I posted a response that said that someone had tried it (though I got the chip wrong) and still got a significant performance boost. I didn't try to say that the performance was as good as replacing the main board. Was it really as much of a misunderstanding as you are saying? The G5 comment was just an aside that unfortunately only became a distraction.
It wasn't really you, it was rather aegisdesign who suddenly jumped in after you compared the performance to the G5. All of a sudden, it was no longer wondering whether swapping out chips would be worth the money, it became something like, "It's faster than the G5 and that's all that matters."
Quote:
I bought a base mini new and sold it on eBay 11 months later with only a 20% difference between purchase price and resale price, but that sale was before the Core Duo units were released. I bought a refurbed iMac and a couple months later, sold it at an insignificant loss. Notebooks might be a different matter, but given the switch, I can imagine Powerbook owners dumping their computers for MacBook Pros, making a bit of a glut. The loss is likely still less than a person selling any other 6mo old notebook.
"Better" resale value is still not necessarily good. The Mini is not a good example because it's a cheap low-end system and would depreciate more slowly. As for the refurb, the valid comparison there would have been how much would you have lost had you paid retail, not refurb price. If you saved $300 off retail and sold it at an insignificant loss, then that machine lost a little over $300 of resale value, not a few bucks.
"Better" resale value is still not necessarily good. The Mini is not a good example because it's a cheap low-end system and would depreciate more slowly. As for the refurb, the valid comparison there would have been how much would you have lost had you paid retail, not refurb price. If you saved $300 off retail and sold it at an insignificant loss, then that machine lost a little over $300 of resale value, not a few bucks.
Right, but the Powerbook G4 isn't exactly a fair comparison.
Yeah, it "was sold" this year, but it hadn't seen a significant upgrade since January 2005, and even that was a pretty insignificant speed bump. Only a $1000 depreciation on a 1.5-2 year old computer that's 4x slower than what they make now? That's really fucking good.
For $500, you could get a far faster MacBook Pro, or you could get an also faster MacBook and have cash to spare if you don't use the graphics card.
I don't even really want to know what you were hoping for, to be honest.
Today, the only socketed Intel Macs have Core Solos or Duo 'Yonah' chips of up to 2Ghz.
In a year's time, the only thing you can replace them with on Intel's roadmap is another Yonah at up to 2.33Ghz (the T2700) or a Merom at up to 2.33Ghz (the T7600). Both on the same 667Mhz bus. THERE IS NO 3GHZ CHIP ON SOCKET M.
The Yonah socket M is on it's deathbed. That's what I meant by 'low end' btw Zandros - socket P's come in faster and in a year's time, as was Kolchak's original timeframe, 2.33 on a 667 FSB is going to be lower end.
If you're upgrading a Core Solo Mini then that's quite a handy upgrade to the CPU, if it's an iMac then it's pointless. IMHO.
In a years time, I'd expect Apple to be using Conroes or Socket P Merom+ chips with consequently faster FSBs in the iMac and the Mini. And with that, a faster chipset, faster GMA or GPUs. I say that because Intel have cheaper Socket P Meroms planned - T5500 etc. - perfect for the Mini.
That's why I think upgrading today's Intel Macs is short sighted.
Hope that's clear.
Nobody was comparing G5 to Intel performance. The aside started because you wanted to compare Conroe to Conroe-in-a-Mini performance, which isn't going to happen since Mini's can't have Conroes. I pointed out that the more interesting comparison was a Conroe based Mac to one of Apple's previous systems. You seem to think I meant G5 but I explicitly mentioned Yonah.
Nobody was comparing G5 to Intel performance. The aside started because you wanted to compare Conroe to Conroe-in-a-Mini performance, which isn't going to happen since Mini's can't have Conroes. I pointed out that the more interesting comparison was a Conroe based Mac to one of Apple's previous systems. You seem to think I meant G5 but I explicitly mentioned Yonah.
You still seem to be reading something else altogether. I didn't bring up the G5. Read the thread again. Nor did I bring up the Mini or imply a Conroe could be put in it. All I wondered was whether a Mac Pro would be worth upgrading since someone was saying Intel's faster product cycle speeds up Apple's and will cause faster obsolescence than seen in the previously slowly updated PPC Mac lines. The "more interesting comparison" was irrelevant. That upgrade is impossible, short of replacing the whole system, so why even talk about it? JeffDM wrote: "BTW: there have been and will be a lot of comparisions of current and future systems with their previous counterparts. I think one may as well get over it. Despite architectural differences, the actual performance of apps are what matters in the end." Yes, the actual performance does matter. But do we still go around comparing Powermac G5s to G3s or even G4s? Or PPC601s to 68040s? No. People are concerned with current models and how long they'll serve in the future. So not many people care that Conroe 2006 is faster than the G5, which is a given. But how much faster is Conroe 2007 than 2006? And are Apple motherboards as upgradable as many PC motherboards, or are they, like many previous Apple mobos, crippled? If you don't remember times in the not very distant past when people complained about how Apple intentionally reduced some feature on the motherboard for no good reason, you have a short memory. Remember that the iBook for the longest time could only do video mirroring even though the hardware could handle spanning. When I bought my PC motherboard years ago, DDR266 memory was standard in the marketplace. But that board was designed to handle up to DDR333. That's the question: Will Apple design with some eye on the future, or just lock it in to what's current, knowing many users would just buy whole new machines because Apple users are supposedly too meek to mess with replacing CPUs, motherboards and whatnot.
The Yonah socket M is on it's deathbed. That's what I meant by 'low end' btw Zandros - socket P's come in faster and in a year's time, as was Kolchak's original timeframe, 2.33 on a 667 FSB is going to be lower end.
Okay, but the FCPGA6 socket are really on its half-life now, since it was introduced with the Yonahs in the beginning of the year.
"Better" resale value is still not necessarily good. The Mini is not a good example because it's a cheap low-end system and would depreciate more slowly. As for the refurb, the valid comparison there would have been how much would you have lost had you paid retail, not refurb price. If you saved $300 off retail and sold it at an insignificant loss, then that machine lost a little over $300 of resale value, not a few bucks.
The unit already lost $300 over list price before I bought it. I did sell it as a refurbished unit, and the buyer did know that. This was also at a time when the fastest of the used iMac G4s were going for only slightly less than the price of a refurbished G5. Whenever I looked at whatever model of used Mac, the pricing was considerably higher than what I would pay for it.
Is this slower depreciation you suggest based on absolute amount or percent? Over the same period, assuming the percentage of depreciation, a $2000 Powermac would lose $400, but that's still very good considering it got a year's use.
The unit already lost $300 over list price before I bought it. I did sell it as a refurbished unit, and the buyer did know that.
That's exactly my point. You can't say that your Mac retained almost all of its resale value because you didn't calculate from its original value. Most people buy them new. If you had bought it at list, you would have had a real depreciation of $300+, which is not an "insignificant loss."
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Is this slower depreciation you suggest based on absolute amount or percent? Over the same period, assuming the percentage of depreciation, a $2000 Powermac would lose $400, but that's still very good considering it got a year's use.
Percentage, of course. You mentioned a mini earlier that you sold at a 20% loss, or roughly $100. A $500 mini is not going to lose $300 of value in one year, while your iMac lost more than that over a few months of use, calculating from what it would have cost when it was made. A $2000 Powermac would likely lose 25-35% of its value within a year, dropping into the $1300 range. A $4000 Powermac would lose roughly 35%. I saw Quads selling for $2600 to $3200 on eBay, and those were with $640 of additional RAM installed.
You still seem to be reading something else altogether. I didn't bring up the G5. Read the thread again. Nor did I bring up the Mini or imply a Conroe could be put in it.
You did...
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Originally posted by Kolchak
I'd want to know how the Conroe-equipped Mini performs relative to another computer that comes stock with Conroe. Are you getting everything out of that Conroe? I doubt it, since the Mini's memory subsystem is slower, and perhaps the clock speed multiplier as well.
For the last freakin time, you can't put a Conroe in a Mini, or any of the Intel Macs. If you could, I suspect it would behave like any other Conroe equipped computer. Snore.............zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Why are you making such a big deal out of this?
Quote:
Originally posted by Kolchak
All I wondered was whether a Mac Pro would be worth upgrading since someone was saying Intel's faster product cycle speeds up Apple's and will cause faster obsolescence than seen in the previously slowly updated PPC Mac lines. The "more interesting comparison" was irrelevant. That upgrade is impossible, short of replacing the whole system, so why even talk about it?
Because replacing the whole system is the upgrade we're all waiting for, not some mythical impossible Conroe upgrade in a year's time.
Quote:
Originally posted by Kolchak
JeffDM wrote: "BTW: there have been and will be a lot of comparisions of current and future systems with their previous counterparts. I think one may as well get over it. Despite architectural differences, the actual performance of apps are what matters in the end." Yes, the actual performance does matter. But do we still go around comparing Powermac G5s to G3s or even G4s? Or PPC601s to 68040s? No. People are concerned with current models and how long they'll serve in the future. So not many people care that Conroe 2006 is faster than the G5, which is a given.
It's not a given and yes we DO compare old systems to the new systems and speculate if they'll be faster than the old systems. That's what many of us are waiting for, the tipping point where the applications we use are faster on the new systems than our old systems. Then we'll upgrade. At the moment, even a Woodcrest will be SLOWER than a G5 for my applications, which are not universal binaries. For maybe 80% of my work, an Intel chip is a downgrade, not an upgrade.
Quote:
Originally posted by Kolchak
But how much faster is Conroe 2007 than 2006? And are Apple motherboards as upgradable as many PC motherboards, or are they, like many previous Apple mobos, crippled? If you don't remember times in the not very distant past when people complained about how Apple intentionally reduced some feature on the motherboard for no good reason, you have a short memory. Remember that the iBook for the longest time could only do video mirroring even though the hardware could handle spanning.
Bearing in mind most of the rumours say Apple isn't even going to use the Conroe in the Mac Pro and none of the Intel Macs are capable of using it, aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?
And Apple has NEVER disabled features in their Pro desktops so I fail to see why you're concerned. Occasionally they've had some pretty bad implementations - eg. Firewire on the G5, but you can slap a board in for that. And occasionally they go for quiet instead of fast but hey, that's Apple.
Quote:
Originally posted by Kolchak
When I bought my PC motherboard years ago, DDR266 memory was standard in the marketplace. But that board was designed to handle up to DDR333. That's the question: Will Apple design with some eye on the future, or just lock it in to what's current, knowing many users would just buy whole new machines because Apple users are supposedly too meek to mess with replacing CPUs, motherboards and whatnot.
It's mostly out of Apple's hands now since the Intel Macs use off the shelf Intel CPUs and Intel chipsets so we're stuck with whatever Intel can do and not what Apple can. The Mac Pro motherboard is an Intel design. Can you see Apple or Intel not wanting to showcase a screamer when it launches? I think not.
Anyway, I'm done. Enjoy waiting for your Conroe upgrade.
I saw Quads selling for $2600 to $3200 on eBay, and those were with $640 of additional RAM installed. [/B]
Tempting, but I'll wait to see if Bruce Chizen walks out on stage at WWDC first and announces universal binaries first. By then Quads might be cheaper still.
Why do we have to wait until the iMac gets upgraded to get Conroe chips?
Why not start a rumor on Conroe's in the same case as the Woodcrest chip. The Woodcrest or 5100 series chips are needed to make a dual dual machine and Apple needs to have a Quad machine as a Workstation class machine to replace the current G5.
However, looking at the performance of the Conroes on Anandtech it looks like a worthy chip as a replacement for the dual processor G5's. It has a different chipset and architecture than Woodcrest but with motherboard support from Intel it would not be difficult for Apple to sell both Woodcrest chips and Conroe chips in a 'Mac Pro'. Both should be announced at WWDC.
The processors are 'available' (Anandtech thinks there will be a shortage with every computer manufacturer getting allocated as Intel transitions manufacturing from P4's.) and Apple should not be standing at the back of the line.
With the chip prices I have seen the dual dual Woodcrests still look like they are out of my price range.
I've read these new Intel chips have upgreaded vector circuitry. Does anybody know how these compare to Altivec?
Not quite as good but pretty close. There's only a few instructions missing of note.
The new Core 2 chips have a 128bit vector instruction path like a G4/G5. Previously they split it into 2 64bit instructions so it ran at half the speed on the Pentium and the current Core Solo/Duo.
Well this is all very exciting. Of course, we never know what Apple will actually do but here is what we DO know:
1 - Conroe/Merom/Woodcrest are all 64-bit.
2 - Conroe/Merom/Woodcrest have 128-bit vector processing like G4s/G5s.
3 - Conroe/Merom/Woodcrest all do more per MHz than Yonah.
4 - Apple's current Yonah machines are some of the fastest home PC's around.
5 - Apple's post-WWDC line-up is going to kick some serious ass.
I agree with those who feel that iMac should get the Conroe. Assuming heat is not an issue, it would actually be cheaper for Apple to use the Conroe chips vs. the Yonahs, which means either they can lower prices or (more likely) just make more profit per machine. And either one is fine by me.
I am exciting to see what comes at WWDC ... the rest of 2006 is gonna be very interesting for Apple fans.
Tempting, but I'll wait to see if Bruce Chizen walks out on stage at WWDC first and announces universal binaries first. By then Quads might be cheaper still.
The reason we won't see a UB CS2 is financial as well as technical, or so I've been hearing. Adobe is releasing CS3 early to mid 2007, and if a major enhancement is a 50% speed boost on Macs (because it'll be Universal) over CS2, then that's a way to assure that every Mac-user with CS1 and CS2 grabs a copy of CS3. Otherwise, everyone with CS2 might grab a $50-$100 crossgrade, and be willing to sit out CS3 a bit.
Of course, the technical side is also apparently a nightmare, too...
What I'd be interested in is seeing if CS3 uses Core Image to any degree. While I'm not an Adobe pro (but I do use it at school sometimes), and I don't know the exact details, I do know that Core Image Fun House did all those funky special effects in near-real-time on my sister's BlackBook.
For the last freakin time, you can't put a Conroe in a Mini, or any of the Intel Macs. If you could, I suspect it would behave like any other Conroe equipped computer. Snore.............zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
You are quoting an early message in response to an statement by JeffDM (in the message immediately before that) that somebody put a Conroe in a mini. So I didn't bother to confirm his statement before throwing out the hypothetical question, but I don't see you screaming at him that he's an idiot for being the one to make that statement in the first place. And what's this "for the last freakin time"? You quote one message and all of a sudden I'm supposed to be a dunce who says it over and over? You need to check your reading comprehension and attitude.
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Bearing in mind most of the rumours say Apple isn't even going to use the Conroe in the Mac Pro and none of the Intel Macs are capable of using it, aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?
The AI article expressly says, "Core 2 Duo chips are expected to make their way into Apple's Mac product line slightly later this year." If not in the Mac Pro, then where? iMac? Macbook Pro? XServes, maybe, but I'm not sure if they're considered part of the Mac product line.
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And Apple has NEVER disabled features in their Pro desktops so I fail to see why you're concerned. Occasionally they've had some pretty bad implementations - eg. Firewire on the G5, but you can slap a board in for that. And occasionally they go for quiet instead of fast but hey, that's Apple.
Yep, Apple sure gives us everything we need in the pro machines. That must be why we have oodles of USB ports (all 3 of them) on G5s, especially compared to cheap PC motherboards that only have eight or more USB 2.0 ports. Or why many of the G5s, including my Dualie, only came with four RAM slots. My PC motherboard, in the neighborhood of 4 years old, has 10 USB ports, 4 FireWire ports, 8 RAM slots, an onboard surround sound decoder and six IDE channels including four on a RAID controller. None of which is matched by my two year old G5. And I was able to keep upgrading the processor to AMD's fastest Athlon XP (not 64) until about two years ago, paying less than $100 extra each time as I sold the old processor.
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It's mostly out of Apple's hands now since the Intel Macs use off the shelf Intel CPUs and Intel chipsets so we're stuck with whatever Intel can do and not what Apple can. The Mac Pro motherboard is an Intel design. Can you see Apple or Intel not wanting to showcase a screamer when it launches? I think not.
Intel doesn't much care if Apple limits the implementation. They have plenty of other customers who can make fast machines, and they can just say Apple's machines are slower because of the OS. Intel designed the basic motherboard, but since Apple contracts the manufacturing, they can do whatever they want with it, including using the bare minimum in terms of component speeds to meet the design and nothing over. Honestly, so what even if it is a screamer on launch? Six months later, if it's in the middle of the pack and not upgradable thanks to Apple's machinations, how good is that?
The reason we won't see a UB CS2 is financial as well as technical, or so I've been hearing. Adobe is releasing CS3 early to mid 2007, and if a major enhancement is a 50% speed boost on Macs (because it'll be Universal) over CS2, then that's a way to assure that every Mac-user with CS1 and CS2 grabs a copy of CS3. Otherwise, everyone with CS2 might grab a $50-$100 crossgrade, and be willing to sit out CS3 a bit.
I'm ok with that although if universal binary-ness is it's only selling point it'll be a bit of a rip-off.
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Originally posted by ZachPruckowski
Of course, the technical side is also apparently a nightmare, too...
What I'd be interested in is seeing if CS3 uses Core Image to any degree. While I'm not an Adobe pro (but I do use it at school sometimes), and I don't know the exact details, I do know that Core Image Fun House did all those funky special effects in near-real-time on my sister's BlackBook.
One can hope that Adobe have took the time to ditch the cruft in their apps and pick up more of OSX's core features, including Core Image, but I doubt it. I suspect stuff like that won't get implemented unless there is a corresponding Windows feature, and generally, there isn't.
The Core 2 Extreme does not exceed 45 °C CPU temperature using the Intel retail cooler in an office environment.............You should care to enable SpeedStep, because it reduces the processor clock speed to 1.6 GHz when idle. This will cause the processor fan to drop its rotation speed to as little as 1,500 RPM. Eventually, we measured an average CPU temperature level of only 25°C (77°F). That's almost room temperature!
If that's the case, all the "conroe will be too hot for iMac" claims would be off base. I really do hope Apple puts the Conroe in the iMac next week.
I think they'll put a Conroe in.
There's a low power Xeon 5148 which runs at 2.33Ghz and has a TDP of just 40W compared to the Conroe's normal 65W. I'd imagine Intel had a similar Conroe up their sleeves. 40W is just 5W more than Yonah/Merom and still less than the G5.
They won't put a Xeon in though - FB-DIMMS are about twice the price of DDR2.
There's a low power Xeon 5148 which runs at 2.33Ghz and has a TDP of just 40W compared to the Conroe's normal 65W. I'd imagine Intel had a similar Conroe up their sleeves.
Do they? That's the problem. Up to this moment I am not aware of such a Conroe variant. And yes, with 40 W TDP it can go easily in the iMac.
Comments
Originally posted by JeffDM
I posted a response that said that someone had tried it (though I got the chip wrong) and still got a significant performance boost. I didn't try to say that the performance was as good as replacing the main board. Was it really as much of a misunderstanding as you are saying? The G5 comment was just an aside that unfortunately only became a distraction.
It wasn't really you, it was rather aegisdesign who suddenly jumped in after you compared the performance to the G5. All of a sudden, it was no longer wondering whether swapping out chips would be worth the money, it became something like, "It's faster than the G5 and that's all that matters."
I bought a base mini new and sold it on eBay 11 months later with only a 20% difference between purchase price and resale price, but that sale was before the Core Duo units were released. I bought a refurbed iMac and a couple months later, sold it at an insignificant loss. Notebooks might be a different matter, but given the switch, I can imagine Powerbook owners dumping their computers for MacBook Pros, making a bit of a glut. The loss is likely still less than a person selling any other 6mo old notebook.
"Better" resale value is still not necessarily good. The Mini is not a good example because it's a cheap low-end system and would depreciate more slowly. As for the refurb, the valid comparison there would have been how much would you have lost had you paid retail, not refurb price. If you saved $300 off retail and sold it at an insignificant loss, then that machine lost a little over $300 of resale value, not a few bucks.
Originally posted by Kolchak
"Better" resale value is still not necessarily good. The Mini is not a good example because it's a cheap low-end system and would depreciate more slowly. As for the refurb, the valid comparison there would have been how much would you have lost had you paid retail, not refurb price. If you saved $300 off retail and sold it at an insignificant loss, then that machine lost a little over $300 of resale value, not a few bucks.
Right, but the Powerbook G4 isn't exactly a fair comparison.
Yeah, it "was sold" this year, but it hadn't seen a significant upgrade since January 2005, and even that was a pretty insignificant speed bump. Only a $1000 depreciation on a 1.5-2 year old computer that's 4x slower than what they make now? That's really fucking good.
For $500, you could get a far faster MacBook Pro, or you could get an also faster MacBook and have cash to spare if you don't use the graphics card.
I don't even really want to know what you were hoping for, to be honest.
Kolchak,
Today, the only socketed Intel Macs have Core Solos or Duo 'Yonah' chips of up to 2Ghz.
In a year's time, the only thing you can replace them with on Intel's roadmap is another Yonah at up to 2.33Ghz (the T2700) or a Merom at up to 2.33Ghz (the T7600). Both on the same 667Mhz bus. THERE IS NO 3GHZ CHIP ON SOCKET M.
The Yonah socket M is on it's deathbed. That's what I meant by 'low end' btw Zandros - socket P's come in faster and in a year's time, as was Kolchak's original timeframe, 2.33 on a 667 FSB is going to be lower end.
If you're upgrading a Core Solo Mini then that's quite a handy upgrade to the CPU, if it's an iMac then it's pointless. IMHO.
In a years time, I'd expect Apple to be using Conroes or Socket P Merom+ chips with consequently faster FSBs in the iMac and the Mini. And with that, a faster chipset, faster GMA or GPUs. I say that because Intel have cheaper Socket P Meroms planned - T5500 etc. - perfect for the Mini.
That's why I think upgrading today's Intel Macs is short sighted.
Hope that's clear.
Nobody was comparing G5 to Intel performance. The aside started because you wanted to compare Conroe to Conroe-in-a-Mini performance, which isn't going to happen since Mini's can't have Conroes. I pointed out that the more interesting comparison was a Conroe based Mac to one of Apple's previous systems. You seem to think I meant G5 but I explicitly mentioned Yonah.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Nobody was comparing G5 to Intel performance. The aside started because you wanted to compare Conroe to Conroe-in-a-Mini performance, which isn't going to happen since Mini's can't have Conroes. I pointed out that the more interesting comparison was a Conroe based Mac to one of Apple's previous systems. You seem to think I meant G5 but I explicitly mentioned Yonah.
You still seem to be reading something else altogether. I didn't bring up the G5. Read the thread again. Nor did I bring up the Mini or imply a Conroe could be put in it. All I wondered was whether a Mac Pro would be worth upgrading since someone was saying Intel's faster product cycle speeds up Apple's and will cause faster obsolescence than seen in the previously slowly updated PPC Mac lines. The "more interesting comparison" was irrelevant. That upgrade is impossible, short of replacing the whole system, so why even talk about it? JeffDM wrote: "BTW: there have been and will be a lot of comparisions of current and future systems with their previous counterparts. I think one may as well get over it. Despite architectural differences, the actual performance of apps are what matters in the end." Yes, the actual performance does matter. But do we still go around comparing Powermac G5s to G3s or even G4s? Or PPC601s to 68040s? No. People are concerned with current models and how long they'll serve in the future. So not many people care that Conroe 2006 is faster than the G5, which is a given. But how much faster is Conroe 2007 than 2006? And are Apple motherboards as upgradable as many PC motherboards, or are they, like many previous Apple mobos, crippled? If you don't remember times in the not very distant past when people complained about how Apple intentionally reduced some feature on the motherboard for no good reason, you have a short memory. Remember that the iBook for the longest time could only do video mirroring even though the hardware could handle spanning. When I bought my PC motherboard years ago, DDR266 memory was standard in the marketplace. But that board was designed to handle up to DDR333. That's the question: Will Apple design with some eye on the future, or just lock it in to what's current, knowing many users would just buy whole new machines because Apple users are supposedly too meek to mess with replacing CPUs, motherboards and whatnot.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
The Yonah socket M is on it's deathbed. That's what I meant by 'low end' btw Zandros - socket P's come in faster and in a year's time, as was Kolchak's original timeframe, 2.33 on a 667 FSB is going to be lower end.
Okay, but the FCPGA6 socket are really on its half-life now, since it was introduced with the Yonahs in the beginning of the year.
Originally posted by Kolchak
"Better" resale value is still not necessarily good. The Mini is not a good example because it's a cheap low-end system and would depreciate more slowly. As for the refurb, the valid comparison there would have been how much would you have lost had you paid retail, not refurb price. If you saved $300 off retail and sold it at an insignificant loss, then that machine lost a little over $300 of resale value, not a few bucks.
The unit already lost $300 over list price before I bought it. I did sell it as a refurbished unit, and the buyer did know that. This was also at a time when the fastest of the used iMac G4s were going for only slightly less than the price of a refurbished G5. Whenever I looked at whatever model of used Mac, the pricing was considerably higher than what I would pay for it.
Is this slower depreciation you suggest based on absolute amount or percent? Over the same period, assuming the percentage of depreciation, a $2000 Powermac would lose $400, but that's still very good considering it got a year's use.
Originally posted by JeffDM
The unit already lost $300 over list price before I bought it. I did sell it as a refurbished unit, and the buyer did know that.
That's exactly my point. You can't say that your Mac retained almost all of its resale value because you didn't calculate from its original value. Most people buy them new. If you had bought it at list, you would have had a real depreciation of $300+, which is not an "insignificant loss."
Is this slower depreciation you suggest based on absolute amount or percent? Over the same period, assuming the percentage of depreciation, a $2000 Powermac would lose $400, but that's still very good considering it got a year's use.
Percentage, of course. You mentioned a mini earlier that you sold at a 20% loss, or roughly $100. A $500 mini is not going to lose $300 of value in one year, while your iMac lost more than that over a few months of use, calculating from what it would have cost when it was made. A $2000 Powermac would likely lose 25-35% of its value within a year, dropping into the $1300 range. A $4000 Powermac would lose roughly 35%. I saw Quads selling for $2600 to $3200 on eBay, and those were with $640 of additional RAM installed.
Originally posted by Kolchak
You still seem to be reading something else altogether. I didn't bring up the G5. Read the thread again. Nor did I bring up the Mini or imply a Conroe could be put in it.
You did...
Originally posted by Kolchak
I'd want to know how the Conroe-equipped Mini performs relative to another computer that comes stock with Conroe. Are you getting everything out of that Conroe? I doubt it, since the Mini's memory subsystem is slower, and perhaps the clock speed multiplier as well.
For the last freakin time, you can't put a Conroe in a Mini, or any of the Intel Macs. If you could, I suspect it would behave like any other Conroe equipped computer. Snore.............zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Why are you making such a big deal out of this?
Originally posted by Kolchak
All I wondered was whether a Mac Pro would be worth upgrading since someone was saying Intel's faster product cycle speeds up Apple's and will cause faster obsolescence than seen in the previously slowly updated PPC Mac lines. The "more interesting comparison" was irrelevant. That upgrade is impossible, short of replacing the whole system, so why even talk about it?
Because replacing the whole system is the upgrade we're all waiting for, not some mythical impossible Conroe upgrade in a year's time.
Originally posted by Kolchak
JeffDM wrote: "BTW: there have been and will be a lot of comparisions of current and future systems with their previous counterparts. I think one may as well get over it. Despite architectural differences, the actual performance of apps are what matters in the end." Yes, the actual performance does matter. But do we still go around comparing Powermac G5s to G3s or even G4s? Or PPC601s to 68040s? No. People are concerned with current models and how long they'll serve in the future. So not many people care that Conroe 2006 is faster than the G5, which is a given.
It's not a given and yes we DO compare old systems to the new systems and speculate if they'll be faster than the old systems. That's what many of us are waiting for, the tipping point where the applications we use are faster on the new systems than our old systems. Then we'll upgrade. At the moment, even a Woodcrest will be SLOWER than a G5 for my applications, which are not universal binaries. For maybe 80% of my work, an Intel chip is a downgrade, not an upgrade.
Originally posted by Kolchak
But how much faster is Conroe 2007 than 2006? And are Apple motherboards as upgradable as many PC motherboards, or are they, like many previous Apple mobos, crippled? If you don't remember times in the not very distant past when people complained about how Apple intentionally reduced some feature on the motherboard for no good reason, you have a short memory. Remember that the iBook for the longest time could only do video mirroring even though the hardware could handle spanning.
Bearing in mind most of the rumours say Apple isn't even going to use the Conroe in the Mac Pro and none of the Intel Macs are capable of using it, aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?
And Apple has NEVER disabled features in their Pro desktops so I fail to see why you're concerned. Occasionally they've had some pretty bad implementations - eg. Firewire on the G5, but you can slap a board in for that. And occasionally they go for quiet instead of fast but hey, that's Apple.
Originally posted by Kolchak
When I bought my PC motherboard years ago, DDR266 memory was standard in the marketplace. But that board was designed to handle up to DDR333. That's the question: Will Apple design with some eye on the future, or just lock it in to what's current, knowing many users would just buy whole new machines because Apple users are supposedly too meek to mess with replacing CPUs, motherboards and whatnot.
It's mostly out of Apple's hands now since the Intel Macs use off the shelf Intel CPUs and Intel chipsets so we're stuck with whatever Intel can do and not what Apple can. The Mac Pro motherboard is an Intel design. Can you see Apple or Intel not wanting to showcase a screamer when it launches? I think not.
Anyway, I'm done. Enjoy waiting for your Conroe upgrade.
Originally posted by Kolchak
I saw Quads selling for $2600 to $3200 on eBay, and those were with $640 of additional RAM installed. [/B]
Tempting, but I'll wait to see if Bruce Chizen walks out on stage at WWDC first and announces universal binaries first. By then Quads might be cheaper still.
Why not start a rumor on Conroe's in the same case as the Woodcrest chip. The Woodcrest or 5100 series chips are needed to make a dual dual machine and Apple needs to have a Quad machine as a Workstation class machine to replace the current G5.
However, looking at the performance of the Conroes on Anandtech it looks like a worthy chip as a replacement for the dual processor G5's. It has a different chipset and architecture than Woodcrest but with motherboard support from Intel it would not be difficult for Apple to sell both Woodcrest chips and Conroe chips in a 'Mac Pro'. Both should be announced at WWDC.
The processors are 'available' (Anandtech thinks there will be a shortage with every computer manufacturer getting allocated as Intel transitions manufacturing from P4's.) and Apple should not be standing at the back of the line.
With the chip prices I have seen the dual dual Woodcrests still look like they are out of my price range.
- Mark
Originally posted by sc_markt
I've read these new Intel chips have upgreaded vector circuitry. Does anybody know how these compare to Altivec?
Not quite as good but pretty close. There's only a few instructions missing of note.
The new Core 2 chips have a 128bit vector instruction path like a G4/G5. Previously they split it into 2 64bit instructions so it ran at half the speed on the Pentium and the current Core Solo/Duo.
1 - Conroe/Merom/Woodcrest are all 64-bit.
2 - Conroe/Merom/Woodcrest have 128-bit vector processing like G4s/G5s.
3 - Conroe/Merom/Woodcrest all do more per MHz than Yonah.
4 - Apple's current Yonah machines are some of the fastest home PC's around.
5 - Apple's post-WWDC line-up is going to kick some serious ass.
I agree with those who feel that iMac should get the Conroe. Assuming heat is not an issue, it would actually be cheaper for Apple to use the Conroe chips vs. the Yonahs, which means either they can lower prices or (more likely) just make more profit per machine. And either one is fine by me.
I am exciting to see what comes at WWDC ... the rest of 2006 is gonna be very interesting for Apple fans.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Tempting, but I'll wait to see if Bruce Chizen walks out on stage at WWDC first and announces universal binaries first. By then Quads might be cheaper still.
The reason we won't see a UB CS2 is financial as well as technical, or so I've been hearing. Adobe is releasing CS3 early to mid 2007, and if a major enhancement is a 50% speed boost on Macs (because it'll be Universal) over CS2, then that's a way to assure that every Mac-user with CS1 and CS2 grabs a copy of CS3. Otherwise, everyone with CS2 might grab a $50-$100 crossgrade, and be willing to sit out CS3 a bit.
Of course, the technical side is also apparently a nightmare, too...
What I'd be interested in is seeing if CS3 uses Core Image to any degree. While I'm not an Adobe pro (but I do use it at school sometimes), and I don't know the exact details, I do know that Core Image Fun House did all those funky special effects in near-real-time on my sister's BlackBook.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
You did...
For the last freakin time, you can't put a Conroe in a Mini, or any of the Intel Macs. If you could, I suspect it would behave like any other Conroe equipped computer. Snore.............zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
You are quoting an early message in response to an statement by JeffDM (in the message immediately before that) that somebody put a Conroe in a mini. So I didn't bother to confirm his statement before throwing out the hypothetical question, but I don't see you screaming at him that he's an idiot for being the one to make that statement in the first place. And what's this "for the last freakin time"? You quote one message and all of a sudden I'm supposed to be a dunce who says it over and over? You need to check your reading comprehension and attitude.
Bearing in mind most of the rumours say Apple isn't even going to use the Conroe in the Mac Pro and none of the Intel Macs are capable of using it, aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?
The AI article expressly says, "Core 2 Duo chips are expected to make their way into Apple's Mac product line slightly later this year." If not in the Mac Pro, then where? iMac? Macbook Pro? XServes, maybe, but I'm not sure if they're considered part of the Mac product line.
And Apple has NEVER disabled features in their Pro desktops so I fail to see why you're concerned. Occasionally they've had some pretty bad implementations - eg. Firewire on the G5, but you can slap a board in for that. And occasionally they go for quiet instead of fast but hey, that's Apple.
Yep, Apple sure gives us everything we need in the pro machines. That must be why we have oodles of USB ports (all 3 of them) on G5s, especially compared to cheap PC motherboards that only have eight or more USB 2.0 ports. Or why many of the G5s, including my Dualie, only came with four RAM slots. My PC motherboard, in the neighborhood of 4 years old, has 10 USB ports, 4 FireWire ports, 8 RAM slots, an onboard surround sound decoder and six IDE channels including four on a RAID controller. None of which is matched by my two year old G5. And I was able to keep upgrading the processor to AMD's fastest Athlon XP (not 64) until about two years ago, paying less than $100 extra each time as I sold the old processor.
It's mostly out of Apple's hands now since the Intel Macs use off the shelf Intel CPUs and Intel chipsets so we're stuck with whatever Intel can do and not what Apple can. The Mac Pro motherboard is an Intel design. Can you see Apple or Intel not wanting to showcase a screamer when it launches? I think not.
Intel doesn't much care if Apple limits the implementation. They have plenty of other customers who can make fast machines, and they can just say Apple's machines are slower because of the OS. Intel designed the basic motherboard, but since Apple contracts the manufacturing, they can do whatever they want with it, including using the bare minimum in terms of component speeds to meet the design and nothing over. Honestly, so what even if it is a screamer on launch? Six months later, if it's in the middle of the pack and not upgradable thanks to Apple's machinations, how good is that?
Originally posted by ZachPruckowski
The reason we won't see a UB CS2 is financial as well as technical, or so I've been hearing. Adobe is releasing CS3 early to mid 2007, and if a major enhancement is a 50% speed boost on Macs (because it'll be Universal) over CS2, then that's a way to assure that every Mac-user with CS1 and CS2 grabs a copy of CS3. Otherwise, everyone with CS2 might grab a $50-$100 crossgrade, and be willing to sit out CS3 a bit.
I'm ok with that although if universal binary-ness is it's only selling point it'll be a bit of a rip-off.
Originally posted by ZachPruckowski
Of course, the technical side is also apparently a nightmare, too...
What I'd be interested in is seeing if CS3 uses Core Image to any degree. While I'm not an Adobe pro (but I do use it at school sometimes), and I don't know the exact details, I do know that Core Image Fun House did all those funky special effects in near-real-time on my sister's BlackBook.
One can hope that Adobe have took the time to ditch the cruft in their apps and pick up more of OSX's core features, including Core Image, but I doubt it. I suspect stuff like that won't get implemented unless there is a corresponding Windows feature, and generally, there isn't.
Originally posted by halse
The Core 2 Extreme does not exceed 45 °C CPU temperature using the Intel retail cooler in an office environment.............You should care to enable SpeedStep, because it reduces the processor clock speed to 1.6 GHz when idle. This will cause the processor fan to drop its rotation speed to as little as 1,500 RPM. Eventually, we measured an average CPU temperature level of only 25°C (77°F). That's almost room temperature!
from
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/..._64/page8.html
If that's the case, all the "conroe will be too hot for iMac" claims would be off base. I really do hope Apple puts the Conroe in the iMac next week.
Originally posted by jdcfsu
If that's the case, all the "conroe will be too hot for iMac" claims would be off base. I really do hope Apple puts the Conroe in the iMac next week.
I think they'll put a Conroe in.
There's a low power Xeon 5148 which runs at 2.33Ghz and has a TDP of just 40W compared to the Conroe's normal 65W. I'd imagine Intel had a similar Conroe up their sleeves. 40W is just 5W more than Yonah/Merom and still less than the G5.
They won't put a Xeon in though - FB-DIMMS are about twice the price of DDR2.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
There's a low power Xeon 5148 which runs at 2.33Ghz and has a TDP of just 40W compared to the Conroe's normal 65W. I'd imagine Intel had a similar Conroe up their sleeves.
Do they? That's the problem. Up to this moment I am not aware of such a Conroe variant. And yes, with 40 W TDP it can go easily in the iMac.
Originally posted by PB
Do they? That's the problem. Up to this moment I am not aware of such a Conroe variant. And yes, with 40 W TDP it can go easily in the iMac.
Only just spotted myself in an Ars article.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paed.../promacs.ars/5