I expect these machines will have to hold us over until Oct - Jan. At that point either IBM will have rev'd the 970FX to eek out a bit more speed (although it sounds like that will be less than another 500 MHz), or they will have readied & ramped its successor. I'd be surprised if the successor can manage much better clock rate unless they've gone and stretched the pipelines further, but I don't think they'll play Intel's game. If IBM can get their new materials working acceptably then we might see a bit more improvement in heat/clock, but I'm not expecting much of a leap. 3 GHz might be The Limit for 90nm, and 65nm probably won't be any different since heat density has become a limiting factor and leakage from traces is dominating the equation. Some new optimizations in the design process may yield some improvements, but they are likely to be very incremental. As a result future designs will probably make the chips larger at the same clock rate -- SMT, multi-core, larger caches, embedded RAM, and Cell-type designs.
I am afraid he is not. There is a general slowdown in chip industry, not just IBM, as clock speed goes up. The range 3-4 GHz seems the be the wall for the current technology implementation. When Intel, the GHz king, come out and talk about dual cores and efficient architectures and abandon officially what gave them dominance in the CPU market, you cannot have much doubt.
Why? The limits of Physics are getting closer and closer, and there is no way to follow Moore's law other than enhancing the architecture of the chips.
Increasing the frequency of the CPUs is non-sense, and will only lead to increase the heat density dissipated by the chip, increasing its efficiency only marginally (increasing frequency is usually made by deepening the pipeline, which is not the best thing to do - Programmer, correct me if I'm wrong - since it leads to increasing lag time when a branch prediction occurs). IBM engineers have understood that. AMD engineers too. Even Intel engineers seem to have understood.
Architecture, then... NOW it becomes interesting : the bottleneck in computers is the pathetically slow accesses to memory. Embedding more cache, and eventually, RAM, on the processors will lead to tremendous bumps in processing speed.
Add multi-core to those chips, and you'll get killer performance, with communication between the two cores being incredibly fast, and access to memory, custom-built.
Hand in hand, I really believe it is a good thing that IBM is also working on architectural innovations, and not only on manufacturing process enhancements.
I expect these machines will have to hold us over until Oct - Jan. At that point either IBM will have rev'd the 970FX to eek out a bit more speed (although it sounds like that will be less than another 500 MHz), or they will have readied & ramped its successor. I'd be surprised if the successor can manage much better clock rate unless they've gone and stretched the pipelines further, but I don't think they'll play Intel's game. If IBM can get their new materials working acceptably then we might see a bit more improvement in heat/clock, but I'm not expecting much of a leap. 3 GHz might be The Limit for 90nm, and 65nm probably won't be any different since heat density has become a limiting factor and leakage from traces is dominating the equation. Some new optimizations in the design process may yield some improvements, but they are likely to be very incremental. As a result future designs will probably make the chips larger at the same clock rate -- SMT, multi-core, larger caches, embedded RAM, and Cell-type designs.
Even if some don't believe me it's not the clock speed of the new G5s that's made me mad. Given the rest of the industry I think IBM is doing the best it can. The rules of physics (whatever) aren't easy to break....
What has me less than impressed is what Apple has done to 'the rest of the system' - As my laundry list above states - nothing has been done. Apple has had close to a full year to add 'SOMETHING' to the motherboard / system design and from what I see cept for popping on a 2.5GHz cpu and adding a liquid cooled heat sync (for the 2.5GHz cpu) everything else was left untouched. HD's same, FireWire same, USB same, PCI same, open bays same, optical drive same, video same. Heck the system designers are still in a delusional state that makes them think shipping a G5 with 256MB of RAM is fine and dandy! (Are they freakin NUTS!)
Oh I almost forgot, they DID slap on some additional memory onto the 1+ year old video card technology. Whoop-de-freakin-do!
Am I missing anything?
Come on Apple You coulda thrown us a bone somewhere - you know just to show us the PowerMac hardware designers weren't on a 1 year sabbatical ALL at the same time!
As far as I remember, Apple has been introducing a new top model and dropping the previous bottom model many times - this is not new.
Has Apple ever had a motherboard that only lasted one version? And the DP1.8 wasn't downgraded - it was upgraded to a DP2.0.
This was a speed bump - nothing else.
Okay maybe so but...
Many times the TOP became the BOTTOM this time we didn't get that
Other times the middle and bottom got GOOSED in some way or another be it Memory, HD, video card, superdrive or what have you. We didn't get that either. For as long as I can remember never has SO LITTLE been changed to the line as a whole. Maybe I'm wrong but I still can't think of a single instance.
From the looks of things they just played musical CPUs - The boxes stayed where they were and the cpus each got up and moved down one 'seat' the 1.6 fell off and the 2.5 stepped into the top box. The hardware designers must have been truly EXHAUSTED!
Hell they could had the decency to let the 1.8GHz CPU keep it's same mobo, memory config, video etc but they didn't even do that. Instead they let the 1.6 mobo and config live on.
1 - Only a one new CPU speed introduction (2.5 GHz) all the others are old news.
This is due to the manufacturing problems at 90nm. The 2 of 3 models use essentially old CPUs. When the problems a fixed, we may expect a little bump to 2.0/2.2/2.5 GHz line-up or something like that. This is done so that at least 2 of 3 models are immediately available.
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2 - No appreciable motherboard changes at all and in the case of the 1.8 a downgrade to PCI from PCI-X
As Leonard said. And as I see it the 1.8 wasn't downgraded - the low-end was upgraded from a 1.6 to a 1.8.
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3 - No memory upgrades at all and it the case of the 1.8 a downgrade.
Since Apple didn't call it a workstation, 8GB for a personal computer is very good. Only a few will want to install 16GB anyway, so Apple must have decided it's not practical.
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4 - No hard drive changes at all and in the case of the 1.8 and 2.0 a downgrade
Apple has naver been too generous when it comes to hard drives and this time is just no exception. A more serious flaw is the lack of hard drive bays which motion graphics pros love so much.
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5 - Not even a stitch of a change in video cards. In fact, the lack of video cards updates have been pointed out by most everyone right off the bat. A huge letdown to most. Second only to not making the change to PCI-Extreme
A slight change in the amount of SDRAM has taken place, hasn't it? Again, Apple doesn't make GPUs themselves, so they might have been unable to offer anything more. And for most purposes Radeon 9600 XT is good enough.
Quote:
6 - No display updates - still mismatched holdovers from the G4 days. Quite un-Apple like if you ask most people.
Mismatched from the design point of view? I don't quite get it. If so, new designs may come at WWDC when the Brilliant Savings promotion ends.
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So could it be that the reason that the "NEW" PowerMac line is still stuck with OLD video card options is due to the fact that it didn't make sense for Apple to redesign 'more modern cards' with ADC knowing full well:
A - The 'new' hardware is short lived
B - The 'current' displays are at their end of life
C - New PowerMacs and Displays will QUICKLY follow that are DVI based and then Apple can utilize cards and/or card designs that are already being made for the rest of the PC industry. (greatly increasing the video card options).
Possible, but, you know the point A depends on IBM only. I'm afraid, at this point in time, even Jobs would not bet too much on it.
PowerMac hardware designers weren't on a 1 year sabbatical ALL at the same time!
And why did Jon Rubinstein move to head the new iPod division? Because the PowerMac prospects are so exciting? 'iPodGrid Computing' anyone?
But seriously, we don't know why Rubinstein moved, and if you are an optimist, the lack of actual changes to the PowerMac line would suggest that Apple reserved the goodies for a new line of Macs. Maybe the next IBM chip, let's call it the 'G6', requires changes in software design as the G5 did and hence might also get an introduction at WWDC? That is if you are an optimist.
And I also see room at the low-end, where a 'headless' Mac is sorely needed in the $1000-$2000 segment, now that the cheapest monitor-less Mac is a $2000+ affair. Again, if you're an optimist.
Pessimists would say that there won't be a workstation-type Mac and that the next gen IBM chip would happen at the earliest with the next PowerMac revision, introduced January 2005, shipping March/April 2005 - 10 months from today.
And there won't be any low-cost headless Mac either, as none has ever existed since the second coming of Steve.
Though hope springs eternal. So let's be optimists...
So we (and Apple) expected a speedbump about 6 months ago and then more through revision this summer. Now the speed bump arrives in this summer and the revision hopefully later this year.
These things happen and I am sure IBM is hard at work. The good thing is that Intel have used more than a year to get from 3060 MHz to 3400 MHz. If we next summer is not well above 3 GHz I will feel depressed but the current situation is not that bad
Okay, maybe we have different ideas of what several months are. By several months, I mean 5-8 months. Not just a couple of months (or 2 months). That's the lenght of a normal update cycle for Apple. So they will NOT be short-lived which to me means less than 3 months.
What has me less than impressed is what Apple has done to 'the rest of the system' - As my laundry list above states - nothing has been done. Apple has had close to a full year to add 'SOMETHING' to the motherboard / system design and from what I see cept for popping on a 2.5GHz cpu and adding a liquid cooled heat sync (for the 2.5GHz cpu) everything else was left untouched. HD's same, FireWire same, USB same, PCI same, open bays same, optical drive same, video same. Heck the system designers are still in a delusional state that makes them think shipping a G5 with 256MB of RAM is fine and dandy! (Are they freakin NUTS!)
Oh I almost forgot, they DID slap on some additional memory onto the 1+ year old video card technology. Whoop-de-freakin-do!
Am I missing anything?
This wasn't a hardware revision, it was a speed bump. They have been on a 6-9 month cycle of revise-bump-revise-bump-... for a long time now. 9 months ago they shipped a revised design (i.e. the first G5s in September). To Apple's credit they had been planning to ship the bump in Jan (then March), a mere 4 (then 6) months after the original shipped, but the 90nm wall foiled their plans. Even so, 10 months (Sept -> July) isn't the end of the world. The next iteration (in 6-9 months) ought to see a significant revision.
Designing & testing new motherboards and ASICs is difficult and expensive work. Apple needs to put the latest technology into them (e.g. PCIe & DDR2) so that they don't fall too far behind on the next 2 iterations, but they can't bring them to market too soon (assuming they were ready) because those bleeding edge technologies start out really expensive. Its only the mass consumption by the PC market that drives down their prices and makes them usable by Apple.
As for the GPUs, I don't see what all the bitching is about. The units Apple chose are the current low, mid, and high end boards available without moving to PCIe (which I just explained above isn't ready for market yet). The BTO option for the 9800XT is an awesome board, but most people don't need it so don't make everybody spend money on it. The 9600XT is a very very respectable card. Don't get sucked in by the "extreme benchmarking types" and their very deceptive graphs... these things are very fast and capable, and in practice the delta to the highest end cards less than they would have you think. This isn't like back in the day when most Macs came with an ATI RageII+ -- even the nVidia 5200 FX is a fully capable card with performance that would have dropped jaws 2 years ago... and if you buy a replacement from ATI then you're really only out ~$70 (the cost of the nVidia card at PC retail). Considering that OpenGL 1.5 is needed to take full advantage of all of these cards and its not out yet, I'd say that the graphics hardware is just fine. When Apple does get its PCIe machine out then the new PCIe cards that nVidia and ATI have been talking up should be available in decent quantity and reasonable prices, and Apple will deliver them.
As for the equipment in the low end machine -- Apple is putting the lowest cost drives into this machine and the sweet spot is 80 GB right now. At least its a 7200 RPM drive. That is plenty for many customers, and there is room to add another drive if you need a bit more... which you can source from the lowest cost supplier you can find. The same goes for RAM... upgrade if you need more, and buy it from the lowest cost supplier you can find. Apple will (almost) never be the cheapest source of these parts. They buy in large volumes with guaranteed long term (6-12 months anyhow) contracts so that they don't get killed if the part prices shoot up. The last time memory prices really shot way up (a decade or more ago now?) Apple was actually offering the best prices around on RAM, but that is extremely rare and may never happen again. Personally I don't want to buy large quantities of RAM from Apple, so I don't want them equipping their machines with lots of it. I'd rather they allow us to buy machines with no RAM, but they insist on shipping only machines that are actually testable (can't really argue with that!).
Oh, and the new dual 1.8 is definitely the single 1.6 upgraded. It has only 4 DIMM slots and the 1.6's PCI configuration.
If I remember correctly, an IBM rep did say that the 970fx would use/is using strained silicon and SOI. After a brief look at tech documents on Apple's web site, I found no mention of Strained Silicon, only SOI. I would think Apple would praise the use of strained silicon in tech documents if it were being used.
In addition, IBM is developing Strained Silicon Directly on Insulator(SSDOI), (how that might be different than just usng strained silicon and SOI I don't know, but it seems that it is somehow). If the current 970fx is not using SSDOI, then the prospects for it reaching 3.0GHz should be quite promising wouldn't you think? Hopefully, IBM will be releasing more tech information concerning the fx shortly.
This doesn't even include what improvements the next generation cpu, IBM 975 or whatever it is called, will include in it's architecture.
These new chips might actually be available next month, but due to the same 90nm issues, might not go any faster than 2.5 odd GHz either, far below the magical 3GHz. However since they are Power5 derived chips with hyperthreading their performance is still a lot better than similarly clocked 970fx chips, hence worth for Apple to use.[/B]
Oh, and the new dual 1.8 is definitely the single 1.6 upgraded. It has only 4 DIMM slots and the 1.6's PCI configuration.
The whole time I was completely agreeing with you... Then I saw who posted it and told myself "That explains it".
Every post you put up has been right on the money. This was perfect programmer. It actually made me feel so much better about buying a dual 2.5. As you were writing it I was so close to put in my order.
I'm going to wait until WWDC and see if I can put my order in there instead. Perhaps I can jump on a waiting list if I'm a developer?
But you're right about the ram and the hard drives. It probably drives down the cost of the machine significantly... which leaves room for parts on water cooling, graphics cards, etc.
Graphics cards: You're right on that too... Apple can't jump into a new technology without it being driven down by PC sales...
So we (and Apple) expected a speedbump about 6 months ago and then more through revision this summer. Now the speed bump arrives in this summer and the revision hopefully later this year.
I no longer believe Apple ever intended to release updates to the PowerMac G5 until June of this year...
A). Steve's "3Ghz Promise" essentially gave us the date for the next PowerMac update - June 2004.
. During a financial conference call it was stated the PowerMacs were on a 1-year upgrade cycle.
C). Tom Boger of Apple stated that they didn't know they would miss the "3Ghz Promise" deadline until a few weeks ago.
This all points to Apple planning on one big update a year with no revisions in between. I'm sure they had big things planned for the 3Ghz update but a lot of things went wrong in addition to the 90nm transition. They tend to hold off on other improvements until the full package is ready.
We can only hope Apple learns from this and abandons the 1-year upgrade cycle however. It is just too long a wait. Certainly no one here believes the new 1.8/2.0/2.5 lineup can hold Apple until June 2005 right?
I predict sooner than later, AMD and Intel are going to get passed the problems they have been having for the last year or so. Once they get passed this I predict they will jump about a ghz within the next year.... if they do, apple will fall far behind again.
My point is, the dual 2.5 won't hold them until june of 2005... or rather july of 2005. I hope for apple's sake they at the very least upgrade these machines at MWSF'05.
Boy o' boy, the doom and gloom is really getting a bit too much around here. You folks sound like you upgrade your Macs every upgrade-cycle to capture the most out of every MHz available. Yet, some how I doubt all you chicken littles are that dependent on speed that these upgrades are going to cause your world to come to a sluggish halt.
I guess most folks upgrade every few years. In that time, even if you started with the high end system, you are way below what is high end by the time you buy a new system. I'm sure someone on these boards could have really used that extra 500MHz, but I suspect most of you are just suffering a let down from Unlce Steve's promisr falling through. I suggest getting over it and be happy with the very good hardware that Apple is shipping.
Boy o' boy, the doom and gloom is really getting a bit too much around here. You folks sound like you upgrade your Macs every upgrade-cycle to capture the most out of every MHz available. Yet, some how I doubt all you chicken littles are that dependent on speed that these upgrades are going to cause your world to come to a sluggish halt.
I guess most folks upgrade every few years. In that time, even if you started with the high end system, you are way below what is high end by the time you buy a new system. I'm sure someone on these boards could have really used that extra 500MHz, but I suspect most of you are just suffering a let down from Uncle Steve's promisr falling through. I suggest getting over it and be happy with the very good hardware that Apple is shipping.
Nice post! Those folks you're describing are so me!
Comments
Originally posted by Programmer
I expect these machines will have to hold us over until Oct - Jan. At that point either IBM will have rev'd the 970FX to eek out a bit more speed (although it sounds like that will be less than another 500 MHz), or they will have readied & ramped its successor. I'd be surprised if the successor can manage much better clock rate unless they've gone and stretched the pipelines further, but I don't think they'll play Intel's game. If IBM can get their new materials working acceptably then we might see a bit more improvement in heat/clock, but I'm not expecting much of a leap. 3 GHz might be The Limit for 90nm, and 65nm probably won't be any different since heat density has become a limiting factor and leakage from traces is dominating the equation. Some new optimizations in the design process may yield some improvements, but they are likely to be very incremental. As a result future designs will probably make the chips larger at the same clock rate -- SMT, multi-core, larger caches, embedded RAM, and Cell-type designs.
i hope your wrong.
Originally posted by geekmeet
i hope your wrong.
I am afraid he is not. There is a general slowdown in chip industry, not just IBM, as clock speed goes up. The range 3-4 GHz seems the be the wall for the current technology implementation. When Intel, the GHz king, come out and talk about dual cores and efficient architectures and abandon officially what gave them dominance in the CPU market, you cannot have much doubt.
Originally posted by geekmeet
i hope your wrong.
Why? The limits of Physics are getting closer and closer, and there is no way to follow Moore's law other than enhancing the architecture of the chips.
Increasing the frequency of the CPUs is non-sense, and will only lead to increase the heat density dissipated by the chip, increasing its efficiency only marginally (increasing frequency is usually made by deepening the pipeline, which is not the best thing to do - Programmer, correct me if I'm wrong - since it leads to increasing lag time when a branch prediction occurs). IBM engineers have understood that. AMD engineers too. Even Intel engineers seem to have understood.
Architecture, then... NOW it becomes interesting : the bottleneck in computers is the pathetically slow accesses to memory. Embedding more cache, and eventually, RAM, on the processors will lead to tremendous bumps in processing speed.
Add multi-core to those chips, and you'll get killer performance, with communication between the two cores being incredibly fast, and access to memory, custom-built.
Hand in hand, I really believe it is a good thing that IBM is also working on architectural innovations, and not only on manufacturing process enhancements.
Originally posted by Programmer
I expect these machines will have to hold us over until Oct - Jan. At that point either IBM will have rev'd the 970FX to eek out a bit more speed (although it sounds like that will be less than another 500 MHz), or they will have readied & ramped its successor. I'd be surprised if the successor can manage much better clock rate unless they've gone and stretched the pipelines further, but I don't think they'll play Intel's game. If IBM can get their new materials working acceptably then we might see a bit more improvement in heat/clock, but I'm not expecting much of a leap. 3 GHz might be The Limit for 90nm, and 65nm probably won't be any different since heat density has become a limiting factor and leakage from traces is dominating the equation. Some new optimizations in the design process may yield some improvements, but they are likely to be very incremental. As a result future designs will probably make the chips larger at the same clock rate -- SMT, multi-core, larger caches, embedded RAM, and Cell-type designs.
Even if some don't believe me it's not the clock speed of the new G5s that's made me mad. Given the rest of the industry I think IBM is doing the best it can. The rules of physics (whatever) aren't easy to break....
What has me less than impressed is what Apple has done to 'the rest of the system' - As my laundry list above states - nothing has been done. Apple has had close to a full year to add 'SOMETHING' to the motherboard / system design and from what I see cept for popping on a 2.5GHz cpu and adding a liquid cooled heat sync (for the 2.5GHz cpu) everything else was left untouched. HD's same, FireWire same, USB same, PCI same, open bays same, optical drive same, video same. Heck the system designers are still in a delusional state that makes them think shipping a G5 with 256MB of RAM is fine and dandy! (Are they freakin NUTS!)
Oh I almost forgot, they DID slap on some additional memory onto the 1+ year old video card technology. Whoop-de-freakin-do!
Am I missing anything?
Come on Apple You coulda thrown us a bone somewhere - you know just to show us the PowerMac hardware designers weren't on a 1 year sabbatical ALL at the same time!
Dave
Originally posted by DaveGee
Well these G5 v2 upgrades just SMELL FUNNY.
1 - Only a one new CPU speed introduction (2.5 GHz) all the others are old news.
As far as I remember, Apple has been introducing a new top model and dropping the previous bottom model many times - this is not new.
Originally posted by DaveGee
2 - No appreciable motherboard changes at all and in the case of the 1.8 a downgrade to PCI from PCI-X
3 - No memory upgrades at all and it the case of the 1.8 a downgrade
4 - No hard drive changes at all and in the case of the 1.8 and 2.0 a downgrade
Has Apple ever had a motherboard that only lasted one version? And the DP1.8 wasn't downgraded - it was upgraded to a DP2.0.
This was a speed bump - nothing else.
Originally posted by JLL
As far as I remember, Apple has been introducing a new top model and dropping the previous bottom model many times - this is not new.
Has Apple ever had a motherboard that only lasted one version? And the DP1.8 wasn't downgraded - it was upgraded to a DP2.0.
This was a speed bump - nothing else.
Okay maybe so but...
Many times the TOP became the BOTTOM this time we didn't get that
Other times the middle and bottom got GOOSED in some way or another be it Memory, HD, video card, superdrive or what have you. We didn't get that either. For as long as I can remember never has SO LITTLE been changed to the line as a whole. Maybe I'm wrong but I still can't think of a single instance.
From the looks of things they just played musical CPUs - The boxes stayed where they were and the cpus each got up and moved down one 'seat' the 1.6 fell off and the 2.5 stepped into the top box. The hardware designers must have been truly EXHAUSTED!
Hell they could had the decency to let the 1.8GHz CPU keep it's same mobo, memory config, video etc but they didn't even do that. Instead they let the 1.6 mobo and config live on.
Blech!
Dave
Originally posted by DaveGee
1 - Only a one new CPU speed introduction (2.5 GHz) all the others are old news.
This is due to the manufacturing problems at 90nm. The 2 of 3 models use essentially old CPUs. When the problems a fixed, we may expect a little bump to 2.0/2.2/2.5 GHz line-up or something like that. This is done so that at least 2 of 3 models are immediately available.
2 - No appreciable motherboard changes at all and in the case of the 1.8 a downgrade to PCI from PCI-X
As Leonard said. And as I see it the 1.8 wasn't downgraded - the low-end was upgraded from a 1.6 to a 1.8.
3 - No memory upgrades at all and it the case of the 1.8 a downgrade.
Since Apple didn't call it a workstation, 8GB for a personal computer is very good. Only a few will want to install 16GB anyway, so Apple must have decided it's not practical.
4 - No hard drive changes at all and in the case of the 1.8 and 2.0 a downgrade
Apple has naver been too generous when it comes to hard drives and this time is just no exception. A more serious flaw is the lack of hard drive bays which motion graphics pros love so much.
5 - Not even a stitch of a change in video cards. In fact, the lack of video cards updates have been pointed out by most everyone right off the bat. A huge letdown to most. Second only to not making the change to PCI-Extreme
A slight change in the amount of SDRAM has taken place, hasn't it? Again, Apple doesn't make GPUs themselves, so they might have been unable to offer anything more. And for most purposes Radeon 9600 XT is good enough.
6 - No display updates - still mismatched holdovers from the G4 days. Quite un-Apple like if you ask most people.
Mismatched from the design point of view? I don't quite get it. If so, new designs may come at WWDC when the Brilliant Savings promotion ends.
So could it be that the reason that the "NEW" PowerMac line is still stuck with OLD video card options is due to the fact that it didn't make sense for Apple to redesign 'more modern cards' with ADC knowing full well:
A - The 'new' hardware is short lived
B - The 'current' displays are at their end of life
C - New PowerMacs and Displays will QUICKLY follow that are DVI based and then Apple can utilize cards and/or card designs that are already being made for the rest of the PC industry. (greatly increasing the video card options).
Possible, but, you know the point A depends on IBM only. I'm afraid, at this point in time, even Jobs would not bet too much on it.
Originally posted by DaveGee
PowerMac hardware designers weren't on a 1 year sabbatical ALL at the same time!
And why did Jon Rubinstein move to head the new iPod division? Because the PowerMac prospects are so exciting? 'iPodGrid Computing' anyone?
But seriously, we don't know why Rubinstein moved, and if you are an optimist, the lack of actual changes to the PowerMac line would suggest that Apple reserved the goodies for a new line of Macs. Maybe the next IBM chip, let's call it the 'G6', requires changes in software design as the G5 did and hence might also get an introduction at WWDC? That is if you are an optimist.
And I also see room at the low-end, where a 'headless' Mac is sorely needed in the $1000-$2000 segment, now that the cheapest monitor-less Mac is a $2000+ affair. Again, if you're an optimist.
Pessimists would say that there won't be a workstation-type Mac and that the next gen IBM chip would happen at the earliest with the next PowerMac revision, introduced January 2005, shipping March/April 2005 - 10 months from today.
And there won't be any low-cost headless Mac either, as none has ever existed since the second coming of Steve.
Though hope springs eternal. So let's be optimists...
Originally posted by DaveGee
The hardware designers must have been truly EXHAUSTED!
Perhaps they are waiting for stuff like PCI Express.
These things happen and I am sure IBM is hard at work. The good thing is that Intel have used more than a year to get from 3060 MHz to 3400 MHz. If we next summer is not well above 3 GHz I will feel depressed but the current situation is not that bad
Originally posted by DaveGee
Huh?
"Several Months" ***IS*** short lived!
Dave
Okay, maybe we have different ideas of what several months are. By several months, I mean 5-8 months. Not just a couple of months (or 2 months). That's the lenght of a normal update cycle for Apple. So they will NOT be short-lived which to me means less than 3 months.
Originally posted by DaveGee
What has me less than impressed is what Apple has done to 'the rest of the system' - As my laundry list above states - nothing has been done. Apple has had close to a full year to add 'SOMETHING' to the motherboard / system design and from what I see cept for popping on a 2.5GHz cpu and adding a liquid cooled heat sync (for the 2.5GHz cpu) everything else was left untouched. HD's same, FireWire same, USB same, PCI same, open bays same, optical drive same, video same. Heck the system designers are still in a delusional state that makes them think shipping a G5 with 256MB of RAM is fine and dandy! (Are they freakin NUTS!)
Oh I almost forgot, they DID slap on some additional memory onto the 1+ year old video card technology. Whoop-de-freakin-do!
Am I missing anything?
This wasn't a hardware revision, it was a speed bump. They have been on a 6-9 month cycle of revise-bump-revise-bump-... for a long time now. 9 months ago they shipped a revised design (i.e. the first G5s in September). To Apple's credit they had been planning to ship the bump in Jan (then March), a mere 4 (then 6) months after the original shipped, but the 90nm wall foiled their plans. Even so, 10 months (Sept -> July) isn't the end of the world. The next iteration (in 6-9 months) ought to see a significant revision.
Designing & testing new motherboards and ASICs is difficult and expensive work. Apple needs to put the latest technology into them (e.g. PCIe & DDR2) so that they don't fall too far behind on the next 2 iterations, but they can't bring them to market too soon (assuming they were ready) because those bleeding edge technologies start out really expensive. Its only the mass consumption by the PC market that drives down their prices and makes them usable by Apple.
As for the GPUs, I don't see what all the bitching is about. The units Apple chose are the current low, mid, and high end boards available without moving to PCIe (which I just explained above isn't ready for market yet). The BTO option for the 9800XT is an awesome board, but most people don't need it so don't make everybody spend money on it. The 9600XT is a very very respectable card. Don't get sucked in by the "extreme benchmarking types" and their very deceptive graphs... these things are very fast and capable, and in practice the delta to the highest end cards less than they would have you think. This isn't like back in the day when most Macs came with an ATI RageII+ -- even the nVidia 5200 FX is a fully capable card with performance that would have dropped jaws 2 years ago... and if you buy a replacement from ATI then you're really only out ~$70 (the cost of the nVidia card at PC retail). Considering that OpenGL 1.5 is needed to take full advantage of all of these cards and its not out yet, I'd say that the graphics hardware is just fine. When Apple does get its PCIe machine out then the new PCIe cards that nVidia and ATI have been talking up should be available in decent quantity and reasonable prices, and Apple will deliver them.
As for the equipment in the low end machine -- Apple is putting the lowest cost drives into this machine and the sweet spot is 80 GB right now. At least its a 7200 RPM drive. That is plenty for many customers, and there is room to add another drive if you need a bit more... which you can source from the lowest cost supplier you can find. The same goes for RAM... upgrade if you need more, and buy it from the lowest cost supplier you can find. Apple will (almost) never be the cheapest source of these parts. They buy in large volumes with guaranteed long term (6-12 months anyhow) contracts so that they don't get killed if the part prices shoot up. The last time memory prices really shot way up (a decade or more ago now?) Apple was actually offering the best prices around on RAM, but that is extremely rare and may never happen again. Personally I don't want to buy large quantities of RAM from Apple, so I don't want them equipping their machines with lots of it. I'd rather they allow us to buy machines with no RAM, but they insist on shipping only machines that are actually testable (can't really argue with that!).
Oh, and the new dual 1.8 is definitely the single 1.6 upgraded. It has only 4 DIMM slots and the 1.6's PCI configuration.
Originally posted by DrBoar
The good thing is that Intel have used more than a year to get from 3060 MHz to 3400 MHz.
Intel released the 3.06 in November of 2002. The 3.4 has only truly been available for a month or so.
In addition, IBM is developing Strained Silicon Directly on Insulator(SSDOI), (how that might be different than just usng strained silicon and SOI I don't know, but it seems that it is somehow). If the current 970fx is not using SSDOI, then the prospects for it reaching 3.0GHz should be quite promising wouldn't you think? Hopefully, IBM will be releasing more tech information concerning the fx shortly.
This doesn't even include what improvements the next generation cpu, IBM 975 or whatever it is called, will include in it's architecture.
Originally posted by hobBIT
New Power5 derived CPUs available, but 'slow'?
These new chips might actually be available next month, but due to the same 90nm issues, might not go any faster than 2.5 odd GHz either, far below the magical 3GHz. However since they are Power5 derived chips with hyperthreading their performance is still a lot better than similarly clocked 970fx chips, hence worth for Apple to use.[/B]
Power5 is 130nm...
Originally posted by Programmer
Oh, and the new dual 1.8 is definitely the single 1.6 upgraded. It has only 4 DIMM slots and the 1.6's PCI configuration.
The whole time I was completely agreeing with you... Then I saw who posted it and told myself "That explains it".
Every post you put up has been right on the money. This was perfect programmer. It actually made me feel so much better about buying a dual 2.5. As you were writing it I was so close to put in my order.
I'm going to wait until WWDC and see if I can put my order in there instead. Perhaps I can jump on a waiting list if I'm a developer?
But you're right about the ram and the hard drives. It probably drives down the cost of the machine significantly... which leaves room for parts on water cooling, graphics cards, etc.
Graphics cards: You're right on that too... Apple can't jump into a new technology without it being driven down by PC sales...
5 stars on programmers post.
Originally posted by DrBoar
So we (and Apple) expected a speedbump about 6 months ago and then more through revision this summer. Now the speed bump arrives in this summer and the revision hopefully later this year.
I no longer believe Apple ever intended to release updates to the PowerMac G5 until June of this year...
A). Steve's "3Ghz Promise" essentially gave us the date for the next PowerMac update - June 2004.
C). Tom Boger of Apple stated that they didn't know they would miss the "3Ghz Promise" deadline until a few weeks ago.
This all points to Apple planning on one big update a year with no revisions in between. I'm sure they had big things planned for the 3Ghz update but a lot of things went wrong in addition to the 90nm transition. They tend to hold off on other improvements until the full package is ready.
We can only hope Apple learns from this and abandons the 1-year upgrade cycle however. It is just too long a wait. Certainly no one here believes the new 1.8/2.0/2.5 lineup can hold Apple until June 2005 right?
My point is, the dual 2.5 won't hold them until june of 2005... or rather july of 2005. I hope for apple's sake they at the very least upgrade these machines at MWSF'05.
I guess most folks upgrade every few years. In that time, even if you started with the high end system, you are way below what is high end by the time you buy a new system. I'm sure someone on these boards could have really used that extra 500MHz, but I suspect most of you are just suffering a let down from Unlce Steve's promisr falling through. I suggest getting over it and be happy with the very good hardware that Apple is shipping.
Originally posted by Carson O'Genic
Boy o' boy, the doom and gloom is really getting a bit too much around here. You folks sound like you upgrade your Macs every upgrade-cycle to capture the most out of every MHz available. Yet, some how I doubt all you chicken littles are that dependent on speed that these upgrades are going to cause your world to come to a sluggish halt.
I guess most folks upgrade every few years. In that time, even if you started with the high end system, you are way below what is high end by the time you buy a new system. I'm sure someone on these boards could have really used that extra 500MHz, but I suspect most of you are just suffering a let down from Uncle Steve's promisr falling through. I suggest getting over it and be happy with the very good hardware that Apple is shipping.
Nice post! Those folks you're describing are so me!