970s real advantage - 64 & 32 bit at the same time
The 970's real advantage comes when you look at the 64 bit competition.
As Steve will say:
4GB is crap. Wanna see 4GB go by? Watch uncompressed lowly NTSC video (1MB/frame) for 4000 frames, ie: about 2 minutes of video! WE NEED 64 to get the job done. It is also easy to dream up games that use worlds that have multiple gigs of textures. A map of Earth at 200 meter resolution uses up well over 10GB of texture memory. Programming such applications in 32 bit is as much a pain as was trying to write ms word in 16 bit.
Itanium: Intel says it will only be in consumer/workstations in a few years. Intel is Ostrich-like on 64 bit.
"It could be the end of the decade" before mainstream desktops need more than 4GB of memory, one of the chief reasons to move to 64-bit chips, Justin Rattner, a senior fellow at Intel, said during an interview at the Intel Developer Forum taking place here this week.
Mr. Rattner's comments echoed statements from Intel President Paul Otellini, who said in an interview last year that Intel may not be compelled to produce a 64-bit desktop chip until 2008 or even 2009. "(1)
Also, look at the speed that an itanium 64 bit OS (which is a lot of work to write BTW) will run 32 bit apps at. Think Pentium 500 if you are lucky.
Then look at AMD. They have a better crossover solution at hand, but for the AMD opteron to run 64 bit code it has to 'switch modes', a slow process. "...By contrast, AMD uses a 64-bit prefix in front of X86 instructions to tag a 64-bit operation. The technique requires referring to separate 64-bit registers and extended memory addresses. That method is "very elegant in terms of not disrupting the X86 architecture but may not be able to support mixed 32- and 64-bit operations as well as IBM's approach," said McCarron of Mercury Research."(3)
Can't wait.
--Knobsturner
(1) <a href="http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030221.gt64/GTStory"; target="_blank">http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030221.gt64/GTStory</a>;
(2) <a href="http://www.hardwaresite.net/x86-64.html"; target="_blank">http://www.hardwaresite.net/x86-64.html</a>;
(3)http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20021014S0059
As Steve will say:
4GB is crap. Wanna see 4GB go by? Watch uncompressed lowly NTSC video (1MB/frame) for 4000 frames, ie: about 2 minutes of video! WE NEED 64 to get the job done. It is also easy to dream up games that use worlds that have multiple gigs of textures. A map of Earth at 200 meter resolution uses up well over 10GB of texture memory. Programming such applications in 32 bit is as much a pain as was trying to write ms word in 16 bit.
Itanium: Intel says it will only be in consumer/workstations in a few years. Intel is Ostrich-like on 64 bit.
"It could be the end of the decade" before mainstream desktops need more than 4GB of memory, one of the chief reasons to move to 64-bit chips, Justin Rattner, a senior fellow at Intel, said during an interview at the Intel Developer Forum taking place here this week.
Mr. Rattner's comments echoed statements from Intel President Paul Otellini, who said in an interview last year that Intel may not be compelled to produce a 64-bit desktop chip until 2008 or even 2009. "(1)
Also, look at the speed that an itanium 64 bit OS (which is a lot of work to write BTW) will run 32 bit apps at. Think Pentium 500 if you are lucky.
Then look at AMD. They have a better crossover solution at hand, but for the AMD opteron to run 64 bit code it has to 'switch modes', a slow process. "...By contrast, AMD uses a 64-bit prefix in front of X86 instructions to tag a 64-bit operation. The technique requires referring to separate 64-bit registers and extended memory addresses. That method is "very elegant in terms of not disrupting the X86 architecture but may not be able to support mixed 32- and 64-bit operations as well as IBM's approach," said McCarron of Mercury Research."(3)
Can't wait.
--Knobsturner
(1) <a href="http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030221.gt64/GTStory"; target="_blank">http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030221.gt64/GTStory</a>;
(2) <a href="http://www.hardwaresite.net/x86-64.html"; target="_blank">http://www.hardwaresite.net/x86-64.html</a>;
(3)http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20021014S0059
Comments
While the x86 world is playing Keystone Kops, Apple has its ducks in a row for this transition. As the business world winces at the carnage in the Wintel world, Apple is going to look substantially more serious and "grown up" than the others. The FUD machines at Microsoft and Intel are going to be working overtime to try to keep their traditional markets in line. Could get quite interesting.
<strong>Sorry to disrupt your multi-GB RAM fantasies, but keep in mind that the amount of money people are willing to spend on RAM is limited, and the price of RAM only falls so fast. It's hard to imagine it being economically viable for Apple to make machines with over $2,000 of RAM in them.</strong><hr></blockquote>
businesses and professionals would LOVE over 4gb of ram...which is a key market (and who buy the most) powermacs from apple. they will pay...specially if its an BTW option
[quote]Originally posted by wmf:
<strong>Sorry to disrupt your multi-GB RAM fantasies, but keep in mind that the amount of money people are willing to spend on RAM is limited, and the price of RAM only falls so fast. It's hard to imagine it being economically viable for Apple to make machines with over $2,000 of RAM in them.</strong><hr></blockquote>
[quote]Only if they buy the RAM at the Apple store would it be prohibitive.<hr></blockquote>Try some reality. PC3200 memory, DDR-400, which would provide some of the bandwidth necessary for the 970 is selling for about $150/512MB stick. 4GB of RAM equals ~$1200. This is not PC133 pricing.
And there isnothingprohibitive about having a high max-RAM capacity. How many people actually have 2 gigs on their Powermacs right now? Not many. Having a 4 gig capacity means that professionals can have a lot, and people that have the need for that much RAM usually have the money. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
<strong>Sorry to disrupt your multi-GB RAM fantasies, but keep in mind that the amount of money people are willing to spend on RAM is limited, and the price of RAM only falls so fast. It's hard to imagine it being economically viable for Apple to make machines with over $2,000 of RAM in them.</strong><hr></blockquote>
But that sword cuts both ways. If Intel or AMD want to brag about 64-bit address space, they're going to have to supply multi-GB of RAM, too. So that problem's a wash. As long as Apple is using commodity RAM, it costs the same for everybody.
I tend to laugh when people talk about RAM being prohibitively expensive. When I bought my 7200/75 eons ago 16MB chips were $799. Of course apps didn't utilize what they do nowadays but nonetheless RAM prices today are fair.
<strong>Then look at AMD. They have a better crossover solution at hand, but for the AMD opteron to run 64 bit code it has to 'switch modes', a slow process. "...By contrast, AMD uses a 64-bit prefix in front of X86 instructions to tag a 64-bit operation. The technique requires referring to separate 64-bit registers and extended memory addresses. That method is "very elegant in terms of not disrupting the X86 architecture but may not be able to support mixed 32- and 64-bit operations as well as IBM's approach," said McCarron of Mercury Research."(3)
(2) <a href="http://www.hardwaresite.net/x86-64.html"; target="_blank">http://www.hardwaresite.net/x86-64.html</a>;
(3) <a href="http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20021014S0059"; target="_blank">http://www.siliconstrategies.com/story/OEG20021014S0059</a></strong><hr></blockquote>;
About 1/2 way down your second ref it says that the 64 bit mode can run 16 and 32 bit programs in compatibily type way. So why switch modes from Long (64 bit) to Protected (32 bit)? Just stay in Long and switch the compatibilty bit on & off as needed.
Can someone who knows about this stuff help me out?
MM
Sorry to contribute the RAM discussion, but the (current) reality is that PC3200 sells for under $75 for a 512MB DIMM. Countless resellers have them marked at that price. Check pricewatch.com before blindly reporting a market price for anything hardware related.
Anything else you want to teach about me about the web, or self-righteousness?
Anything else you want to teach about me about the web, or self-righteousness? <hr></blockquote>
Am I wrong, or is $69 under $75? Maybe you want to argue that the average dollar store sells some things for 99 cents? It's a dollar store!
Who in their right mind is going to pay a 'median' price of $150 when they can get it for less than half the price. (Remember 'less than' means any number below the first on the number scale, and 'half' would mean that you divide the original value by two. I assume that since you used the word median you know these things already, but you seemed confused by my first post, so I thought I'd clarify just in case.)
Cut this rediculousness. Don't point and yell 'self-righteous!' when someone points out your error.
If you can't take the sarcasm in this post, don't trash up the thread any further with a whiney reply.
I'm so very sorry that I corrected you.
[ 03-01-2003: Message edited by: FrostyMMB ]</p>
<strong>Who in their right mind is going to pay a 'median' price of $150 when they can get it for less than half the price.</strong><hr></blockquote>
As a number of OS 9 users discovered when 10.1 came out and they switched over, OS X is intolerant of bad RAM. OS 9 was accomodating, at the expense of efficiency.
Apple doesn't use the cheapest RAM they can find. Nor does any OS X user who wants their system to keep purring along. So the price of RAM from a reputable vendor is the relevant benchmark here, because you tend to get what you pay for.
Furthermore when I bought a computer in 2000 it shipped with 256 MB of RAM. To buy the same level now I would get 512 MB after 3 years. Intel is right when they say RAM really isn't advancing that fast. Very few markets actually need 64 bit computing and a lot that do already use 64 bit hardware.
[ 03-02-2003: Message edited by: Telomar ]</p>