One thing I'd like to see Apple pull off is immediate availability. It seems like they have a trend of announcing a product, and then saying, "Oh well, it's nice to dream about, but you can't have it for months." I think Apple needs to seriously work on their logistics and make sure that when they announce a prodduct, that it's actually available then. I have a few friends that are Mac Switchers and they are still waiting on their Mac Mini's. It was my understanding that Apple started doing their own press releases and events so they would be able to be more flexible with delivery dates rather than the fixed schedule of Mac shows. If that was the case, they have seriously fallen short.
I have the cash to drop right now on a fully decked out system, forget plastic. I'm just disappointed that it's going to be around June before Apple can get its act together and get us some new PM's.
I have the cash to drop right now on a fully decked out system, forget plastic. I'm just disappointed that it's going to be around June before Apple can get its act together and get us some new PM's.
I think It's funny. Your not the only one who is ready, but nobody is truely sure when they'll come out. It's interesting to go back through all the PM threads and look at what everybody expects to see, or predicts to see. Obviously no one knows but Apple, but there are quite a few different opinions as to what people think will, and wont be ready in the next update. My one prediction is that because there are so many different predictions on the subject that someone was bound to be right. I myself have no idea. I just know what it would take for me to buy one.
A lot of people don't want to buy a PM because they are waiting for PCI-E replacing AGP. 3GHz is just a nice-to-have. PCI-E is a must-have!
Exactly! For any tower type applications especially in the price range Apple plays in PCI-Express is mandatory. The only possible exception would be Hypertrasport right into a Nvidia Graphics subsystem. That would only be likely at the low end though.
Quote:
Well Apple can't wait a year for dual core technology, by that time AMD will be shipping mother boards supporting 8 cores and 4 cores cheap.!
Cheap as Apple defines cheap or cheap as the PC market defines cheap?
I think my cheap is not your cheap
I suspect in a few short months we will be buying PC's with 4 cores for the price of a SMP board today. The first few months will have a premium but that won't last long -- well atleast on the PC side of the aisle.
Note:
Beyond the need for Apple to have PCI-Express there is a huge need for them to get in touch with their customers and reconfigure the PowerMac. I believe that Apple can do this because they did an excellent job with the MINI. In effect that current PowerMac is a woefully underspecd machine barely able to meet customer demands.
I suspect in a few short months we will be buying PC's with 4 cores for the price of a SMP board today. The first few months will have a premium but that won't last long -- well atleast on the PC side of the aisle.
Note:
Beyond the need for Apple to have PCI-Express there is a huge need for them to get in touch with their customers and reconfigure the PowerMac. I believe that Apple can do this because they did an excellent job with the MINI. In effect that current PowerMac is a woefully underspecd machine barely able to meet customer demands.
Dave
I have to agree with that completely. The demands have also become so varied. As I was going through the forums, and looking at everyones predictions, I noticed there are wide varying degrees of what users need out of the next PowerMac. It strengthened my belief that there should be more than one PowerMac in todays marketplace, and a wider variety of configurations.
In effect that current PowerMac is a woefully underspecd machine barely able to meet customer demands.
Fluff. These are exactly the type of statements that I hear from Mac users who run glorified super internet surf boxes.
The Powermac was never meant to be everything a person needs "out the box" It's a platform that you build and add the components necessary to complete your task. I really have to laugh everytime I read something like this because I'm reminded of just how many people I come across on a daily basis that are doing "wonderful" things with G4s no less. The people that have the time to spout off about how the current Powermacs are so inadequate are almost invariably the ones not getting anything substantial done.
Onlooker's plight (lack of high end) 3D cards is the "only" excuse I'll personally accept as Quadros and FireGL boards aren't available. Other than that there's not much you cannot do on a Powermac.
Hmmmm not too freakin bad for a computer that hasn't been updated in 8 months. People stop pissing on our legs and telling us it's raining. The Powermac is fine and the next lineup "will" have PCI Express. I'm positive just because the time is right.
Exactly! For any tower type applications especially in the price range Apple plays in PCI-Express is mandatory. The only possible exception would be Hypertrasport right into a Nvidia Graphics subsystem. That would only be likely at the low end though.
Currently, for graphics, PCI-E is nothing but a bullet point on the feature list -- there is no performance benefit.
The rest of the system may benefit if you're doing high bandwidth work, but currently AGP 4x provides sufficient bandwidth for the tasks at hand and we've got double that. Latency doesn't improve with PCI-E, either. The major gain is bandwidth from the GPU back to the CPU, and that is only interesting if your GPU isn't busy with the graphics (Apple is pushing CoreImage in this direction though which may imply that PCI-E and Tiger will come fairly close together).
I suspect in a few short months we will be buying PC's with 4 cores for the price of a SMP board today. The first few months will have a premium but that won't last long -- well atleast on the PC side of the aisle.
You suspect wrong,
Starting production on the chips won't even start until august - september (at the earliest) for BOTH amd and intel. This accordingn to THEIR road maps. I guarantee these chips will be outrageously overpriced the first year - year and half. Along with the mobo's being overpriced. Amd's will come down a lot quicker than Intels. Just look at intel's p4's! 800 for a 3.8ghz!? are you kidding me? $450 for a 3.6ghz!? They ask insane prices for simple chips now, I can't imagine what they will ask when dual core comes out.
I always notice its the same people bitching about speed, yet I have never been handed any REAL WORLD proof about speed losses from these individuals. Just some stupid benchmarks that don't even have ANYTHING TO DO WITH REAL WORLD USE! It gets really tiring trying to defend something that I have personally used along with hundreds of thousands of other people.
As hmurchison said: "Fluff. These are exactly the type of statements that I hear from Mac users who run glorified super internet surf boxes."
I've been on record saying onlooker is right about professional graphics cards, but the argument stops there. There is NOTHING WRONG with the current line up of machines except hte price being 8 months old.
As hmurchison said: "Fluff. These are exactly the type of statements that I hear from Mac users who run glorified super internet surf boxes."
I've been on record saying onlooker is right about professional graphics cards, but the argument stops there. There is NOTHING WRONG with the current line up of machines except hte price being 8 months old.
Agreed, the current machines are fine albeit the for mentioned lack of professional graphic cards. The speed issue that people have if not in their mind is the OS, I still don?t think OSX is optimized enough (for my taste) for the G5. I still see ?The Spinny Wheel of Death? on regular bases and I want to shoot the finder out of Canon along with Hunter S. Thompsons remains.
I guarantee these chips will be outrageously overpriced the first year - year and half. Along with the mobo's being overpriced. Amd's will come down a lot quicker than Intels.
Actually the AMD Mobo's will be cheaper much quicker than you anticipated.
The current nForce4 (according to nvidia) should be able to use AMD's dual core processors when they are released. AMD were working closely with Nvidia when they designed their board.
But the chips... I have no doubt about that, I imagine they'll try and mark them up for as long as possible. The Opteron 252 is new, and pretty damn expensive.
As for the PowerMac, there are varying degrees of user needs, and I'm just not sure the one size fit's all approach is the best option anymore. Not with all the options available in the form of lesser expensive, but yet full featured workstations that are available in the PC, and also the options available to those that have greater demands.
There are Two motherboards available in the PowerMac right now, but they don't have the processor drop down any more. You used to be able to switch processors on the fly from the Apple store. Anyone remember that? It made choosing what you wanted, and then deciding what was important, and what you could discard, and live without for a while so much easier IMO. I believe processor constraints are to blame for that though.
I still don?t think OSX is optimized enough (for my taste) for the G5.
well that's why Tiger is coming around. A bit of ram goes a long way though. After I'm logged in for a couple days, basically my whole system stays wired in my ram and it launches extremely fast. actually, i'm not expert so maybe OS X doesnt do that, but obviously there's some sort of caching going on.
opinion/speculation question for the group regarding future powermacs and potential performance with FCP... I have some associates who are thinking about swithing from PC video editing to FCP...
I was just at the Crossgates Mall Applestore, and was playing with a dual 2.5 and a mess of HD files they had on board, doing some silly things in Motion (which I had never used before) I was flored by the performance... FLORED. I understand that this app is the first to really show the potential of core video. Now granted, i was on a workstation using a 30" display (which I will own, amazing...) and the high end video card, with a box running 2.5 gigs of RAM, so it was an optimal situation, but my PC using friends who are all about video/compositing in AE on there Dual Xeons... there mouths were on the floor. They said they have never seen anything like this on any platform (from a performance standpoint at least) and couldnt stop talking about it all night. At one point we had like 12 layers of HD doing crazy stuff, and everything was real time all the time.
All that being said, here's the question that I need opinions on. The rumor is, FCP 5 will be fully Core Video enabled like Motion is. What has kept my friends using PC hardware are the relativly cheap boards from Canapus (sp?) and the like that completly take out all rendering from there video workflow. (not just preview but final render is instant as well, at least with DV). Would FCP 5 running with no special hardware potentialy give this same level of performance if it is using a high end video card? What I hear from these editors is FCP's realtime effects are on preview only, but final renders are much slower than there systems which eleminate these renders... I wonder how well a dual 2.8 (dual core or whatever) loaded up with goodies will do in the render department? Any wild speculations appreciated!
Thank you. I too get tired of people lamenting how woefully slow the dual G5's are. This is pure rubbish depending on what needs you may have. The dual G5's still outperform more expensive hardware in some tasks.
The rumor is, FCP 5 will be fully Core Video enabled like Motion is. What has kept my friends using PC hardware are the relativly cheap boards from Canapus (sp?) and the like that completly take out all rendering from there video workflow
I'm getting the feeling that FCP will have seriously improved effect support due to Core Image/Video. The audio support will be improved due to QT7. Here's the really tantalizing stuff though. I just read that Motion is like a "proof of concept" technology for Shake. Honestly Apple hasn't really tweaked Shake all that much but NAB 2005 next month may change that. Ummmm Shake compositing at the speed of Core Image/Video is a wonderful thought.
As for the rendering Apple doesn't like hardware if they don't need it. One of the most requested features is background rendering and I think Apple will have this as well as improved Xgrid/Qmaster support. I don't think editors mind working with lower resolution proxies but when they're done they don't want extended render times to see the final result.
I'm REALLY hoping Apple doesn't wait until WWDC to update the Powermacs. I won't be buying one but I want to see the new OS and video stuff running on the fasted Mac hardware possible.
Man I have a lot to say that is really positive, but I just got back from the store with Star Wars Republic Commando, and I'm going to go kick some freaking online ass!
OK I can read now, you are questioning the 11/2003 announcement of the 1.8. I can buy that.
Quote:
Originally posted by emig647
Exactly
But it really depends on how Apple viewed the 1.8 addition, if they think that it was an update then they would have a different out look on it than we do. Did anything else change with the rest of the line? Like a slightly different chip set for the entire line? It doesn't have to be a faster processor to make it an update. Look at it like this: Apple waited a year and had little to show for it. IBM knows that they let Steve down not a way to a good working relationship. IBM and Apple know that they really need to come through. IBM recognized maybe early that clock speed was ending its life as an easy way to add performance. IBM had lots of experience using many different technologies on other chips for other customers. Maybe IBM made the original cell using a G5 and VMX units, ok maybe not. But I expect big things, because IBM has had lots of time to work on the problem. Time will tell.
Comments
Originally posted by Brendon
OK I can read now, you are questioning the 11/2003 announcement of the 1.8. I can buy that.
Exactly
I have the cash to drop right now on a fully decked out system, forget plastic. I'm just disappointed that it's going to be around June before Apple can get its act together and get us some new PM's.
Originally posted by Brian Green
I have the cash to drop right now on a fully decked out system, forget plastic. I'm just disappointed that it's going to be around June before Apple can get its act together and get us some new PM's.
I think It's funny. Your not the only one who is ready, but nobody is truely sure when they'll come out. It's interesting to go back through all the PM threads and look at what everybody expects to see, or predicts to see. Obviously no one knows but Apple, but there are quite a few different opinions as to what people think will, and wont be ready in the next update. My one prediction is that because there are so many different predictions on the subject that someone was bound to be right. I myself have no idea. I just know what it would take for me to buy one.
technology that is available.
All we can do now is hold on and see what happens.
Originally posted by smalM
Originally posted by wizard69
Right now the PowerMac is a dead end!
A lot of people don't want to buy a PM because they are waiting for PCI-E replacing AGP. 3GHz is just a nice-to-have. PCI-E is a must-have!
Exactly! For any tower type applications especially in the price range Apple plays in PCI-Express is mandatory. The only possible exception would be Hypertrasport right into a Nvidia Graphics subsystem. That would only be likely at the low end though.
Quote:
Well Apple can't wait a year for dual core technology, by that time AMD will be shipping mother boards supporting 8 cores and 4 cores cheap.!
Cheap as Apple defines cheap or cheap as the PC market defines cheap?
I think my cheap is not your cheap
I suspect in a few short months we will be buying PC's with 4 cores for the price of a SMP board today. The first few months will have a premium but that won't last long -- well atleast on the PC side of the aisle.
Note:
Beyond the need for Apple to have PCI-Express there is a huge need for them to get in touch with their customers and reconfigure the PowerMac. I believe that Apple can do this because they did an excellent job with the MINI. In effect that current PowerMac is a woefully underspecd machine barely able to meet customer demands.
Dave
Originally posted by wizard69
I suspect in a few short months we will be buying PC's with 4 cores for the price of a SMP board today. The first few months will have a premium but that won't last long -- well atleast on the PC side of the aisle.
Note:
Beyond the need for Apple to have PCI-Express there is a huge need for them to get in touch with their customers and reconfigure the PowerMac. I believe that Apple can do this because they did an excellent job with the MINI. In effect that current PowerMac is a woefully underspecd machine barely able to meet customer demands.
Dave
I have to agree with that completely. The demands have also become so varied. As I was going through the forums, and looking at everyones predictions, I noticed there are wide varying degrees of what users need out of the next PowerMac. It strengthened my belief that there should be more than one PowerMac in todays marketplace, and a wider variety of configurations.
In effect that current PowerMac is a woefully underspecd machine barely able to meet customer demands.
Fluff. These are exactly the type of statements that I hear from Mac users who run glorified super internet surf boxes.
The Powermac was never meant to be everything a person needs "out the box" It's a platform that you build and add the components necessary to complete your task. I really have to laugh everytime I read something like this because I'm reminded of just how many people I come across on a daily basis that are doing "wonderful" things with G4s no less. The people that have the time to spout off about how the current Powermacs are so inadequate are almost invariably the ones not getting anything substantial done.
Onlooker's plight (lack of high end) 3D cards is the "only" excuse I'll personally accept as Quadros and FireGL boards aren't available. Other than that there's not much you cannot do on a Powermac.
Try again people.
Hmmmm not too freakin bad for a computer that hasn't been updated in 8 months. People stop pissing on our legs and telling us it's raining. The Powermac is fine and the next lineup "will" have PCI Express. I'm positive just because the time is right.
Originally posted by wizard69
Exactly! For any tower type applications especially in the price range Apple plays in PCI-Express is mandatory. The only possible exception would be Hypertrasport right into a Nvidia Graphics subsystem. That would only be likely at the low end though.
Currently, for graphics, PCI-E is nothing but a bullet point on the feature list -- there is no performance benefit.
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...0/pcie-04.html
The rest of the system may benefit if you're doing high bandwidth work, but currently AGP 4x provides sufficient bandwidth for the tasks at hand and we've got double that. Latency doesn't improve with PCI-E, either. The major gain is bandwidth from the GPU back to the CPU, and that is only interesting if your GPU isn't busy with the graphics (Apple is pushing CoreImage in this direction though which may imply that PCI-E and Tiger will come fairly close together).
Originally posted by wizard69
I suspect in a few short months we will be buying PC's with 4 cores for the price of a SMP board today. The first few months will have a premium but that won't last long -- well atleast on the PC side of the aisle.
You suspect wrong,
Starting production on the chips won't even start until august - september (at the earliest) for BOTH amd and intel. This accordingn to THEIR road maps. I guarantee these chips will be outrageously overpriced the first year - year and half. Along with the mobo's being overpriced. Amd's will come down a lot quicker than Intels. Just look at intel's p4's! 800 for a 3.8ghz!? are you kidding me? $450 for a 3.6ghz!? They ask insane prices for simple chips now, I can't imagine what they will ask when dual core comes out.
I always notice its the same people bitching about speed, yet I have never been handed any REAL WORLD proof about speed losses from these individuals. Just some stupid benchmarks that don't even have ANYTHING TO DO WITH REAL WORLD USE! It gets really tiring trying to defend something that I have personally used along with hundreds of thousands of other people.
As hmurchison said: "Fluff. These are exactly the type of statements that I hear from Mac users who run glorified super internet surf boxes."
I've been on record saying onlooker is right about professional graphics cards, but the argument stops there. There is NOTHING WRONG with the current line up of machines except hte price being 8 months old.
Originally posted by emig647
As hmurchison said: "Fluff. These are exactly the type of statements that I hear from Mac users who run glorified super internet surf boxes."
I've been on record saying onlooker is right about professional graphics cards, but the argument stops there. There is NOTHING WRONG with the current line up of machines except hte price being 8 months old.
Agreed, the current machines are fine albeit the for mentioned lack of professional graphic cards. The speed issue that people have if not in their mind is the OS, I still don?t think OSX is optimized enough (for my taste) for the G5. I still see ?The Spinny Wheel of Death? on regular bases and I want to shoot the finder out of Canon along with Hunter S. Thompsons remains.
Originally posted by emig647
I guarantee these chips will be outrageously overpriced the first year - year and half. Along with the mobo's being overpriced. Amd's will come down a lot quicker than Intels.
Actually the AMD Mobo's will be cheaper much quicker than you anticipated.
The current nForce4 (according to nvidia) should be able to use AMD's dual core processors when they are released. AMD were working closely with Nvidia when they designed their board.
But the chips... I have no doubt about that, I imagine they'll try and mark them up for as long as possible. The Opteron 252 is new, and pretty damn expensive.
As for the PowerMac, there are varying degrees of user needs, and I'm just not sure the one size fit's all approach is the best option anymore. Not with all the options available in the form of lesser expensive, but yet full featured workstations that are available in the PC, and also the options available to those that have greater demands.
There are Two motherboards available in the PowerMac right now, but they don't have the processor drop down any more. You used to be able to switch processors on the fly from the Apple store. Anyone remember that? It made choosing what you wanted, and then deciding what was important, and what you could discard, and live without for a while so much easier IMO. I believe processor constraints are to blame for that though.
Originally posted by Relic
I still don?t think OSX is optimized enough (for my taste) for the G5.
well that's why Tiger is coming around. A bit of ram goes a long way though. After I'm logged in for a couple days, basically my whole system stays wired in my ram and it launches extremely fast. actually, i'm not expert so maybe OS X doesnt do that, but obviously there's some sort of caching going on.
Sometimes it's easy to understand why ignorance is bliss
Originally posted by Relic
... and I want to shoot the finder out of Canon along with Hunter S. Thompsons remains.
That guy couldn't go out in any better way
As far as NForce4 mobos, thats really cool. But the cpu's will still cost a lot... especially intel.
I was just at the Crossgates Mall Applestore, and was playing with a dual 2.5 and a mess of HD files they had on board, doing some silly things in Motion (which I had never used before) I was flored by the performance... FLORED. I understand that this app is the first to really show the potential of core video. Now granted, i was on a workstation using a 30" display (which I will own, amazing...) and the high end video card, with a box running 2.5 gigs of RAM, so it was an optimal situation, but my PC using friends who are all about video/compositing in AE on there Dual Xeons... there mouths were on the floor. They said they have never seen anything like this on any platform (from a performance standpoint at least) and couldnt stop talking about it all night. At one point we had like 12 layers of HD doing crazy stuff, and everything was real time all the time.
All that being said, here's the question that I need opinions on. The rumor is, FCP 5 will be fully Core Video enabled like Motion is. What has kept my friends using PC hardware are the relativly cheap boards from Canapus (sp?) and the like that completly take out all rendering from there video workflow. (not just preview but final render is instant as well, at least with DV). Would FCP 5 running with no special hardware potentialy give this same level of performance if it is using a high end video card? What I hear from these editors is FCP's realtime effects are on preview only, but final renders are much slower than there systems which eleminate these renders... I wonder how well a dual 2.8 (dual core or whatever) loaded up with goodies will do in the render department? Any wild speculations appreciated!
Thank you. I too get tired of people lamenting how woefully slow the dual G5's are. This is pure rubbish depending on what needs you may have. The dual G5's still outperform more expensive hardware in some tasks.
The rumor is, FCP 5 will be fully Core Video enabled like Motion is. What has kept my friends using PC hardware are the relativly cheap boards from Canapus (sp?) and the like that completly take out all rendering from there video workflow
I'm getting the feeling that FCP will have seriously improved effect support due to Core Image/Video. The audio support will be improved due to QT7. Here's the really tantalizing stuff though. I just read that Motion is like a "proof of concept" technology for Shake. Honestly Apple hasn't really tweaked Shake all that much but NAB 2005 next month may change that. Ummmm Shake compositing at the speed of Core Image/Video is a wonderful thought.
As for the rendering Apple doesn't like hardware if they don't need it. One of the most requested features is background rendering and I think Apple will have this as well as improved Xgrid/Qmaster support. I don't think editors mind working with lower resolution proxies but when they're done they don't want extended render times to see the final result.
I'm REALLY hoping Apple doesn't wait until WWDC to update the Powermacs. I won't be buying one but I want to see the new OS and video stuff running on the fasted Mac hardware possible.
Originally posted by emig647
Exactly
But it really depends on how Apple viewed the 1.8 addition, if they think that it was an update then they would have a different out look on it than we do. Did anything else change with the rest of the line? Like a slightly different chip set for the entire line? It doesn't have to be a faster processor to make it an update. Look at it like this: Apple waited a year and had little to show for it. IBM knows that they let Steve down not a way to a good working relationship. IBM and Apple know that they really need to come through. IBM recognized maybe early that clock speed was ending its life as an easy way to add performance. IBM had lots of experience using many different technologies on other chips for other customers. Maybe IBM made the original cell using a G5 and VMX units, ok maybe not. But I expect big things, because IBM has had lots of time to work on the problem. Time will tell.