I could care less if you PC monkeys want a SP computer. Your just getting second rate POS's anyways. Apple has to live up to performance comparisons against Dual Xeons, and Athlons. Not to mention almost everybody that has a Dual PowerMac says they would never go back sp configuration in million years. Duals are staying.
Think about it. If Apple go's to SP with a 3GHz PowerMac tomorrow, it's going to be blown into the dirt in so many categories VS. Dual Xeon, and Dual Athlon processor configured PC's.
Sorry I'll keep my Dual 3GHz PowerMac money until WWDC, or sooner. If not that BOXX I configured for $5,000.00+ is going to be my next computer.
I could care less if you PC monkeys want a SP computer. Your just getting second rate POS's anyways. Apple has to live up to performance comparisons against Dual Xeons, and Athlons. Not to mention almost everybody that has a Dual PowerMac says they would never go back sp configuration in million years. Duals are staying.
Think about it. If Apple go's to SP with a 3GHz PowerMac tomorrow, it's going to be blown into the dirt in so many categories VS. Dual Xeon, and Dual Athlon processor configured PC's.
Sorry I'll keep my Dual 3GHz PowerMac money until WWDC, or sooner. If not that BOXX I configured for $5,000.00+ is going to be my next computer.
yeah excactly. i'm working with my single G4 since 4 years now and it runs the latest software and most of the time i've around 12 apps running. at that time i should have bought a dual 450MHz G4 instead - that beast - with os x - has a lot of advantages over my single ... my next machine will be a dual for sure...
oh and btw. imagine a single PIII/700 which was the competitor in the pc-world when i bought my G4... how would that machine compare to my G4 today with 12 apps at the same time *lol*
So maybe I can go out and purchase a G4 PowerMac for around $1300 instead? And I can use my 17" (smurf) Apple CRT display. And the PowerMac will be able to do basic tasks FASTER than the eMac. But it's STILL completely inadequate for DVD burning and video games.
So I guess that means that the entry-level G5 is really the ONLY Apple product that can suit my needs. But even with the DVD burning capability, the 1.6GHz G5 machine still has an AVERAGE video card. Which kind of makes me scratch my head. Because I'd think that a machine that costs $1800 should have more than an AVERAGE card. (But I suppose that's more of a personal preference, and not a requirement at this point)
I Am sick of people on this post BITCHING about PRICE. GET A JOB DUDE!
The professional reality is that if you want ot author a serious DVD you need to go to DLT ( digital linear tape ) as apple's superdrive does not support authoring media for dvd mass repro. iDVD is a consumer tool nothing more soemthing to show your friends ect. Go buy studio dvd pro. Quite frankly $1800 is nothing to spend on a computer if your really using it for work. I wish mac's were that cheap in my part of the world... I shelled out $5000 for my TI book and still consider it my best investment.. As far as the G5 is concerned we should all be lucky that companies like apple exist to provide us with machines that are SCALEABLE THINK X-SERVE KIDDIES... lest we be stuck with more beige from wintel....
Well I do not believe this is the case at all. Even if partly true, many people just take their case down to the local computer store for the latest and greatest.
The cup holders I'm actually refering to though are what is built into the machine that various people pick up at the store. Things such as multifunction card readers and the like.
They can be likened to cup holders as many people using these devices don't have a clue when it comes to the technology. They do understand that their camera (or whatever) takes a memory card that fits one of the slots in the reader. Much like a CDROM reader, the consumer starts to expect that certain things will be in place as convience to them.
Well I tend to disagree, many people do add harddrives to their machines. Sure you can argue that with present drives sizes this is less likely to happen but I will take the other side of the fence in this argument. What is new, and quite literally chewing up harddrives, is the digital technology that has moved into the home front. Digital photos, movies and sound take up consderable space and are the latest examples of what users install on their machines to plug up a drive. Believe me it doesn't take long to fill a harddrive with digital photos.
Another point in this argument are sales fliers. Every computer store of any significant size runs weekly specials on harddrives. Very few of these are going into new boxes. Add to to harddrives things like CDROM's, memory and video cards. Sure many of these go to geeks but just as many if not more are going into non geek computers.
No matter how many times you point this out to someone, a lot of people will claim that unless it's inside the case, it doesn't count. Or it's too expensive. Or they don't like a second thingy with a cable to their box. Something.
You'll never satisfy this contingent unless you produce a case that's mostly empty space, takes up a huge amount of room, and looks k3wl. (Hint: same folks that drive ricers. :P ) They don't expandability, they want looks, even if they won't admit it.
The *only* reasonable counter argument is that external drives, for instance, cost a bit more than internal ones. Fair enough, they do. But you know what? I use my external drives for backups, and I like being able to remove them easily. Added security from electrical surges, etc, to boot. When a storm comes through, even though I have a UPS, I worry about the internal drives. My backups are safely off-line, off-grid. And, I can rotate two of them, keeping one at work and one at home. There are good solid reasons to *prefer* externals in many cases.
Another point in this argument are sales fliers. Every computer store of any significant size runs weekly specials on harddrives. Very few of these are going into new boxes. Add to to harddrives things like CDROM's, memory and video cards. Sure many of these go to geeks but just as many if not more are going into non geek computers.
If things are selling well, you don't have to run specials on them. All the things you mention have short effective shelf lives because the tech is constantly getting better, which is where the incentives come in to issue those fliers.
Also, I think there's more expansion on the PC side just because people believe there's more need for it, or skimp on features at purchase because the geek they've dragged along to help them with all those confusing things has told them they can always add something later.
It's all needless trouble and complexity most of the time. In fact, were it not for Apple, it would be much worse. If there was any great consumer demand for internal expansion, wouldn't someone have made it easier? But who made it easier? Before Apple's cases for the x600 towers and the G3, taking a PC case apart involved lots of screws and sharp edges and fiddling. Even now it's often needlessly difficult to extricate something or put it in. So, again, zero market research was done. The PC tower is not a product of demand. It's a product of inertia and manufacturer convenience. If Apple intends to sell machines based on what consumers want to use, they have to do better than that. And I believe that they are.
The eMac will remain as a focused product for what's left of the dying educational market. The only enticing entree for would be consumers will remain the iBook.
The iBook is a great computer, though? Why is it so bad to have only two good consumer computers, when they're both good? Is it the "laptops are not for desktops" motif? I don't get that.
Well I did a bit of research including reading Apples Technology Overview pdf. While it is totally possible that IBM has addressed the size of the cache and ohter issues it certainly isn't stated as so in the Technical Overview.
In fact the specifications still have a 512K L2 cache listed. It is not impossible for Apple to release a new machine with an upgraded cache in a month or two but I really doubt that they will do that.
Before you go about calling someone an idiot you really ought to look at the information that Apple has released. Everything that I've seen so far indicates that all we are getting is a process shrink with possibly some minor tweaks. This does not inspire me at all. The information available does not offer much hope that the G5 Towers will scale well to 3GHz or there about.
Now maybe this is just one of a couple of 90 nano meter processors that Apple will deliver this quarter, if so that would be fantastic. But I do doubt that that is the case.
Dave
Where'd you get the idea that a die size change should mean a new processor? Believe it or not, I think of a 90nm 970 as just that - a 90nm 970, not some newfangled processor.
The OS is nice, no doubt about it, but it is only going to clinch a sale for a small segment of the market. Some of the missing features on Mac hardware can be likened to an SUV without cup holders. Granted a cup holder has nothing to do with an SUV doing its job, but boy are they nice to have. Apple builds fully functional hardware, everyone can agree on that, but they drop the ball on the cup holders; that is the little details that make the hardware more usable.
Ah, you mean no nice extras like an elegant case, a clean inside, an easy-access door, a built-in monitor making the computer dead-simple to setup, a battery power indicator on the battery (useful when the computer is sleeping or when you have multiple batteries,) a better power adapter with wrapping-up areas that neatly pop out when needed and an adjustable clippy? No neat stuff like light weight and a smooth-as-silk trackpad? No nice optical mice?
Or is your idea of "extras" 6 expansion slots for the not included FireWire, Gigabit Ethernet, and SATA, leaving you with the same number as the G5? Plus enough drive bays so you never have to buy one of those convenient FireWire drives?
Not so much new as improved. Now granted whn e some of the more detailed informaiton is shoved upon us in the future it may be shown that some issues with the 970 are cleaned up. I've yet to see any indication of that.
The lack of a change to the cache size strikes me as a negative for a couple of reasons. One is the issue with scaling performance as the clock rate differential increases. If the size has not changed I do wonder if any attempt was made to increase the caches effectiveness. At this time there is no indication that anything has been done here.
It is fine to think of the unit as just a die shrunk version of the old processor. But what is wrong with expecting a few fixes along the way. AS was mentioned else where there are things that can be done to the 970 to make it a better processor, one of these is supporting the no-oped instructions from the vector unit.
Ultimately I believe that this processor will end up being Apples processor for the low end machines. Why not make it all it can be?
Thanks
Dave
Quote:
Originally posted by ryaxnb
Where'd you get the idea that a die size change should mean a new processor? Believe it or not, I think of a 90nm 970 as just that - a 90nm 970, not some newfangled processor.
Think about it. If Apple go's to SP with a 3GHz PowerMac tomorrow, it's going to be blown into the dirt in so many categories VS. Dual Xeon, and Dual Athlon processor configured PC's.
Sorry I'll keep my Dual 3GHz PowerMac money until WWDC, or sooner. If not that BOXX I configured for $5,000.00+ is going to be my next computer.
The door that hits you in the ass on the way out will be the $3K dual 3 Gig G5's that comes out before your 90 day warranty on that $5K BOXX runs out.
You PC monkeys are just getting second rate POS's anyways. Apple will not only live up to performance comparisons against Dual Xeons, and Athlons, it will destroy them.
This sort of response is getting to be a bit tiresome. If any of this conversation had revolved around external devices that would be one thing, but we are not talking about those sorts of devices.
Mind you each and every device below has its place in the world. But why would anyone want to clutter up his desk with all of these accessories.
The lack of a change to the cache size strikes me as a negative for a couple of reasons. One is the issue with scaling performance as the clock rate differential increases. If the size has not changed I do wonder if any attempt was made to increase the caches effectiveness. At this time there is no indication that anything has been done here.
I think you're getting ahead of yourself here. These 90nm chips are the first rolling off the lines at Fishkill. We just don't know enough about the (semi) new design. Maybe they kept the cache at 512k to keep initial costs down.
Notice how much the die shrank, lots of stuff could be put in there later, keeping the cost the same as before. But these new chips will be cheaper.
Maybe they kept the cache at 512k to keep initial costs down.
In addition, you shouldn't think that increasing the cache on the G5 is quite the necessity that it would be on in the PC world.
Apple's use of HyperTransport means that the G5s have much faster access to main memory than PC designs (or previous Mac designs) allow. A cache miss on a PowerMac doesn't impose nearly the penalty it would on a PC. As the memory intensive benchmarks show, the main bottleneck in the new PowerMacs isn't memory bandwidth; judging by the improvement in performance brought by G5 optimized compiling, I'd estimate the main problem lies in optimization and compiler design (Apple/IBM's compilers are nowhere near as good as Intel's).
I imagine that Apple and IBM considered these factors when when designing the chip and the architecture. Also, there has been talk of a 970+ appearing before the 980 revision, and that's likely to have the sort of improvements people are missing here as that will be the design that scales to dramatically higher clock speeds. Or so say the rumors.
In addition, you shouldn't think that increasing the cache on the G5 is quite the necessity that it would be on in the PC world.
Apple's use of HyperTransport means that the G5s have much faster access to main memory than PC designs (or previous Mac designs) allow. A cache miss on a PowerMac doesn't impose nearly the penalty it would on a PC. As the memory intensive benchmarks show, the main bottleneck in the new PowerMacs isn't memory bandwidth; judging by the improvement in performance brought by G5 optimized compiling, I'd estimate the main problem lies in optimization and compiler design (Apple/IBM's compilers are nowhere near as good as Intel's).
I imagine that Apple and IBM considered these factors when when designing the chip and the architecture. Also, there has been talk of a 970+ appearing before the 980 revision, and that's likely to have the sort of improvements people are missing here as that will be the design that scales to dramatically higher clock speeds. Or so say the rumors.
1) Memory access doesn't go across the Hypertransport bus, just the elastic bus.
2) The main purpose of cache is to reduce the latency of memory access rather than increase the bandwidth, and in this regard the G5s perform poorly compared to most modern PCs, and very poorly compared to Opteron machines with on-chip memory controllers. Most purely bandwidth dependent programmes have datasets that will never fit in cache.
I think you're getting ahead of yourself here. These 90nm chips are the first rolling off the lines at Fishkill. We just don't know enough about the (semi) new design. Maybe they kept the cache at 512k to keep initial costs down.
Or more likely because it would not greatly increase the performance of the chip to increase the cache to 1mb.Take a look at these benchmarks.
Comments
Think about it. If Apple go's to SP with a 3GHz PowerMac tomorrow, it's going to be blown into the dirt in so many categories VS. Dual Xeon, and Dual Athlon processor configured PC's.
Sorry I'll keep my Dual 3GHz PowerMac money until WWDC, or sooner. If not that BOXX I configured for $5,000.00+ is going to be my next computer.
Originally posted by onlooker
I could care less if you PC monkeys want a SP computer. Your just getting second rate POS's anyways. Apple has to live up to performance comparisons against Dual Xeons, and Athlons. Not to mention almost everybody that has a Dual PowerMac says they would never go back sp configuration in million years. Duals are staying.
Think about it. If Apple go's to SP with a 3GHz PowerMac tomorrow, it's going to be blown into the dirt in so many categories VS. Dual Xeon, and Dual Athlon processor configured PC's.
Sorry I'll keep my Dual 3GHz PowerMac money until WWDC, or sooner. If not that BOXX I configured for $5,000.00+ is going to be my next computer.
yeah excactly. i'm working with my single G4 since 4 years now and it runs the latest software and most of the time i've around 12 apps running. at that time i should have bought a dual 450MHz G4 instead - that beast - with os x - has a lot of advantages over my single ... my next machine will be a dual for sure...
oh and btw. imagine a single PIII/700 which was the competitor in the pc-world when i bought my G4... how would that machine compare to my G4 today with 12 apps at the same time *lol*
[B
So maybe I can go out and purchase a G4 PowerMac for around $1300 instead? And I can use my 17" (smurf) Apple CRT display. And the PowerMac will be able to do basic tasks FASTER than the eMac. But it's STILL completely inadequate for DVD burning and video games.
So I guess that means that the entry-level G5 is really the ONLY Apple product that can suit my needs. But even with the DVD burning capability, the 1.6GHz G5 machine still has an AVERAGE video card. Which kind of makes me scratch my head. Because I'd think that a machine that costs $1800 should have more than an AVERAGE card. (But I suppose that's more of a personal preference, and not a requirement at this point)
I Am sick of people on this post BITCHING about PRICE. GET A JOB DUDE!
The professional reality is that if you want ot author a serious DVD you need to go to DLT ( digital linear tape ) as apple's superdrive does not support authoring media for dvd mass repro. iDVD is a consumer tool nothing more soemthing to show your friends ect. Go buy studio dvd pro. Quite frankly $1800 is nothing to spend on a computer if your really using it for work. I wish mac's were that cheap in my part of the world... I shelled out $5000 for my TI book and still consider it my best investment.. As far as the G5 is concerned we should all be lucky that companies like apple exist to provide us with machines that are SCALEABLE THINK X-SERVE KIDDIES... lest we be stuck with more beige from wintel....
Originally posted by wizard69
Well I do not believe this is the case at all. Even if partly true, many people just take their case down to the local computer store for the latest and greatest.
The cup holders I'm actually refering to though are what is built into the machine that various people pick up at the store. Things such as multifunction card readers and the like.
They can be likened to cup holders as many people using these devices don't have a clue when it comes to the technology. They do understand that their camera (or whatever) takes a memory card that fits one of the slots in the reader. Much like a CDROM reader, the consumer starts to expect that certain things will be in place as convience to them.
Well I tend to disagree, many people do add harddrives to their machines. Sure you can argue that with present drives sizes this is less likely to happen but I will take the other side of the fence in this argument. What is new, and quite literally chewing up harddrives, is the digital technology that has moved into the home front. Digital photos, movies and sound take up consderable space and are the latest examples of what users install on their machines to plug up a drive. Believe me it doesn't take long to fill a harddrive with digital photos.
Another point in this argument are sales fliers. Every computer store of any significant size runs weekly specials on harddrives. Very few of these are going into new boxes. Add to to harddrives things like CDROM's, memory and video cards. Sure many of these go to geeks but just as many if not more are going into non geek computers.
How to expand the eMac:
* Floppy drives: USB.
* Zip drives: USB/FireWire.
* Hard Drives: FireWire.
* DSL/Cable: Ethernet/USB.
* RAM: Upgrades fine.
* Optical drives: FireWire.
* Card Reader: USB
* Mouse & Keyboard: USB.
etc.
You'll never satisfy this contingent unless you produce a case that's mostly empty space, takes up a huge amount of room, and looks k3wl. (Hint: same folks that drive ricers. :P ) They don't expandability, they want looks, even if they won't admit it.
The *only* reasonable counter argument is that external drives, for instance, cost a bit more than internal ones. Fair enough, they do. But you know what? I use my external drives for backups, and I like being able to remove them easily. Added security from electrical surges, etc, to boot. When a storm comes through, even though I have a UPS, I worry about the internal drives. My backups are safely off-line, off-grid. And, I can rotate two of them, keeping one at work and one at home. There are good solid reasons to *prefer* externals in many cases.
Originally posted by wizard69
Another point in this argument are sales fliers. Every computer store of any significant size runs weekly specials on harddrives. Very few of these are going into new boxes. Add to to harddrives things like CDROM's, memory and video cards. Sure many of these go to geeks but just as many if not more are going into non geek computers.
If things are selling well, you don't have to run specials on them. All the things you mention have short effective shelf lives because the tech is constantly getting better, which is where the incentives come in to issue those fliers.
Also, I think there's more expansion on the PC side just because people believe there's more need for it, or skimp on features at purchase because the geek they've dragged along to help them with all those confusing things has told them they can always add something later.
It's all needless trouble and complexity most of the time. In fact, were it not for Apple, it would be much worse. If there was any great consumer demand for internal expansion, wouldn't someone have made it easier? But who made it easier? Before Apple's cases for the x600 towers and the G3, taking a PC case apart involved lots of screws and sharp edges and fiddling. Even now it's often needlessly difficult to extricate something or put it in. So, again, zero market research was done. The PC tower is not a product of demand. It's a product of inertia and manufacturer convenience. If Apple intends to sell machines based on what consumers want to use, they have to do better than that. And I believe that they are.
Originally posted by whoami
ROFL!
i guess that's better than the george forman grill G5!
Originally posted by Ompus
The eMac will remain as a focused product for what's left of the dying educational market. The only enticing entree for would be consumers will remain the iBook.
The iBook is a great computer, though? Why is it so bad to have only two good consumer computers, when they're both good? Is it the "laptops are not for desktops" motif? I don't get that.
Originally posted by wizard69
Well I did a bit of research including reading Apples Technology Overview pdf. While it is totally possible that IBM has addressed the size of the cache and ohter issues it certainly isn't stated as so in the Technical Overview.
In fact the specifications still have a 512K L2 cache listed. It is not impossible for Apple to release a new machine with an upgraded cache in a month or two but I really doubt that they will do that.
Before you go about calling someone an idiot you really ought to look at the information that Apple has released. Everything that I've seen so far indicates that all we are getting is a process shrink with possibly some minor tweaks. This does not inspire me at all. The information available does not offer much hope that the G5 Towers will scale well to 3GHz or there about.
Now maybe this is just one of a couple of 90 nano meter processors that Apple will deliver this quarter, if so that would be fantastic. But I do doubt that that is the case.
Dave
Where'd you get the idea that a die size change should mean a new processor? Believe it or not, I think of a 90nm 970 as just that - a 90nm 970, not some newfangled processor.
Originally posted by wizard69
The OS is nice, no doubt about it, but it is only going to clinch a sale for a small segment of the market. Some of the missing features on Mac hardware can be likened to an SUV without cup holders. Granted a cup holder has nothing to do with an SUV doing its job, but boy are they nice to have. Apple builds fully functional hardware, everyone can agree on that, but they drop the ball on the cup holders; that is the little details that make the hardware more usable.
Ah, you mean no nice extras like an elegant case, a clean inside, an easy-access door, a built-in monitor making the computer dead-simple to setup, a battery power indicator on the battery (useful when the computer is sleeping or when you have multiple batteries,) a better power adapter with wrapping-up areas that neatly pop out when needed and an adjustable clippy? No neat stuff like light weight and a smooth-as-silk trackpad? No nice optical mice?
Or is your idea of "extras" 6 expansion slots for the not included FireWire, Gigabit Ethernet, and SATA, leaving you with the same number as the G5?
Originally posted by T'hain Esh Kelch
Ehrmmm.. And which product is it exactly that the Xserve competes against?
All of IBM's low-end to mid-range servers.
The lack of a change to the cache size strikes me as a negative for a couple of reasons. One is the issue with scaling performance as the clock rate differential increases. If the size has not changed I do wonder if any attempt was made to increase the caches effectiveness. At this time there is no indication that anything has been done here.
It is fine to think of the unit as just a die shrunk version of the old processor. But what is wrong with expecting a few fixes along the way. AS was mentioned else where there are things that can be done to the 970 to make it a better processor, one of these is supporting the no-oped instructions from the vector unit.
Ultimately I believe that this processor will end up being Apples processor for the low end machines. Why not make it all it can be?
Thanks
Dave
Originally posted by ryaxnb
Where'd you get the idea that a die size change should mean a new processor? Believe it or not, I think of a 90nm 970 as just that - a 90nm 970, not some newfangled processor.
Originally posted by onlooker
Think about it. If Apple go's to SP with a 3GHz PowerMac tomorrow, it's going to be blown into the dirt in so many categories VS. Dual Xeon, and Dual Athlon processor configured PC's.
Sorry I'll keep my Dual 3GHz PowerMac money until WWDC, or sooner. If not that BOXX I configured for $5,000.00+ is going to be my next computer.
The door that hits you in the ass on the way out will be the $3K dual 3 Gig G5's that comes out before your 90 day warranty on that $5K BOXX runs out.
You PC monkeys are just getting second rate POS's anyways. Apple will not only live up to performance comparisons against Dual Xeons, and Athlons, it will destroy them.
Mind you each and every device below has its place in the world. But why would anyone want to clutter up his desk with all of these accessories.
Thanks
Dave
Originally posted by ryaxnb
How to expand the eMac:
* Floppy drives: USB.
* Zip drives: USB/FireWire.
* Hard Drives: FireWire.
* DSL/Cable: Ethernet/USB.
* RAM: Upgrades fine.
* Optical drives: FireWire.
* Card Reader: USB
* Mouse & Keyboard: USB.
etc.
Originally posted by wizard69
The lack of a change to the cache size strikes me as a negative for a couple of reasons. One is the issue with scaling performance as the clock rate differential increases. If the size has not changed I do wonder if any attempt was made to increase the caches effectiveness. At this time there is no indication that anything has been done here.
I think you're getting ahead of yourself here. These 90nm chips are the first rolling off the lines at Fishkill. We just don't know enough about the (semi) new design. Maybe they kept the cache at 512k to keep initial costs down.
Notice how much the die shrank, lots of stuff could be put in there later, keeping the cost the same as before. But these new chips will be cheaper.
Originally posted by discstickers
Maybe they kept the cache at 512k to keep initial costs down.
In addition, you shouldn't think that increasing the cache on the G5 is quite the necessity that it would be on in the PC world.
Apple's use of HyperTransport means that the G5s have much faster access to main memory than PC designs (or previous Mac designs) allow. A cache miss on a PowerMac doesn't impose nearly the penalty it would on a PC. As the memory intensive benchmarks show, the main bottleneck in the new PowerMacs isn't memory bandwidth; judging by the improvement in performance brought by G5 optimized compiling, I'd estimate the main problem lies in optimization and compiler design (Apple/IBM's compilers are nowhere near as good as Intel's).
I imagine that Apple and IBM considered these factors when when designing the chip and the architecture. Also, there has been talk of a 970+ appearing before the 980 revision, and that's likely to have the sort of improvements people are missing here as that will be the design that scales to dramatically higher clock speeds. Or so say the rumors.
Originally posted by jginsbu
In addition, you shouldn't think that increasing the cache on the G5 is quite the necessity that it would be on in the PC world.
Apple's use of HyperTransport means that the G5s have much faster access to main memory than PC designs (or previous Mac designs) allow. A cache miss on a PowerMac doesn't impose nearly the penalty it would on a PC. As the memory intensive benchmarks show, the main bottleneck in the new PowerMacs isn't memory bandwidth; judging by the improvement in performance brought by G5 optimized compiling, I'd estimate the main problem lies in optimization and compiler design (Apple/IBM's compilers are nowhere near as good as Intel's).
I imagine that Apple and IBM considered these factors when when designing the chip and the architecture. Also, there has been talk of a 970+ appearing before the 980 revision, and that's likely to have the sort of improvements people are missing here as that will be the design that scales to dramatically higher clock speeds. Or so say the rumors.
1) Memory access doesn't go across the Hypertransport bus, just the elastic bus.
2) The main purpose of cache is to reduce the latency of memory access rather than increase the bandwidth, and in this regard the G5s perform poorly compared to most modern PCs, and very poorly compared to Opteron machines with on-chip memory controllers. Most purely bandwidth dependent programmes have datasets that will never fit in cache.
michael
Originally posted by discstickers
I think you're getting ahead of yourself here. These 90nm chips are the first rolling off the lines at Fishkill. We just don't know enough about the (semi) new design. Maybe they kept the cache at 512k to keep initial costs down.
Or more likely because it would not greatly increase the performance of the chip to increase the cache to 1mb.Take a look at these benchmarks.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1941
Note the minimal to nonexistant difference in performance between the athelon64 3000+ and the athelon64 3200+.
Both run at 2.0 ghrz-the only difference is that the 3000+ has 512kb of cache and the 3200+ has 1mb.
And notice what the 128 bit memory controler does.Shocking.
Originally posted by cuneglasus
...the 3000+ has 512mb of cache...
overkill!