Apple introduces Power Mac G5 Quad & Power Mac G5 Dual - Page 3

The 7800 is for 3D gaming and 3D apps like Cinema 4D or Maya. For 2D work like photoshop and video work you won't notice much of a difference. Most of the performance increase in graphics cards nowadays is in the 3D area. 2D more or less reached it's max a few card generations ago.

Well, it could be two months it could be two weeks. I would assume if it was a matter of days, the supervisor would be privy to that info. Because he's in the dark, that tells me it may be weeks off at least. So I'd have to cancel my order and wait and then re-order and then spend $400 or so more and I probably would if I did video or was a gamer. But I'm not, so does that mean I'm good to go with the 6600?

Hell, right now I'm on a dual gig with the geforce4 MX

Awesome man, thanks. I can breathe a sigh of relief now and go ahead with my order. Thanks again

no worries kidred, you'll enjoy your setup. i was just really excited for you that if you could afford the 7800 gt you'd have some max power happening. but certainly given what you have said, it would be way overkill and make your machine noisier anyway. the 6600 plus liquid-cooled (if i am not wrong) dualcore g5 will be sweet and silent for max "in the zone" photoshopping.

How well does everyone think the 6600 will handle X-Plane 8 and Halo at 1650x1050. I'm currently on the 5200 in my PBook and I can get most things up to medium in Halo @ 1024x768 and I would really like to see everything on high. After that most of my work is limited to software development and video which I can get by on with my 5200 with out any problem.

Well, you talk about two G5s, I talk about four G5s. Mind you, the dual core chip is much larger than a single core one. So, if the Power Mac case was spacious to host two single core G5s, it seems about right for two dual core G5s. It looks like Apple had this situation in mind when designed this case. Of course with a single core G5 inside (old mono-processor models), it looked like an empty can .

I can imagine that the designers (J. Ives, et. al.) had kept a good amount of headroom to expand if necessary, which was good for them because the liquid cooling system for the 2.5 and 2.7 dual processor systems were monstrous. They probably knew a dual core option was going to be made when designing the enclosure.

My only complaint of the system is that the inlet fans had an annoying whine when the chips and ambient air are abover a given temperature. At idle, Macs are very quiet, but when their fans need to move air, they make excessive high pitch noise, IMO.

heh. i get ya now i had a powermac g5 1.6ghz single for a few months. that was one heavy beast. i would not look forward to lugging around a Quad... yeah i think its possible apple factored all this in. but at the end of the day they're not happy with having to deal with this hot, expensive, and impossible-to-squeeze-into-a-laptop chip also known as the powerpc g5 \

still this is a great upgrade and if i had more time/money/etc i would have hung on to my powermac g5, i was creating some mad stuff in reason2.5/abletonlive3 software synth trance musicy stuff... the sata drive was hella noisy on that though, it has improved in the past 1+ year. *sigh* technology and how it evolves. a reason for waking up each day huh? just to see wtf is going on

My old Ati 8500 handles graphic acceleration in Max or Lightwave quite well on the PC. And this card must be about 3-4 years old?

I'm sure the 7800GT will be more than adequate for Open GL performance in Lightwave...or Max. For general to detailed models.

For ultra-detailed CAD 3D work then maybe the Quadro is more appropriate.

To saay the 7800GT is only a gaming card would be inaccurate. 'Gaming' cards have come a long way and can pull the fringe out of alot of 'Workstation' cards in many respects.

Gaming cards do push polygons/trianges about. Look at Quake 4 for example.

I couldn't say any of the work I would do it going to get much better than that yet the Nvidia 7800GT looks like it's going to throw it around.

Gaming cards have come along way in their support of Open GL. In games. And in 3D apps.

I'd be very interested in seeing a 7800GT vs a Quadro myself in LW or Max. To see the difference myself...

I'm guessing you're only going to tell the difference because of the extra 256 megs of ram and driver 'edge' on really detailed 3D models.

Benches. Links. etc. If you care to educate me differently. Pictures of a 3d model through put comparison as well....

Lemon Bon Bon

I sent email on the Apple feedback page this morning, since the 7800 GT is mentioned in the www.apple.com/powermac/graphics.html page as a build to order option, and is still not on the Apple Store anywhere.

Hopefully they'll get that fixed soon, but I'm not buying until there are some independent tests anyway. But then - yeah.

As to memory ... yep, bet some people just buy, though that seems *least* likely on the high end. $10k for memory? (granted, a lot of memory)

I already corrected my self on this, but I'll say it more clearly. It's not that they are using 8x in the second slot, they have 8x in both slots because the SLI bridge will match the input speed of the matching cards so SLI will function properly. It's a bottleneck.
I would much rather just have one 16x ( 1- 16X vs. 2- 8x) slot, instead of the minor improvment of 2 matching cards running at 8x, and save the cash until Apple releases one later with 2x full speed 16x slots.

I wouldn't mind seeing what matching two 6600's using an SLI bridge perform like compared to the single one in the 16X slot for comparason, or 2 7800GTX's for that matter. I'd bet that someone like bear feats, or toms hardware will try it out for us sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.

Only AMD processor driven machines (and it's a select few motherboards that have it) have dual FULL speed 16X PCI-E expressways, and that is how it should have been from the beginning, but nobody could get it working.

But on a side note. I do think yesterday answered the question that I will finally be able to use a Quadro in a PowerMac at the very beginning of next year though. (if not sooner, because I'm totally excited about this) And that Apple does intend on keeping the Pro line. Unlike those idiots that kept saying Apple will drop the PowerMac. F*ck! those @ss holes had me scared for a little while.

My old Ati 8500 can handle a model with 100,000 polygons. 'Square' polygons in Lightwave. Before it slows down. And. Begins. Slide-show....up-date.

I'm guessing the 7800 could easily handle, what? 1/2 a million? More? A million?

I can't think of anything non-CAD related that would make me pick a Quadro over a barn-storming 7800GT. For Lightwave and Max modeling? I'm sure the 7800GT would more than amble along in relatively complex scenes.

Daz 3D models of 30-60,000 polygons handle fairly well on my Ati 8500. I should imagine a 7800GT would cruise it.

The Quadro will probably cost about 3-4 times as much. For what I'd want to do...I can't see the Quadro topping it. For bang for buck. It's the 7800GT.

Lemon Bon Bon

The guy at phone from the french Apple store, told me that they had an new info (6 hours ago) : there will not be any 7800 video card option and they are going to edit the web pages speaking of this video card.

I don't know if this info is true, but I can swear that what I related is true. He seems to be embarassed, and asked me several times, why I wanted a faster video card, and what I intended to do with it. I think that the guy recieved guidelines from his boss.

There had better be a 7800gt option. That can't be true....

lbb

I bet in a few months if they update the other PowerMacs as quads as well, they will add it.

An another guy report the same thing on Mac Bidouille. Any people ordering asking the question about the 7800 on the Apple french store recieved the same answer. The 7800 option is cancelled. No delay, just cancelled

I fear that it will be the same in every countries.
The good new, is that according to a first benchmarks the dual 2,3 ghz is faster than the old 2,5 dual with a 6800 pro video card.

Grrrrr ... they want us to buy these things, right? And I want to, but ... argg.

The $9500 quote was for the non-ECC RAM. The ECC RAM is $11900!!!

What's really weird about ECC RAM is the price variations between different sizes. At 1GB the price difference is only $60, but at 2GB the price difference is $1000.

Those aren't even the right numbers. The correct numbers are:

4 8 15 16 23 42

Doesn't matter anyways, some lucky person in Oregon won it all. $340 million...damn.

Only 160 millions $ after taxes

There's absolutely NO WAY Apple is going to offer a £80 card or a £1100 card.

That's wide field. Even for Apple.

NO WAY!

It's got to be a. Glitch at store or b. Supply problem for now.

Option is there or will be added. It WAS with the Ati cards over time.

Hell, ATI aren't even shipping their X whatever cards yet... *(....)*

They'll be along shortly as well. They going to let Nvidia do all the Mac-ing?

No. My guess is we'll have the 7800GT, Quadro.

Ati will respond with? x1800 and a FireGl workstation card.

As Mac sales climb the rivalry to have the best Mac card will increase.

This should not be overlooked.

Think about it. Apple have not just moved to PCI-Express to have a pretty average 6600 or an extreme Quadro and nothing else.

PCI EX Nvidia and Ati options will come...it wouldn't make sense otherwise.

Lemon Bon Bon

A 6600 card is perfectly fine for any 2D work.

Just to clear this up.

All of these cards are competing on the 3D level, not the 2D level. 2D requires very little from the GPU these days, as the GPU is pretty powerful even on low end cards. As long as you have enough memory and aren't using two 30" monitors at once, you can rest easy.

About time that they got Quadros onboard, these have been out for what, four years? FireGLs would be nice as well.

The SLI mobo's are special. They aren't regulat boards with two 8x slots. They are design to work with SLI just as boards are coming out designed to work with just Crossfire.

I'm pretty sure that this will not work with either.

That's nonsense. I asked Apple about that today. He said that there was a delay.

Remember when they came out with the 6800Ultra? There was a delay there as well.

don't tell me people are buying these new PM's with the major intent to play 3-5 year old pc games on them. Oh, wow, you can play Halo at a slightly higher resolution with the new nvidia's via pci-e. Guess what... the enjoyment of that game goes up about 2% because of this. we are in serious need of new software to show off these systems.

so are people freaked-out w/ liquid cooling now or are they beginning to accept it? I haven't seen the failure reports that so many worry about, myself, but we'll see what happens.

I think it's more along the lines that people buying 3k dollar machines want graphics card that cost more than 50 dollars in them. I don't know for sure but i'm pretty sure it's something like that.

And we have it in things like Aperture. Motion. Final Cut.

Doom 3. Lightwave 8-9. Poser 6.

These aren't 3-5 years old.

There's plenty of good stuff on the Mac that could do with a 7800GT.

Lemon Bon Bon

Damn straight.

£2300 inc Vat for a 'flag ship' Quad Cpu Workstation with medicore GPU? THAT SUCKS!

Yeesh, adding the 6600GT is only £104. And performs the nuts off a 6600 vanilla. For an extra £50, the GT6600 would have been a really 'okay' card to include.

Honestly, Apple why inc' a card half way behind the curve all the time.

Lemon Bon Bon

PS. I'm glad the 7800 GT had merely been 'delayed'...

Well, with Mac's improving sales figures...ask the obvious question.

Will ATI take it with the 'bend over' from Nvidia?

When will ATI retort?

Nvidia have already hosed ATI in delivery and bang for buck this year.

How long before before ATI come back at them?

I'm guessing not that long...

Lemon Bon Bon

PS. Remember the dark days of Quickdraw 3D and no 3D competitionn on the Mac? Competition...a beautiful thing...

Anyone know how the 2 GHz boxes compare, and to the various other Dual 2GHz models? I have a rev a dualie and am getting anxious to upgrade. Although at this point, I think I'd wait for the quads to trickle down the line a bit more and wait for the next gen screens.

I think the best bet for upgrading is to get an older 2.5Ghz machine from macmall for 2,200 and sell your current machine on ebay. I have been thinking about doing such a thing myself.

Ah, I hadnt seen that they had added another port... This is nice, since it is saves having to take up 2 slots just to run Xsan. What would have been super cool would have been to build in an Fibre Channel HBA so that all Power Macs would be Xsan ready out of the box (in terms of hardware). Just wishful thinking

it's hard to think you'd see the quads trickle down now. The next revision is probably going to be from Intel. There may be a 3rd party upgrade after-market replacement processor later.
Although, it is possible Apple will squeeze these one more time just to keep the updates coming before the revision to meet demand, and give them time for other projects before the intel transition.

hi lemon bon bon, just a side note, there is no 3ds max for mac. anyway i'm with the lightwave camp because its renders are simply beautiful. 3ds max renders always look like, well, 3ds max renders. but that is quite a separate debate i don't want to get into (max vs lightwave) since i haven't done 3d stuff for a little while now.

i agree that the 7800 gt can handle a lot of openGL stuff in lightwave, say cinema4d, etc... quite well. quadro is probably when you are doing some serious "workstation" 3d graphics and very high resolutions/ multiple monitors etc. for creative motion graphics, animation type 3d work and lower-poly (eg games modelling) the 7800 gt would offer a lot of openGL goodness. 256mb vram would be sweet as well.

but again, like you said, benchmarks and models, polygon counts, texture size etc... would be the key to really work out whether one might want a 7800gt or Quadro. it's great that there is a Quadro option though, as many people on Ai have been commenting about this past year.

ati is behind the curve. the x1---- lines are not really shipping in quantity even to the gaming /pc world.

which is surprising for the 7800gt, either nvidia can't supply them for whatever reason or the drivers are not ready or something else is holding them up. which makes me think, how come apple doesn't get the 7800gts from say Asus? less of a profit margin but 3rd parties have been shipping 7800-series cards for many many months in good quantities now... hmmm i'm sure apple has a reason to only use pure-nvidia-branded 7800gt s?

PS> anyway i have a very personal bias towards lightwave on the mac so mad props to the Quad, hopefully a lot of lightwave users in games, creative, motion, vfx, animation, etc... will get onto the Quad with either the 7800gt (if it ever comes out!!) or Quadro....

I'm sure ATI will respond. But they're having so many problems of their own getting the 1000 series out the door as it is that this is probably on the backburner for now.

agreed.

From the Luxology forums:

I'd rather see how Renderman, and mental ray perform, but that is good information to see.