How long is the G3 going to hang around?
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?
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?
Comments
2003?
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!!
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?
Chris
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.
you're not serious...
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.
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.
<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**...
<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
Apple cannot put sucha hihg-drain chip in all of its portables wthout some radical new battery technollo0gy. I like radicalynew battery haofto techonogloy.
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!