Clearly _something_ has been done to the current crop of G4 such that it plays nice with DDR memory. Either that, or a newer iteration is being used. Examine the following image which I will now shamelessly link from Apple.com:
It would be a joke to say that the current heat sink sits atop the CPU daughtercard there. To get an idea of just how much space is available inside a 1U case, well, check out the back of the box:
Nice and cozy, eh? So what the Hell is cooling that pair of blazing hot G4s then? Or, to put things in perspective, what would happen if you were to run your dual GHz without its heat sink? Leonis? Certainly a metal case helps in heat dissipation, but it can't replace the ****massive heatsink inside my Quicksilver. Just something to think about. Xserve is such a stupid name.
Pay attention to the 1GB/s that the memory controller (which is part of the system controller here) is connected to the two G4s with.
So it's like there's a 4 lane highway from the memory to the system controller, but once you get there it narrows down to a 2 lane highway to get to the CPUs, and you have a traffic jam.</strong><hr></blockquote>
[quote]Originally posted by DisgruntledQS733Owner:
<strong>
It would be a joke to say that the current heat sink sits atop the CPU daughtercard there. To get an idea of just how much space is available inside a 1U case, well, check out the back of the box:
Nice and cozy, eh? So what the Hell is cooling that pair of blazing hot G4s then? Or, to put things in perspective, what would happen if you were to run your dual GHz without its heat sink? Leonis? Certainly a metal case helps in heat dissipation, but it can't replace the ****massive heatsink inside my Quicksilver. Just something to think about.r</strong><hr></blockquote>
FYI - the heat sinks in the new desktops are far smaller than before.. my dual 1Ghz's heat sink is tiny compared to my previous 733 Mhz machine...
So I'd bet the XServe is using these lower 'heat generating' G4's, like the desktop.. those big fans on top of the processors will cool things off enough.. plus these are ment to be in racks, and if you have racks, you almost always have a/c in the machine room.. (remembering my fond days at Excite@Home)..
<strong>I doubt that there is much performance improvement in this system over the current Dual GHz towers.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Not for processor intensive activity, no. But for I/O intensive work, yes. Consider, for example, that the AGP video card (or any of the other system DMA bus masters) could be reading from main memory at close to 1 GByte/sec without impacting processor memory bandwidth. Not such a big deal on a desktop machine, but huge for a server.
stop crying about your Wolf3d FPS numbers... Must be nice to have the cash to buy a brand new Mac and have time to play games on it, then to come on here and complain.
Give your Powermac to me, I could actually do some work on it.
My prediction: minor speedbump with DDR.. and a special chip that detects bitching from the user, then the system sprouts legs and walks back to Cupertino while the bitchy user is tossing and turning over the difference between 150 and 200fps.
[quote]Can I remind people that Motorola have only managed to increase the G4 clock speed by 0.5 Ghz in the last two years, what makes anyone think they can boost it by nearly that again in the next two months?
1.4 Ghz in July? don't make me laugh!
1.2 would be borderline plausible, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is no speed bump in July at all, maybe the low end models will climb the Mhz ladder and the prices all go down. Perhaps they may also try and distract us with some Bluetooth tech.
I doubt a multibutton Apple mouse is on the way either, this goes against Apple user interface doctrine, and with Steve in charge, ethos is everything.
Socrates<hr></blockquote>
One thing people always forget when they talk about Apple/Mot's inability to do 400 mhz speed increases: A 20% speed increase from 500 to 600 is 100mhz. Once you're at 1 gig you need a 200mhz increase to maintain the same rate of growth. If Apple went from 1 gig to 1.4, it'd be roughly equivalent to the rate of growth we saw when we went from 533 to 733. Not exactly rocket science, and I know the % rates don't translate into the same % performance gains, but it's gotta be considered. And if Apple does go from 1 gig to 1.4, they don't deserve any kudos, cause it's not like they're all of a sudden burnin along.
Another thing: i don't get how Apple is planning to corner the digital editing biz in Hollywood at the rate they're going. Yet there'sbeen enough in the news hinting at Apple's going in that direction. Mike from xlr8yourmac has hiunted that we should see dramatic performance jumps at MWNY. He's not one to talk off the top of his head. Yet Apple continues to roll out new stuff that's nice, but nothing to get excited about. I think it's pretty obvious there not going anywhere with Motorola. So I'm curious about the comment on AMD's 64 bit chips that aren't intel compatiblle. No one bit on this, and it's the first I heard of it, what with all the talk about clawhammer or whatever it's called. So is this a possibility? Where would altivec figure in there?
One final comment. If the digital film stuff is just Steve blowing smoke up people's asses, and Apple continues to improve it's PM line at the same rate of incremental performance gains it's been giving us for years, then it's a company run by fools. Becasue we OSx they really have a chance to make some inroads and get back some of the market share they lost. To not take advantage of this seems ludicrous. The alternative is to continue playing the game they'be been going at the past few years-milk their existing base (I liked the comment, Steve's just squeezing us like lemons) by giving them continual computer obsolescence, while at the same time always dangliing these hints that the next great thing is coming soon, and if you just wait and keep buying Apples machines you'll eventually hit the jackpot.
I don't know what to think... if Apple can't hit 1.4ghz in DP by MWNY, with a decent line up (1000 / 1200 / 2x1400 isn't decent, top two at least in duals, all 3 preferably), with at least 266mhz FSB and 266mhz DDR RAM, I cannot seriously consider buying one, and I believe that the sales will decline even further
Apple, we are asking for LAST YEARS technology, and you can't provide it? 2000 hardware in your 2002 computers i pathetic. MWSF is the deadline for me. If 1.8ghz hasn't been hit, or prices slashed at least $1000 on all models, I have no choice to look elsewhere. AMD's are absolutely kicking in all areas, not even a DP 1 gigahurtz can keep up to a 1.8ghz athlon, its hard pressed to even come close to a 1.6. And considering an AMD setup cost a small fraction of a DP 1 ghz (well, for about what the SP 800 costs now).....
This is the first post like this I have ever posted. Apple need a miracle, and fast...
[quote]One thing people always forget when they talk about Apple/Mot's inability to do 400 mhz speed increases: A 20% speed increase from 500 to 600 is 100mhz. Once you're at 1 gig you need a 200mhz increase to maintain the same rate of growth. If Apple went from 1 gig to 1.4, it'd be roughly equivalent to the rate of growth we saw when we went from 533 to 733. Not exactly rocket science, and I know the % rates don't translate into the same % performance gains, but it's gotta be considered. And if Apple does go from 1 gig to 1.4, they don't deserve any kudos, cause it's not like they're all of a sudden burnin along.
<hr></blockquote>
An excellent point, but is it possible that more technical obstacles arise when attempting to scale at higher clock speeds? For example, is scaling from 400 MHz to 500 MHz as easy as scaling from 1 GHz to 1.2 GHz? I don't know...but maybe someone else here could weigh in?
Ughh, this would also mean that with the Pentium 4 at 3 GHz, a paltry 20% increase in clock speed would jack it up to a mighty 3.6 GHz! Doeh! Meaning that by this time next year, $1600 Wintels will be around 4 GHz while a $3200 Powermac will be lucky to eek out 1.6 GHz.
Dark times lie ahead for Apple....I fear that the performance gap will grow so large that creative professionals will have no choice but to grudgingly migrate to Wintel.
<strong>Of course it should also be noted that the new G4s are already breaking the 200fps barrier on the toughest games when used with the high end graphics cards
Are you joking? In Q3A a DP 1GHz w/ a Radeon 8500 or GF3 gets only 150FPS at 640x480. Q3A is not one of the "toughest games" either, and that limit appears to be because of the processor/bus, *not* the card. Try running RtCW on *any* Mac with *any* card and getting 200FPS with *any* settings....dumbass.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Something must be wrong with your hardware/software. 150 fps @ 640 with that kind of hardware?
My hardware; G4 466/Rage128"pro" in fact gets 115 fps @ 640. Not joking, inflating by .1 fps. (Bring all your flames, but I'll still timedemo four at 115)
They are stuck with moto so we have three opportunities for mwny :
The Best:
G5 with Rapid I/O / PCI X / 333 Mhz DDR
1.2 / 1.4 / 1.6 Ghz
The Good:
G4+ with a 266Mhz FSB / FireWire 2 / ATA100
1.0 / 1.2 / Dual 1.4 Ghz
The Ugly:
G4 with a 133Mhz FSB / FW1 / ATA 66
1.0 / 1.1 / Dual 1.2 Ghz
I will trade my dual 800 ONLY for a Dual 1.4 with a 266 FSB, DDR 266, ATA 100 & a faster SuperDrive.
But i do hope that we will be amazed this summer but i'm scared that it will be another iXXX device only, an upgrade to the iBook and an the ugly update for the G4. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
<strong>[b]Are you joking? In Q3A a DP 1GHz w/ a Radeon 8500 or GF3 gets only 150FPS at 640x480. Q3A is not one of the "toughest games" either, and that limit appears to be because of the processor/bus, *not* the card. Try running RtCW on *any* Mac with *any* card and getting 200FPS with *any* settings....dumbass.</strong><hr></blockquote>
FYI - the heat sinks in the new desktops are far smaller than before.. my dual 1Ghz's heat sink is tiny compared to my previous 733 Mhz machine...
So I'd bet the XServe is using these lower 'heat generating' G4's, like the desktop.. those big fans on top of the processors will cool things off enough.. plus these are ment to be in racks, and if you have racks, you almost always have a/c in the machine room.. (remembering my fond days at Excite@Home)..
canadianmacguy</strong><hr></blockquote>
the heat sinks were removed for the photo. look here:
you also see that the G4's are covered to direct the air motion to them. and those fans blow sideways like an old hair dryer. look at the known pics, they are not circle shaped, but have an air-out opening towards the G4's.
Things are looking bleak right now. The distinct possibility exists that Apple may be trippled in both Mhz and real world power by the end of 2002. Not good at all.
When you look at AE benchmarks (where testers crippled the PC and not the Mac) you see that an Athlon and G4 are just about trading Mhz for Mhz. AMD has about 60% more clocks and the timed tests gave up about 60% faster speeds for the Athlon DP system. Sure some things aren't exactly even, but the machines were close in cost, and the PC even had memory REMOVED. You can argue that it had faster drives, RAM, etc, but the company could ship those components at their stated MSRP. There's no faulting them for that.
The newest P4's may not be the fastest per clock, but they have so many clocks that they ARE FASTER than even the fastest Athlons. If the comparo to a DP Athlon wasn't good, then the performance comparo to a DP P4 is downright depressing.
What Apple doesn't seem to understand is that it's mmore than OK to overcharge for performance -- if you sell the fastest system money can buy for 50% more than the next best thing people will pay for it even if it's only 15% faster. HOWEVER, if you sell a machine that's 60% slower for equivalent money people will start looking elsewhere. Megahurts myths, RDF, and 'fake-offs' aside. Eventually even superior OS aside. The big boys make good software for windows too. If I only use photoshop, or AE, or AVID, or Premiere, how much am I really going to care about looking at windows? I'll skin it with something pleasant, and not use it much at all beyond launching and closing my apps. A pro is going to care about a 2 hour render vs a 4-5hour render.
PC's could double up over Apple's best performing machine's by year's end, they're more than half way there already. DP won't matter much if even an SP x86 machine can beat it at most tasks.
Some seriously clocked, .13u, deep pipe, fast memory, big cache PPC's are needed Yesterday!
<strong>And yet a 600 Imac with superdrive can encode faster than a 2 ghz sony vaio.
And yet a 600 Imac with superdrive's digital media software runs circles around any pc version.
I'd love a g5 but if you think the computing experience for _everyone_ comes down to speed then...</strong><hr></blockquote>
WTF are you talking about? There are no 600 iMacs with a super-drive.
Those were G3 CRT iMacs with 600's and they didn't even have combo drives let alone super.
I defy you to show me anything that a 600Mhz G3 can do faster than a 2Ghz P4.
An 800Mhz G4 hangs in the game but it won't decisively win any speed tests, even DVD encoding against the fastest x86. Altivec is a great tech that keeps G4's in the contest for encoding/decodind video and photo work, but they're getting their asses handed to them in 3-d. Even audio runs faster on the PC for just about any encoding/decoding/recording/VST plugin role you can think of.
So Apple has very nice software. The point is that the platform/OS become less important if you have good third party software to support your machine. If x86 continues to pull away from Apple, it won't matter how good DVD studio pro, or Final Cut, or iTunes, or OSX, or QT are. Equivalent (industry standard) software will exist on the other platform. You won't need Windows for anything more than launching the program. Even if you hate it, the price-performance advantage just gets too great to ignore.
<strong>Things are looking bleak right now. The distinct possibility exists that Apple may be trippled in both Mhz and real world power by the end of 2002. Not good at all.
When you look at AE benchmarks (where testers crippled the PC and not the Mac) you see that an Athlon and G4 are just about trading Mhz for Mhz. AMD has about 60% more clocks and the timed tests gave up about 60% faster speeds for the Athlon DP system. Sure some things aren't exactly even, but the machines were close in cost, and the PC even had memory REMOVED. You can argue that it had faster drives, RAM, etc, but the company could ship those components at their stated MSRP. There's no faulting them for that.
The newest P4's may not be the fastest per clock, but they have so many clocks that they ARE FASTER than even the fastest Athlons. If the comparo to a DP Athlon wasn't good, then the performance comparo to a DP P4 is downright depressing.
What Apple doesn't seem to understand is that it's mmore than OK to overcharge for performance -- if you sell the fastest system money can buy for 50% more than the next best thing people will pay for it even if it's only 15% faster. HOWEVER, if you sell a machine that's 60% slower for equivalent money people will start looking elsewhere. Megahurts myths, RDF, and 'fake-offs' aside. Eventually even superior OS aside. The big boys make good software for windows too. If I only use photoshop, or AE, or AVID, or Premiere, how much am I really going to care about looking at windows? I'll skin it with something pleasant, and not use it much at all beyond launching and closing my apps. A pro is going to care about a 2 hour render vs a 4-5hour render.
PC's could double up over Apple's best performing machine's by year's end, they're more than half way there already. DP won't matter much if even an SP x86 machine can beat it at most tasks.
Some seriously clocked, .13u, deep pipe, fast memory, big cache PPC's are needed Yesterday!</strong><hr></blockquote>
Call me an optomist... but: "Do you think Apple is totally unaware of the speed gap...?" Do you think they are content where they are...? Do you think that "behind the scenes" there arent't SEVERE efforts to change this...?
I (personally) believe they are 100% aware of their standings and are looking to the "next" generation of processors and architectures for their systems... but in the MEANTIME, they are trying to make inroads to the server market to get established.
Let's look at their situation realisticly... I view them as a "new" player on the field now... the new *NIX-based OS which is in ITS infancy... there is SO MUCH room to grow there... the new hardware for servers and RAID boxes are to get them in-the-door... meanwhile... behind the scenes (I hope) they are trying to not only solve and close the gap in speed, but hopefully exceed the competition and become the leaders. I truly do not think that Apple is happy being "behind" the PC world in speed (be it percieved or actual).
It's not like there are executives who think.. "What...? PeeCees are FASTER than OUR boxes...? When did THIS happen...? I have to get-out-more-often..."
(silly, yes) But I truly believe they are trying to solve the issue... and I truly HOPE they have a solution that takes them QUANTUM steps ahead. (not holding breath, though)
I think you can split an ATA100 drive into two smaller partitions so you don't waste any storage. eg split a 160GB drive into 2 80GB partitions, but it would be nice if the controller just support bigger drives out-right. Current drives are pretty close to the partition size limit of ATA100. If you plan on upgrading the drive in your mac at any time in the future ATA133 or greater would be a good feature.
As I've stated before, the hard-drive upgrade is the one upgrade that can be done to virtually any mac. It wouldn't cost much to include ATA133 on the mobo. PM's have PCI slots but every other mac doesn't.
<strong>It's not like there are executives who think.. "What...? PeeCees are FASTER than OUR boxes...? When did THIS happen...? I have to get-out-more-often..."</strong><hr></blockquote>But it could be that they are so RDF-ed that they truly don't see it as that much of a problem, and so aren't taking the steps that they could be taking to change things.
Comments
It would be a joke to say that the current heat sink sits atop the CPU daughtercard there. To get an idea of just how much space is available inside a 1U case, well, check out the back of the box:
Nice and cozy, eh? So what the Hell is cooling that pair of blazing hot G4s then? Or, to put things in perspective, what would happen if you were to run your dual GHz without its heat sink? Leonis? Certainly a metal case helps in heat dissipation, but it can't replace the ****massive heatsink inside my Quicksilver. Just something to think about. Xserve is such a stupid name.
-DisgruntledQS733Owner
<strong>
Pay attention to the 1GB/s that the memory controller (which is part of the system controller here) is connected to the two G4s with.
So it's like there's a 4 lane highway from the memory to the system controller, but once you get there it narrows down to a 2 lane highway to get to the CPUs, and you have a traffic jam.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Excellent explanation timortis, thanks ...
toasty
<strong>
It would be a joke to say that the current heat sink sits atop the CPU daughtercard there. To get an idea of just how much space is available inside a 1U case, well, check out the back of the box:
Nice and cozy, eh? So what the Hell is cooling that pair of blazing hot G4s then? Or, to put things in perspective, what would happen if you were to run your dual GHz without its heat sink? Leonis? Certainly a metal case helps in heat dissipation, but it can't replace the ****massive heatsink inside my Quicksilver. Just something to think about.r</strong><hr></blockquote>
FYI - the heat sinks in the new desktops are far smaller than before.. my dual 1Ghz's heat sink is tiny compared to my previous 733 Mhz machine...
So I'd bet the XServe is using these lower 'heat generating' G4's, like the desktop.. those big fans on top of the processors will cool things off enough.. plus these are ment to be in racks, and if you have racks, you almost always have a/c in the machine room.. (remembering my fond days at Excite@Home)..
canadianmacguy
<strong>I doubt that there is much performance improvement in this system over the current Dual GHz towers.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Not for processor intensive activity, no. But for I/O intensive work, yes. Consider, for example, that the AGP video card (or any of the other system DMA bus masters) could be reading from main memory at close to 1 GByte/sec without impacting processor memory bandwidth. Not such a big deal on a desktop machine, but huge for a server.
Give your Powermac to me, I could actually do some work on it.
My prediction: minor speedbump with DDR.. and a special chip that detects bitching from the user, then the system sprouts legs and walks back to Cupertino while the bitchy user is tossing and turning over the difference between 150 and 200fps.
1.4 Ghz in July? don't make me laugh!
1.2 would be borderline plausible, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is no speed bump in July at all, maybe the low end models will climb the Mhz ladder and the prices all go down. Perhaps they may also try and distract us with some Bluetooth tech.
I doubt a multibutton Apple mouse is on the way either, this goes against Apple user interface doctrine, and with Steve in charge, ethos is everything.
Socrates<hr></blockquote>
One thing people always forget when they talk about Apple/Mot's inability to do 400 mhz speed increases: A 20% speed increase from 500 to 600 is 100mhz. Once you're at 1 gig you need a 200mhz increase to maintain the same rate of growth. If Apple went from 1 gig to 1.4, it'd be roughly equivalent to the rate of growth we saw when we went from 533 to 733. Not exactly rocket science, and I know the % rates don't translate into the same % performance gains, but it's gotta be considered. And if Apple does go from 1 gig to 1.4, they don't deserve any kudos, cause it's not like they're all of a sudden burnin along.
Another thing: i don't get how Apple is planning to corner the digital editing biz in Hollywood at the rate they're going. Yet there'sbeen enough in the news hinting at Apple's going in that direction. Mike from xlr8yourmac has hiunted that we should see dramatic performance jumps at MWNY. He's not one to talk off the top of his head. Yet Apple continues to roll out new stuff that's nice, but nothing to get excited about. I think it's pretty obvious there not going anywhere with Motorola. So I'm curious about the comment on AMD's 64 bit chips that aren't intel compatiblle. No one bit on this, and it's the first I heard of it, what with all the talk about clawhammer or whatever it's called. So is this a possibility? Where would altivec figure in there?
One final comment. If the digital film stuff is just Steve blowing smoke up people's asses, and Apple continues to improve it's PM line at the same rate of incremental performance gains it's been giving us for years, then it's a company run by fools. Becasue we OSx they really have a chance to make some inroads and get back some of the market share they lost. To not take advantage of this seems ludicrous. The alternative is to continue playing the game they'be been going at the past few years-milk their existing base (I liked the comment, Steve's just squeezing us like lemons) by giving them continual computer obsolescence, while at the same time always dangliing these hints that the next great thing is coming soon, and if you just wait and keep buying Apples machines you'll eventually hit the jackpot.
Kind of pathetic.
Apple, we are asking for LAST YEARS technology, and you can't provide it? 2000 hardware in your 2002 computers i pathetic. MWSF is the deadline for me. If 1.8ghz hasn't been hit, or prices slashed at least $1000 on all models, I have no choice to look elsewhere. AMD's are absolutely kicking in all areas, not even a DP 1 gigahurtz can keep up to a 1.8ghz athlon, its hard pressed to even come close to a 1.6. And considering an AMD setup cost a small fraction of a DP 1 ghz (well, for about what the SP 800 costs now).....
This is the first post like this I have ever posted. Apple need a miracle, and fast...
N don't blame me, I didn't do it.
G-News
<hr></blockquote>
An excellent point, but is it possible that more technical obstacles arise when attempting to scale at higher clock speeds? For example, is scaling from 400 MHz to 500 MHz as easy as scaling from 1 GHz to 1.2 GHz? I don't know...but maybe someone else here could weigh in?
Ughh, this would also mean that with the Pentium 4 at 3 GHz, a paltry 20% increase in clock speed would jack it up to a mighty 3.6 GHz! Doeh! Meaning that by this time next year, $1600 Wintels will be around 4 GHz while a $3200 Powermac will be lucky to eek out 1.6 GHz.
Dark times lie ahead for Apple....I fear that the performance gap will grow so large that creative professionals will have no choice but to grudgingly migrate to Wintel.
<strong>Of course it should also be noted that the new G4s are already breaking the 200fps barrier on the toughest games when used with the high end graphics cards
Are you joking? In Q3A a DP 1GHz w/ a Radeon 8500 or GF3 gets only 150FPS at 640x480. Q3A is not one of the "toughest games" either, and that limit appears to be because of the processor/bus, *not* the card. Try running RtCW on *any* Mac with *any* card and getting 200FPS with *any* settings....dumbass.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Something must be wrong with your hardware/software. 150 fps @ 640 with that kind of hardware?
My hardware; G4 466/Rage128"pro" in fact gets 115 fps @ 640. Not joking, inflating by .1 fps. (Bring all your flames, but I'll still timedemo four at 115)
Macs are not THAT slow, thats for sure.
My prediction for MWNY:
1,33GHz DP/1,2 GHz SP/1,13Ghz SP
133 MHz systembus/266MHz DDR RAM
ATA 133 controller...
They are stuck with moto so we have three opportunities for mwny :
The Best:
G5 with Rapid I/O / PCI X / 333 Mhz DDR
1.2 / 1.4 / 1.6 Ghz
The Good:
G4+ with a 266Mhz FSB / FireWire 2 / ATA100
1.0 / 1.2 / Dual 1.4 Ghz
The Ugly:
G4 with a 133Mhz FSB / FW1 / ATA 66
1.0 / 1.1 / Dual 1.2 Ghz
I will trade my dual 800 ONLY for a Dual 1.4 with a 266 FSB, DDR 266, ATA 100 & a faster SuperDrive.
But i do hope that we will be amazed this summer but i'm scared that it will be another iXXX device only, an upgrade to the iBook and an the ugly update for the G4. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
[ 05-15-2002: Message edited by: jeromba ]</p>
<strong>[b]Are you joking? In Q3A a DP 1GHz w/ a Radeon 8500 or GF3 gets only 150FPS at 640x480. Q3A is not one of the "toughest games" either, and that limit appears to be because of the processor/bus, *not* the card. Try running RtCW on *any* Mac with *any* card and getting 200FPS with *any* settings....dumbass.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Wow, you must know a lot about games.
<strong>
FYI - the heat sinks in the new desktops are far smaller than before.. my dual 1Ghz's heat sink is tiny compared to my previous 733 Mhz machine...
So I'd bet the XServe is using these lower 'heat generating' G4's, like the desktop.. those big fans on top of the processors will cool things off enough.. plus these are ment to be in racks, and if you have racks, you almost always have a/c in the machine room.. (remembering my fond days at Excite@Home)..
canadianmacguy</strong><hr></blockquote>
the heat sinks were removed for the photo. look here:
you also see that the G4's are covered to direct the air motion to them. and those fans blow sideways like an old hair dryer. look at the known pics, they are not circle shaped, but have an air-out opening towards the G4's.
When you look at AE benchmarks (where testers crippled the PC and not the Mac) you see that an Athlon and G4 are just about trading Mhz for Mhz. AMD has about 60% more clocks and the timed tests gave up about 60% faster speeds for the Athlon DP system. Sure some things aren't exactly even, but the machines were close in cost, and the PC even had memory REMOVED. You can argue that it had faster drives, RAM, etc, but the company could ship those components at their stated MSRP. There's no faulting them for that.
The newest P4's may not be the fastest per clock, but they have so many clocks that they ARE FASTER than even the fastest Athlons. If the comparo to a DP Athlon wasn't good, then the performance comparo to a DP P4 is downright depressing.
What Apple doesn't seem to understand is that it's mmore than OK to overcharge for performance -- if you sell the fastest system money can buy for 50% more than the next best thing people will pay for it even if it's only 15% faster. HOWEVER, if you sell a machine that's 60% slower for equivalent money people will start looking elsewhere. Megahurts myths, RDF, and 'fake-offs' aside. Eventually even superior OS aside. The big boys make good software for windows too. If I only use photoshop, or AE, or AVID, or Premiere, how much am I really going to care about looking at windows? I'll skin it with something pleasant, and not use it much at all beyond launching and closing my apps. A pro is going to care about a 2 hour render vs a 4-5hour render.
PC's could double up over Apple's best performing machine's by year's end, they're more than half way there already. DP won't matter much if even an SP x86 machine can beat it at most tasks.
Some seriously clocked, .13u, deep pipe, fast memory, big cache PPC's are needed Yesterday!
And yet a 600 Imac with superdrive's digital media software runs circles around any pc version.
I'd love a g5 but if you think the computing experience for _everyone_ comes down to speed then...
<strong>And yet a 600 Imac with superdrive can encode faster than a 2 ghz sony vaio.
And yet a 600 Imac with superdrive's digital media software runs circles around any pc version.
I'd love a g5 but if you think the computing experience for _everyone_ comes down to speed then...</strong><hr></blockquote>
WTF are you talking about? There are no 600 iMacs with a super-drive.
Those were G3 CRT iMacs with 600's and they didn't even have combo drives let alone super.
I defy you to show me anything that a 600Mhz G3 can do faster than a 2Ghz P4.
An 800Mhz G4 hangs in the game but it won't decisively win any speed tests, even DVD encoding against the fastest x86. Altivec is a great tech that keeps G4's in the contest for encoding/decodind video and photo work, but they're getting their asses handed to them in 3-d. Even audio runs faster on the PC for just about any encoding/decoding/recording/VST plugin role you can think of.
So Apple has very nice software. The point is that the platform/OS become less important if you have good third party software to support your machine. If x86 continues to pull away from Apple, it won't matter how good DVD studio pro, or Final Cut, or iTunes, or OSX, or QT are. Equivalent (industry standard) software will exist on the other platform. You won't need Windows for anything more than launching the program. Even if you hate it, the price-performance advantage just gets too great to ignore.
compares ata100 and ata133. No difference.
Why pay more?
<strong>Things are looking bleak right now. The distinct possibility exists that Apple may be trippled in both Mhz and real world power by the end of 2002. Not good at all.
When you look at AE benchmarks (where testers crippled the PC and not the Mac) you see that an Athlon and G4 are just about trading Mhz for Mhz. AMD has about 60% more clocks and the timed tests gave up about 60% faster speeds for the Athlon DP system. Sure some things aren't exactly even, but the machines were close in cost, and the PC even had memory REMOVED. You can argue that it had faster drives, RAM, etc, but the company could ship those components at their stated MSRP. There's no faulting them for that.
The newest P4's may not be the fastest per clock, but they have so many clocks that they ARE FASTER than even the fastest Athlons. If the comparo to a DP Athlon wasn't good, then the performance comparo to a DP P4 is downright depressing.
What Apple doesn't seem to understand is that it's mmore than OK to overcharge for performance -- if you sell the fastest system money can buy for 50% more than the next best thing people will pay for it even if it's only 15% faster. HOWEVER, if you sell a machine that's 60% slower for equivalent money people will start looking elsewhere. Megahurts myths, RDF, and 'fake-offs' aside. Eventually even superior OS aside. The big boys make good software for windows too. If I only use photoshop, or AE, or AVID, or Premiere, how much am I really going to care about looking at windows? I'll skin it with something pleasant, and not use it much at all beyond launching and closing my apps. A pro is going to care about a 2 hour render vs a 4-5hour render.
PC's could double up over Apple's best performing machine's by year's end, they're more than half way there already. DP won't matter much if even an SP x86 machine can beat it at most tasks.
Some seriously clocked, .13u, deep pipe, fast memory, big cache PPC's are needed Yesterday!</strong><hr></blockquote>
Call me an optomist... but: "Do you think Apple is totally unaware of the speed gap...?" Do you think they are content where they are...? Do you think that "behind the scenes" there arent't SEVERE efforts to change this...?
I (personally) believe they are 100% aware of their standings and are looking to the "next" generation of processors and architectures for their systems... but in the MEANTIME, they are trying to make inroads to the server market to get established.
Let's look at their situation realisticly... I view them as a "new" player on the field now... the new *NIX-based OS which is in ITS infancy... there is SO MUCH room to grow there... the new hardware for servers and RAID boxes are to get them in-the-door... meanwhile... behind the scenes (I hope) they are trying to not only solve and close the gap in speed, but hopefully exceed the competition and become the leaders. I truly do not think that Apple is happy being "behind" the PC world in speed (be it percieved or actual).
It's not like there are executives who think.. "What...? PeeCees are FASTER than OUR boxes...? When did THIS happen...? I have to get-out-more-often..."
(silly, yes) But I truly believe they are trying to solve the issue... and I truly HOPE they have a solution that takes them QUANTUM steps ahead. (not holding breath, though)
- Scott
I think you can split an ATA100 drive into two smaller partitions so you don't waste any storage. eg split a 160GB drive into 2 80GB partitions, but it would be nice if the controller just support bigger drives out-right. Current drives are pretty close to the partition size limit of ATA100. If you plan on upgrading the drive in your mac at any time in the future ATA133 or greater would be a good feature.
As I've stated before, the hard-drive upgrade is the one upgrade that can be done to virtually any mac. It wouldn't cost much to include ATA133 on the mobo. PM's have PCI slots but every other mac doesn't.
<strong>It's not like there are executives who think.. "What...? PeeCees are FASTER than OUR boxes...? When did THIS happen...? I have to get-out-more-often..."</strong><hr></blockquote>But it could be that they are so RDF-ed that they truly don't see it as that much of a problem, and so aren't taking the steps that they could be taking to change things.