Portents for Spring 2003

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
Okay the whole 2002 PowerMac much ado is done.



Off to 2003! Will IBM woo or have they already wooed?



Was the 166Mhz bus a big deal (R&D-wise) or a stopgap for RIO or HT goodness?



Commence!!



Screed
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 50
    What i want to know is WTF did the "famed" 1.4, 1.6 Ghz G4's go???!?!? :confused: :confused:

    Was it just rampant rumour and speculation without any basis?! (wait a mo, this is AI, what am I saying! )

    .....anyway, this is yet another stopgap so I think the road is clear either we will get a totally new processor and Mobo next year or Apple will slowly sink from view, killed off by a ill-concieved marriage to Moto.... (alright just kidding!! )
  • Reply 2 of 50
    stoostoo Posts: 1,490member
    Well, the bus is still SDR and I imagine that 166MHz has probably been included in the G4+ spec. for a while. No major motherboard changes except to the memory controller.
  • Reply 2 of 50
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    well, we're only four months - approx. 120 days, give or take - from macworld san francisco. i think that will be too early to refresh these towers, so we are probably waiting until Spring 2003 before seeing any revamp.



    BUT...



    it looks like those leaked photos and PDF were so on the money it isn't even funny. the PDF DID say "G5-ready," though it also said max of 4 GB of DDRAM. whereas apple says it's 2. then again, apple has been known to understate the max RAM allotment (my iMac was only supposed to take 256 MB of RAM, but I have 512 in it now with no problem).



    do you think the G5 is the next step? Apple has been getting by with 20% increases so far each time, could they (and motorola) get their act together to blow us away next Spring?



    damn, and i was going to buy an eMac, but, comparitively, these towers make it look puny.
  • Reply 4 of 50
    murkmurk Posts: 935member
    Since Dorsal is no longer among the living, I'll say it for him: "2003 is Apple's Year!"
  • Reply 5 of 50
    gfeiergfeier Posts: 127member
    [quote]Originally posted by Thereubster:

    <strong>What i want to know is WTF did the "famed" 1.4, 1.6 Ghz G4's go???!?!? :confused: :confused:

    Was it just rampant rumour and speculation without any basis?! (wait a mo, this is AI, what am I saying! )

    .....anyway, this is yet another stopgap so I think the road is clear either we will get a totally new processor and Mobo next year or Apple will slowly sink from view, killed off by a ill-concieved marriage to Moto.... (alright just kidding!! )</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Dual 800 --&gt; Dual 1000 = +25%

    Dual 1000 --&gt; Dual 1250 = +25%

    Dual 1250 --&gt; Dual 1600 = +28%



    That takes care of MWSF 2003.



    Right in line with Moore's Law - doubled processor speeds in 18 months.



    Look for something entirely new around MWNY 2003. Not before.



    [ 08-13-2002: Message edited by: gfeier ]</p>
  • Reply 6 of 50
    The new macs seems OK. I will wait untill Ive seen tests in Lightwave etc.The lack of cutting edge stuff, like Firewire2, USB2 and AGPX8 makes it a turn-of. Cause these are soon to be standards and when they are these macs will be old as Jesus old slippers.
  • Reply 7 of 50
    g-newsg-news Posts: 1,107member
    I'm afraid this is going to stay a while.

    I wouldnt expet anything else than speedbumps for the next revision, the big stuff isn't coming before the "G5" (whatever that may be), and that's most likely not before 12 months from now.



    G-news
  • Reply 8 of 50
    yevgenyyevgeny Posts: 1,148member
    I think that we will see a new MOBO's when a new CPU comes out. I never thought that XServe's motherboard was a hack, but a genuine preview of what Apple had coming. These new desktops confirm that the XServe design was not a fluke.



    A new motherboard (real DDR) would mean a new CPU from Motorola, and these guys don't seem able to design such a beast.



    So, I don't see Apple coming out with a new motherboard + a new CPU in 5 months (Jan). This means that we are going to have the XServe motherboard around for a while until we get a new CPU (my guess: in nine months to a year). It will be possible to get a better idea of when a new CPU + mobo will be out by paying close attention to IBM at the Microprocessor forum and by looking at their timetable for their new chip.



    Glad to see that the current Apple desktop boxes are dual CPU's. Apple will probably continue with this until they get new chips (new chips are usually too constrained to make it possible to offer duals in all configurations).
  • Reply 9 of 50
    catcat Posts: 18member
    I liked the machine until I read in here, and thought about what your saying. Now I'm totally p*ssed off. You are all right. There will not any new UMA for a long time. We wont see a G5, or anything impressive hardware wise out of Apple in our life times at the rate we are going. G5??? Maybe 2005. There is no chance we'll get one by MWSF. I'm doubting MWNY.



    You know. I did not even want a G5 so much as I wanted FireWire2, and USB 2.0, with at least a 1.8GHz processor. (not like they had it, and it wasn't even rumored), but it would at least make PowerMac's look more presentable as a serious piece of hardware in comparision to the competition. Why,,, Because 1.8GHz PPC is close enough.
  • Reply 10 of 50
    programmerprogrammer Posts: 3,457member
    Today's introduction is pretty much inline with what I had expected. I'd been hoping for a 1 - 1.4 GHz spread in clock rates, but hadn't really thought we'd see a bump to 166 MHz bus speed. What we got is probably better than I was expecting, although the 1.25 won't be shipping for a month!



    In roughly the January timeframe expect bumps to at least 1.4 GHz (no higher than 1.6, and not likely at that). The iMacs & PowerBooks will probably get to 1 GHz about that time, possibly with 133 MHz buses in the iMac. FireWire2, improved AirPort, Bluetooth, and possibly the "little DSPs" Moki was on about a while back. AGP 8x we'll have to wait and see -- I don't know how quickly Apple will adopt it.



    In the 2nd half of '03 sometime we may see the new IBM processor arrive. Won't really be able to speculate much until the MDF in October, but pay careful attention to that.



    FWIW: Motorola could design the desktop chip everybody wants if they wanted to. They don't, and they said so a little while ago (longer if you listen to Moki). They specifically said "MPX is the way it is because that's the way the embedded system designers like it. It is a shared bus and will stay that way, and that means no DDR." Consider us lucky to get the 166 MHz version.





    There sure are a lot of people that get worked up over specs which don't really mean a whole lot -- e.g. FireWire2 isn't going to make a difference to you for at least a year because there are no peripherals that use it. The dual 1 GHz machines is about the same speed as a single 1.8 GHz for anything that is multi-threaded (or if you are using more than one app)... and multi-threaded programs are becoming much more common, especially the ones which need this kind of performance. The new memory bus delivers sustained throughput of

    ~1060 GB/sec, and the system can still deliver full PCI/AGP/ATA bandwidth into memory while the processors are maxed out. These are fast machines, the problem is that it doesn't show up in Intel marketing-speak (i.e. MHz) nor does it show up in pure benchmarks (which deliberately ignore or turn off things that you would normally have going on during computing, like disk & network access). These are practical machines, and while they may not excel at certain tasks overall they are strong performers.



    But enough of this nonesense, I'm off to the store to buy myself a new Mac...



    [ 08-13-2002: Message edited by: Programmer ]</p>
  • Reply 11 of 50
    yevgenyyevgeny Posts: 1,148member
    [quote]Originally posted by Cat:

    <strong>I liked the machine until I read in here, and thought about what your saying. Now I'm totally p*ssed off. You are all right. There will not any new UMA for a long time. We wont see a G5, or anything impressive hardware wise out of Apple in our life times at the rate we are going. G5??? Maybe 2005. There is no chance we'll get one by MWSF. I'm doubting MWNY.



    You know. I did not even want a G5 so much as I wanted FireWire2, and USB 2.0, with at least a 1.8GHz processor. (not like they had it, and it wasn't even rumored), but it would at least make PowerMac's look more presentable as a serious piece of hardware in comparision to the competition. Why,,, Because 1.8GHz PPC is close enough.</strong><hr></blockquote>





    As for when we will see a new CPU, I again refer to my post about watching IBM at the microprocessor forum. Until we get an idea of how far along IBM is, everything is pure speculation. I would guess that they are further along than just having a design for a new CPU. I would conjecture that IBM and Apple have already been working on this for some time.



    As for Firewire 2 and USB 2, these are very new standards and they take time to incorporate into a new motherboard. Motherboards are not simple pieces of technology- they are quite complex and need to integrate quite a few different technologies. Don't knock Apple for not having a firewire 2 motherboard. At least wait until a PC motherboard supports Firewire 2 before you berate Apple. Building a motherboard is not like making a sandwich- you don't just slap a bunch of stuff together.



    The current machines are good (if the specs are to be believed). The mid range machine looks pretty good and I will recommend it to some of my friends who have been waiting.
  • Reply 12 of 50
    brussellbrussell Posts: 9,812member
    October is going to be very informative - we'll get some indication as to how far off this desktop Power4 is and whether it's Mac-suitable.



    Motorola should have the G4s on a .13 fab by Spring '03, and that should bump clock speeds. Hopefully they'll design the chip to sit on a true DDR mobo, which should also help a lot.



    I think the real action is going to be in the other machines. The emac/imac/ibook/powerbook are still topped out at 700 & 800 Mhz! Those should get up to 1Ghz by Spring '03.



    The Sahara should be at 1Ghz for the iBook, and a .13 1Ghz G4 could get into the TiBook.



    Then, either the Motorola G5 or the IBM Power4 variant will get into the PowerMacs.
  • Reply 13 of 50
    catcat Posts: 18member
    Yevgeny , what do you mean wait for a PC to have FireWire 2 first???? FireWire is Apple's baby. PC's don't even have firewire mobo's as an industry standard yet, let alone start using FireWire 2 - Which I might add will probably debut on a Macintosh probably even before a digital video camera get's it.

    I have no Idea why you think a PC should have it first... Does anyone agree with that, or am I alone in thinking that FireWire is a pionered, and semi designed by Apple technology?



    [ 08-13-2002: Message edited by: Cat ]</p>
  • Reply 14 of 50
    yevgenyyevgeny Posts: 1,148member
    [quote]Originally posted by Cat:

    <strong>Yevgeny , what do you mean wait for a PC to have FireWire 2 first???? FireWire is Apple's baby. PC's don't even have firewire mobo's as an industry standard yet, let alone start using FireWire 2 - Which I might add will probably debut on a Macintosh probably even before a digital video camera get's it.

    I have no Idea why you think a PC should have it first... Does anyone agree with that, or am I alone in thinking that FireWire is a pionered, and semi designed by Apple technology?



    [ 08-13-2002: Message edited by: Cat ]</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I mean don't call it late until someone else has it. It is late once a PC vendor has it on a motherboard. It takes alot of time to get the next revision of technology into the field (something that end users usually don't understand about hardware and software).



    I think that Apple should be the first vendor to support it, but that this takes quite a bit of time. It will get here when it gets here. If Jobs got up on a stage and said "we were going to come out with a new motherboard today, but we decided to delay it for four months to add firewire 2. See ya in four months.", people would kill him. There is no immediate need for firewire 2. There is an immediate need for a faster motherboard.
  • Reply 15 of 50
    yevgenyyevgeny Posts: 1,148member
    [quote]Originally posted by BRussell:

    <strong>

    Motorola should have the G4s on a .13 fab by Spring '03, and that should bump clock speeds. Hopefully they'll design the chip to sit on a true DDR mobo, which should also help a lot.

    </strong><hr></blockquote>



    If Moto does this, then it means that Apple isn't going to ship an IBM chip anytine soon. Not that I would mind Moto doing this... but I can't see them caring very much for Apple. <img src="graemlins/oyvey.gif" border="0" alt="[No]" /> I don't see Apple releasing two desktop motherboards next year (it might happen, but it isn't very cost effective. In the old days, Apple did this, but the practice was discouraged under Amelio).



    Again, the microprocessor forum is the place to look for more concrete speculation.
  • Reply 15 of 50
    [quote]Originally posted by Thereubster:

    <strong>What i want to know is WTF did the "famed" 1.4, 1.6 Ghz G4's go???!?!? :confused: :confused:</strong><hr></blockquote>

    the g4 isn't scheduled to get to 1.6 until the end of this year, maybe early next year. this is about what i expected from the g4 chip. eh, guess we'll have to wait to see some benchmarks.
  • Reply 17 of 50
    robsterrobster Posts: 256member
    [quote]Originally posted by Thereubster:

    <strong>What i want to know is WTF did the "famed" 1.4, 1.6 Ghz G4's go???!?!? :confused: </strong><hr></blockquote>



    The 1.4's and 1.6's are PPC7470 Processors, the new PowerMacs use PPC7450 Processors which currently max out at 1.25mhz
  • Reply 18 of 50
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    Apart from the bus speed, is anything going on with these G4's that wasn't originally? I mean, come on Moto, WTF? Can it be so damn hard to move to .13u ??? Is it possible that a company whose major interest is embedded chips is the last one to the .13u party ??? From what I've read such a die shrink would allow 30% faster chips. That would take us from 1250 to a comfortable 1600Mhz. Intel will soon move to .09u !!! What with such a process they'll be running 4Ghz chips by the end of 2003. WTF?



    I sure hope Moto cooks up something better soon, like a .13u SOI G4 (with DDR FSB). Slap those in everything Apple sells and then we can move on to IBM Power Derivatives for the POWERmacs.
  • Reply 19 of 50
    yevgenyyevgeny Posts: 1,148member
    [quote]Originally posted by Matsu:

    <strong>Apart from the bus speed, is anything going on with these G4's that wasn't originally? I mean, come on Moto, WTF? Can it be so damn hard to move to .13u ??? Is it possible that a company whose major interest is embedded chips is the last one to the .13u party ??? From what I've read such a die shrink would allow 30% faster chips. That would take us from 1250 to a comfortable 1600Mhz. Intel will soon move to .09u !!! What with such a process they'll be running 4Ghz chips by the end of 2003. WTF?

    .</strong><hr></blockquote>



    One possible explanation is that the die shrink to 0.13, and a 1.6 GHz cpu is Moto's last hurrah. It would be good for Apple to make sure that any future chips from IBM are ready before 1.6 goes too stale. Apple might be dragging their feet on this, not Moto (although I am inclined to think that Moto is dragging just because we all know that they don't care).



    I am content with dual 1.25's over single 1.4's or single 1.6's. Higher CPU's may be available, just not in quantity. I'm really hoping that Apple will keep the Dual CPU's as a desktop strategy.



    [ 08-13-2002: Message edited by: Yevgeny ]</p>
  • Reply 20 of 50
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    [quote]Portents...<hr></blockquote>



    Nice diction!
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