Call me daft (well, don't really...) but could someone please explain to me how AI.com and forums.AI are connected? Hell, if it wasn't for blue2kdave's post I never would've bothered to check AI's 'front page'.
Call me daft (well, don't really...) but could someone please explain to me how AI.com and forums.AI are connected? Hell, if it wasn't for blue2kdave's post I never would've bothered to check AI's 'front page'.
Well yes, thank you. In fact I've been around long enough to say that that's the portal I used to enter the forums from (before the fancy new speed hole graphics), but I'm looking for more of an explanation.
1.8GHz tops? Meh. A 3.2GHz P4 with Hyperthreading on an 800MHz FSB will be faster for most things.
I could be wrong, but aren't PC mobos with 800 MHZ FSB, not actually authentic 800 mhz? like it's just a quad pumped 200 mhz FSB, or something like that.
furthermore, the IBM PPC 970 was designed to have a FSB of half the CPU speed, no matter what. And likewise this would mean that the 1.8 would have a true 900 MHZ FSB. That's called SERIOUS BANDWIDTH that should make all everyday computing run fast as all hell.
I asked about it over in General Discussion, watched some TV, came back and on a whim checked the front page of AI (firt time in months) then came screaming over here.....
The tidbit that caught my eye is that the motherboard will be HyperTransport based. I have to admit that it's not exactly shocking that Apple hasn't just been keeping a seat warm in the HT Consortium all this time, but all speculation on this board has focused on RapidIO. It's not as fast, but it's plenty fast, cheap and scalable, and IBM is heavily invested in it.
The dual-core 970 CPU bit is interesting. It gives Apple some very interesting options: They can have a single-CPU board that accomodates one or two cores without modification (but the second core would be a little bandwidth starved), and a pricier dual-CPU board that can accomodate two or four cores. This would give them an effective quad-CPU board with the engineering complexity of a dual-CPU board (and make no mistake, a dual-970 board will be a bit more work than a dual-G4 board, because the 970 doesn't use a shared bus architecture).
Those boards will scale up very nicely, too. When the 980 and the 9800 come out Apple can drop them in and get effective dual and quad CPUs on a single-CPU board and effective quad and octo CPUs on a dual-CPU board, courtesy of hardware threading and dual-core processors.
Simple motherboards mean low cost and quick time to market. We should be in for a wild ride. 8)
I could be wrong, but aren't PC mobos with 800 MHZ FSB, not actually authentic 800 mhz? like it's just a quad pumped 200 mhz FSB, or something like that.
and the bandwith is over 6 Gig. As for P4s smoking these chips; they CAN compete --until you add Altivec- -and then for those apps optimised for Altivec there will be a serious difference, and not in the P4's favour...well, that's when Steve does his Photoshop number...
Oh, and the P4 at the highest comparable speeds of the 970 can be used to toast bread. And that's why you will never see the fastest P4s in a laptop- which will NOT be the case with the 970s. The 970s and 980s etc are the beginnings of the IBM "low end" processors that can only improve in speed and efficiency as time goes by. By contrast, the P4 can only be sold as a personal butt warmer if pushed any further, hence the need for Intel to come out with a different set of chips (Xeons).. and guess what? they are at lower clock speeds than the P4s, and that's an embarrassment for Intel, for now, creating a little marketing "issue', since Intel has pushed the speed issue to absurdity (and the nonthinking PC user has effusively bought into this, in those occasional and odd circumstances when they think about such things. (What goes around, comes around!)
If Apple puts two of these suckers in the computers then there will be at least a 50% increase in speed over one of them and that wil be untouchable by PC makers for the price. Quad them, and there will be no comparison. Let's hope.
I just hope the new PowerMac G5s are not just vaporware which does not ship for months after the announcement like so many other apple products.
It seems from recent rumors that Motorola is also developing a new version of the G4. I think that the G4 is going to stick around in the consumer line for quite sometime. If Moto can indeed make the G4 go up to 2Ghz with a faster bus and the new low K technology ... well it may not be such a bad chip for the ibook and imac, and emac. Do you guys think apple with completely switch to IBM? I am of the persuasion that having two chip manufactures is better than one for Apple. The 970 seems like it will save the day for Apple. I really hope beyond anything else that they are successful, and I believe that in a few years they will have their 10%.
Although the news of the 970 coming out shortly for the PowerMacs is great, I wonder what is in store for the PowerBooks. If moto can really make a 2ghz G4 use no more than 12watts or whatever with that low k tech, would it not be a better chip for the PowerBooks than the 970?
Also, if apple is not planning on using the G4 any more, why would moto develop a new 2ghz version? I thought the G4 was mainly just for apple?
Why do you say that? Estimated SPECmark scores shown off by IBM last October put the 1.8GHz PPC970 at about ~950 int and ~1050 fp. The 3.0GHz Canterwood P4's already have breached 1200 in both SPEC int and fp. That's about a 20% lead Intel has right now and it will be boosted to ~30% with the 3.2GHz part this month. The new Canterwood P4 motherboards also have memory bandwidth of 6.4GB/sec (the PPC970 has no advantage there).
At IBM's Dhrystone ALU estimates, the PPC970 is even futhur behind.
If these benchmarks were worthless, IBM wouldn't have bothered with them. SPECmarks are an industry standard and do tell you what to expect.
You know as long as I can do the things I like to do on my Apple that is all I need. A 800mhz 7455 seems fast enough for me. So as long as the 970 allows apple to remain competitive, does it really matter which chip is a little faster?
I wish I could bet on this whole 970 at WWDC thing in Vegas. Can't you bet on just about anything there?
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I wouldn't get too excited about this thing happening at WWDC. It's very possible, but still just rumors. Plus now we have people speculating that they will "leapfrog" Intel, and a price drop to boot. There is bound to be disappointment come the 23rd. Expectations are getting too high. Expect the worst, hope for the best.
You know as long as I can do the things I like to do on my Apple that is all I need. A 800mhz 7455 seems fast enough for me. So as long as the 970 allows apple to remain competitive, does it really matter which chip is a little faster?
I absolutely agree! Most people don't buy a new computer every 6 months, so the fastest computer in the world sitting on someone's desk ends up being not-the-fastest computer in the world a few months later. Speed only becomes a problem when your doing high end work for a living or if the computer that you sell are way behind. I would say 10-30% difference in certain tasks leaves enough room for arguing which is "fastest." When it gets to 50% slower, then you toss in the towel and agree the other guy is faster.
Comments
Originally posted by 709
Call me daft (well, don't really...) but could someone please explain to me how AI.com and forums.AI are connected? Hell, if it wasn't for blue2kdave's post I never would've bothered to check AI's 'front page'.
Just go to AppleInsider.
I like the name GV. Haven't seen that name suggested before. But does that mean the processor is only half the OS?
Originally posted by Mr. Me
Just go to AppleInsider.
Well yes, thank you. In fact I've been around long enough to say that that's the portal I used to enter the forums from (before the fancy new speed hole graphics), but I'm looking for more of an explanation.
And I though the ads in the forums were bad.
Saturday nights at AI are starting to scare me.....
Originally posted by Existence
1.8GHz tops? Meh. A 3.2GHz P4 with Hyperthreading on an 800MHz FSB will be faster for most things.
I could be wrong, but aren't PC mobos with 800 MHZ FSB, not actually authentic 800 mhz? like it's just a quad pumped 200 mhz FSB, or something like that.
furthermore, the IBM PPC 970 was designed to have a FSB of half the CPU speed, no matter what. And likewise this would mean that the 1.8 would have a true 900 MHZ FSB. That's called SERIOUS BANDWIDTH that should make all everyday computing run fast as all hell.
suitably positioned in sequence to be the "one ring"
as long as the new machine isn't called the Smeagol.
I asked about it over in General Discussion, watched some TV, came back and on a whim checked the front page of AI (firt time in months) then came screaming over here.....
Cool.
In Before Third Page
he teases.... we's don't likeeeessss beings teased do we smeagol?
The dual-core 970 CPU bit is interesting. It gives Apple some very interesting options: They can have a single-CPU board that accomodates one or two cores without modification (but the second core would be a little bandwidth starved), and a pricier dual-CPU board that can accomodate two or four cores. This would give them an effective quad-CPU board with the engineering complexity of a dual-CPU board (and make no mistake, a dual-970 board will be a bit more work than a dual-G4 board, because the 970 doesn't use a shared bus architecture).
Those boards will scale up very nicely, too. When the 980 and the 9800 come out Apple can drop them in and get effective dual and quad CPUs on a single-CPU board and effective quad and octo CPUs on a dual-CPU board, courtesy of hardware threading and dual-core processors.
Simple motherboards mean low cost and quick time to market. We should be in for a wild ride. 8)
Originally posted by Wrong Robust
I could be wrong, but aren't PC mobos with 800 MHZ FSB, not actually authentic 800 mhz? like it's just a quad pumped 200 mhz FSB, or something like that.
and the bandwith is over 6 Gig. As for P4s smoking these chips; they CAN compete --until you add Altivec- -and then for those apps optimised for Altivec there will be a serious difference, and not in the P4's favour...well, that's when Steve does his Photoshop number...
Oh, and the P4 at the highest comparable speeds of the 970 can be used to toast bread. And that's why you will never see the fastest P4s in a laptop- which will NOT be the case with the 970s. The 970s and 980s etc are the beginnings of the IBM "low end" processors that can only improve in speed and efficiency as time goes by. By contrast, the P4 can only be sold as a personal butt warmer if pushed any further, hence the need for Intel to come out with a different set of chips (Xeons).. and guess what? they are at lower clock speeds than the P4s, and that's an embarrassment for Intel, for now, creating a little marketing "issue', since Intel has pushed the speed issue to absurdity (and the nonthinking PC user has effusively bought into this, in those occasional and odd circumstances when they think about such things. (What goes around, comes around!)
If Apple puts two of these suckers in the computers then there will be at least a 50% increase in speed over one of them and that wil be untouchable by PC makers for the price. Quad them, and there will be no comparison. Let's hope.
1.8GHz tops? Meh. A 3.2GHz P4 with Hyperthreading on an 800MHz FSB will be faster for most things.
no, it won't.
It seems from recent rumors that Motorola is also developing a new version of the G4. I think that the G4 is going to stick around in the consumer line for quite sometime. If Moto can indeed make the G4 go up to 2Ghz with a faster bus and the new low K technology ... well it may not be such a bad chip for the ibook and imac, and emac. Do you guys think apple with completely switch to IBM? I am of the persuasion that having two chip manufactures is better than one for Apple. The 970 seems like it will save the day for Apple. I really hope beyond anything else that they are successful, and I believe that in a few years they will have their 10%.
Although the news of the 970 coming out shortly for the PowerMacs is great, I wonder what is in store for the PowerBooks. If moto can really make a 2ghz G4 use no more than 12watts or whatever with that low k tech, would it not be a better chip for the PowerBooks than the 970?
Also, if apple is not planning on using the G4 any more, why would moto develop a new 2ghz version? I thought the G4 was mainly just for apple?
Originally posted by alcimedes
no, it won't.
Why do you say that? Estimated SPECmark scores shown off by IBM last October put the 1.8GHz PPC970 at about ~950 int and ~1050 fp. The 3.0GHz Canterwood P4's already have breached 1200 in both SPEC int and fp. That's about a 20% lead Intel has right now and it will be boosted to ~30% with the 3.2GHz part this month. The new Canterwood P4 motherboards also have memory bandwidth of 6.4GB/sec (the PPC970 has no advantage there).
At IBM's Dhrystone ALU estimates, the PPC970 is even futhur behind.
If these benchmarks were worthless, IBM wouldn't have bothered with them. SPECmarks are an industry standard and do tell you what to expect.
http://www.specbench.org/osg/cpu2000...s/cpu2000.html
That aside, I do think the PPC970 is nothing but a good thing for Apple. It brings them a lot closer to Intel in performance than the current G4s.
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I wouldn't get too excited about this thing happening at WWDC. It's very possible, but still just rumors. Plus now we have people speculating that they will "leapfrog" Intel, and a price drop to boot. There is bound to be disappointment come the 23rd. Expectations are getting too high. Expect the worst, hope for the best.
Originally posted by Algol
You know as long as I can do the things I like to do on my Apple that is all I need. A 800mhz 7455 seems fast enough for me. So as long as the 970 allows apple to remain competitive, does it really matter which chip is a little faster?
I absolutely agree! Most people don't buy a new computer every 6 months, so the fastest computer in the world sitting on someone's desk ends up being not-the-fastest computer in the world a few months later. Speed only becomes a problem when your doing high end work for a living or if the computer that you sell are way behind. I would say 10-30% difference in certain tasks leaves enough room for arguing which is "fastest." When it gets to 50% slower, then you toss in the towel and agree the other guy is faster.