Spec: Look for updated PowerMacs February 19th - Page 2

[quote]Seybold Seminars has not announced who IS keynoting, we will have to wait until they announce it. It still could be Steve Jobs. <hr></blockquote>

Apple has already announced that they are only doing 6 seminars at Seybold in NY. Apple also does not have as large as a booth as they usually do at shows like Seybold in SF.

Apple makes such a 'large' presence most years at Seybold because of it's close location to Apple. With other trade shows happening basically the week before, and the week after, don't look for Apple to present new Power Macs here.

Why is everyone so hung up on raycer graphics - as I recall, they never even made any products... How do we suddenly know they're going to be kick ass? Or even used at all?

We will see the G5 very soon.
Apple can't use the Apollo chip for the pro line.
Keep in mind that the actual G4 isn't able to gain more speed.
For this reason motorola created the Apollo.
If the powerMac line uses Apollo, its means that the Imac would be stuck at the current 800-867 speed.
Apollo is made for the consumer market and for the portable thanks to its low energy consumption and the low heat that they generate.
Using fhe Apollo for the Powermac would be a dead end.
:o

[quote]Originally posted by Rob Viesca:
<strong>Apple will not announce something as large as the G5 at some small, low-key conference. Something that larger - a next generation chip, mind you - will be saved for MWNY 2002. This and MWSF have traditionally been the places for the larger announcements. Faster processor speeds and minor tweaks to existing product lines occur in MWJapan and MWParis/London.

From what I hear at most rumors sites is that the G5 is not ready yet nor will be finished until April, in time for two months of production before July.

If you're really itching to buy a new computer, don't hold out for a G5. Upgraded powermacs (low-level 850mhz possibly) will most likely poke there heads at MWJapan in 3 months.

For now, it's the iMac's turn to shine.

-Rob</strong><hr></blockquote>

There is no saving! Products are announced either when they are ready (e.g., iBook special event, iPod special event), or before they are ready (e.g., MWSF2002 iMac). To "save" products mean to lose sales.

As dartblazer noted previously, the PowerMacs are 10 day waits at the Apple Store. Sort of strange for a non-upgrade product that Apple is trying to blow out with a promotion...

Are we all in agreement that SOMETHING will happen to the PowerMacs by March? Can the line really survive much longer with its current specs?

When is MacWorld Tokyo?
When is Seybold?
When is Quicktime live?

Steve is probably only keynoting MWTK. I think its the end of Feb. This would be a perfect time for a speed bump to the Powermac line to Apollos, shipping immediately. Then MWNY he announces the G5 shipping end of July, August and September as well as the iMac getting a speed bump up to around 1Ghz (with the Apollos).
I think thats a realistic outlook.

[quote]Originally posted by Toofeu:
<strong>We will see the G5 very soon.
Apple can't use the Apollo chip for the pro line.
Keep in mind that the actual G4 isn't able to gain more speed.
For this reason motorola created the Apollo.
If the powerMac line uses Apollo, its means that the Imac would be stuck at the current 800-867 speed.
Apollo is made for the consumer market and for the portable thanks to its low energy consumption and the low heat that they generate.
Using fhe Apollo for the Powermac would be a dead end.
:o </strong><hr></blockquote>

The G5 will be ready by the end of the year, so who really gives a shit what they use for 6 months - it's not a dead end when you have your exit already planned. Personally, I'm fed up with people saying that if the G5 doesn't come out in 3 weeks they're going to take their own life or something drastic like that or buying a PC. WHO CARES? All I personally care about right now is that Apple gets out of the GHz Gap, brings a better balance to its product line, increases sales, stock goes up. They can intro. the new motherboard architecture (which HAS been ready since last year - they're waiting on the chips), with faster G4's - maybe up to 1.4 GHz or so. In short - quit whining about whether you get G* or G@ - Apple needs to add speed to its Pro line, it needs to add it now from a simple business/marketing standpoint, the G5 will be out *sometime* this year, but in the meantime I think they should use any means possible to make it look like they aren't up against this wall.

Sheesh. OK I'm done now.

-S

In Tokyo we will see a (big) speed bump to the tiBook (and a new TFT at 1600x1200 ?), at Seybold we'll get an update for the PM line. I wonder why Apple didn't discontinue the now obsolete 733 MHz modell replacing it with a 800MHz SP.

The G5 Mac will have a complete new designed motherboard, because it won't use maxbus anymore.
I haven't seen so far any information about the Apollo supporting DDR RAM. But if it does, it will be PC266, not PC333.

I hope we will see a G5 Mac in NY. And I'm beginning to think of a split of the pro line in a G4 midrange and a G5 highend.

i think a quad G4 will be a good alternative to G5 for the first half of 2002 ;-)

anyway - i think the PowerMac lineup will get a very good speed bump in the beginning of february at an apple special event. superdrive in all models, 'cause the consumer line has it - so the pro line will get it!

krassy

[ 01-08-2002: Message edited by: Krassy ]</p>

AMD is going to chip new ATHLON XP based on 0,13 micron SOI in april.
Considering that Motorola and AMD share the same high end Plant in dresden, it's possible to see the Appolo or G5 chips in april also.

[quote]Originally posted by jeromba:
<strong>mmmh... is it possible that the new motherboar will be the same for a new G4 or a new G5 (six month later)?
</strong><hr></blockquote>

Nope, see below.


[quote]<strong>
When the G4 was released there was 2 mobo: One from the old gen and a new one...</strong><hr></blockquote>

Yes, but that was solely for the fact that the G4 still supports the G3's old, slower 60x bus. New G4s use the MPX bus, and G5s are believed to use something completely different (and if they are really 64 bit processors, backwards compatibility for the bus is, um, unlikely to say the least).

Bye,
RazzFazz

[quote]Originally posted by The Mactivist:
<strong>Why is everyone so hung up on raycer graphics - as I recall, they never even made any products... How do we suddenly know they're going to be kick ass? Or even used at all?</strong><hr></blockquote>

Especially since this rumour has been circulating around here for years, but there never was any actual hint to support it besides the fact that Apple bought Raycer...

Bye,
RazzFazz

[quote]Originally posted by Krassy:
<strong>i think a quad G4 will be a good alternative to G5 for the first half of 2002 ;-)
</strong><hr></blockquote>

Hmm, I'd say it depends.
Does anyone here know wether the MPX bus / MaxBus is a point-to-point thing as with the Athlon (i.e. each CPU gets full bandwidth to the northbridge), or if it's a shared bus as with the P3 (i.e. all the CPUs in a system share the available bandwidth)?
In the case of the former, DDR RAM would even make sense with current G4s in a dual-processor configuration, but given the latter, quad G4s seem very unlikely because that shared bus would be a HUGE bottleneck.

Bye,
RazzFazz

Where the hell is Dorsal? Come on back and let us know what the deal is.

[quote]Originally posted by powerdoc:
<strong>AMD is going to chip new ATHLON XP based on 0,13 micron SOI in april.
Considering that Motorola and AMD share the same high end Plant in dresden, it's possible to see the Appolo or G5 chips in april also.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Since when do they share AMD's plant in Dresden? Back when the G4 troubles started there was speculation that Moto could lease some time on that fab from AMD, but there is no evidence that it happened. Since then AMD has brought that fab up to full capacity and they are utilizing it to crank out their Althon processors.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... the G5 does exist, but we have no real info on when it will ship. Based on the very thin info we have, its not outside the realm of possibility that it could ship in Feb, or it could wait to MWNY, or even longer. If there weren't enough chips to ship it this month, what is the point in pre-announcing it and taking the lime light away from the new iMac? By building up chip supplies they increase the clock rate they'll be able to intro at, and increase the amount of software testing they can do. CNN quoted an executive from Motorola as saying that Moto will withhold public product announcements on the request of their customer -- and Apple is exactly the kind of customer who likes to make their own big announcements, associated with trade shows or not. The G5 has been in development for 3-4 years now, and a new chip usually takes that long to design and bring to production. It is also common practice to be refining the existing design while developing a new one in parallel. And chips don't always arrive on the process that is initially planned -- they frequently start on a non-bleeding edge process and then move up later when the process has worked the kinks out. That's what is going on with Apollo, for example. Finally, given the messed up Consumer/Pro line situation, the long PM waiting times, and end of the promotion, there is likely to be a PM update in a month or so.

On the flip side, there is no proof that an update won't just use the first wave of Apollo chips to bump the clock rate. This combined with a fast bus & fast memory will certainly have a big impact on performance. There is no public G5 information, so making predictions isn't much more than pulling dates out of your a$$. Blanket statements about "there is no G5" or "the new PMacs must be G5s" is just silliness.

[ 01-08-2002: Message edited by: Programmer ]</p>

If a big change such as DDR is still pretty far off, I wouldn't be surprised to see a "quiet" update, like the ibook/powerbook update in October, or the combo drive update to the powerbook in December.

Raising the powermac speeds by, say 167Mhz wouldn't require anything other than shutting down the online Apple Store for an hour or so, and certainly wouldn't merit Steve Jobs huffing and puffing.

You see the G4 in the iMac was a goodstep of Apple, because it has no multi-potential. Quad-processor can't be done with G4 because it has a few problems with such things. That's why G5 is coming soon it has the potential for Quads, with Hypertransport and the new nVidia card,8X AGP.

G5 to the top with gForce4

For pro's and Hardcore gamers <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />

[quote]Originally posted by Bozo the Clown:
<strong>If a big change such as DDR is still pretty far off, I wouldn't be surprised to see a "quiet" update, like the ibook/powerbook update in October, or the combo drive update to the powerbook in December.

Raising the powermac speeds by, say 167Mhz wouldn't require anything other than shutting down the online Apple Store for an hour or so, and certainly wouldn't merit Steve Jobs huffing and puffing.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Apple has had a motherboard revision ready since MWNY. It's Motorola that is dragging its feet. Expect the next PowerMac revision to sport it no matter what G* chip it uses. Apple may even want to call it a G5 no matter what, but who knows.

-S