How long is the G3 going to hang around?

cobra

If memory serves correctly, the G3 has been available since sometime during the second half of 1997. Thats been over 4 years ago.



Its only seen a bump in speend of about 500 MHZ. Thats about 125 MHZ a year.



Anyone venture to say when Apple may stop using this chip?



Yes, its a solid chip but it seems to be getting a little long in the tooth. The new iMac needs to really go a G4. I would imagine that the iBook would be the last to get a G4.



The only reason that Apple would not go a G4 in the iMac is if the G5 is not ready. Be a little hard for Apple to market pro machines that have the same chip as the consumer models.



Guess I am just hoping for a G4 in the iMac. If it happens, I may dump my Powermac G4 400 tower for one.



Heck, I would probably get a combo drive, better graphics chip, and a bigger drive as well. Maybe a 133 MHZ bus as well.



Then maybe I am just dreaming.



Any thoughts?

eman

As soon as the iBook gets a G4 that'll be the end of the G3.

cobra

But when will that be?



2003?

junkyard dawg

Apple is insane if the iMac doesn't get a G4 at MWSF. It's time that they begin putting the heat on developers to code for altivec, and the only way to do that is to provide an incentive. If iMac's benefit from altivec, then suddenly developers can rationalize spending the extra time to code for it.



Currently, Apple has not shown much of a committment to Altivec. It is only used in a minority of Macs that are sold, so what is a developer to think?



And since OS X is highly optimized for Altivec, it's only fitting for the iMac to get a G4.



Powermacs should get G5s, iMacs G4s, Titaniums G4s, and the iBook can stick with a G3 for a bit longer.



And remember, when the iMac first hit the shelves, it used the same CPU as the B&W Powermacs, with a similar MHz to the low end towers. I believe it's time to repeat this stellar alignment of Apple's lineup.



OOOHHHHH, YEAHHH!!

matsu

G3, G4 has nothing to do with targeting consumers and pros. Apple would use all G4's if they could, but they couldn't get enough of them, or alternatively they couldn't get enough cool/low power versions untill recently. If Apollo proves easier to fab (higher yields/smaller process) then I should expect Apple to use it, or variants of it, in all their lines From iBook right up to PowerMac. They could use cacheless versions, L1 only versions and L1 + L2 versions to span the 4 lines. Problem is they don't have enough. If a G5 comes out and it's too hot for anything but the powermac (like the original G4), I expect to see G5 PowerMacs, and G4 everything else.



IBM can get it's head out of it's ass and finally supply a SIMD unit. Sahara II is supposed to have an SIMD unit, due at the end of 2002, it should have been in Sahara I. I wonder if they'd add an SIMD unit at Apple's behest and are just keeping quiet about it?

the swan

I wouldn't say that OS X is "highly optimized" for AltiVec. Some yes, but not highly. In my experience G3's and G4's at equivilant Mhz perform pretty much the same.

imacfp

If the G5 is not coming and the G4 is not bumped much higher than 1 Ghz I would rather Apple stick with a high clocking G3. Why have supply problems? Do you really think Moto could get out of their way enough to produce G4s for three out of four lines? Especially if the new iMac takes off like the original one did. I don't think so.



Chris

brussell

I don't think most users will give a damn about Altivec - it's only really beneficial for very specialized applications that crunch large continuous streams of data, like Photoshop filters and DVD encoding. Based on Id's experience with QIII, it doesn't even appear to help games.



It doesn't matter if most developers neglect Altivec. Most apps wouldn't benefit much (if at all) from coding for it.



And there are some points in favor of the G3:



1. It's significantly smaller and cooler than the G4.

2. It's significantly cheaper than the G4.

2. IBM seems to have a commitment to putting some really top technology into it and sending it to 1 Ghz by the end of 2002 with the 750fx.



The G3 will be smaller, cooler, and cheaper, not to mention much faster, by the end of 2002. The G4 Apollo will be getting SOI, but the rest of the good stuff will go straight into the G5. I can actually see a G3 & G5 line-up before an all G4 & G5 line-up.



I think EmAn is right that the iBook will continue to use it, probably for more than a year.

mslee

[quote]I wouldn't say that OS X is "highly optimized" for AltiVec. Some yes, but not highly. In my experience G3's and G4's at equivilant Mhz perform pretty much the same. <hr></blockquote>



you're not serious...

macaddict

The G3 is gonna stay around for quite awhile. The G3 is a very good chip, and remember that aside from Altivec, the G4 offers little over a 750fx at equivelent clock rates. Plus, as mentioned before, it is cheap, cool, and efficient. It would be a waste to write off the G3 before it is used to full potential.



If I was Apple I would quit this business of waiting for expos and just plop new chips in when available. If Apple did that we'd have a 700MHz iBook right now and 800MHz iMacs. The G4's would have hit 1GHz awhile ago and we'd get G5's at MWSF.



But Apple is arrogant and annoying and will either A. be mean and give us G4's for the fifth time in the towers or B. Give us G5's and dump out the 7460 chip when they could have been used to boost sales for the holiday season.



Apple Apple Apple, when will you learn?



Anyways, I can see the iBook getting two more revisions with the G3. One boosting it to 800MHz, and another to approach or reach the 1GHz barrier. From then on, unless IBM continues with G3 development, we will have to use G4's or G5's which will scale above 1GHz.

matsu

It seems that a lot of work went into 7460. Mot didn't do it just to prove they could. Obviously it's targeted to a market that can use/afford G5's. But who knows what that will be.



Anyone remember Gekko? You know that custom PPC IBM made for Nintendo. Apparently it includes some sort of game specific SIMD functions. Hmmm... Could it be that "Sahara will actually get some sort of SIMD by the end of 2002?" IBM has stated that the future versions of it would indeed include that feature. A SIMD capable Sahara would probably be a serious performer. Hell, if the Sahara 2 debuts at 2Ghz, WOW! That'd be a very fast chip. I recall IBM originally forecast that they would scale Sahara up to 2 GHz (no altivec) and then changed their public statements to say Sahara would go from 700-1Ghz in 2002 and be replaced by Sahara 2 at up to 2Ghz at the end of 2002.



Might very well be that the near term Apple line-up will be G3 and G5. G4 for the PB only?



However I seriously disagree with the notion that SIMD is unimportant to consumers. Even Pentium 4 shows significant improvement with SSE optimized photoshop. Bearing in mind that SSE's SIMD is not up to the power of an Altivec. I think I'd be happy with very high clock, short pipeline, low power G3's that had a significant FP improvements (without SIMD). Yet from a software development standpoint SIMD for all macs is appealing.



Aren't there some video/photo plugins in the pipe that will only work with altivec? iUsers use plenty of photoshop and even some FCP/Premier. I dunno, I'm tech-dumb. Give me a fast/cheap machine that runs everything the pro machines do (albeit slower) and I'm happy.

marcuk

I read yesterday that the Gekko's SIMD unit is a subset of Altivec, over at anandtech.com, so maybe IBM have licenced, or made a compatible Altivec unit

blabla

[quote]Originally posted by MarcUK:

<strong>I read yesterday that the Gekko's SIMD unit is a subset of Altivec, over at anandtech.com, so maybe IBM have licenced, or made a compatible Altivec unit</strong><hr></blockquote>



I doubt it is Altivec.. I read the article:



<a href="http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1566&p=2"; target="_blank">http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1566&p=2</a>;



"However details on this processor are sketchy at best but the information we've been able to gather points at a relatively unmodified PowerPC 750CXe microprocessor with the addition of close to 40 new instructions (potentially SIMD FP) designed to specifically aid in game performance. Followers of the PowerPC architecture will quickly realize that these additional instructions do not comprise all of the instructions provided by Motorola's AltiVec SIMD instruction set. It is possible that only a subset of AltiVec was implemented into this processor, using instructions heavily geared towards the tasks that it would be handling."



They dont know sh**...

kidred

[quote]Originally posted by The Swan:

<strong>I wouldn't say that OS X is "highly optimized" for AltiVec. Some yes, but not highly. In my experience G3's and G4's at equivilant Mhz perform pretty much the same.</strong><hr></blockquote>



I have to disagree. I have a G4 450 and my wife has an Imac 400. My G4 is simply flat out faster then her G3, especially in X. She's not a power user so I can understand why she is very sontent with what she has

cdhostage

The thing is tht the G3 is a low-pwoer chip. you can put it in an iBook and it will be very happy.



Apple cannot put sucha hihg-drain chip in all of its portables wthout some radical new battery technollo0gy. I like radicalynew battery haofto techonogloy.

anand

The G3 will be around for a long time. The new G3 chip - which is very different from the first G3 - is a great chip and will work great in the new iMac. The new iMac will not be a G4 (what are you people thinking!) but will use the new IBM G3 chip. Remember, the new G3 is 25% faster at equivelent speeds. That is great and will make the new iMac a nice little machine.



Also G4 based machines are much faster in OS X. It is odd, but they are also faster (much faster ) in loading apps. No alti-vec there!