<strong>Do these new pm's have OS 9?</strong><hr></blockquote>
The tech specs say it ships with the machines. Since it also says: "3) 999MB maximum per application in Mac OS 9.", you can be sure that it boots into OS 9.
Well, it seems like Motorola is right when they said Apollo will get incremental clockspeed improvement. I don't expect Moto can work magic with its seven piper architecture. But what strikes me the most is the marginal improvement on its MPX bus. Tweaking to 167MHZ, when they should have bumped it up by 333MHZ. Whats so good about the increase in clock speed when the processor is sitting in the toilet waiting for the data to get flush. And why Apple uses 333MHZ RAM when the bus can only transfer at the speed of 167MHZ. Perhaps, Apple can save some cost in this case and purchase 167 MHZ RAM instead. I think the G4 is a damn good chip and if the engineer can think of a way to keep the processor busy, the Mac will surely make the P4 looks like a turtle. Motorola has embedded G5 available already and could have just bolted its new turbo charge system bus to the G4. And whats with the 6-8 weeks wait,we all thought its because of high inventory of older PM, but its certain, thats not the case now. Motorola is again having problems delivering the processors to Apple on time. If the tweaking of MPX bus is a cost issue for Apple, I don't see how Apple can afford to use other alternatives. IBM is rumored to have a cut down Power4 with Vector unit but if the cost issue has becoming an issue in Cupertino with Motorola, I don't see how Apple can afford to use IBM. Its definitely more expensive. I hope on January 03, Apple can pull out a suitable processor solution, hopefully the new rumored Power4, I really hope so.
I don't think you'll see new Powermacs in January. Apple seems to be moving away from announcing new Powermacs at Macworld events because sales seem to die a month or so before the event. The element of suprise is going to become more prevalent...while killing us in the process
Steve Jobs has done a terrific job ever since he returns to Apple. Their design team is awesome and their products are sexy as hell. Apple now also have the greatest selection of software and its digital hub concept and its new OS is great. I don't see why Motorola wouldn't take this opportunity to work with Apple, in the same way that Intel did on the PC. The PC is mature, their margin is cut to the bone and their only direction is to follow Bill Gates. Apple, on the other hand,is serious to grow and their approach could lead to great success. Motorola can sacrifice margins to benefit the increase in volume of Apple business. Steve was clearly targetting for the remaining 95% of the PC market. And if the processors are always up to spec, perhaps Apple market share will be in double digit even surpassing AMD. Everybody benefits. I just don't understand Motorolans. They got good chip fabrication know hows and they also got technology but why not settle the grudge with Steve Jobs and simply work together. It just doesn't make sense
I am feelin pretty sad here. I know Apple is doing t, but to hell with MOT. They are at 867MHz for the low end? Does it strike anyone that only ONE of the new models is faster than the old ones, MHz-wise?
No USB 2
No FireWire 2
Nothing better than MOT's crappy MPX bus on the G4
No AGP 8X
When did Apple stop inovating, stop leading the pack? Case design doesn't count for much inovation in my book. I was hoping to pick up a new tower, but not at those specs. They didn't even drop the price on SuperDrive or GeFroce Ti cards in the BTO options. I will not pay more just so my system controller is faster. The only parts I need talking fast are processor/memory/graphics card and those aren't capapble of pulling as much bandwidth as the 333DDR supports. How sucky. I just can't justify a pruchase as a poor college student. Oh well, maybe something nice is in store for the Winter. Cause I am underwhelmed across the board here.
I can't find a single comment about the seven pound heat sink on Apple's pages. How can they talk about dual processors and new system controller but not the heat sinks?!
The marketing folks must be taking over Apple.
And what about the port holes?
Well, if the heat sink help reduce the noise from 747-like to Piper Cub like, I may bite.
As others have noted, the G4's in the new PowerMac's have the same MPX bus speed limit between the CPU's and the system controller. I'm going to try to insert a block diagram from macteens.com here to illustrate. I've read through the Apple specs and description, which talks highly of the throughput from the RAM to the Controller, from L3 cache to the CPU, but it does not say what the throughput is from the system controller to the CPU's!!! What is the offical Apple line here? Is the block diagram from macteens.com correct, with the exception of the throughput from memory to system controller now being 2.6 GB/s instead of 2.1 GB/s?
If I was to get one of these new powermacs equipped with 2 CD burners, could I put a music CD in one of them (assuming the CD had no copy protection) and copy some of the songs to a blank CD in the other drive?
What I'm looking at is I'd like to be able to make custom CD's that have music from different artists and which would play on my home stereo cd player.
The new PM is not bad. Despite no USB2, Airport 2 and Gigawire. Those we can live with. But the front side bus of only 167 is simply hard to swallow. Apple has proven time again and again, its no fluke when they reestablish themselves from the Coma to today's success. But their processor partner, namely Motorola has tried time and time again to put them back to their death bed. Well, Motorola seems to be doing pretty well in this area, even better than Intel and Microsoft.
<strong>But what strikes me the most is the marginal improvement on its MPX bus. Tweaking to 167MHZ, when they should have bumped it up by 333MHZ.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You do realize that a "333MHz" bus is just a 167MHz bus with the clock read differently?
The PowerMac's bus just got 25% faster, at least on the top two models. That's a significant boost.
[quote]<strong>And why Apple uses 333MHZ RAM when the bus can only transfer at the speed of 167MHZ.</strong><hr></blockquote>
As on the XServe, the various DMA devices (HDDs, AGP, maybe FireWire?) can use the added bandwidth without competing with the CPU. That should translate directly to much improved performance for the video cards, and for Quartz Extreme, and also for reading and writing out large files. It should speed up virtual memory.
[quote]<strong>Perhaps, Apple can save some cost in this case and purchase 167 MHZ RAM instead.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There isn't any. SDR SDRAM goes up to 150MHz. To get RAM that can saturate a 167MHz bus - especially the extremely efficient MaxBus - you have to go DDR.
[quote]Originally posted by craig12co:
<strong>I am feelin pretty sad here. I know Apple is doing t, but to hell with MOT. They are at 867MHz for the low end? Does it strike anyone that only ONE of the new models is faster than the old ones, MHz-wise?</strong><hr></blockquote>
The one that's the same as the old top end, MHz-wise, has a 25% faster pipe to 50% faster RAM, and should have better graphics and hard drive performance than the old model. It has room for more drives in the case, as well.
[quote]<strong>Nothing better than MOT's crappy MPX bus on the G4</strong><hr></blockquote>
You're a student, so do some research: Go and find something better than a 167MHz MaxBus for general-purpose, real-world bandwidth. Not theoretical bandwidth, because that hides the quality of implementation of the bus (which is usually worse than you'd think). It's not DDR, but it's far and away the most efficient SDR bus available.
RAMBUS will be faster (much faster) in a few cases, but MaxBus will be faster in a few others.
[quote]<strong>I will not pay more just so my system controller is faster. The only parts I need talking fast are processor/memory/graphics card and those aren't capapble of pulling as much bandwidth as the 333DDR supports.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The processor in almost every PowerMac G4 ever shipped will take data as fast as 333 DDR RAM will serve it up, and demand more. They've always been starved on the bus, and there is in fact no bus currently on the (PC) market that could sate one more than occasionally. Let alone the graphics card. So, in fact, a 25% faster bus feeding the same processors represents a real speed boost. 50% faster RAM does too, for the simple reason that DMA devices like hard drives and graphics cards are no longer competing with the CPU for memory bandwidth.
If you measure "innovation" purely in terms of clock speed, Apple will disappoint you for the rest of your life, and you'll be blind to every innovation they succeed at, no matter how significant. Here's something to chew on: Engineers will tend to prefer the lowest clock speed they can get away with, especially on busses, because the higher the clock speed of a part gets, the more difficult and expensive it becomes to design it, build it, integrate it onto the board, and cool it.
I read to see if this was noted in a previous post. I have no idea if the Quicksilvers had the 'G4' on the side pannels. These new models do not and combined with their improved cooling could be a transitional case to something else. All of you whiners, go switch to DULL already and have the $699 comp become $3000 after stuff breaks right out of warranty. Not to mention you have a crappy OS then too. One more point to considder... two optical drive bays... no more zip drive!!!!
UNDERWHELMING. Where's the USB 2, 1394b, 133/ATA, 133 MHz 64 bit PCI and 8X AGP??!!
I can't justify purchasing any of this line for a still very small incremental increase in performance. Going from 15 GigaFlops to 18 Gigaflops is not my idea of significant progress. I guess I'll be waiting another 6 months for Apple to achieve a RADICAL speed, expansion and connectivity improvement.
I'll bet this new case sounds like the inside of a wind tunnel.
Comments
Nice little updates though. I'm tempted to get the low-end, update to Superdrive and better video card. $1999 not bad, not bad at all.
<strong>Do these new pm's have OS 9?</strong><hr></blockquote>
The tech specs say it ships with the machines. Since it also says: "3) 999MB maximum per application in Mac OS 9.", you can be sure that it boots into OS 9.
No USB 2
No FireWire 2
Nothing better than MOT's crappy MPX bus on the G4
No AGP 8X
When did Apple stop inovating, stop leading the pack? Case design doesn't count for much inovation in my book. I was hoping to pick up a new tower, but not at those specs. They didn't even drop the price on SuperDrive or GeFroce Ti cards in the BTO options. I will not pay more just so my system controller is faster. The only parts I need talking fast are processor/memory/graphics card and those aren't capapble of pulling as much bandwidth as the 333DDR supports. How sucky. I just can't justify a pruchase as a poor college student. Oh well, maybe something nice is in store for the Winter. Cause I am underwhelmed across the board here.
The marketing folks must be taking over Apple.
And what about the port holes?
Well, if the heat sink help reduce the noise from 747-like to Piper Cub like, I may bite.
[ 08-13-2002: Message edited by: Eirik Iverson ]</p>
[ 08-13-2002: Message edited by: Master Chief ]
[ 08-13-2002: Message edited by: Master Chief ]</p>
What I'm looking at is I'd like to be able to make custom CD's that have music from different artists and which would play on my home stereo cd player.
<strong>But what strikes me the most is the marginal improvement on its MPX bus. Tweaking to 167MHZ, when they should have bumped it up by 333MHZ.</strong><hr></blockquote>
You do realize that a "333MHz" bus is just a 167MHz bus with the clock read differently?
The PowerMac's bus just got 25% faster, at least on the top two models. That's a significant boost.
[quote]<strong>And why Apple uses 333MHZ RAM when the bus can only transfer at the speed of 167MHZ.</strong><hr></blockquote>
As on the XServe, the various DMA devices (HDDs, AGP, maybe FireWire?) can use the added bandwidth without competing with the CPU. That should translate directly to much improved performance for the video cards, and for Quartz Extreme, and also for reading and writing out large files. It should speed up virtual memory.
[quote]<strong>Perhaps, Apple can save some cost in this case and purchase 167 MHZ RAM instead.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There isn't any. SDR SDRAM goes up to 150MHz. To get RAM that can saturate a 167MHz bus - especially the extremely efficient MaxBus - you have to go DDR.
[quote]Originally posted by craig12co:
<strong>I am feelin pretty sad here. I know Apple is doing t, but to hell with MOT. They are at 867MHz for the low end? Does it strike anyone that only ONE of the new models is faster than the old ones, MHz-wise?</strong><hr></blockquote>
The one that's the same as the old top end, MHz-wise, has a 25% faster pipe to 50% faster RAM, and should have better graphics and hard drive performance than the old model. It has room for more drives in the case, as well.
[quote]<strong>Nothing better than MOT's crappy MPX bus on the G4</strong><hr></blockquote>
You're a student, so do some research: Go and find something better than a 167MHz MaxBus for general-purpose, real-world bandwidth. Not theoretical bandwidth, because that hides the quality of implementation of the bus (which is usually worse than you'd think). It's not DDR, but it's far and away the most efficient SDR bus available.
RAMBUS will be faster (much faster) in a few cases, but MaxBus will be faster in a few others.
[quote]<strong>I will not pay more just so my system controller is faster. The only parts I need talking fast are processor/memory/graphics card and those aren't capapble of pulling as much bandwidth as the 333DDR supports.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The processor in almost every PowerMac G4 ever shipped will take data as fast as 333 DDR RAM will serve it up, and demand more. They've always been starved on the bus, and there is in fact no bus currently on the (PC) market that could sate one more than occasionally. Let alone the graphics card. So, in fact, a 25% faster bus feeding the same processors represents a real speed boost. 50% faster RAM does too, for the simple reason that DMA devices like hard drives and graphics cards are no longer competing with the CPU for memory bandwidth.
If you measure "innovation" purely in terms of clock speed, Apple will disappoint you for the rest of your life, and you'll be blind to every innovation they succeed at, no matter how significant. Here's something to chew on: Engineers will tend to prefer the lowest clock speed they can get away with, especially on busses, because the higher the clock speed of a part gets, the more difficult and expensive it becomes to design it, build it, integrate it onto the board, and cool it.
Just a few things to think about.
[ 08-13-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
<strong>If I was to get one of these new powermacs equipped with 2 CD burners...</strong><hr></blockquote>
then you would be surprised to know what the eject button does <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
Guys...calm down. It's one thing to complain but if you do at least make sure you're technically up to snuff.
That's how _IT_ is done.
G-News
A@ron
[ 08-13-2002: Message edited by: A@ron ]</p>
I can't justify purchasing any of this line for a still very small incremental increase in performance. Going from 15 GigaFlops to 18 Gigaflops is not my idea of significant progress. I guess I'll be waiting another 6 months for Apple to achieve a RADICAL speed, expansion and connectivity improvement.
I'll bet this new case sounds like the inside of a wind tunnel.
[ 08-13-2002: Message edited by: Multimedia ]
[ 08-13-2002: Message edited by: Multimedia ]
[ 08-13-2002: Message edited by: Multimedia ]</p>
1) No AGP 8X
2) No Superdrive in lowend (eMac now has one)
3) No USB2 or Firewire 2 (gigawire)
4) 6-8 weeks on the 1.25 model!!!!!!!!!!! Intel will be at 3ghz by then!
<strong>sc_markt: yes that how all PC users do it, and all mac users who aren't limited to one puny drive do it.
That's how _IT_ is done.
G-News</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thx G-News.