Compare favourably with top end athlons? is that it? Not Toast top end athlons? Are we mac users now so easily impressed? By the time apple actually ships the machines the wintel world will have moved on again. At that point exactly which athlons will it compare favourably against by the time you receive the newly ordered 'Power' Mac?<hr></blockquote>
What should we do? Click our heels three times and say, "There's a 2GHz G5, there's a 2GHz G5..."
Rant on forums explaining that Apple will be DOOMED for not having:
a) every cool thing under the sun
b) all of the above
..?
Is Steve (and Apple, by extension) intentionally keeping DDR, G5s, FW2 from us?
Come on.
If they could, they would, but they can't, so they haven't.
I'm not happy with the state of HW development at Apple, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. Besides, I need the time to rant on other forums explaining why the Porsche 911 is actually a better car than the BMW M3. There are more important things in life, ya know.
Oh-- here's a pair of sarcasm tags to apply anywhere above: [sarcasm][/sarcasm]
edit: Premature end-of-ranting. It's a common problem for people my age.
Just a question, but just what do you need with such awsome power? Unless you are a 3-D designer or head programmer at Adobe what's the BFD? Pick up any mac from the Apple Store, stick a geforce 4 in it, and slap a gig of ram in it. It can handle anything
you might throw at it. I don't think a processor measuring contest is in order. That is saved for high school locker rooms or unix boards. This is a mac world, and I believe my mac has a bigger backside cache then yours. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> So what's the big deal? Which one of your PC buddies is picking on you so much that you have to have a bigger stick to hit them back with. Try a new approach. When they raise their stick, burn it off with the Toasty-7 napalm pack from marathon and then buy them a cheerwine.
I thought the magic was in owning a mac, not building the highest duplo tower.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I can mostly attest to that... I happen to BE a designer by profession that utilizes 3D and video... my 533MHz w/ 1.5GB of RAM does not get in it's own way. Like I said before... SURE! Anytime you render something... be it 3D, FCP3 composits or AfterEffects compositions... you ALWAYS want more... it's an insatiable apetite that will never go away... but alow me to "slightly" buy-into the MHz-Myth and to put "some" things in perspective.
I know we're sick of CAR metaphors... but here's another one:
Picture a Mac being an auto-maker (your choice) whose overall design and performance you like. For the sake of argument, I'll use BMW. They offer a range of autos that are (in general) more expensive than most other makers, but you enjoy their overall aesthetics, ergonomics and for the MOST part... performance.
Now... there are going to be OTHER cars out there that on paper have more cubic inches, or more horse power or some other aspect that will out-perform the BMW's engine...
Apple will NEVER... (did he say Never?) yep... NEVER be "The Best" at everything. There's always going to be something that someone else does "better" or "faster"... but the bottom line to me is... as far as productivity and enjoyment of my working environment (and yes, I have YEARS of experience on MANY Windoze flavors from 3.1 all the way up to NT and XP) I would MUCH rather be using my Mac at 533/1.5 than to be using a Dell (or other Intel Box) running a MicroSoft OS... not because I'm anti MS... but because I HATE using Windoze... I like some features... but the Mac OS beats 'em all... either 9.x OR 10.x... makes no diff.
Most of us that utilize the Mac to that level will get just what we need from it... let them worry about the speed increases on their end of things. I'm sure they are aware of their own standings. Anything that needs MASSIVE computing power, i.e. More than what a PowerMac G(?) can offer, can be run on the new Xserves for the REAL power-users.
*just realized this is getting long* - Sorry.
I'll wrap it up... I too will always want something faster... but stop & smell the roses... look what we have... great products running great software on a great OS. ALL of them have quirks & problems... but only a FRACTION of what Wintel user have. Enjoy it. Send Apple your feedback... let 'em know what you like, let 'em know what needs to improve... then "let-it-go" and enjoy what you have and let them worry about it.
Bring on MWNY!!! Even if they introduce an iPen that writes under water... I bet it will be BlueTooth compatable.
[quote]Originally posted by GardenOfEarthlyDelights:
<strong>Besides, I need the time to rant on other forums explaining why the Porsche 911 is actually a better car than the BMW M3. There are more important things in life, ya know.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Duh! Because Porsche actually looks like a bad mean sports car and behaves like that! Now I wonder what kind of people actually think a M3 is a nice car anyway. Dey muzt bee crezzy!
Duh! Because Porsche actually looks like a bad mean sports car and behaves like that! Now I wonder what kind of people actually think a M3 is a nice car anyway. Dey muzt bee crezzy!
Oh, and Audi RS6 all the way.</strong><hr></blockquote>
M3, no. But the M5, now you are talking
That is my dream car right now (I am only 18 so saving up 70 grand could take awhile). But those things are nice (interior wise and sound system) plus they are fast.
Oh well, I like my Titanium well enough--though with X is slower than my old iBook running 9... Well, I guess that's why we pay the friggin' price premium, right? </sarcasm>
ZoSo</strong><hr></blockquote>
I work as a programmer/webdeveloper. My main tool for this is a PB G4 running OS X. I installed OS X by just slamming it on top of the working os 9 I had. It's my 5:th Mac alltogether (still got my 1st, 2nd and 3rd running without a hardware problem ever). [Edit: Just remembered I had a new mouse after 2 months with my 1st Mac. And that my 3rd had a minor problem with the monitor. Just 4 the record...]
After my work hours, I come home and plug the same worktool to my MOTU FW Audio interface, boot in to 9 and run LogicAudio with 25-30 channels of audio and about as many plug-ins.
Stable.
That, my friends is why we pay premium for Macs..
You just can't do that on a PC. No matter how fast it is. For Pro/Semi-pro audio to work on the dark side you have to strip the system down so it can't be used to do anything else. That's why they're cheaper. At least in my opinion.
And then there is the question of speed. It's just fine by me. My PB spend most of it's day wating for me anyway. .
I can understand guys and girls doing heavy 3D work that they want premium speed. I have tried some (very basic) 3D and know that the wait is frustrating. Speed is in it's place there. Or one can do what my 3D working PC friends does...render at night while you sleep...
That is my dream car right now (I am only 18 so saving up 70 grand could take awhile). But those things are nice (interior wise and sound system) plus they are fast.</strong><hr></blockquote>
M5 here too. I'm waiting to see what Cadillac comes out with first and to see what the 03 M5 will be like.
spooky...(no rant intended)
In regards to your company moving away from macs due to lack of "latest technology" I submit that this is very stup on managments part.
My partner runs some VERY large graphics centers for magazines and they are switching all of their graphics centers AWAY from windows back to macs. Why? The one mac based graphics center was 1/3 to 1/4 the cost per page when compared to the windows based centers.
What's funny is that the Windows Graphics Stations were nice stations (not a 2.4Ghz PIV but still nice). What did they switch to? iMac's, G4 733's and G4 800's. Were they the faster machines at the time? No. Was the IT department happy about the switch? Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, 1/2 of the it staff is going to loose their jobs because they are no longer needed!
So, by moving back to macs they were able to cut page production costs by 75% and cut high salary staff.
<strong>I can understand guys and girls doing heavy 3D work that they want premium speed. I have tried some (very basic) 3D and know that the wait is frustrating. Speed is in it's place there. Or one can do what my 3D working PC friends does...render at night while you sleep... </strong><hr></blockquote>
Well... it's not just the "rendering" speed that is the slow-down for 3D work... it's the OpenGL speed, the speed of the UI when displaying complex scenes with tens of thousands of polygons, doing "test-renders" of surfaces, etc.
I always do my "Final Renders" at night or if I'm going out for a while. You need to do a lot of test renders though.
Picture "comitting" to a specific reverb or delay on a vocal track without hearing it first... is it the right speed...? regeneration...? depth...? dry/wet mix...? If it took 7-Hours to render the audio file, you'd be damn sure to test the setting on a snippet of audio first to make sure you like it before wasting 7-Hours of render time.
That's what happens with 3D work (at least in MY world).
Well... it's not just the "rendering" speed that is the slow-down for 3D work... it's the OpenGL speed, the speed of the UI when displaying complex scenes with tens of thousands of polygons, doing "test-renders" of surfaces, etc.
I always do my "Final Renders" at night or if I'm going out for a while. You need to do a lot of test renders though.
Picture "comitting" to a specific reverb or delay on a vocal track without hearing it first... is it the right speed...? regeneration...? depth...? dry/wet mix...? If it took 7-Hours to render the audio file, you'd be damn sure to test the setting on a snippet of audio first to make sure you like it before wasting 7-Hours of render time.
That's what happens with 3D work (at least in MY world).</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, I've just done very basic explorations of the 3D world some years ago....mainly in EIAS 2.8-2.9. So I stand humbly corrected there...
However, I come from jurassic times when you actually HAD to render reverbs to snippets of audio...even if it just took a couple of minutes back then, you had to do it again (for each track) for the final mix almost every time to get the balance right. So I know a little how you 3D masters must feel... Hold on though...I'm shure your time will come soon...
[quote]Originally posted by pey/coy-ote.:
<strong>
Welcome VaporTrails
Thanks for the post what a great first entry !
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thanks....it's great to be here. <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
<strong>Well... it's not just the "rendering" speed that is the slow-down for 3D work... it's the OpenGL speed, the speed of the UI when displaying complex scenes with tens of thousands of polygons, doing "test-renders" of surfaces, etc.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's gotta suck.
But it sounds like a lot of the problem is the lack of a workstation grade video card. That won't affect the final render, but (if I understand things right) it will accelerate the previews.
The only thing Apple can do about that is either hope for really nice stuff from ATi or nVIDIA (since Matrox seems to still be pissed about the RTMac...) or to give one of the workstation card makers some incentive to develop Mac drivers.
Actually, I think ATi and nVIDIA will come through, if what I've heard about this summer's offerings is true.
But it sounds like a lot of the problem is the lack of a workstation grade video card. That won't affect the final render, but (if I understand things right) it will accelerate the previews.
The only thing Apple can do about that is either hope for really nice stuff from ATi or nVIDIA (since Matrox seems to still be pissed about the RTMac...) or to give one of the workstation card makers some incentive to develop Mac drivers.
Actually, I think ATi and nVIDIA will come through, if what I've heard about this summer's offerings is true.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I keep hearing that these "workstation" graphics chips are just so much better than the consumer level boards... but just recently I read a review which compared the latest and greatest of the "workstation" cards against nVidia and ATIs offerings in that market. ATI was significantly behind, but nVidia was really close and in a few ways considerably out ahead. I think its time to put to rest the notion that nVidia can't compete in the "high end" market. Their next chipset ought to really put an exclamation point at the end of that statement.
<strong>But it sounds like a lot of the problem is the lack of a workstation grade video card. That won't affect the final render, but (if I understand things right) it will accelerate the previews.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Actually the latest and greatest (prosumer) offers from ATI and NVidia are really fast. Thing is, when people made tests with those cards they came to the conclusion that those cards are really CPU and bandwidth-limited when it comes to higher resoltuion scenes.
For games, that often wont need to handle more than 25.000 textured and lighted triangles, one can do fine with a ~ 1ghz pc or a 800 mhz mac. But when it comes to "pro" scenes those triangle counts go into 100.000 thousands and that's something completely different to process.
From what I know that's exactly the reason why SGI is (was?) doing so well in the pro 3D market - SGI machines have hight bandwidth and while they may work at 500 mhz they can pump whole lots of data around. I'm not sure how many registers the MIPS CPUs have, but I somewhere heared that they had more than 4 times (or more?) as much data registers as pcs had at that time.
So while "pro" cards help a bit the CPU/bus soon becomes the bottleneck, given that you don't run out of RAM first.
Pre September 1999 Motorola and Apple get on well and prepare the 7400+Sawtooth motherboard.
September 1999: G4 Released, Motorola and Apple prepare the 7450+DA Motherboard.
500MHz stall, management problems at Motorola and Apple
January 2000: 7450+Power to Burn G4s Released, Apple prepares a DDR motherboard, Motorola screws up and gets engineers working on a DDR MPX bus.
July 2001: Apple delays DDR motherboard to add features to compensate for 133MHz MPX (mini-DSPs on the memory bus, DMA, etc), Motorola possibly informs Apple that DDR MPX has been canned, 166MHz bump possible.
January 2002: DDR motherboard delayed further.
Motorola Announces to the world that 166Mhz is the possible improvement they will make to MPX.
July 2002: DDR motherboard delayed again and Xserve chipset used for the Power Macs, or the DDR motherboard finally arrives.
DDR motherboard released in the following 6 months, or the DDR motherboard conficts with a G5/Power4/whatever motherboard and is used in non-Power Macs instead.
New CPUs
An IBM G5 for Power Macs appears unlikely. Motorola claims it is ahead of IBM in terms of the G5. IBM also uses the PowerPC as an embedded CPU, not high-end embedded/desktop like Motorola.
Apple has to worry about the non-Power Macs, which need lower power CPUs. A Power4 in an iMac? I don't think so.
However, if IBM diversifies the Power4 (produces 1 and 2 core CPUs, with and without L3 cache) then I could see them being used. Motorola looks like a sinking ship, so instead of trying to get the PowerPC to run faster to compete, why not get the Power4 to run slower (much easier)?
IBM appears to be diversifying the Power4 (the "Power4 Diversification Manager" post in another thread), so it seems the logical choice.
Something Competely Different?? I doubt it. Companies all take certain levels of risks. Why would Apple want to risk getting Intel or AMD involved in the PowerPC? Why would Intel or AMD get involved in the PowerPC? They're both loss-making, and they are traditional companies. Making a loss? Focus on your core product lines. Don't do Something Completely Different? unless absolutly necessary.
So, Power4 Dual-Core for Power-Macs, Single-Core for e/iMacs/Portables/Xserves? Something along those lines is, IMHO going to become reality.
When? Well, the Power4 has been shipping for a while now. So anytime in the next 12 months seems probable. I mean, if IBM (for example) finished the Power4 a year ago, then they probably moved straight on to a new project. In this case, not making it faster but slower :eek: . 2 years for a downgrade to an existing CPU doesn't seem unreasonable. 1 year would seem resonable except for the fact that they'll have to ramp up production for Apple.
The existance of an Apple Workstation?
Unlikely. Give the Xserve clustering software, and for less than a square meter of floor space you have the 50th fastest computer in the world. Why bother develop a new computer when there is one available, itching for some software?
Changes to the Power Mac
The Power Mac is for anywhere a powerful, expandable desktop computer is needed. Unis, graphics design, etc. So, apart from speed, what would help these people? PCI-Express (formally 3GIO, formally Apharoe) is promising cartrage-based expansion cards. FireWire is hot swappable. Panasonic has native FireWire (do a search in Current Hardware) Hard Drives. So, PCI-Express and FireWire Hard Drives would be insanly great for easy upgrades. I won't even try to guess the next PowerMac form factor.
Rapid-I/O looks cool. Imagine this: a Rapid-I/O switch connecting a PCI-Express chip, IC and the CPU daughtercard. On the CPU daugtercard sits an Rapid-I/O switch for 2, 4, 8, whatever number of CPUs. The memory is on the daugtercard, controlled by the CPUs. Upgrade the daugtercard, upgrade the number of CPUs and the speed of the memory. Sound cool, doesn't it?
Summing up my guesses
Mac World New York 2002: Pessimistic for the Power Mac. DDR Sawtooth.
Mac World San Franciso 2003: Apple has good management, stops the feature creep and releases a next-gen DDR motherboard (which means some features like 802.11g and bluetooth don't make it).
Mac World New York 2003: A Power4 motherboard is released, with PCI-Express, a new IC, 802.11g and bluetooth. FireWire hard drives on Power Macs, offering it as an alternative to Serial-ATA.
To those who say: Apple will never have the best, and there is only going to be improvements, nothing completely new, thats true of now. However, Apple used to have the best. The iMac is completely new. The Power Mac will be completely new sometime, too.
<strong>Mac World New York 2002: Pessimistic for the Power Mac. DDR Sawtooth.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Like many other have stated before I really do wonder what Apple would introduce at MWNY then - iPad is not that a great idea, speed buming the whole product lines for about 100 mhz wont make the crowd any happier.
Maybe PowerBook and PowerMac will be scrapped and ProBook and ProMac introduced? I can't imagine Steve coming on stage and saying "Soo... basically Aqua looks great, Jaguar will be a bit faster and all the computers get a 100mhz bump. ...oh, and one more thing! iPhoto 2.0 is out NOW! Let me show you how GREAT it is!"
To those who can only compare Athlons to G4s: listen to Steve Jobs about MHz myth and better compare Windows XP to Mac OS X. I suspect you'll prefer a G4@1GHz with OS X rather than a P8@5GHz with XP.
Just calm down and see what Apple has to offer. THEN either start crying or buy a new Mac.
Comments
Compare favourably with top end athlons? is that it? Not Toast top end athlons? Are we mac users now so easily impressed? By the time apple actually ships the machines the wintel world will have moved on again. At that point exactly which athlons will it compare favourably against by the time you receive the newly ordered 'Power' Mac?<hr></blockquote>
What should we do? Click our heels three times and say, "There's a 2GHz G5, there's a 2GHz G5..."
Rant on forums explaining that Apple will be DOOMED for not having:
a) every cool thing under the sun
b) all of the above
..?
Is Steve (and Apple, by extension) intentionally keeping DDR, G5s, FW2 from us?
Come on.
If they could, they would, but they can't, so they haven't.
I'm not happy with the state of HW development at Apple, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it. Besides, I need the time to rant on other forums explaining why the Porsche 911 is actually a better car than the BMW M3. There are more important things in life, ya know.
Oh-- here's a pair of sarcasm tags to apply anywhere above: [sarcasm][/sarcasm]
edit: Premature end-of-ranting. It's a common problem for people my age.
[ 06-16-2002: Message edited by: GardenOfEarthlyDelights ]</p>
<strong>
Just a question, but just what do you need with such awsome power? Unless you are a 3-D designer or head programmer at Adobe what's the BFD? Pick up any mac from the Apple Store, stick a geforce 4 in it, and slap a gig of ram in it. It can handle anything
you might throw at it. I don't think a processor measuring contest is in order. That is saved for high school locker rooms or unix boards. This is a mac world, and I believe my mac has a bigger backside cache then yours. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> So what's the big deal? Which one of your PC buddies is picking on you so much that you have to have a bigger stick to hit them back with. Try a new approach. When they raise their stick, burn it off with the Toasty-7 napalm pack from marathon and then buy them a cheerwine.
I thought the magic was in owning a mac, not building the highest duplo tower.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I can mostly attest to that... I happen to BE a designer by profession that utilizes 3D and video... my 533MHz w/ 1.5GB of RAM does not get in it's own way. Like I said before... SURE! Anytime you render something... be it 3D, FCP3 composits or AfterEffects compositions... you ALWAYS want more... it's an insatiable apetite that will never go away... but alow me to "slightly" buy-into the MHz-Myth and to put "some" things in perspective.
I know we're sick of CAR metaphors... but here's another one:
Picture a Mac being an auto-maker (your choice) whose overall design and performance you like. For the sake of argument, I'll use BMW. They offer a range of autos that are (in general) more expensive than most other makers, but you enjoy their overall aesthetics, ergonomics and for the MOST part... performance.
Now... there are going to be OTHER cars out there that on paper have more cubic inches, or more horse power or some other aspect that will out-perform the BMW's engine...
Apple will NEVER... (did he say Never?) yep... NEVER be "The Best" at everything. There's always going to be something that someone else does "better" or "faster"... but the bottom line to me is... as far as productivity and enjoyment of my working environment (and yes, I have YEARS of experience on MANY Windoze flavors from 3.1 all the way up to NT and XP) I would MUCH rather be using my Mac at 533/1.5 than to be using a Dell (or other Intel Box) running a MicroSoft OS... not because I'm anti MS... but because I HATE using Windoze... I like some features... but the Mac OS beats 'em all... either 9.x OR 10.x... makes no diff.
Most of us that utilize the Mac to that level will get just what we need from it... let them worry about the speed increases on their end of things. I'm sure they are aware of their own standings. Anything that needs MASSIVE computing power, i.e. More than what a PowerMac G(?) can offer, can be run on the new Xserves for the REAL power-users.
*just realized this is getting long* - Sorry.
I'll wrap it up... I too will always want something faster... but stop & smell the roses... look what we have... great products running great software on a great OS. ALL of them have quirks & problems... but only a FRACTION of what Wintel user have. Enjoy it. Send Apple your feedback... let 'em know what you like, let 'em know what needs to improve... then "let-it-go" and enjoy what you have and let them worry about it.
Bring on MWNY!!! Even if they introduce an iPen that writes under water... I bet it will be BlueTooth compatable.
- Scott
<strong>Besides, I need the time to rant on other forums explaining why the Porsche 911 is actually a better car than the BMW M3. There are more important things in life, ya know.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Duh! Because Porsche actually looks like a bad mean sports car and behaves like that! Now I wonder what kind of people actually think a M3 is a nice car anyway. Dey muzt bee crezzy!
Oh, and Audi RS6 all the way.
<strong>
Duh! Because Porsche actually looks like a bad mean sports car and behaves like that! Now I wonder what kind of people actually think a M3 is a nice car anyway. Dey muzt bee crezzy!
Oh, and Audi RS6 all the way.</strong><hr></blockquote>
M3, no. But the M5, now you are talking
That is my dream car right now (I am only 18 so saving up 70 grand could take awhile). But those things are nice (interior wise and sound system) plus they are fast.
<strong>
Oh well, I like my Titanium well enough--though with X is slower than my old iBook running 9... Well, I guess that's why we pay the friggin' price premium, right? </sarcasm>
ZoSo</strong><hr></blockquote>
I work as a programmer/webdeveloper. My main tool for this is a PB G4 running OS X. I installed OS X by just slamming it on top of the working os 9 I had. It's my 5:th Mac alltogether (still got my 1st, 2nd and 3rd running without a hardware problem ever). [Edit: Just remembered I had a new mouse after 2 months with my 1st Mac. And that my 3rd had a minor problem with the monitor. Just 4 the record...]
After my work hours, I come home and plug the same worktool to my MOTU FW Audio interface, boot in to 9 and run LogicAudio with 25-30 channels of audio and about as many plug-ins.
Stable.
That, my friends is why we pay premium for Macs..
You just can't do that on a PC. No matter how fast it is. For Pro/Semi-pro audio to work on the dark side you have to strip the system down so it can't be used to do anything else. That's why they're cheaper. At least in my opinion.
And then there is the question of speed. It's just fine by me. My PB spend most of it's day wating for me anyway. .
I can understand guys and girls doing heavy 3D work that they want premium speed. I have tried some (very basic) 3D and know that the wait is frustrating. Speed is in it's place there. Or one can do what my 3D working PC friends does...render at night while you sleep...
[ 06-16-2002: Message edited by: VaporTrails ]</p>
<strong>
That is my dream car right now (I am only 18 so saving up 70 grand could take awhile). But those things are nice (interior wise and sound system) plus they are fast.</strong><hr></blockquote>
M5 here too. I'm waiting to see what Cadillac comes out with first and to see what the 03 M5 will be like.
spooky...(no rant intended)
In regards to your company moving away from macs due to lack of "latest technology" I submit that this is very stup on managments part.
My partner runs some VERY large graphics centers for magazines and they are switching all of their graphics centers AWAY from windows back to macs. Why? The one mac based graphics center was 1/3 to 1/4 the cost per page when compared to the windows based centers.
What's funny is that the Windows Graphics Stations were nice stations (not a 2.4Ghz PIV but still nice). What did they switch to? iMac's, G4 733's and G4 800's. Were they the faster machines at the time? No. Was the IT department happy about the switch? Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, 1/2 of the it staff is going to loose their jobs because they are no longer needed!
So, by moving back to macs they were able to cut page production costs by 75% and cut high salary staff.
<strong>I can understand guys and girls doing heavy 3D work that they want premium speed. I have tried some (very basic) 3D and know that the wait is frustrating. Speed is in it's place there. Or one can do what my 3D working PC friends does...render at night while you sleep...
Well... it's not just the "rendering" speed that is the slow-down for 3D work... it's the OpenGL speed, the speed of the UI when displaying complex scenes with tens of thousands of polygons, doing "test-renders" of surfaces, etc.
I always do my "Final Renders" at night or if I'm going out for a while. You need to do a lot of test renders though.
Picture "comitting" to a specific reverb or delay on a vocal track without hearing it first... is it the right speed...? regeneration...? depth...? dry/wet mix...? If it took 7-Hours to render the audio file, you'd be damn sure to test the setting on a snippet of audio first to make sure you like it before wasting 7-Hours of render time.
That's what happens with 3D work (at least in MY world).
Thanks for the post what a great first entry !
<strong>
Well... it's not just the "rendering" speed that is the slow-down for 3D work... it's the OpenGL speed, the speed of the UI when displaying complex scenes with tens of thousands of polygons, doing "test-renders" of surfaces, etc.
I always do my "Final Renders" at night or if I'm going out for a while. You need to do a lot of test renders though.
Picture "comitting" to a specific reverb or delay on a vocal track without hearing it first... is it the right speed...? regeneration...? depth...? dry/wet mix...? If it took 7-Hours to render the audio file, you'd be damn sure to test the setting on a snippet of audio first to make sure you like it before wasting 7-Hours of render time.
That's what happens with 3D work (at least in MY world).</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, I've just done very basic explorations of the 3D world some years ago....mainly in EIAS 2.8-2.9. So I stand humbly corrected there...
However, I come from jurassic times when you actually HAD to render reverbs to snippets of audio...even if it just took a couple of minutes back then, you had to do it again (for each track) for the final mix almost every time to get the balance right. So I know a little how you 3D masters must feel...
[quote]Originally posted by pey/coy-ote.:
<strong>
Welcome VaporTrails
Thanks for the post what a great first entry !
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thanks....it's great to be here. <img src="graemlins/smokin.gif" border="0" alt="[Chilling]" />
<strong>Well... it's not just the "rendering" speed that is the slow-down for 3D work... it's the OpenGL speed, the speed of the UI when displaying complex scenes with tens of thousands of polygons, doing "test-renders" of surfaces, etc.</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's gotta suck.
But it sounds like a lot of the problem is the lack of a workstation grade video card. That won't affect the final render, but (if I understand things right) it will accelerate the previews.
The only thing Apple can do about that is either hope for really nice stuff from ATi or nVIDIA (since Matrox seems to still be pissed about the RTMac...) or to give one of the workstation card makers some incentive to develop Mac drivers.
Actually, I think ATi and nVIDIA will come through, if what I've heard about this summer's offerings is true.
<strong>
That's gotta suck.
But it sounds like a lot of the problem is the lack of a workstation grade video card. That won't affect the final render, but (if I understand things right) it will accelerate the previews.
The only thing Apple can do about that is either hope for really nice stuff from ATi or nVIDIA (since Matrox seems to still be pissed about the RTMac...) or to give one of the workstation card makers some incentive to develop Mac drivers.
Actually, I think ATi and nVIDIA will come through, if what I've heard about this summer's offerings is true.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I keep hearing that these "workstation" graphics chips are just so much better than the consumer level boards... but just recently I read a review which compared the latest and greatest of the "workstation" cards against nVidia and ATIs offerings in that market. ATI was significantly behind, but nVidia was really close and in a few ways considerably out ahead. I think its time to put to rest the notion that nVidia can't compete in the "high end" market. Their next chipset ought to really put an exclamation point at the end of that statement.
<strong>M3, no. But the M5, now you are talking
The M5 is nice, but the Audi RS6 Avant is what I'd love to have!
<a href="http://www.audi.com/de/de/neuwagen/a6/rs_6/rs_6.jsp"; target="_blank">Audi RS6</a>
<strong>But it sounds like a lot of the problem is the lack of a workstation grade video card. That won't affect the final render, but (if I understand things right) it will accelerate the previews.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Actually the latest and greatest (prosumer) offers from ATI and NVidia are really fast. Thing is, when people made tests with those cards they came to the conclusion that those cards are really CPU and bandwidth-limited when it comes to higher resoltuion scenes.
For games, that often wont need to handle more than 25.000 textured and lighted triangles, one can do fine with a ~ 1ghz pc or a 800 mhz mac. But when it comes to "pro" scenes those triangle counts go into 100.000 thousands and that's something completely different to process.
From what I know that's exactly the reason why SGI is (was?) doing so well in the pro 3D market - SGI machines have hight bandwidth and while they may work at 500 mhz they can pump whole lots of data around. I'm not sure how many registers the MIPS CPUs have, but I somewhere heared that they had more than 4 times (or more?) as much data registers as pcs had at that time.
So while "pro" cards help a bit the CPU/bus soon becomes the bottleneck, given that you don't run out of RAM first.
Pre September 1999 Motorola and Apple get on well and prepare the 7400+Sawtooth motherboard.
September 1999: G4 Released, Motorola and Apple prepare the 7450+DA Motherboard.
500MHz stall, management problems at Motorola and Apple
January 2000: 7450+Power to Burn G4s Released, Apple prepares a DDR motherboard, Motorola screws up and gets engineers working on a DDR MPX bus.
July 2001: Apple delays DDR motherboard to add features to compensate for 133MHz MPX (mini-DSPs on the memory bus, DMA, etc), Motorola possibly informs Apple that DDR MPX has been canned, 166MHz bump possible.
January 2002: DDR motherboard delayed further.
Motorola Announces to the world that 166Mhz is the possible improvement they will make to MPX.
July 2002: DDR motherboard delayed again and Xserve chipset used for the Power Macs, or the DDR motherboard finally arrives.
DDR motherboard released in the following 6 months, or the DDR motherboard conficts with a G5/Power4/whatever motherboard and is used in non-Power Macs instead.
New CPUs
An IBM G5 for Power Macs appears unlikely. Motorola claims it is ahead of IBM in terms of the G5. IBM also uses the PowerPC as an embedded CPU, not high-end embedded/desktop like Motorola.
Apple has to worry about the non-Power Macs, which need lower power CPUs. A Power4 in an iMac? I don't think so.
However, if IBM diversifies the Power4 (produces 1 and 2 core CPUs, with and without L3 cache) then I could see them being used. Motorola looks like a sinking ship, so instead of trying to get the PowerPC to run faster to compete, why not get the Power4 to run slower (much easier)?
IBM appears to be diversifying the Power4 (the "Power4 Diversification Manager" post in another thread), so it seems the logical choice.
Something Competely Different?? I doubt it. Companies all take certain levels of risks. Why would Apple want to risk getting Intel or AMD involved in the PowerPC? Why would Intel or AMD get involved in the PowerPC? They're both loss-making, and they are traditional companies. Making a loss? Focus on your core product lines. Don't do Something Completely Different? unless absolutly necessary.
So, Power4 Dual-Core for Power-Macs, Single-Core for e/iMacs/Portables/Xserves? Something along those lines is, IMHO going to become reality.
When? Well, the Power4 has been shipping for a while now. So anytime in the next 12 months seems probable. I mean, if IBM (for example) finished the Power4 a year ago, then they probably moved straight on to a new project. In this case, not making it faster but slower :eek: . 2 years for a downgrade to an existing CPU doesn't seem unreasonable. 1 year would seem resonable except for the fact that they'll have to ramp up production for Apple.
The existance of an Apple Workstation?
Unlikely. Give the Xserve clustering software, and for less than a square meter of floor space you have the 50th fastest computer in the world. Why bother develop a new computer when there is one available, itching for some software?
Changes to the Power Mac
The Power Mac is for anywhere a powerful, expandable desktop computer is needed. Unis, graphics design, etc. So, apart from speed, what would help these people? PCI-Express (formally 3GIO, formally Apharoe) is promising cartrage-based expansion cards. FireWire is hot swappable. Panasonic has native FireWire (do a search in Current Hardware) Hard Drives. So, PCI-Express and FireWire Hard Drives would be insanly great for easy upgrades. I won't even try to guess the next PowerMac form factor.
Rapid-I/O looks cool. Imagine this: a Rapid-I/O switch connecting a PCI-Express chip, IC and the CPU daughtercard. On the CPU daugtercard sits an Rapid-I/O switch for 2, 4, 8, whatever number of CPUs. The memory is on the daugtercard, controlled by the CPUs. Upgrade the daugtercard, upgrade the number of CPUs and the speed of the memory. Sound cool, doesn't it?
Summing up my guesses
Mac World New York 2002: Pessimistic for the Power Mac. DDR Sawtooth.
Mac World San Franciso 2003: Apple has good management, stops the feature creep and releases a next-gen DDR motherboard (which means some features like 802.11g and bluetooth don't make it).
Mac World New York 2003: A Power4 motherboard is released, with PCI-Express, a new IC, 802.11g and bluetooth. FireWire hard drives on Power Macs, offering it as an alternative to Serial-ATA.
To those who say: Apple will never have the best, and there is only going to be improvements, nothing completely new, thats true of now. However, Apple used to have the best. The iMac is completely new. The Power Mac will be completely new sometime, too.
Barto
<strong>Mac World New York 2002: Pessimistic for the Power Mac. DDR Sawtooth.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Like many other have stated before I really do wonder what Apple would introduce at MWNY then - iPad is not that a great idea, speed buming the whole product lines for about 100 mhz wont make the crowd any happier.
Maybe PowerBook and PowerMac will be scrapped and ProBook and ProMac introduced? I can't imagine Steve coming on stage and saying "Soo... basically Aqua looks great, Jaguar will be a bit faster and all the computers get a 100mhz bump. ...oh, and one more thing! iPhoto 2.0 is out NOW! Let me show you how GREAT it is!"
A few people would start crying I'd imagine...
<strong> A few people would start crying I'd imagine...
Crying...?
Steve better make sure the chairs are bolted down if that's all he announced... hehehe...
:eek:
<strong>
Crying...?
Steve better make sure the chairs are bolted down if that's all he announced... hehehe...
:eek: </strong><hr></blockquote>
Not only that. He has to talk to the security department that to do a scan to every audience before he/she gets into the conference room.
To those who can only compare Athlons to G4s: listen to Steve Jobs about MHz myth
Just calm down and see what Apple has to offer. THEN either start crying or buy a new Mac.