Power Mac 'Quadra' G5 quad processor coming soon?

wizard69

Have you looked closely at the current G5 XServes? They seem to be optimised IMHO for use as compute servers instead of more traditional data servers. The XServes are stripped down

to the bare minimum right now.



Thanks

Dave

Quote:

Originally posted by Tuttle

Instead of quad G5s, I would love to see something like mini-xservers for artists. None of the heavy stuff needed for a real server. Just enough for rendering jobs - CPU(s),memory, and darwin. Have your own mini-renderfarm 'just work' when you buy one and connect it up to your current Mac and Maya or other packages. Need more power, just pickup another node and plug it in to your current stack.

wizard69

There are just two issue that bother me. One is what do people expect to get from "pro" cards that Apple is not already delivering? The second item is that Apple has a long way to go in optimizing the current drivers and libraries for the shipping cards. Energy expended that benefits all customers, is a much better investment at this point than throwing money at specific issues.



It is the fact that Apple has targeted part of the professional graphics market that makes optimized video drivers important. it is better to boost all applications instead of focusing on drivers to optimize one program. If Apple was delivering highly optimized drivers for ATI's cards, then I would say yes go on and look a specific optimizations for targeted programs.



It just isn't time yet for that.



Dave

Quote:

Originally posted by onlooker



Here it is: I'll reply to wizard69's post, or some of it. Otherwise it would take all day, and start a huge flame battle, or something. I'm just going to blow off singling out his comments one by one, and let that go. But to sum it up simply. In my mind it all comes down to what Apple has entered, what companies they bought, and how they are positioning themselves. My statements were not meant as selfish thoughts as you made it out to be. I was making a realistic assumptions based upon facts as to where Apple needs the most help in performance. I'm not worried about the performance of IBM's processors catching up with the x86'. I know they will very soon. But back to what I was saying: The Mac has always been tailored towards graphics oriented users, and a High Performance 3D graphics card option just was not a completely self centered thought. We know Pixar is working on RenderMan, and it's still on it's way. Actually It's probably been done for a while, but when RenderMan for Mac is fully unleashed you know Steve Jobs will have it rendering some of the coolest stuff imaginable for us, and he knows the whole Pro graphics community, and 3D production houses will be watching very closely. I can't imagine him using anything without using Maya Unlimited. RenderMan is the tool to have. There are no contenders, and there is no second place behind RenderMan. Second place is just who the first looser is. Seriously... With all the great companies Apple has acquired with all the fantastic pro level software they have, and what I assume is soon to be available from others close to Apple. I just don't see them lagging that far behind in anything other than a Pro 3D card. It just seems like a natural thing to biatch about because they should have gotten to it sooner.

rhumgod

I don't see Apple releasing a quad anything anymore. Clustering can deal with the issue of processing time and xGrid can bring that to the desktop business culture.



We aren't all Pixars of course. Maybe they could use a couple of them....8)