i currently own a high end AMD machine. Ive never owned a MAC before. And if i had 4k right now i would buy a new Powermac.
OSX is VERY tempting when you run a wintel machine and you have to reset it DAILY just to keep it running correctly. and you have to REFORMAT almost on a yearly basis when the BSOD's start nockin on your doorstep.
now granted apple cant just sit on their cool OS forever, but as long as i can play games like Q3A, and WC3, and D2, and Starcraft, and Redfaction with a good vid card like a GF4 or a new ATI 9700, i can live with a little slower bus speed/cpu speed.
[quote]now granted apple cant just sit on their cool OS forever, but as long as i can play games like Q3A, and WC3, and D2, and Starcraft, and Redfaction with a good vid card like a GF4 or a new ATI 9700, i can live with a little slower bus speed/cpu speed. <hr></blockquote>
I think that's the point Aris. Presently it is not a "little slower bus speed/ cpu speed" but a LOT slower. Really as most know it is the motherboard and bus/ memory speed that holds the Powermacs back quite a bit.
Right now if you put a $399 ATI 9700 in a Powermac you would be wasting your cash as the card would never approach saturation.
To bring us to the "little slower" position we need more from the G4.
I think that's the point Aris. Presently it is not a "little slower bus speed/ cpu speed" but a LOT slower. Really as most know it is the motherboard and bus/ memory speed that holds the Powermacs back quite a bit.
Right now if you put a $399 ATI 9700 in a Powermac you would be wasting your cash as the card would never approach saturation.
To bring us to the "little slower" position we need more from the G4.</strong><hr></blockquote>
i'll agree with you that apple needs to make their machines faster to take a larger portion of the market share.
but honestly. my roomate has a G4 DP 800mhz powermac and a gf3 and he gets over 100 fps on any game out now with all the settings turned up. i think your overexagerating a little bit.
That new tower in the spy photos has some serious cooling capacity. No G4 would need that sort of cooling, it's got to be something else entirely.
Remember all those rumors in December and January about the G5 being ready? Maybe it wasn't "killed", but some bugs were found, or maybe supply issues came up. Apple delayed the release for one product cycle, and now we're at the end of that cycle. The last Powermac update wreaked of a stop-gap update, one that wasn't well planned or thought out in advance. All it really took was dropping in faster CPUs into an existing design, not exactly heavy R&D needed for that. What's Apple been doing with their Powermac hardware engineers? Well, we know this much, they've been working on a tower that's got enough cooling capacity to keep a Power 4 chip cozy and cool (well, maybe not quite, but damn near!).
I think we're in for a mondo surprise in a few weeks, a new Powermac that's going to blow some minds and send others crying for mommy. Apple is finally going to have a reason for charing extra money for their computers. Once again. Apple will have performance that Wintels only dream of. John Carmack will cream his pants over the new Powermacs, Bill Gates will get jealous and say nasty things about Apple, and Steve Jobs will masturbate live on stage.
<strong>That new tower in the spy photos has some serious cooling capacity. No G4 would need that sort of cooling, it's got to be something else entirely.
Remember all those rumors in December and January about the G5 being ready? Maybe it wasn't "killed", but some bugs were found, or maybe supply issues came up. Apple delayed the release for one product cycle, and now we're at the end of that cycle. The last Powermac update wreaked of a stop-gap update, one that wasn't well planned or thought out in advance. All it really took was dropping in faster CPUs into an existing design, not exactly heavy R&D needed for that. What's Apple been doing with their Powermac hardware engineers? Well, we know this much, they've been working on a tower that's got enough cooling capacity to keep a Power 4 chip cozy and cool (well, maybe not quite, but damn near!).
I think we're in for a mondo surprise in a few weeks, a new Powermac that's going to blow some minds and send others crying for mommy. Apple is finally going to have a reason for charing extra money for their computers. Once again. Apple will have performance that Wintels only dream of. John Carmack will cream his pants over the new Powermacs, Bill Gates will get jealous and say nasty things about Apple, and Steve Jobs will masturbate live on stage.
It's all coming together...</strong><hr></blockquote>
i honestly hope your right... but im going to keep my expectations low so i either
"To bring us to the "little slower" position we need more from the G4."
Yep.
JD.
I pay to see the last paragraph. Steve Jobs bending Wintel over for a good hosing, but instead of the usual Photoshop bake off...: 'Yeah baby...how's it feel now...HUH...Bintel..(?)..pipeline this...(refering to the size of his deeper Power4 pipeline...) take this...eat my fpu...you...mhz whore...can you feel my integer? HUH? HUH!??! Can you take my bandwidth (refs Rio...) Width...it's all about WIDTH...BA-BEEE...you...oh gawd...we have...lift off...(refering to his double core whopper...)"
I'm not too sure what the Macworld crowd or Cnet would make of it though...
<strong>now granted apple cant just sit on their cool OS forever, but as long as i can play games like Q3A, and WC3, and D2, and Starcraft, and Redfaction with a good vid card like a GF4 or a new ATI 9700, i can live with a little slower bus speed/cpu speed.</strong><hr></blockquote>
while q3a runs fine there will be a bunch of games coming out that will have hi-res textures and detailed models and maybe even half a AI and then your computer will have to move a lot of data around and for that you'd need a bigger bus. surely you wouldn't want to have 5 second pauses in doom 3 when your computer decides it's time to load a few bumpmaps and textures and a model or two of a few enemies...
anyhow, while the cpu speed i not that pivotal to me, although I do a radiosity render or two now and then, I'd very much like a faster bus simply because I work with huge files usually. and those do benefit from a faster bus, afaik.
It's not inconceivable that Apple would want to have significant input into their next chip.
They've already done the impossible with Jaguar and Xserve AND getting MAYA 4.5 on the Mac (Not to mentioning having Open GL and Nvidia in on the party). Things thought impossible or unlikely are here.
If Apple want to get into the 'Shake' space...hardware wise...I expect something significant to happen within the next year.
The G4 may 'limp on' with DDR and a mhz bump...and Rio early next year. The G4's fpu performance in 3d is very weak. The G4 is a product of neglect. A fine debut chip spoiled by politics, incompetence and...?
But a 'True' next gen' processor...'G5' is what's needed to be taken seriously in the PC workstation space.
We might no want nor care for mhz. But performance counts. Bandwidth counts. Fpu performance in 3D counts.
"while q3a runs fine there will be a bunch of games coming out that will have hi-res textures and detailed models and maybe even half a AI and then your computer will have to move a lot of data around and for that you'd need a bigger bus. surely you wouldn't want to have 5 second pauses in doom 3 when your computer decides it's time to load a few bumpmaps and textures and a model or two of a few enemies...
anyhow, while the cpu speed i not that pivotal to me, although I do a radiosity render or two now and then, I'd very much like a faster bus simply because I work with huge files usually. and those do benefit from a faster bus, afaik. "
If Apple want to get into the 'Shake' space...hardware wise...I expect something significant to happen within the next year.
The G4 may 'limp on' with DDR and a mhz bump...and Rio early next year. The G4's fpu performance in 3d is very weak. The G4 is a product of neglect. A fine debut chip spoiled by politics, incompetence and...?
...
We might no want nor care for mhz. But performance counts. Bandwidth counts. Fpu performance in 3D counts.
I'd agree with all of that except that the G4's fpu performance is very weak. When you look at the shoot-outs you find athlons doing 3-d at just about proportionally faster speeds. Athlon 1.6Ghz (not whatever weird XP rating) goes about 60% faster than a Ghz G4. And you find P4's, though not as efficient, just dusting everybody, with a 2.5Ghz chip returning a little more than 2x the performance. Maybe 2.2x, so that a 2.53Ghz P4 goes about a 110% faster in 3-d stuff. On a clock for clock basis the G4's single double precision fpu seems to do quite well, but there just aren't enough clocks and it ends up getting smoked for any task where it can't use it's superior SIMD (it's one saving grace ATM)
Now, if the thing was just 'faster' it'd be quite competitive as it is. But, unfortunately, it keeps puttering along at 50% Moore's Law, and the performance gap keeps widening.
Die-shrink plus true DDR would make a good PM G4 chip for the (very) short term, but the G4 must surely be headed to the consumer and laptop line-ups now, with something else entirely coming to the PM.
I think (hope) that in 12-18 months we ought to see consumer macs with faster cooler G4's than the PM's ever got and that the Professional lines will move to a truly worthy chip. hmmm... There's a lot of cooling potential in those cases now coming off the Apple production line... I wonder what's in there?
It's probably a G4 for now (though maybe a seriously pumped-up version) but there must be something else on the horizon.
"Q: There have been questions about the high price of Microsoft's Office product for OS X and the low volume of sales. Should Microsoft consider dropping the price?
A: If they're concerned about the volume they're selling, I certainly think that's one of the things to look at. In a tough economy, with the price of a computer continually migrating downward, if you're spending $1,000 or $1,500 on a computer, you don't want to spend $500 on a software package. That's a challenge they have."
Apple lecturing M$ on volume. I like the irony in that...
I do not "know" that the G4 is bus limited and so does very few outside Apple. The public mantra seem to be that "if G4 had DDR it would smoke the AMD Intel offerings".
I assume that we soon will have a singel CPU in the 1GHz range in the low end with DDR, it will be intresting to se it it is faster than the 1GHz G4 or even the 1GHz upgrades for 100 MHz bus G4/AGP computers.
And Quake 3 as a yardstick for 3D? It is a old application. Many Macs that do well in Q3 struggle with Medal of Honor despite that it is Q3 based.
Unreal Tournament 2003 is just around the corner, I hope, and that will set new standards for 3D. Some PC sites alredy use UT 2003 to test the latest GPUs from nVIDIA and ATI.
Apples push for video work on the ohme computer is really a good reason for having really good CPU performance.
The 500 MHz stall meant a lot of lost ground and so far Apple have made no sign of catching up. Getting a 1.4MHz CPU out in a month or two is just keeping up with half the clock speed of the Intel CPUs. They absolutly have to start to get closer to show that they are able to close the performance gap over time.
How would ATI fare if they never could get close to nVIDA in performance that their top of the line was like last years offers form nVIDIA?
ATI did catch up nVIDIA that had the lead for a long time and now they are leapfrogging each other. Motorola on the other hand....
There really isn't much to pick apart with this rumour... its all fairly plausible. One thing that struck me with TheRegister rumours last year was that there were one or two quotes that said "we got the latest G5 back from Motorola". Perhaps it was just a funny was of phrasing it, but you normally wouldn't say that unless you sent them something in order to get it back from them. That would be the case if it was an Apple designed PowerPC.
AIM includes some provisions for sharing of design technology so no doubt Apple has some really good starting points for a new design, and they probably have a bunch of work that was done on the CORE2000 that was supposed to follow the G2 (but never materialized). They also may have gotten a few people from Somerset, in addition to all the Apple people taking part in the Somerset projects.
The note about not having a "32-bit compatibility layer" is actually more correct than saying it has one. PowerPC 32bit/64bit compatibility is built into BookE and isn't a "layer", its just a single bit switch in the CPU that modifies the behaviour of a handful of integer instructions. It can run 32-bit code but it is not emulated.
The 800 MHz clock rate hints at a highly superscalar design, rather like the POWER4. If this is a made up rumour then it is clearly made up with an awareness of the other rumours of IBM involvement. It doesn't fall in line with last year's rumours about high clock rates (>2GHz), however.
"running a Darwin variant, not MacOS X" is a little weird, but it implies things are at a pretty early stage and the HAL hasn't been fully updated for this processor yet. That and the next comment fall in line with a 2003 introduction for these beastly CPUs.
No information about the bus or memory controller.
Market positioning... it makes a lot of sense to build a very powerful workstation-class Mac, but that doesn't mean the PowerMac can be left to languish. Since this beast doesn't sound like it is near term, we'll hopefully see improved performance in the PowerMac line soon (G4 based).
I can believe this rumor. It's just what some clever thinking should expect from Apple. They are an innovator. They do what everyone else thinks is unexpected, not worth the effort or a waste of time.
Imagine a true workstation level Mac. That would be COOL and definitely re-invigorate the market.
<strong>That new tower in the spy photos has some serious cooling capacity. No G4 would need that sort of cooling, it's got to be something else entirely.
Remember all those rumors in December and January about the G5 being ready? Maybe it wasn't "killed", but some bugs were found, or maybe supply issues came up. Apple delayed the release for one product cycle, and now we're at the end of that cycle. The last Powermac update wreaked of a stop-gap update, one that wasn't well planned or thought out in advance. All it really took was dropping in faster CPUs into an existing design, not exactly heavy R&D needed for that. What's Apple been doing with their Powermac hardware engineers? Well, we know this much, they've been working on a tower that's got enough cooling capacity to keep a Power 4 chip cozy and cool (well, maybe not quite, but damn near!).
I think we're in for a mondo surprise in a few weeks, a new Powermac that's going to blow some minds and send others crying for mommy. Apple is finally going to have a reason for charing extra money for their computers. Once again. Apple will have performance that Wintels only dream of. John Carmack will cream his pants over the new Powermacs, Bill Gates will get jealous and say nasty things about Apple, and Steve Jobs will masturbate live on stage.
It's all coming together...</strong><hr></blockquote>
Or in Jan, maybe.....
JYD, what's up? You're being awfully optimistic.... <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
AIM includes some provisions for sharing of design technology so no doubt Apple has some really good starting points for a new design, and they probably have a bunch of work that was done on the CORE2000 that was supposed to follow the G2 (but never materialized). They also may have gotten a few people from Somerset, in addition to all the Apple people taking part in the Somerset projects.
The note about not having a "32-bit compatibility layer" is actually more correct than saying it has one. PowerPC 32bit/64bit compatibility is built into BookE and isn't a "layer", its just a single bit switch in the CPU that modifies the behaviour of a handful of integer instructions. It can run 32-bit code but it is not emulated.
The 800 MHz clock rate hints at a highly superscalar design, rather like the POWER4. If this is a made up rumour then it is clearly made up with an awareness of the other rumours of IBM involvement. It doesn't fall in line with last year's rumours about high clock rates (>2GHz), however.
"running a Darwin variant, not MacOS X" is a little weird, but it implies things are at a pretty early stage and the HAL hasn't been fully updated for this processor yet. That and the next comment fall in line with a 2003 introduction for these beastly CPUs.
No information about the bus or memory controller.
Market positioning... it makes a lot of sense to build a very powerful workstation-class Mac, but that doesn't mean the PowerMac can be left to languish. Since this beast doesn't sound like it is near term, we'll hopefully see improved performance in the PowerMac line soon (G4 based).[/QB]<hr></blockquote>
I too would like to know more about the motherboard and bus design, but alas, "Deep Mac" isn't talking and has now become cagey with his replies. Rather than put my words in his mouth I'll call it quits with regard to this paticular rumor and not ask for any more details.
For you and others reading my little contribution of water cooler gossip my source nailed the Xserve. The reason I didn't share this piece of info was that I didn't believe it myself. Apple? Rack mounted servers? Enterprise market? "Yeah Right" was my thought. Well here I sit, I could have been legend on Apple Insider and elevated in status with the likes of Kormac, Dorsal M and others. *sniff* Opportunity missed I suppose
All sarcasm aside my source, okay I'll call him "Deep Mac" did share with me some tidbits about Apple's methods and requirements for testing their hardware dev platforms along with some other commentary. NOTE: This is basically a summary of many conversations and information he's shared.
Issue # 1: Cases/Industrial Design.
Deep Mac claims that he has never seen a new Apple case design and maintains that the prototype units he has seen are typical PC full tower beige cases with the new Apple hardware inside. Stuck to the side of these cases are large labels with helpful reminders from Apple Corporate to heed NDA's and other legal agreements. Aside from that, the boxes themselves are indistinguishable from any other PC/Workstation/Server machine in his QA Lab. Deep Mac is unconvinced that 3rd party developers ever see new Apple industrial design concepts, and that leaks of pictures etc. of new Apple Industrial Design must come from Apple itself or a subsidiary.
He did say that he has seen prototype hardware that came equipped with some rather elaborate cooling systems, like refridgeration units strapped on to these units.
Issue #2: Specifications.
Deep Mac claims that the documentation from Apple about the prototype hardware seldom mentions specs. Since he is a Software QA guy whose focus is testing device drivers, all he gets are the Test Requirements, Scenerios and Test Objectives
for the hardware. He gets his specs from the Operating System or reading the printed labels on the devices themselves.
Issue 3#: OS and system software.
In recent memory Deep Mac claims that he has yet to see a test box run a commercial version of the Mac OS, he mentioned that he's seen Rhapsody once on a test box. Instead he's seen AIX, FreeBSD, but of late he's seen more Darwin than anything else. (Makes sense, build up kernel layer of Darwin, integrate with the rest of MacOS X later)
Other tidbits from Deep Mac:
Prepare to be blown away with what Apple has in development over the next two years, and no, it has nothing to due with clockspeed.
And finally, with regard to Apple's strategy in the long-term. Apple wants no less than a 25% marketshare. (Where Deep Mac got this I do not know, nor does he give a time frame)
Food for thought. Like all of you *I* want to know more about these workstation class machines he's talked about. Frankly it's the most exciting thing I've heard in awhile.
Comments
OSX is VERY tempting when you run a wintel machine and you have to reset it DAILY just to keep it running correctly. and you have to REFORMAT almost on a yearly basis when the BSOD's start nockin on your doorstep.
now granted apple cant just sit on their cool OS forever, but as long as i can play games like Q3A, and WC3, and D2, and Starcraft, and Redfaction with a good vid card like a GF4 or a new ATI 9700, i can live with a little slower bus speed/cpu speed.
[quote]now granted apple cant just sit on their cool OS forever, but as long as i can play games like Q3A, and WC3, and D2, and Starcraft, and Redfaction with a good vid card like a GF4 or a new ATI 9700, i can live with a little slower bus speed/cpu speed. <hr></blockquote>
I think that's the point Aris. Presently it is not a "little slower bus speed/ cpu speed" but a LOT slower. Really as most know it is the motherboard and bus/ memory speed that holds the Powermacs back quite a bit.
Right now if you put a $399 ATI 9700 in a Powermac you would be wasting your cash as the card would never approach saturation.
To bring us to the "little slower" position we need more from the G4.
<strong>Aris
I think that's the point Aris. Presently it is not a "little slower bus speed/ cpu speed" but a LOT slower. Really as most know it is the motherboard and bus/ memory speed that holds the Powermacs back quite a bit.
Right now if you put a $399 ATI 9700 in a Powermac you would be wasting your cash as the card would never approach saturation.
To bring us to the "little slower" position we need more from the G4.</strong><hr></blockquote>
i'll agree with you that apple needs to make their machines faster to take a larger portion of the market share.
but honestly. my roomate has a G4 DP 800mhz powermac and a gf3 and he gets over 100 fps on any game out now with all the settings turned up. i think your overexagerating a little bit.
Remember all those rumors in December and January about the G5 being ready? Maybe it wasn't "killed", but some bugs were found, or maybe supply issues came up. Apple delayed the release for one product cycle, and now we're at the end of that cycle. The last Powermac update wreaked of a stop-gap update, one that wasn't well planned or thought out in advance. All it really took was dropping in faster CPUs into an existing design, not exactly heavy R&D needed for that. What's Apple been doing with their Powermac hardware engineers? Well, we know this much, they've been working on a tower that's got enough cooling capacity to keep a Power 4 chip cozy and cool (well, maybe not quite, but damn near!).
I think we're in for a mondo surprise in a few weeks, a new Powermac that's going to blow some minds and send others crying for mommy. Apple is finally going to have a reason for charing extra money for their computers. Once again. Apple will have performance that Wintels only dream of. John Carmack will cream his pants over the new Powermacs, Bill Gates will get jealous and say nasty things about Apple, and Steve Jobs will masturbate live on stage.
It's all coming together...
<strong>That new tower in the spy photos has some serious cooling capacity. No G4 would need that sort of cooling, it's got to be something else entirely.
Remember all those rumors in December and January about the G5 being ready? Maybe it wasn't "killed", but some bugs were found, or maybe supply issues came up. Apple delayed the release for one product cycle, and now we're at the end of that cycle. The last Powermac update wreaked of a stop-gap update, one that wasn't well planned or thought out in advance. All it really took was dropping in faster CPUs into an existing design, not exactly heavy R&D needed for that. What's Apple been doing with their Powermac hardware engineers? Well, we know this much, they've been working on a tower that's got enough cooling capacity to keep a Power 4 chip cozy and cool (well, maybe not quite, but damn near!).
I think we're in for a mondo surprise in a few weeks, a new Powermac that's going to blow some minds and send others crying for mommy. Apple is finally going to have a reason for charing extra money for their computers. Once again. Apple will have performance that Wintels only dream of. John Carmack will cream his pants over the new Powermacs, Bill Gates will get jealous and say nasty things about Apple, and Steve Jobs will masturbate live on stage.
It's all coming together...</strong><hr></blockquote>
i honestly hope your right... but im going to keep my expectations low so i either
1. am not dissapointed if your wrong
or
2. so im really really excited if your right
[ 07-25-2002: Message edited by: gifted expert ]</p>
Yep.
JD.
I pay to see the last paragraph. Steve Jobs bending Wintel over for a good hosing, but instead of the usual Photoshop bake off...: 'Yeah baby...how's it feel now...HUH...Bintel..(?)..pipeline this...(refering to the size of his deeper Power4 pipeline...) take this...eat my fpu...you...mhz whore...can you feel my integer? HUH? HUH!??! Can you take my bandwidth (refs Rio...) Width...it's all about WIDTH...BA-BEEE...you...oh gawd...we have...lift off...(refering to his double core whopper...)"
I'm not too sure what the Macworld crowd or Cnet would make of it though...
///...er...ahem... <img src="graemlins/embarrassed.gif" border="0" alt="[Embarrassed]" />
Lemon Bon Bon
[ 07-25-2002: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>
<strong>now granted apple cant just sit on their cool OS forever, but as long as i can play games like Q3A, and WC3, and D2, and Starcraft, and Redfaction with a good vid card like a GF4 or a new ATI 9700, i can live with a little slower bus speed/cpu speed.</strong><hr></blockquote>
while q3a runs fine there will be a bunch of games coming out that will have hi-res textures and detailed models and maybe even half a AI and then your computer will have to move a lot of data around and for that you'd need a bigger bus. surely you wouldn't want to have 5 second pauses in doom 3 when your computer decides it's time to load a few bumpmaps and textures and a model or two of a few enemies...
anyhow, while the cpu speed i not that pivotal to me, although I do a radiosity render or two now and then, I'd very much like a faster bus simply because I work with huge files usually. and those do benefit from a faster bus, afaik.
They've already done the impossible with Jaguar and Xserve AND getting MAYA 4.5 on the Mac (Not to mentioning having Open GL and Nvidia in on the party). Things thought impossible or unlikely are here.
If Apple want to get into the 'Shake' space...hardware wise...I expect something significant to happen within the next year.
The G4 may 'limp on' with DDR and a mhz bump...and Rio early next year. The G4's fpu performance in 3d is very weak. The G4 is a product of neglect. A fine debut chip spoiled by politics, incompetence and...?
But a 'True' next gen' processor...'G5' is what's needed to be taken seriously in the PC workstation space.
We might no want nor care for mhz. But performance counts. Bandwidth counts. Fpu performance in 3D counts.
"while q3a runs fine there will be a bunch of games coming out that will have hi-res textures and detailed models and maybe even half a AI and then your computer will have to move a lot of data around and for that you'd need a bigger bus. surely you wouldn't want to have 5 second pauses in doom 3 when your computer decides it's time to load a few bumpmaps and textures and a model or two of a few enemies...
anyhow, while the cpu speed i not that pivotal to me, although I do a radiosity render or two now and then, I'd very much like a faster bus simply because I work with huge files usually. and those do benefit from a faster bus, afaik. "
Yep.
Lemon Bon Bon
[ 07-25-2002: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</p>
[ 07-25-2002: Message edited by: G-News ]</p>
<strong>
If Apple want to get into the 'Shake' space...hardware wise...I expect something significant to happen within the next year.
The G4 may 'limp on' with DDR and a mhz bump...and Rio early next year. The G4's fpu performance in 3d is very weak. The G4 is a product of neglect. A fine debut chip spoiled by politics, incompetence and...?
...
We might no want nor care for mhz. But performance counts. Bandwidth counts. Fpu performance in 3D counts.
[ 07-25-2002: Message edited by: Lemon Bon Bon ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'd agree with all of that except that the G4's fpu performance is very weak. When you look at the shoot-outs you find athlons doing 3-d at just about proportionally faster speeds. Athlon 1.6Ghz (not whatever weird XP rating) goes about 60% faster than a Ghz G4. And you find P4's, though not as efficient, just dusting everybody, with a 2.5Ghz chip returning a little more than 2x the performance. Maybe 2.2x, so that a 2.53Ghz P4 goes about a 110% faster in 3-d stuff. On a clock for clock basis the G4's single double precision fpu seems to do quite well, but there just aren't enough clocks and it ends up getting smoked for any task where it can't use it's superior SIMD (it's one saving grace ATM)
Now, if the thing was just 'faster' it'd be quite competitive as it is. But, unfortunately, it keeps puttering along at 50% Moore's Law, and the performance gap keeps widening.
Die-shrink plus true DDR would make a good PM G4 chip for the (very) short term, but the G4 must surely be headed to the consumer and laptop line-ups now, with something else entirely coming to the PM.
I think (hope) that in 12-18 months we ought to see consumer macs with faster cooler G4's than the PM's ever got and that the Professional lines will move to a truly worthy chip. hmmm... There's a lot of cooling potential in those cases now coming off the Apple production line... I wonder what's in there?
It's probably a G4 for now (though maybe a seriously pumped-up version) but there must be something else on the horizon.
A: If they're concerned about the volume they're selling, I certainly think that's one of the things to look at. In a tough economy, with the price of a computer continually migrating downward, if you're spending $1,000 or $1,500 on a computer, you don't want to spend $500 on a software package. That's a challenge they have."
Apple lecturing M$ on volume. I like the irony in that...
Lemon Bon Bon
I assume that we soon will have a singel CPU in the 1GHz range in the low end with DDR, it will be intresting to se it it is faster than the 1GHz G4 or even the 1GHz upgrades for 100 MHz bus G4/AGP computers.
And Quake 3 as a yardstick for 3D? It is a old application. Many Macs that do well in Q3 struggle with Medal of Honor despite that it is Q3 based.
Unreal Tournament 2003 is just around the corner, I hope, and that will set new standards for 3D. Some PC sites alredy use UT 2003 to test the latest GPUs from nVIDIA and ATI.
Apples push for video work on the ohme computer is really a good reason for having really good CPU performance.
The 500 MHz stall meant a lot of lost ground and so far Apple have made no sign of catching up. Getting a 1.4MHz CPU out in a month or two is just keeping up with half the clock speed of the Intel CPUs. They absolutly have to start to get closer to show that they are able to close the performance gap over time.
How would ATI fare if they never could get close to nVIDA in performance that their top of the line was like last years offers form nVIDIA?
ATI did catch up nVIDIA that had the lead for a long time and now they are leapfrogging each other. Motorola on the other hand....
AIM includes some provisions for sharing of design technology so no doubt Apple has some really good starting points for a new design, and they probably have a bunch of work that was done on the CORE2000 that was supposed to follow the G2 (but never materialized). They also may have gotten a few people from Somerset, in addition to all the Apple people taking part in the Somerset projects.
The note about not having a "32-bit compatibility layer" is actually more correct than saying it has one. PowerPC 32bit/64bit compatibility is built into BookE and isn't a "layer", its just a single bit switch in the CPU that modifies the behaviour of a handful of integer instructions. It can run 32-bit code but it is not emulated.
The 800 MHz clock rate hints at a highly superscalar design, rather like the POWER4. If this is a made up rumour then it is clearly made up with an awareness of the other rumours of IBM involvement. It doesn't fall in line with last year's rumours about high clock rates (>2GHz), however.
"running a Darwin variant, not MacOS X" is a little weird, but it implies things are at a pretty early stage and the HAL hasn't been fully updated for this processor yet. That and the next comment fall in line with a 2003 introduction for these beastly CPUs.
No information about the bus or memory controller.
Market positioning... it makes a lot of sense to build a very powerful workstation-class Mac, but that doesn't mean the PowerMac can be left to languish. Since this beast doesn't sound like it is near term, we'll hopefully see improved performance in the PowerMac line soon (G4 based).
Imagine a true workstation level Mac. That would be COOL and definitely re-invigorate the market.
<strong>...and Steve Jobs will masturbate live on stage.</strong><hr></blockquote>
<img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
Ala Jim Morrison, eh?
<strong>That new tower in the spy photos has some serious cooling capacity. No G4 would need that sort of cooling, it's got to be something else entirely.
Remember all those rumors in December and January about the G5 being ready? Maybe it wasn't "killed", but some bugs were found, or maybe supply issues came up. Apple delayed the release for one product cycle, and now we're at the end of that cycle. The last Powermac update wreaked of a stop-gap update, one that wasn't well planned or thought out in advance. All it really took was dropping in faster CPUs into an existing design, not exactly heavy R&D needed for that. What's Apple been doing with their Powermac hardware engineers? Well, we know this much, they've been working on a tower that's got enough cooling capacity to keep a Power 4 chip cozy and cool (well, maybe not quite, but damn near!).
I think we're in for a mondo surprise in a few weeks, a new Powermac that's going to blow some minds and send others crying for mommy. Apple is finally going to have a reason for charing extra money for their computers. Once again. Apple will have performance that Wintels only dream of. John Carmack will cream his pants over the new Powermacs, Bill Gates will get jealous and say nasty things about Apple, and Steve Jobs will masturbate live on stage.
It's all coming together...</strong><hr></blockquote>
Or in Jan, maybe.....
JYD, what's up? You're being awfully optimistic.... <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
AIM includes some provisions for sharing of design technology so no doubt Apple has some really good starting points for a new design, and they probably have a bunch of work that was done on the CORE2000 that was supposed to follow the G2 (but never materialized). They also may have gotten a few people from Somerset, in addition to all the Apple people taking part in the Somerset projects.
The note about not having a "32-bit compatibility layer" is actually more correct than saying it has one. PowerPC 32bit/64bit compatibility is built into BookE and isn't a "layer", its just a single bit switch in the CPU that modifies the behaviour of a handful of integer instructions. It can run 32-bit code but it is not emulated.
The 800 MHz clock rate hints at a highly superscalar design, rather like the POWER4. If this is a made up rumour then it is clearly made up with an awareness of the other rumours of IBM involvement. It doesn't fall in line with last year's rumours about high clock rates (>2GHz), however.
"running a Darwin variant, not MacOS X" is a little weird, but it implies things are at a pretty early stage and the HAL hasn't been fully updated for this processor yet. That and the next comment fall in line with a 2003 introduction for these beastly CPUs.
No information about the bus or memory controller.
Market positioning... it makes a lot of sense to build a very powerful workstation-class Mac, but that doesn't mean the PowerMac can be left to languish. Since this beast doesn't sound like it is near term, we'll hopefully see improved performance in the PowerMac line soon (G4 based).[/QB]<hr></blockquote>
I too would like to know more about the motherboard and bus design, but alas, "Deep Mac" isn't talking and has now become cagey with his replies. Rather than put my words in his mouth I'll call it quits with regard to this paticular rumor and not ask for any more details.
For you and others reading my little contribution of water cooler gossip my source nailed the Xserve. The reason I didn't share this piece of info was that I didn't believe it myself. Apple? Rack mounted servers? Enterprise market? "Yeah Right" was my thought. Well here I sit, I could have been legend on Apple Insider and elevated in status with the likes of Kormac, Dorsal M and others. *sniff* Opportunity missed I suppose
All sarcasm aside my source, okay I'll call him "Deep Mac" did share with me some tidbits about Apple's methods and requirements for testing their hardware dev platforms along with some other commentary. NOTE: This is basically a summary of many conversations and information he's shared.
Issue # 1: Cases/Industrial Design.
Deep Mac claims that he has never seen a new Apple case design and maintains that the prototype units he has seen are typical PC full tower beige cases with the new Apple hardware inside. Stuck to the side of these cases are large labels with helpful reminders from Apple Corporate to heed NDA's and other legal agreements. Aside from that, the boxes themselves are indistinguishable from any other PC/Workstation/Server machine in his QA Lab. Deep Mac is unconvinced that 3rd party developers ever see new Apple industrial design concepts, and that leaks of pictures etc. of new Apple Industrial Design must come from Apple itself or a subsidiary.
He did say that he has seen prototype hardware that came equipped with some rather elaborate cooling systems, like refridgeration units strapped on to these units.
Issue #2: Specifications.
Deep Mac claims that the documentation from Apple about the prototype hardware seldom mentions specs. Since he is a Software QA guy whose focus is testing device drivers, all he gets are the Test Requirements, Scenerios and Test Objectives
for the hardware. He gets his specs from the Operating System or reading the printed labels on the devices themselves.
Issue 3#: OS and system software.
In recent memory Deep Mac claims that he has yet to see a test box run a commercial version of the Mac OS, he mentioned that he's seen Rhapsody once on a test box. Instead he's seen AIX, FreeBSD, but of late he's seen more Darwin than anything else. (Makes sense, build up kernel layer of Darwin, integrate with the rest of MacOS X later)
Other tidbits from Deep Mac:
Prepare to be blown away with what Apple has in development over the next two years, and no, it has nothing to due with clockspeed.
And finally, with regard to Apple's strategy in the long-term. Apple wants no less than a 25% marketshare. (Where Deep Mac got this I do not know, nor does he give a time frame)
Food for thought. Like all of you *I* want to know more about these workstation class machines he's talked about. Frankly it's the most exciting thing I've heard in awhile.
<strong>Frankly it's the most exciting thing I've heard in awhile.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I won't argue with that assessment.
The new Apple POWERWorks