Over the recent years, Apple has been clearly ahead in terms of performance. However, depending on the application, the gap is much narrower now and there is no clear winner.
Your post might signal to others that performance equals megahertz. Don't fall into that trap. While it might be true for some, this is a very shallow indicator.
Some say that Windows caught on years ago... well... LOL... I am a Windows LAN administrator, I have seen the hype and I have to deal with the crap.</strong><hr></blockquote>
If the new specs start at 867 and top out at 1.25, this is yet another G4 generation that wont get any of my money. I sold my G4 350 (yikes) last June, anticipating the new PowerMacs. But so far i haven't seen anything that has made me go :eek:
Apple keep throwing us small bones every six months. I think we've been hungry for so long, anything more and people go mad, caught up in the RDF. I've developed an immunity to the RDF. I'm starting to think Apple is just rationing the speed to milk us as long as possible. After thier huge rant about dual-this, and dual-that, all the PMs should have been dual in the first place
I don't see myself switching, but they arent't getting anymore of my money till its something that makes me say... DAMN!! <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" /> In the mean time, my money will go to things like saving for a car, fixing up my place, console gaming, etc. If when they finally get on the ball i'm broke and can't afford a new mac... tough.
[quote] If the new specs start at 867 and top out at 1.25, this is yet another G4 generation that wont get any of my money. I sold my G4 350 (yikes) last June, anticipating the new PowerMacs. But so far i haven't seen anything that has made me go <hr></blockquote>
You're doing yourself a disservice. I have a G4/500 sitting next to a Dual Gig. The Dual Gig makes my 500 feel like a jalopy, especially in OSX. Photobench shows a 100% - 400% improvement in every function.
Buy a new Dual Gig tomorrow and you'll feel a huge difference. Believe me, even a small speed increase adds up over the course of a day.
The best part about it, though, is the user experience- I get impatient when I have to (rarely) do something on the 500 nowadays.
I am not a millionaire, and have other expenses. I am a young single guy living on my own, and have to work hard for my money. Mommy and Daddy do not buy the things I own, and I have rent to pay cuz i dont live in thier basement. (Note: that is not any kind of personal attack).
I cannot be dropping money like if it grew on trees. My point is, unless Apple shows me something that warrants getting my money over my other expenses and responsibilities, they wont. For some it seems to easy to say "just get a dual-giger and whatever...". I'll be making do with my Pismo 400 and iMac 333 for now.
Snappier(tm) interface is nice and all, and useless benchmarks, and seti@home boasting rights might be interesting... But what i want is to see my machine leave a P4 in tyhe dust in Office Apps, Graphic Apps, 3D Applications, Gaming, etc AND NOT cost 3 times as much as a comparable PC <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
If the bottom computer is really dual processor, then that price seems low (i.e. wrong) to me. So I can't really get too enraged over a rumor that doesn't quite seem right to me. Since I don't post here very often, I will say that if these rumors are basically correct, then I will be:
I'm not in the market for a new computer right now, but Apple needs to get on the ball now if they are going to be performance competitive when I do look to buy in about 18 months. I think it is a sign of real desperation that so many are now hoping for a Power4 descendant! Now for those of you who say that current computers are fast enough. I have a Quicksilver 733. It is fast enough for my day to day needs, but just because I am not spending every waking moment doing a 3d render doesn't mean that I should have to wait all day when I do want a render. And until a five year old computer is not considered obsolete, I am always going to want the fastest computer I can afford-- for me that wil usually be the bottom end computer.
Last thought before I get banned for the day: it annoys me to no end that some of you are more or less saying you will only ever buy Apple computers. It just conveys the sense that Apple is independent from the rest of the market, and does not need to be price or performance competitive. Apple clearly takes advantage of this loyalty, but I wouldn't necessary argue that it is a healthy thing. I don't have to switch to Windows to see that they have superior hardware at cheaper cost, and I don't think it is too much to ask that Apple employ mature industry standards like DDR. In fact, I would say that if that is too much to ask, then Apple's economic model has failed.
[quote]Apple keep throwing us small bones every six months. <hr></blockquote>
But it's not Apple starving us for upgrades, it's Motorola. Apple threw in their lot with the G4 and now they're paying for it. It's not like they have 2GHz+ processors and they're holding them back just to be mean. They can only ship what Moto delivers. Don't you think this burns Apple just as much as it burns us? But they have to sell machines until they can move to a new chip. I personally believe Apple has some big hardware coming. They didn't buy Nothing Real so they could run Shake on 700Mhz eMacs. I will stay nervously optimistic.
The specs may not be that bad. In fact the low end machine is a decent deal. But I think the reason people are venting at Apple is because they're tired of being let down. Of course in a way we're responsible for the high expectations, but if we didn't have those expectations, where would we be? Most peple on this board are Mac fanatics. A lot are in school, and feeling constantly beseiged by PC users. Anyone working in corporate America is in a similar situation. So there's this continual hope that, come the next Apple product upgrade, we're finally gonna get a computer that holds up hardware-wise (or moreover, spec-wise) to PCs. Only what we get is more dissapointment-once again meager increases in speed and technology-and prices that are way out of line (especially when considering that the new OS is not quite as simple to use as the old one, so you don't have that low IT support cost holding down overall costs like you used to).
How many times has this happened over the last 2-3 years? And then we have the Motorola situation; now the future of the platform is really up in the air. If Apple was a little more forthcoming, it might ease people's anxieties a bit. But, instead, Apple acts as if everything is fine, and that the only problem is the tanking economy. If anything, people on these boards are too passionate (about their Macs) and too loyal to Apple; the anger comes from feeling that the company take their support for granted.
I'll just say that most of you would actually be very, very pleased with how Jaguar would perform on a dual 1.25 Ghz G4 with a 166 MHz bus and 333 MHz DDR memory. Very pleased. Really, really, really pleased.
Jaguar is not the OS X that you're used to... it really is faster, and giving the G4 more bandwidth in addition to higher clock speeds will make you take notice, I guarantee it. So everybody relax.
<strong>Considering the retail Radeon 9700 Mac Edition is about 6 months away, the specs on the first page are pure rubbish.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The issue is drivers, Samples cards are out now and PC product is expected to be shipping in a month, so if Apple wrote the SW it COULD happen sooner (theough I think it would be more like 2-4 Months instead of 6). I hope one way or the other they get it ready soon.
<strong>But what i want is to see my machine leave a P4 in tyhe dust in Office Apps, Graphic Apps, 3D Applications, Gaming, etc AND NOT cost 3 times as much as a comparable PC <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, then you might as well switch to PCs, as Intel will always make sure their desktop CPUs are the fastest, are at least close to the fastest processor available. Not even the POWER4 puts the P4 "in the dust", I doubt the next-gen 64-bit IBM PPC will either.
[quote] I am not a millionaire, and have other expenses. I am a young single guy living on my own, and have to work hard for my money. Mommy and Daddy do not buy the things I own, and I have rent to pay cuz i dont live in thier basement. (Note: that is not any kind of personal attack). <hr></blockquote>
Ha! I haven't seen my parents in months, I support my wife, and I guarantee I pay more rent than you do :-)
However, I'm also a professional graphic artist, and I presume herein lies the difference. A Mac is not an "extra expense" for me, it's a vital tool. Even a little bit of performance increase has a measurable impact on my bottom line.
If I were to adopt a similar attitude as yours, that would be like a carpenter holding off on buying a hammer until they come out with a model that drives two nails at a time.
I can understand how you're cool to the rumored specs- you probably don't need a Mac to make your living. To me, it's a cut and dried business decision. Will the new machines present a cost/benefit improvement over my current machines?
If the answer is yes, then I'm foolish not to upgrade if I can afford it. In the case of the rumored machines, I don't see a big enough benefit to go $1500 out of pocket to step up to the dual 1.2 gig- unless it provides enough capability that I can make an extra $1500 in three to six months.
If I were a film editor, I might realize that extra income in three weeks. If I used my Mac exclusively to play WCIII, then it wouldn't ever make sense.
As for the comparison with Windows machines, that's a fair one if you're willing to make the concessions that working in that environment requires. A coworker at a recent freelance gig spent a day of downtime because his Windows machine suffered from a conflict between Photoshop and a printer driver- it eventually destroyed his machine, requiring an OS reinstall.
At the rate I'm billing that job, a day's work is at least $600. That's a third of the way to the difference between my current machine and the new topline Mac.
To me, the rumored machines sound pretty good for the money.
People are only disappointed because rumors of 1.4 Ghz were flying all over the place last week.
It's foolish to be complaining about performance of a computer none of you have seen, used, or found benchmarks for. You all say Apple is going to release slow hardware. You don't know that.
The Dual 533 was much faster than the Dual 500, and the performance increase was due to motherboard improvements. The G4 is a very fast chip, but it is starved by the bus. We should be begging for motherboard upgrades, not processor upgrades.
Right now, we don't really know much about the new motherboards, just the processors that run on them.
The 867 sounds like it will be similar to the Yikes. The Yikes wasn't around very long... ;o)
If the rumor is true, it is a 25% speed increase, not including motherboard improvments. If we can get a 25% speed increase every 6 months, we'll stay on pace with Moore's Law.
Jaguar + QE + DDR = fast.
Apple might have a couple 2Ghz chips in a lab for testing. However, that is a far cry from having tens of thousands of them to do a production run.
Actually, 333 doesn't go into 1.25 Ghz very well. Unless there are new clock multipliers that work at 3.75x, it appears unlikely that 1.25 is a real number. I'm sure someone over at ThinkSecret did the same calculations and came to the same conclusion.
266 * 4.5 = 1197 (~1.2)
333 * 3.5 = ~1166
333* 4 = ~1333
Take your pick....</strong><hr></blockquote>
We're talking double-pump here. So for 333 effective, you'd have a 166 mHz processor bus. And the Moto dude said that the current MX bus could do that.
166.666666667 * 7.5 = 1250.000025
Remember, each pulse of the 166 clock gets 2 chunks of data.
theres some rumors out there that 1.2 is just the faster one, not the fastest. Man I wish I could convince our studio to upgrade i'm on a g3 400 anybody hiring graphic artist, I'm experienced in broadcast hehe.
I'm starting to be very tired of apple and its products, I can't believe that the specs are so low...
the intel world is reaching the 3 ghtz barrier and we get a 1.25 processor speed for more than 3000 dollars!!
I'll keep my old system for another 6 months.
But this shouldn't come as a surprise, Apple knows so well how to let us down...</strong><hr></blockquote>
Give me a break. Do you really think that it's Apple's goal to sell slow computers? Anybody with half a brain can see that the big problem is that they're stuck with Motorola because all classic and carbon apps wouldn't run if they switched architectures, and IBM was concentrating their PowerPC efforts on server hardware. Dual 1.25-GHz machines will be close in performance to the high end p4 and AMD machines, especially for those things that use the vector processing units. Plus, the price drop on the current dual-1GHz tells us that the new machines will have a faster system bus or something else that makes them substantially better than the current offerings. Of course, if you want to go buy a cheapo PC, be my guest. Maybe it will come with Windows ME and it will help you build anger about something else other than "slow" powermac specs.
Comments
<strong>
Over the recent years, Apple has been clearly ahead in terms of performance. However, depending on the application, the gap is much narrower now and there is no clear winner.
Your post might signal to others that performance equals megahertz. Don't fall into that trap. While it might be true for some, this is a very shallow indicator.
Some say that Windows caught on years ago... well... LOL... I am a Windows LAN administrator, I have seen the hype and I have to deal with the crap.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Sing it brother!!!!!!!!!!!!
Apple keep throwing us small bones every six months. I think we've been hungry for so long, anything more and people go mad, caught up in the RDF. I've developed an immunity to the RDF. I'm starting to think Apple is just rationing the speed to milk us as long as possible. After thier huge rant about dual-this, and dual-that, all the PMs should have been dual in the first place
I don't see myself switching, but they arent't getting anymore of my money till its something that makes me say... DAMN!! <img src="graemlins/surprised.gif" border="0" alt="[Surprised]" /> In the mean time, my money will go to things like saving for a car, fixing up my place, console gaming, etc. If when they finally get on the ball i'm broke and can't afford a new mac... tough.
[ 08-12-2002: Message edited by: keston ]</p>
<strong>
I'm merely amusing myself until I get banned...</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's the spirit.
You're doing yourself a disservice. I have a G4/500 sitting next to a Dual Gig. The Dual Gig makes my 500 feel like a jalopy, especially in OSX. Photobench shows a 100% - 400% improvement in every function.
Buy a new Dual Gig tomorrow and you'll feel a huge difference. Believe me, even a small speed increase adds up over the course of a day.
The best part about it, though, is the user experience- I get impatient when I have to (rarely) do something on the 500 nowadays.
[ 08-12-2002: Message edited by: marcsiry ]</p>
I cannot be dropping money like if it grew on trees. My point is, unless Apple shows me something that warrants getting my money over my other expenses and responsibilities, they wont. For some it seems to easy to say "just get a dual-giger and whatever...". I'll be making do with my Pismo 400 and iMac 333 for now.
Snappier(tm) interface is nice and all, and useless benchmarks, and seti@home boasting rights might be interesting... But what i want is to see my machine leave a P4 in tyhe dust in Office Apps, Graphic Apps, 3D Applications, Gaming, etc AND NOT cost 3 times as much as a comparable PC <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
[ 08-12-2002: Message edited by: keston ]</p>
I'm not in the market for a new computer right now, but Apple needs to get on the ball now if they are going to be performance competitive when I do look to buy in about 18 months. I think it is a sign of real desperation that so many are now hoping for a Power4 descendant! Now for those of you who say that current computers are fast enough. I have a Quicksilver 733. It is fast enough for my day to day needs, but just because I am not spending every waking moment doing a 3d render doesn't mean that I should have to wait all day when I do want a render. And until a five year old computer is not considered obsolete, I am always going to want the fastest computer I can afford-- for me that wil usually be the bottom end computer.
Last thought before I get banned for the day: it annoys me to no end that some of you are more or less saying you will only ever buy Apple computers. It just conveys the sense that Apple is independent from the rest of the market, and does not need to be price or performance competitive. Apple clearly takes advantage of this loyalty, but I wouldn't necessary argue that it is a healthy thing. I don't have to switch to Windows to see that they have superior hardware at cheaper cost, and I don't think it is too much to ask that Apple employ mature industry standards like DDR. In fact, I would say that if that is too much to ask, then Apple's economic model has failed.
see ya,
failedmathematician
But it's not Apple starving us for upgrades, it's Motorola. Apple threw in their lot with the G4 and now they're paying for it. It's not like they have 2GHz+ processors and they're holding them back just to be mean. They can only ship what Moto delivers. Don't you think this burns Apple just as much as it burns us? But they have to sell machines until they can move to a new chip. I personally believe Apple has some big hardware coming. They didn't buy Nothing Real so they could run Shake on 700Mhz eMacs. I will stay nervously optimistic.
How many times has this happened over the last 2-3 years? And then we have the Motorola situation; now the future of the platform is really up in the air. If Apple was a little more forthcoming, it might ease people's anxieties a bit. But, instead, Apple acts as if everything is fine, and that the only problem is the tanking economy. If anything, people on these boards are too passionate (about their Macs) and too loyal to Apple; the anger comes from feeling that the company take their support for granted.
Jaguar is not the OS X that you're used to... it really is faster, and giving the G4 more bandwidth in addition to higher clock speeds will make you take notice, I guarantee it. So everybody relax.
Quad Motorola PowerPC G4 7470 CPUs @ 1.6GHz
512KB on-die 1:1 L2 cache per CPU
4MB backside 2:1 L3 cache per CPU
333MHz DDR Front Side Bus
4GB PC2700 333MHz DDR SDRAM (4 @ 1GB DIMMs)
Dual ATA133 interfaces (hardware RAID implemented in system controller; supports 4 devices)
Four (4) 120GB ATA133 HDDs (RAID Level 0/Striped; 7,200rpm; 8MB cache per HDD)
Single ATA100 interface (supports 2 devices)
SuperDrive2 optical drive (slot-loading)
CD-R/RW optical drive (slot-loading)
AGP Pro110 8x graphics slot
nVidia/Apple Quartz Extreme OpenGL card (512MB DDR2 RAM; dual NV30 GPUs; dual ADC ports)
Two (2) Apple Cinema HD Displays (23"/1920x1200/32bit)
Four (4) PCI-X expansion slots (133MHz/64bit; dual busses; two slots per bus)
Two (2) FireWire2 ports (800Mbps)
Two (2) FireWire ports (400Mbps)
Four (4) USB ports (12Mbps)
10/100/1000BaseT Ethernet; RJ45 port
Airport2/BlueTooth integrated into single PC Card
Keyboard (USB standard/BlueTooth optional)
Mouse (USB standard/BlueTooth optional; three-button optional)
Mac OS X v10.2 (JagWire) standard
BWAHHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!
<strong>PowerMac G4 Workstation
Quad Motorola PowerPC G4 7470 CPUs @ 1.6GHz
512KB on-die 1:1 L2 cache per CPU
4MB backside 2:1 L3 cache per CPU
333MHz DDR Front Side Bus
4GB PC2700 333MHz DDR SDRAM (4 @ 1GB DIMMs)
Dual ATA133 interfaces (hardware RAID implemented in system controller; supports 4 devices)
Four (4) 120GB ATA133 HDDs (RAID Level 0/Striped; 7,200rpm; 8MB cache per HDD)
Single ATA100 interface (supports 2 devices)
SuperDrive2 optical drive (slot-loading)
CD-R/RW optical drive (slot-loading)
AGP Pro110 8x graphics slot
nVidia/Apple Quartz Extreme OpenGL card (512MB DDR2 RAM; dual NV30 GPUs; dual ADC ports)
Two (2) Apple Cinema HD Displays (23"/1920x1200/32bit)
Four (4) PCI-X expansion slots (133MHz/64bit; dual busses; two slots per bus)
Two (2) FireWire2 ports (800Mbps)
Two (2) FireWire ports (400Mbps)
Four (4) USB ports (12Mbps)
10/100/1000BaseT Ethernet; RJ45 port
Airport2/BlueTooth integrated into single PC Card
Keyboard (USB standard/BlueTooth optional)
Mouse (USB standard/BlueTooth optional; three-button optional)
Mac OS X v10.2 (JagWire) standard
BWAHHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!</strong><hr></blockquote>
..Um.. I'll have what he's having.
<strong>Considering the retail Radeon 9700 Mac Edition is about 6 months away, the specs on the first page are pure rubbish.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The issue is drivers, Samples cards are out now and PC product is expected to be shipping in a month, so if Apple wrote the SW it COULD happen sooner (theough I think it would be more like 2-4 Months instead of 6). I hope one way or the other they get it ready soon.
<strong>But what i want is to see my machine leave a P4 in tyhe dust in Office Apps, Graphic Apps, 3D Applications, Gaming, etc AND NOT cost 3 times as much as a comparable PC <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, then you might as well switch to PCs, as Intel will always make sure their desktop CPUs are the fastest, are at least close to the fastest processor available. Not even the POWER4 puts the P4 "in the dust", I doubt the next-gen 64-bit IBM PPC will either.
Ha! I haven't seen my parents in months, I support my wife, and I guarantee I pay more rent than you do :-)
However, I'm also a professional graphic artist, and I presume herein lies the difference. A Mac is not an "extra expense" for me, it's a vital tool. Even a little bit of performance increase has a measurable impact on my bottom line.
If I were to adopt a similar attitude as yours, that would be like a carpenter holding off on buying a hammer until they come out with a model that drives two nails at a time.
I can understand how you're cool to the rumored specs- you probably don't need a Mac to make your living. To me, it's a cut and dried business decision. Will the new machines present a cost/benefit improvement over my current machines?
If the answer is yes, then I'm foolish not to upgrade if I can afford it. In the case of the rumored machines, I don't see a big enough benefit to go $1500 out of pocket to step up to the dual 1.2 gig- unless it provides enough capability that I can make an extra $1500 in three to six months.
If I were a film editor, I might realize that extra income in three weeks. If I used my Mac exclusively to play WCIII, then it wouldn't ever make sense.
As for the comparison with Windows machines, that's a fair one if you're willing to make the concessions that working in that environment requires. A coworker at a recent freelance gig spent a day of downtime because his Windows machine suffered from a conflict between Photoshop and a printer driver- it eventually destroyed his machine, requiring an OS reinstall.
At the rate I'm billing that job, a day's work is at least $600. That's a third of the way to the difference between my current machine and the new topline Mac.
To me, the rumored machines sound pretty good for the money.
People are only disappointed because rumors of 1.4 Ghz were flying all over the place last week.
It's foolish to be complaining about performance of a computer none of you have seen, used, or found benchmarks for. You all say Apple is going to release slow hardware. You don't know that.
The Dual 533 was much faster than the Dual 500, and the performance increase was due to motherboard improvements. The G4 is a very fast chip, but it is starved by the bus. We should be begging for motherboard upgrades, not processor upgrades.
Right now, we don't really know much about the new motherboards, just the processors that run on them.
The 867 sounds like it will be similar to the Yikes. The Yikes wasn't around very long... ;o)
If the rumor is true, it is a 25% speed increase, not including motherboard improvments. If we can get a 25% speed increase every 6 months, we'll stay on pace with Moore's Law.
Jaguar + QE + DDR = fast.
Apple might have a couple 2Ghz chips in a lab for testing. However, that is a far cry from having tens of thousands of them to do a production run.
<strong>
Actually, 333 doesn't go into 1.25 Ghz very well. Unless there are new clock multipliers that work at 3.75x, it appears unlikely that 1.25 is a real number. I'm sure someone over at ThinkSecret did the same calculations and came to the same conclusion.
266 * 4.5 = 1197 (~1.2)
333 * 3.5 = ~1166
333* 4 = ~1333
Take your pick....</strong><hr></blockquote>
We're talking double-pump here. So for 333 effective, you'd have a 166 mHz processor bus. And the Moto dude said that the current MX bus could do that.
166.666666667 * 7.5 = 1250.000025
Remember, each pulse of the 166 clock gets 2 chunks of data.
Craig
He said I shouldn't buy anything right now.
He then said something about new product tomorrow at 9am ET.
He said he 'suspects' - but said it in a way like he maybe knew ??
1.0
1.2
1.4
with faster bus speeds
Said he did not know about pricing, but definitely said I should just wait until tomorrow.
not sure if this is accurate or what
<strong> <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" />
I'm starting to be very tired of apple and its products, I can't believe that the specs are so low...
the intel world is reaching the 3 ghtz barrier and we get a 1.25 processor speed for more than 3000 dollars!!
I'll keep my old system for another 6 months.
But this shouldn't come as a surprise, Apple knows so well how to let us down...</strong><hr></blockquote>
Give me a break. Do you really think that it's Apple's goal to sell slow computers? Anybody with half a brain can see that the big problem is that they're stuck with Motorola because all classic and carbon apps wouldn't run if they switched architectures, and IBM was concentrating their PowerPC efforts on server hardware. Dual 1.25-GHz machines will be close in performance to the high end p4 and AMD machines, especially for those things that use the vector processing units. Plus, the price drop on the current dual-1GHz tells us that the new machines will have a faster system bus or something else that makes them substantially better than the current offerings. Of course, if you want to go buy a cheapo PC, be my guest. Maybe it will come with Windows ME and it will help you build anger about something else other than "slow" powermac specs.
Matthew