G5 - The truth
It's been a while and much has happened in the interim, but some things never change, especially the over optimistic and over pessimistic fellings shared on this board. But it's good to know some things never change. One thing i don't know is how this rumor about the G5 is so widespread. So far I have yet to see one in any lab allthough I don't doubt they exist; inside Apple labs. What we have seen though, is widespread use of the 7460 which is basically a 7450 with an improved method of manufacter. Still this is nothing to sneeze at. They offer linear performance over the 7450 at better speeds. The range so far has been ~900-1400MHz but it is hard to give exact numbers due to the variety of motherboards they exist on. I was shocked when the newer motherboard we were working on were not released at the Expo this past summer. Fully working DDR-SDRAM motherboards were ready with a full assortment of modern motherboard features including Fibre Firewire at speeds up to 1600Mbps with a fibre port and 2 lower speed (800Mb) normal ports. USB1.1 was still there but the board had support for DDR-SDRAM and an advanced system bus running at 266MHz. They were to include CPU's running at up to 1GHz. Perhaps faster CPU's were hard to come by.
Of couse they could have put that plan on ice and wait for the recently announced 333Mhz DDR-SDRAM. The board was fully compatible with the newer SDRAM standard and easy to impliment. this of course would imply the cpu bus to the main controller would be accordingly sped up to provice sufficient bandwidth. Internally on the main controller (memory+PCI+peripherals (there is no seperate southbridge controller)) there is a hyper transport link from PCI controller and peripherals such as ATA/133, USB, audio (also new), etc. Firewire and ethernet have their own seperate connections. This is an advanced peice of silicon. No, to me the only reason to release this board that is all ready this Expo is simple; many of the advanced features would go unused. perhaps there would have been a lack of advanced firewire peripherals. Or maybe they wanted to see the outcome of the memory wars between RAMBUS and the DDR consortium (there was in fact RAMBUS based prototypes of G4 systems floating around that we never came in contact with). In just over a month we will see a leap in performance from Apple's high end. It should be enough to justify their role in high end applications for years to come. We'll see.
Of couse they could have put that plan on ice and wait for the recently announced 333Mhz DDR-SDRAM. The board was fully compatible with the newer SDRAM standard and easy to impliment. this of course would imply the cpu bus to the main controller would be accordingly sped up to provice sufficient bandwidth. Internally on the main controller (memory+PCI+peripherals (there is no seperate southbridge controller)) there is a hyper transport link from PCI controller and peripherals such as ATA/133, USB, audio (also new), etc. Firewire and ethernet have their own seperate connections. This is an advanced peice of silicon. No, to me the only reason to release this board that is all ready this Expo is simple; many of the advanced features would go unused. perhaps there would have been a lack of advanced firewire peripherals. Or maybe they wanted to see the outcome of the memory wars between RAMBUS and the DDR consortium (there was in fact RAMBUS based prototypes of G4 systems floating around that we never came in contact with). In just over a month we will see a leap in performance from Apple's high end. It should be enough to justify their role in high end applications for years to come. We'll see.
Comments
[ 11-24-2001: Message edited by: stimuli ]</p>
Apple doesn't deserve to charge people at this price for an 'old' techonolgy
[ 11-24-2001: Message edited by: Leonis ]</p>
IF it's performance is only a small gain from the existing DP 800 (should have a big price cut after January) I think I would go for it if I am buying a new machine
[ 11-24-2001: Message edited by: Leonis ]</p>
<strong>Dorsal M, if you get the chance, could you tell us a little about 3D on these amchines?</strong><hr></blockquote>
that's why I am asking how it compares to those high end P4 systems....and oh yeah....those Athlon XP 1800+ systems too....
But I don't think those new PowerMac will beat the Athlon unless it's equiped with G5
[ 11-24-2001: Message edited by: Leonis ]</p>
<strong>But I don't think those new PowerMac will beat the Athlon unless it's equiped with G5
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Unfortunately, I think you might be right.
The 1.6Ghz Athlon Thunderbird smokes the dual 800 PowerMac (not to mention my DP 500) by a quite significant margin while cost slightly more than 1/3 the cost of the PowerMac!
My 1.1Ghz Athlon PC only costs me $600CDN and it's 15% faster on rendering than my DP 500!
[ 11-24-2001: Message edited by: Leonis ]</p>
<strong>Are you sure this is the real Dorsal? Once again, he made his name Dorsal M. That M on the end is enough to make me think its another fake. Please people, don't f*ck around with us re Dorsal. Can someone check the IP?</strong><hr></blockquote>
The reason the M is there is because the fake dorsal has the name dorsal so the real one can't use it.
Confirmed. It is the real Dorsal people.
Anyway...a G4 based POwermac announced at MWSF better include some technological advances. DDR Ram, HyperTransport and GHz+ Processors (they better not hack off the external caches on the Powermacs like they are with everything else). 800MPs Firewire? Who cares? It will be well over a year before any companies implement it...PC makers are still starting to implement Firewire 1.0 let alone 2.0. It will be a while before Cannon or Sony implement it on their cameras, or Firewire hard drives implement it. I say put money elsewhere Apple, better MB technology, better front side bus. Forget USB 2.0 and 800mbps Firewire, it's too early.
[ 11-25-2001: Message edited by: Bodhi ]
[ 11-25-2001: Message edited by: Bodhi ]</p>
According this this badly translated German article IBM and MOT both worked on it-
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And where I am straight thereby, still which to the G5: At the front of the next power PC version 75xx - better admits under the name G5 - does which. Allegedly Motorola and IBM work intensively on this chip, so that Apple can achieve their goal already of presenting to G5-Macs anno 2002. Do you have now finally enough?
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And why does IBM have a G5 chip<a href="http://lhd.datapower.com/db/dispproduct.php3?DISP?2371" target="_blank">already?</a> Why would IBM have a G5 (server?) chip and then have Apple come out with a G5 made by MOT?
So, if IBM and MOT are fabbing this chip doesn't that help the chances for a Jan release as opposed to March?
<strong>And why does IBM have a G5 chip<a href="http://lhd.datapower.com/db/dispproduct.php3?DISP?2371" target="_blank">already?</a> Why would IBM have a G5 (server?) chip and then have Apple come out with a G5 made by MOT?
So, if IBM and MOT are fabbing this chip doesn't that help the chances for a Jan release as opposed to March?</strong><hr></blockquote>
I think this is merely a coincidence as the terminology in that link refers to IBM system model numbers, not the processor chips.
I am inclined to believe Dorsal and will stick with the updated MB with an upgraded G4. Will I try to sell my DP800 before MWSF as I have my past 3 systems in anticipation of a significant enough upgrade to make it worthwhile? Hmmm, been burnt before... but isn't that part of the fun of being on the bleeding edge?