Rev B. iMac G5 question from Mac Newbie
Hello - a quick question for you experts:
I'm awaiting the revision of this computer to see what the video card update may (or may not) be. I know nobody has an exact time-frame on when the next update will happen although it seems that it could be at any minute or up to 4 months from now from what i've seen on these and other boards. I'm a recent convert to Macs - had a PB but sold it so, the speculation game here is new to me. I was wondering what peoples realistic thoughts were on this in regards to what Apple would MOST likely upgrade - I would pull the trigger and order now if I knew that the upgrade may only be a .1 or .2 mhz bump. Thanks.
Steve
I'm awaiting the revision of this computer to see what the video card update may (or may not) be. I know nobody has an exact time-frame on when the next update will happen although it seems that it could be at any minute or up to 4 months from now from what i've seen on these and other boards. I'm a recent convert to Macs - had a PB but sold it so, the speculation game here is new to me. I was wondering what peoples realistic thoughts were on this in regards to what Apple would MOST likely upgrade - I would pull the trigger and order now if I knew that the upgrade may only be a .1 or .2 mhz bump. Thanks.
Steve
Comments
IF there will most "likely" be NO graphics card improvement then I would be inclined to buy now. I really dont care about .1-.3 MGHZ improvement. I would be willing to wait till June to get a graphics improvement however.
The thing that gets me is, I have a 6 year old PC "dell" and it has a 64mg graphics card, I just cant see buying a brand new awesome imac and have the same size graphics card.
Maybe im mistaken and the card in the Imac is WAY better than my 6 year old card, but still............
so what are your thoughts on what improvments will be made and when?
thanks for your time.
trout
Steve
please share your thoughts.
trout
Oh, and if you truly have a six year old machine (we're talking 1999 here) there is NO chance that the GPU in your machine is better than the one in the iMac. Really, it's probably not even close.
Making a quick look through Tom's hardware it looks like the very top of the line GPU from march 1999 was a TNT2 with 32 Mb of RAM, and the runner up was the Voodoo3 which came with 16 Mb of RAM. I don't know if it's even possible to have gotten a 64 Mb card in 1999.
If you think a TNT2 is anywhere remotely in the neighborhood of the performance of the iMac GPU, well, you're sadly mistaken!
Originally posted by Flounder
Well, even if the graphic card doesn't get an update, I'd say there is a good chance of a HD bump, which would be welcome and possibly a move up in base RAM to 512, since the powerbook had moved up to 512 standard (and presumably the powermacs will follow once they are updated).
Oh, and if you truly have a six year old machine (we're talking 1999 here) there is NO chance that the GPU in your machine is better than the one in the iMac. Really, it's probably not even close.
Making a quick look through Tom's hardware it looks like the very top of the line GPU from march 1999 was a TNT2 with 32 Mb of RAM, and the runner up was the Voodoo3 which came with 16 Mb of RAM. I don't know if it's even possible to have gotten a 64 Mb card in 1999.
If you think a TNT2 is anywhere remotely in the neighborhood of the performance of the iMac GPU, well, you're sadly mistaken!
Yeah! The iMacs graphics card is only 3-2 years old, tops! Seriously though, I'm in the EXACT same boat as you. I'm waiting until august for a Graphics card update (rev. B would be nice as well) and then getting an iMac if it happens. I just can't justify spending $2400 cdn (Including a gig of ram and 160 gig HD) for a computer with a $20 permanent video card. I'm confident that it'll be updated though, just wait and see.
Not saying it is a good as the Imac, I hope not, just saying that it has 64Megs and I would like to get one with more megs in a brand new computer.
thanks
Trout
Just hope it will have the 8x superdrive, more memory, i'm hoping too for a better graphic card, at least for the 20',
bluetooth 2, and hope we'll be suprising with other cool new stuff.
Originally posted by keikojaa
Waiting for the same thing. REv B. I have a emac 800mhz and as soon as the imac update is out,with tiger and ilife 05 i will buy it...
Just hope it will have the 8x superdrive, more memory, i'm hoping too for a better graphic card, at least for the 20',
bluetooth 2, and hope we'll be suprising with other cool new stuff.
If they put a new graphics card in, they'll most likely put it in the high end 17" and the 20". I personally have no interest in the 20", as I can't afford it, and I have no use for it. And a 8x super drive would rock. Whats the major difference between the G5 in now, and the Rev.B G5? Is there a major performance difference?
Trout, if you got a dell with 64 MB of VRAM in "1999/2000", you must have paid top dollar. Complete systems were shipping at that point with 64MB of system memory (the iMac; and in fact for half the year, it shipped with 32 MB. It shipped with 8MB VRAM.)
In mid-2001 (a year and a half after you bought your system), a friend of mine who games constantly told me he used a system with 128 MB of system memory. (I remember, because when I told him how much memory I put in my then-new Powermac--640MB--he spewed coke all over the backseat of my car. And my PMac at the time shipped with a 32MB standard video card.) I don't know what his graphics card was, but I doubt it was as much as his system memory, and probably not even half.
As far as I can tell, the first 64MB card became available in Dec 99: the Rage Fury MAXX. And that only achieved that number by slapping 2 Rage 128s with 32MB each together. The highest end NVidia card as of Dec 1999 shipped with 32 MB VRAM.
But, anyway, point taken. I'm just saying that it's not fair to compare the extreme high end of one year to a mid-low end of a few years later. Is the iMac's video better than your 5 year old dell's (despite the similarity of memory)? Yes. Without question.
Originally posted by DCQ
Expect Rev b sometime in the may/june timeframe.
Trout, if you got a dell with 64 MB of VRAM in "1999/2000", you must have paid top dollar. Complete systems were shipping at that point with 64MB of system memory (the iMac; and in fact for half the year, it shipped with 32 MB. It shipped with 8MB VRAM.)
In mid-2001 (a year and a half after you bought your system), a friend of mine who games constantly told me he used a system with 128 MB of system memory. (I remember, because when I told him how much memory I put in my then-new Powermac--640MB--he spewed coke all over the backseat of my car. And my PMac at the time shipped with a 32MB standard video card.) I don't know what his graphics card was, but I doubt it was as much as his system memory, and probably not even half.
As far as I can tell, the first 64MB card became available in Dec 99: the Rage Fury MAXX. And that only achieved that number by slapping 2 Rage 128s with 32MB each together. The highest end NVidia card as of Dec 1999 shipped with 32 MB VRAM.
But, anyway, point taken. I'm just saying that it's not fair to compare the extreme high end of one year to a mid-low end of a few years later. Is the iMac's video better than your 5 year old dell's (despite the similarity of memory)? Yes. Without question.
Thats not really point though. The point is that he bought a computer (however long ago, 2000, 2001, whatever) and it came with the current amount of video memory shipping in Apple's rather expensive non upgradable rig, which really is not acceptable by todays standards, when you take into consideration that you'll never even be able to raise it any. Apple should have a 64/128 option, similar to what they have available in the powerbooks, imo. Anyways, hopefully they'll have a 128 in their by august.
*****The gap between the FX 5600 Ultra and the FX 5800 is a big one - too big, actually. Here, NVIDIA was apparently overzealous in wielding the red pen!
By contrast, we were more pleased by the FX 5200 Ultra. With respect to performance, the card can hold its own quite well against the Radeon 9000 PRO/ 9200. As a DirectX 9 card, it is already superior to the others on paper, and it also offers multi-sampling FSAA and relatively fast anisotropic filtering. Because of ATi's driver problems, it wasn't possible to make direct comparisons with the 9000/ 9200 series, which still use the slow SuperSampling, but from past experiences with the 9000/ 8500 FSAA test, it can be concluded that the FX 5200 Ultra should be the better performer here. The gains compared to the GeForce4 MX440-8x are quite clear as well. In the entry-level segment, the FX 5200 Ultra is therefore a good choice. It's not certain, however, as to whether the moderate performance of the card really allows the DirectX 9 features in games to be used. Tests with modern games such as Splinter Cell or Aquanox 2 (internal tests with DX 9 Beta Patch) show that the card is actually too slow for this.******
That does not really sound all that bad to me. Am I confused? I truely want a better graphics card, HOWEVER, if the current one can handle iDVD and iMovie, and i Photo and play movies and play COMMAND AND CONQUER GENERALS, I guess it is adaquate for ME. What do you think about that??? Mqaybe it doesnt suck after all
trout
Originally posted by trout
I did some research on the *Current* card in tyhe iMac, the 5200 ultra. And this is directly from Tom's site:
*****The gap between the FX 5600 Ultra and the FX 5800 is a big one - too big, actually. Here, NVIDIA was apparently overzealous in wielding the red pen!
By contrast, we were more pleased by the FX 5200 Ultra. With respect to performance, the card can hold its own quite well against the Radeon 9000 PRO/ 9200. As a DirectX 9 card, it is already superior to the others on paper, and it also offers multi-sampling FSAA and relatively fast anisotropic filtering. Because of ATi's driver problems, it wasn't possible to make direct comparisons with the 9000/ 9200 series, which still use the slow SuperSampling, but from past experiences with the 9000/ 8500 FSAA test, it can be concluded that the FX 5200 Ultra should be the better performer here. The gains compared to the GeForce4 MX440-8x are quite clear as well. In the entry-level segment, the FX 5200 Ultra is therefore a good choice. It's not certain, however, as to whether the moderate performance of the card really allows the DirectX 9 features in games to be used. Tests with modern games such as Splinter Cell or Aquanox 2 (internal tests with DX 9 Beta Patch) show that the card is actually too slow for this.******
That does not really sound all that bad to me. Am I confused? I truely want a better graphics card, HOWEVER, if the current one can handle iDVD and iMovie, and i Photo and play movies and play COMMAND AND CONQUER GENERALS, I guess it is adaquate for ME. What do you think about that??? Mqaybe it doesnt suck after all
trout
By todays standards, its a sub-par card. You'll be able to watch movies and DVD's fine, and it should handle most games alright, but saying its better than the 9200 isn't really saying anything at all. In fact, its pretty bottom of the barrel, check out that same reviews benchmarks. It got 9.9 FPS in Unreal Tournament 2003 with some of the effects turned up, which is unplayable. Also, this is an old review, as it doesn't mention any of the X800, or 6800's at all, or even the XT line for that matter, so the card has been pushed even lower by the new crop of graphic cards out on the market. Don't expect to do any heavy gaming with this (I want to do a moderate amount of gaming, hence my desire to wait for a graphics update). Its a fine card for movies, and web surfing etc, but very poor in terms of games.
My advice is to wait.
Originally posted by Addison
I am expecting a processor bump 8x burner and 512mb ram. Doubt that the video card will get much better, however... I expect this to happen at the same time as Tiger is launched and that will provide a decent boost to video performance.
My advice is to wait.
Really, you don't think Apple will update the video card? Personally, I'd take that over 512 of ram any day. I wouldn't be surprised if they updated the video between now and the end of summer, simply because its necessary to keep the platform viable. Besides, its not as if they have a hard time getting ahold of 128mb gpu's, as they've done it easily enough with the powerbook. I'm going to say that they will update, as to do otherwise would put them behind significantly.
"I highly doubt that they will upgrade the GPU, likely a speed bump to 2Ghz, and 512mg ram with Tiger for the same price or 1-200$ less"
I said what about the GPU, and he said " it does what it was designed to do, and does it well" " if your a gammer, he said, get a powermac, you can get any GPU you want"
so I dont know if that means ANYTHING, but that is what the Apple guys said to me. needless to say, I wish he had said something else
trout
Originally posted by trout
I sure hope your right and they do upgrade the GPU, for what its worth, I went to the Apple store this last weekend and the sales rep. said this
"I highly doubt that they will upgrade the GPU, likely a speed bump to 2Ghz, and 512mg ram with Tiger for the same price or 1-200$ less"
I said what about the GPU, and he said " it does what it was designed to do, and does it well" " if your a gammer, he said, get a powermac, you can get any GPU you want"
so I dont know if that means ANYTHING, but that is what the Apple guys said to me. needless to say, I wish he had said something else
trout
Rule #1 Sales rep's know nothing, and are typically the least trustworth source of news around. That said, your best bet is to just wait and see, though I can't understand why Apple wouldn't announce what their plans are, so people could decide to wait, or get one now. Oh well.
after that, no matter what im buying it! ill be 31 on the 21st, and my wife says she will buy me a iMac for my birthday. I can get one now, but might as well wait til then.
trout
Originally posted by Qchem
If you're wanting cutting edge graphics performance don't buy an iMac. The current gpu in the iMac will run UT2004 and Doom3 (although not on top quality settings), if you want uber gaming performance you either want a powermac, or an x86 based pc.
No, I don't want cuting edge graphics performance, I want adequate performance, without shelling out for a Powermac (since since in getting a PM with one cpu, and I can't afford one with two). I highly doubt that the iMac, with the current GPU, will run doom 3 in any playable form. Maybe if you turn everything off, then you might get 20 fps. I want to be able to play games however, and no be limited after paying the amount of money that is being asked for the iMac. Right now I have a gaming PC, but I need to cut down on gaming, and want a stable OS to work on papers for my university program, though I still wish to be able to play the occasional game. Unfortunatly, the 5200 Ultra does deliver "unparalleled 2D and 3D graphics performance and an immersive, photorealistic gaming experience". I have faith in Apple, so I'm going to wait, and see what they put in after its update.