MacBidouille posts PPC 970 benchmarks - Page 7

I don't think that's what people are arguing so much.

The 'PowerMac' won't qualify as a "gamer's machine". It will be _good_ at games, but it will be priced out of that league. And the niggling compatibility/tardiness/etc issues will mean it can _not_ be _great_ for games.

The "Gamer's box" would be headless-iMac-with-a-slot, or the return-of-the-pizzabox. Otherwise we're doomed to have the 'Consumer line insufficiantly upgradeable' and the 'Power' line priced too steep with features gamer's don't lust after.

That said, Ghost Recon (and other games) rocks on the latest duals w/ a cinema display (as demoed here at 'The Computer Store'). But there's no way that Apple can say with a straight face "We're targeting the gamer's market" with a setup that exceeds $6k. Likewise, on the pc side, the bulk of the 'gamer's market' isn't running around with dual Xeons in towers with 6 pci-x slots either.

If Apple really wants to get enthusiastic gamer support, it would be through an entirely new product line.

I think with Panther, a 970 and a 9700, Mac gaming will have come of age. Macs were doing great colour games when the PC was still doing orange and blue Battle Chess.

So.

Games are important to the Mac. Apple have a sizeable slice of their webside devoted to games and the appropriate Mac set up depending on whether you're a soft or 'hard core' gamer. They'll become more so when we get decent hardware to run them on. It is a big market. It's worth billions...and Apple, a company that can barely string out a profitable quarter...could well do with a slice of that or any music player market (which was also 'unimportant' to Apple before Apple made it so.) All parts of the computer market are 'small' if taken individually. Apple have made a fist of video, music...but now it's time to get back to their core graphic market with a sidewinder missile: the 970. This will torpedo any wintel incursion in Mac Quark/print territory.

I think the 970 will bench much against the PC brethren than the current G4s do re: games. How's that?

Apple's hardly going to trumpet Unreal 2003 performance unless it has a: Unreal 2003 and b: has the latest 9700 and c: a decent cpu with decent bandwidth. The 970 will allow Apple to trumpet gaming and 3d performance. Something Wintel is strong on. Not for much longer. I can see the 970 cutting their lead time.

Personally, I'd settle for Painter 8 performance without brush lag in A4 300dpi mode...or bitch slapping 300 dpi Photoshop files...or 3D renders in about 1 fifth of the time...

Lemon Bon Bon

The IBM site quoted 0.13 as the size, with a speed range of 1.8 to 2.5 GHz. From looking at the original page it would have had to be a serious typo for something else to be intended.

Then that _one_ specific page is removed from the site. All the other references/documents are left alone - there's just nowhere that says '2.5 GHz' anymore.

There wasn't a date presented either for the 2.5's. Just that 'the blades' would be available 2H03, and they would range from 1.8 to 2.5....

If it was a typo, why wasn't it just fixed?
If it was prerelease 0.09 parts, why wasn't it just worded that way "... and 0.09 um parts shipping in 1H04 at 2.5GHz" or whatever?

I think I might be content at 1.8... but I'm not convinced there was no truth behind the Blade announcements. (Seeing the text straight from IBM is convincing somehow

I don't argue that gaming isn't a big thing. I don't argue that cars are a big thing, either, but I don't think it makes sense for Apple to get into that market...

What I'm arguing is that Apple can't make a Powermac that hardcore gamers will flock to without seriously compromising the integrity and viability of the Mac platform, and they shouldn't try. ATi, nVidia, Creative, etc can compete for the meager PC gamer market while Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft can compete for the much larger console market. The barriers of entry to both markets are too high for Apple to even consider.

As long as we Mac users have nothing but clumsy and slow Windows ports to offer, no hardcore gamer will give the platform a second thought. And who cares? Microsoft takes a $250 million beating every quarter from Xbox losses. And on the PC end, I seriously doubt any of the 'l33t g4m3rz' I know paid for Windows XP, or even most of their games. It's their hobby, leave 'em be.

Now, as for making Mac OS X a better place for games to be developed and ported, I completely agree with you. But I'm no programmer, so I'll leave other people to complain about that .

does the introduction of 1.7Ghz Power4+ mean higher clocked 970s ???

Indeed.

Well, ask and ye shall receive eh?

Either we are completely off-base with the 970, or Apple/IBM has something up their collective sleeves.

Any knowledge of new 'boxes' floating around...?

what's the math on that? so compared to macboudille's time it would be what more percentage faster?

It is important to keep in mind, that we cannot directly intepret any information regarding the IBM Blade servers to also directly apply to a potential new breed of PowerMacs.

The expected volume high end yield of the 970 is 1.8ghz. Now a certain percentage of chips will achieve yields higher then that, and based upon other rumors, the percentage of higher yields is greater then expected. However, Apple has been burned too many times by Motorola's inability to meet demand. I think they will play this cautious and will not announce anything they are not confident they can meet the demand of.

Also keep in mind, even if IBM is getting some yield above 2.0 ghz, I would anticipate they will first meet the demand for that higher power in their blade servers, before selling any to Apple. Therefore, Apple will get what is available in volume, but IBM may reserve the lower volume, higher speed chips (if any) for their own use, until such time that supply is sufficient to meet the volume demand of Apple.

The .13 process will likely scale well beyond 2.0 ghz eventually. The question is, will it be in sufficient volume and at acceptable heat and power consumption levels. If anything beyond 1.8 ghz is announced intially by Apple, I will be very pleasantly surprised. But I think it is foolish to expect it. And as much as I am anxious to see 970s in PowerBooks, I think it would be even more foolish to expect them before 2004.

I have great expectations and hopes, but choose to temper them with a little bit of realism. Neither rumors, nor economics nor realistic production scenarios support a complete refresh of all Apple lines for this summer or even fall. However they do provide a for a strong possibility, even probability, for the PowerMacs and X-serves, possibly as soon as July with announcements or at least preliminary introductions at WWDC. More then that is likely fantasy. Of course there is nothing wrong with a little fantasy, as long as you don't live your life around it.

Oh and back on topic of the benchmarks, while interesting and hopeful, they must be taken with a grain of salt. There are obviously irregularities and even if well intentioned, I would have to question their accuracy simply due to probable human error, and the fact that we have no detailed information by which to evaluate the various machines. Still, from what I have seen and read elsewhere, while not "accurate", they may very well be "in the ballpark". I think the 970 will come to the Macintosh and and general performance parity will be restored. In some areas their performance will surpass the competition. Likewise, I expect the competition will also have their areas of superiority.

Still the future of Macintosh is bright. Much brighter then it has been for a very long time.

1.7GHz Power4s? A hot box gets even hotter. I don't know if it'd have any correlation to the 970 clock frequency, though. If it did, that'd mean we could see top 970s at or a little above 2 GHz, would be nice.

Yes, it certainly would be nice, wouldn't it?

IBM can skim the fastest 970 all they want and leave the lowend to Apple, I will not mind. A 1.6 GHz 970 has twise the integer speed of a G4/1.42 and more than 4 times the FP

So if IBM keep the 1.8 and above for their blade server for while, I am still happy
If they keep everyting above 1 GHz I will get cranky even if 900 MHz 970 are faster than the current G4/1.42 GHz....

When put thru the Moki Automatic Translation Device:

Output:

You will be sandbagged when Apple releases > 2ghz 970 based Macs at WWDC.

?

a) confirm
b) deny
c) <cough>

moki, I enjoy the nice "enigmatic" style in your recent posts

lol

Are you gonna make me turn my head, too?

More info on the 970, this time from LoopRumors

They have been briefed on preliminary specs on the 980 but don't bother to tell us. F**** teasers

So can we now say: *CONFIRMED* 970 PM's to be introduced at the WWDC? How reliable are their sources? Hey, I'm just asking questions here

Nope. Hoping the 970 will do that though.

When put thru the Apple Automatic Translation Device:

Those of you that order the Dual 2ghz model on June 23rd will not get your machine till Sept.

I think I can wait a couple 'o months for a dual 2ghz PM

So what will it be:

When introduced at the WWDC:

a) PM single 1.4
b) PM dual 1.6
c) PM dual 1.8

or

A) PowerBooks 1.4 (15" and 17") with 1ghz 12"
B) PM single 1.6
C) PM dual 1.8
D) PM dual 2.0

And after MWSF

0) eMac 1.2 and 1.4 G4
1) iMac 1.4 and 1.6
2) PowerBook 1.4 (12") 1.6 (15" and 17")
3) PM single 1.8
4) PM dual 2.0
5) PM dual 2.3 or 2.5
( 6) PM ultra dual 2.5)

Realistic, maybe not, but it would be an d@mned impressive linup

go have a look at: LoopRumors

Or just look here

I find it interesting that Apple has allegedly received 20,000 1.4 GHZ chips but 40,000 1.6 GHZ and 40,000 1.8 GHZ chips.

Maybe the 970 is fabbing so well their aren't alot of slow chips.

Maybe Apple doesn't need so many because they're putting single 1.4 GHZ chips into their entry level tower

that seems most likely.

So the PB will get a 1.4 then (that is when it enters the PowerBook lineup) ???

That would be my guess. Or for an unreasonably optimistic speculation, the PMac lineup will be all duals at 1.6, 1.8, and 2.0, and the 1.4s are for Powerbooks.

Nah because then you need a chip for the other two PowerBooks.

I don't think we will see powerbooks until the 980 part comes along in January. However it does look possible that 2.3 and 2.5 970's may be available before then, so how about:

1.4 SP
1.6 DP
1.8 DP

Available within a couple of weeks, and one more thing..

Rack mount XStations DP 2.3 and DP 2.5 available in September.

(I would love to say Quads but I dont think so)

macboudille has a little more info.


http://www.macrumors.com

A bit early for the 980 in January, don't you think. In the first half 2003 we will see the 970+. We will see the 980 at the earliest in the second half of 2004. They will probably give the 970 at least a year as the "top dog". netro

From Macbidoobie:

[edit: tried to make more sense of the "babelfish" translation]

For a more intelligible translation:


[Rumour} More info. on the PPC 970

Here are some further exclusive runours about the PPC 970 motherboard. The source may be considered as very reliable. But, for want of proof, they remain rumours. This information concerns a prerelease motherboard sent to a very few Apple partners.

- The motherboard is more rectangular than square (we had already received information about a "very long" board).
- The processor is soldered to the board (typical of a prerelease board) with a standard heatsink on top.
- But, above all, there are 8 RAM slots on the board (presumably PC3200) of which four are covered by a large "do not use" sticker. These 4 are connected differently to the other 4 (no more info. available).

Various explanations for the presence of the 4 non-working slots can be postulated. Here they are in order of increasing likelyhood.

1) (unlikely) They have been dropped from the final board.
2) (possible) On the dual motherboard, each processor has it's own RAM, to increase the bandwidth.
3) (probable) TheTwinBank technology had not been fully implemented on this prerelease motherboard, but will be later.

Only 6 more works to find out!

[/QUOTE]

michael

From Looprumors.com:

We received word that two large shipments of Power PC 970 processors went to Foxconn in Taiwan, under a purchase order from Apple computer. Twenty thousand 1.4Ghz PPC 970's and forty thousand 1.6Ghz PPC 970's have already arrived in their hands. IBM's inventory contains fifty thousand 1.8 Ghz PPC 970's, of which forty thousand are destined for Foxconn tomorrow (Wednesday).

IBM has listed as pending 2Ghz parts as well, which means that it will be in inventory within a month if their fab in East Fishkill produces sufficient volumes of them, and from what we hear they should be in stock by mid-June. Apple has stated that they need a minimum of 40 thousand in order to make a production run, and from what we understand this is for dual processors because normally their production runs are twenty thousand units. It is not IBM's policy to comment on other vendor's unreleased products. We have also been briefed that the PPC 970 will come in 2.3 and 2.5Ghz configurations by the end of the year, and as well some preliminary specs on the upcoming 980 processor, which is a Power 5 derivative.


-------------
RosettaStoned

Deja vu

Hm, where was there a mention about RAM dedicated per CPU in a dual system? Was that here or at Ars "Perpetual Future Apple CPU thread"?

Ah ha! Oh god! The discussion arose from a MacOSRumors report. Yikes. (And MOSR has been done all weekend...)

Six degrees of Mac Rumor Sites.

Screed

Can anyone explain what TwinBank is?

Similar to "Raid Striping" but for RAM?

or is this a bad analogy?