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New G% macs - "fastest PC"

  • Thread starter Thread starter Warren Liebman
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charlibob said:
I am sure it will set a new standard for a short while.
Click to expand...
Even if Apple's claims were inflated, I think the G5 system will be very competitive for more than a short while. The G4 was arguably a top-class processor when it first came out. But, Motorola basically dropped development while the P4 rocketed ahead, and the G4 was hobbled by old bus and memory architectures. This has all changed.

There are two reasons to think the G5 will be far more competitive than the G4 ever was. One reason is the use of top-class industry-standard technology throughout the system. All the bottlenecks that hobbled the G4 have been removed. Use of Hypertransport, the fastest standard RAM available, PCI-X slots, and 8x AGP graphics cards will allow the processor to really stretch its legs. Second-processor efficiency is up from 50% to 90%. And, USB 2.0 support will make it compatible with all the fastest peripherals. Apple is adopting the best technologies available and shedding its old not-invented-here myopia. This is not just a new processor. It is a very competitive system in all respects. The second reason is that the switch from Motorola to IBM bodes well for future processor development. Motorola had no incentive to push the G4, and it showed. IBM, on the other hand, has ambitious plans to use the G5 to compete with Dell in the small-business server market. It has a road map to the next generation chip, and it has promised 9-nanometer fabrication (which would allow larger on-chip memory caches and, thus, much faster throughput) and 3GHz within 12 months.

OS X is getting faster and better by the month, and Longhorn is a long way off. Whether the G5 is the absolute fastest or not, it will clearly give Wintel/WAMD a run for their money, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Professional Mac users finally have a good reason to upgrade. The prices, while not cheap, are competitive in the big-horsepower market.

Further, there is good potential for Apple/IBM to make inroads into enterprise computing markets. As the business sector shifts from Windows to UNIX, Apple gains some leverage. Darwin is a strong competitor in the UNIX world, and IBM has an incentive to develop it further for its servers. The sofware base is growing fast. The number of software developers for OS X has tripled in the last year. And, lots of UNIX apps are being ported with relative ease to OS X and Darwin. Many are free.

Apple is in the strongest competitive position it's ever seen since the introduction of the first Mac. We can only hope it won't drop the ball.

--
'May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.' -
Dwight D. Eisenhower
 
Why is it that every time a thread is posted about Apple, Windoze users just have to chime in with why they think Macs suck. I just wonder how many of these people have ever actually used a Mac and if they have, how long ago was it? OS 6? Before?

Mac users know how enjoyable it is to actually work in an environment in which they can get work done, not put up with blue screens of death or the virus du jour

There's a reason why Apple enjoys product loyalty that no other computer manufacturers can come close to. Apparently, this seems to threaten Windoze users somehow because they are so quick to jump on anyone who writes a kind word about Macs. Go figure.

Well, I'm sure the fur will really fly now, so flame away.

--
Kind Regards,
-Billie
http://homepage.mac.com/brkhan/Menu14.html


Warren Liebman said:
in reverse order

1.6GHz $1999 1.8GHz $2399 Dual 2GHz $2999
Enclosures! 9 fans!. but quieter,
System - G5 System Controller - dedicated bandwidth to each
subsystem. IBM is fabricating it. 6x faster than G4, 8GB
bandwidth, 1processor doesn't slow down the other one. 400mhz
DDR memory, AGP 8x Pro, 133mhz PCI-X slots. Hypertransport. Serial
ATA. 1.5GB/s bandwidth. independent interfaces to each drive. Rest
of the i/o - high performance. optical digital i/o and analog i/o,
fw800 ,usb 2.0
Single/Dual processors. Up to 8GB Memory. Can talk to mem @
6.4GB/s. 4x Superdrive in each. Geforce fx5200 in lower, radeon
9600 pro in higher mode.
Introduced Dr. Johnny Kelly the 3rd on stage.
This is a new generation architecture.
Massivly parallel. Up to 250 inflight instructions. -- can be
processed at the same time. The G4 can do 16. Floating point
"monster". Two fully symetric integer units. massive branch
prediction logic.
fastest front sidebus - ever. designed for dual processor systems.
We're calling it the G5. It is a 64-bit processor. The first first
64-bit desktop processor. Runs our existing 32-bit apps no
problems.
The Chip - we turned to IBM several years ago.
The Chip, the System, The Product
We are delivering today - the Worlds Fastest Personal Computer.
Click to expand...
 
I'm not in the Mac bashing camp but...by you saying "Windoze" is absolutely no different than the people you are calling out in your email for bad mouthing mac. Ironic, eh?
Billie said:
Mac users know how enjoyable it is to actually work in an
environment in which they can get work done, not put up with blue
screens of death or the virus du jour
There's a reason why Apple enjoys product loyalty that no other
computer manufacturers can come close to. Apparently, this seems
to threaten Windoze users somehow because they are so quick to jump
on anyone who writes a kind word about Macs. Go figure.

Well, I'm sure the fur will really fly now, so flame away.

--
Kind Regards,
-Billie
http://homepage.mac.com/brkhan/Menu14.html


Warren Liebman said:
in reverse order

1.6GHz $1999 1.8GHz $2399 Dual 2GHz $2999
Enclosures! 9 fans!. but quieter,
System - G5 System Controller - dedicated bandwidth to each
subsystem. IBM is fabricating it. 6x faster than G4, 8GB
bandwidth, 1processor doesn't slow down the other one. 400mhz
DDR memory, AGP 8x Pro, 133mhz PCI-X slots. Hypertransport. Serial
ATA. 1.5GB/s bandwidth. independent interfaces to each drive. Rest
of the i/o - high performance. optical digital i/o and analog i/o,
fw800 ,usb 2.0
Single/Dual processors. Up to 8GB Memory. Can talk to mem @
6.4GB/s. 4x Superdrive in each. Geforce fx5200 in lower, radeon
9600 pro in higher mode.
Introduced Dr. Johnny Kelly the 3rd on stage.
This is a new generation architecture.
Massivly parallel. Up to 250 inflight instructions. -- can be
processed at the same time. The G4 can do 16. Floating point
"monster". Two fully symetric integer units. massive branch
prediction logic.
fastest front sidebus - ever. designed for dual processor systems.
We're calling it the G5. It is a 64-bit processor. The first first
64-bit desktop processor. Runs our existing 32-bit apps no
problems.
The Chip - we turned to IBM several years ago.
The Chip, the System, The Product
We are delivering today - the Worlds Fastest Personal Computer.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
--
http://www.joesimages.com
 
rwh said:
Majikthize said:
The real-world tests Apple demonstrated were far more impressive.
Photoshop actions, 3D rendering, and statistical number-crunching
were twice as fast as the dual-Xeon Dell. Was the Dell set up in
the optimum configuration? I don't know. We'll have to wait until
the G5s start shipping for some independent tests. What is clear,
though, is that we finally have a real race.
Click to expand...
I think it is important to mention that the Photoshop demo started
by loading a 360MB image. The Mac clearly loaded it faster than
the Dell but they didn't mention what the disk sub-system was on
the Dell. The Mac was using serial ATA, and I'd be willing to bet
the Dell was using IDE rather than multiple ultra-wide 10K SCSI
disks :-)
Click to expand...
Yep. ATA 100. SCSI RAID would cost a lot more, though, and could be added to either machine for even better performance. I should think Dell would upgrade to SATA soon, which will give us a fairer comparison. Maybe the G5 had a drive with a cache-size advantage. ATA100 vs. SATA might not be much of an advantage for the G5 with only a single drive - few single drives can saturate even an ATA 100 bus. SATA will really pay off with ATA RAIDs.
rwh said:
Once the image was loaded, the Mac was noticeably faster
than the Dell, but certainly not 2x as fast.

I like the new Macs, and when its combined with the features of
OS X it looks a lot nicer than an Intel box with XP. The big question
is whether it is worth $3K.
Click to expand...
A dual Xeon is in the same price ballpark. The Dell Apple used was $4,000, but I configured a comparable system on the Dell site for $3,374. You're right about the disk subsystem.

Let's face it, these are premium machines. Let's hope the benefits trickle down to the $1,000-$1,500 price point and into laptops.

--
'May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.' -
Dwight D. Eisenhower
 
Well, I love MAC/PC whatever... but they need to do a comparison test on Doom III.... oh yeah, that isn't ported to the mac.

As soon as Apple makes inroads on software, then I will be the first to line up. However, I go to CompUSA or similar and see 2 shelves for Mac software, but 40% of the store selling PC software. That is the real difference, choices!!!

I do love the Apple LCD panels...

OS
 
I have a disk that includes NT 4 for:

Alpha, MIPS, Rx00, PowerPC and Intel systems. I assumed everyone's NT4 disks were like this, but I guess I got it through my old college.

Jason
Yu-Lin Chan said:
invisible1 said:
You could also run Windows NT on Alpha systems.
Click to expand...
Sure you can. There is a version for Alpha, but Microsoft has
stopped updating it, so I think the last version was NT 3.5.
Click to expand...
 
Mac people think that only Macs can do anything related to graphics or video. There may have been a time that this was true.... but no more. Macs really are teh dying breed. Just look at software. Even the Capture One software is always later to come out with the Mac version, and lots of software doesn't even come in a Mac version. I really don't think there are things that Macs can do that PC's can't... but there really are lots of things that PC's can do and Mac's can't. I understand if you've always used Mac and want to stay with it.... but these days.. its becoming very limiting.

Kiran
Billie said:
Why is it that every time a thread is posted about Apple, Windoze
users just have to chime in with why they think Macs suck.
Click to expand...
 
Don't bother. None of those "40% of the store" software can run on it. The Itanium cannot run a single Windows 32-bit application. You can do it on an AMD 64-bit but only in emulation. However, the G5 will run the 64-bit OS, 64-bit applications, and 32-bit applications concurrantly --- all natively.

With the G5 we see kick-ass speed potential in Macs. The 970 in the G5 is derived from the IBM Power4 and the IBM Power5 in the works. We will benefit from this and so will you because of the increased competition. To see where Macs are going do a google on "ibm power5". This is why we are excited.
OliSim said:
Well, I love MAC/PC whatever... but they need to do a comparison
test on Doom III.... oh yeah, that isn't ported to the mac.

As soon as Apple makes inroads on software, then I will be the
first to line up. However, I go to CompUSA or similar and see 2
shelves for Mac software, but 40% of the store selling PC software.
That is the real difference, choices!!!

I do love the Apple LCD panels...

OS
Click to expand...
 
How long has it been since you used Windows? LOL.
Billie said:
Why is it that every time a thread is posted about Apple, Windoze
users just have to chime in with why they think Macs suck. I just
wonder how many of these people have ever actually used a Mac and
if they have, how long ago was it? OS 6? Before?

Mac users know how enjoyable it is to actually work in an
environment in which they can get work done, not put up with blue
screens of death or the virus du jour
Click to expand...
--
The Lowest Paid Concert Photographer Around
http://www.neonlightsimaging.com/artshow/final.htm
Photography -- just another word for compromise

Yes, this is ON-TOPIC!
 
Hardware/OS differences have become miniscule between Mac and PC.

However, the software availability is another matter entirely.
Kiran P said:
Mac people think that only Macs can do anything related to graphics
or video. There may have been a time that this was true.... but no
more. Macs really are teh dying breed. Just look at software.
Even the Capture One software is always later to come out with the
Mac version, and lots of software doesn't even come in a Mac
version. I really don't think there are things that Macs can do
that PC's can't... but there really are lots of things that PC's
can do and Mac's can't. I understand if you've always used Mac and
want to stay with it.... but these days.. its becoming very
limiting.
Click to expand...
--
The Lowest Paid Concert Photographer Around
http://www.neonlightsimaging.com/artshow/final.htm
Photography -- just another word for compromise

Yes, this is ON-TOPIC!
 
Well, here goes...

I have not seen the blue screen in XP Pro on my outdated P4 2Ghz for over 3 months. In fact, my friends G4 OS X crashes once a day, and that is a good day.

These days, with drivers being developed on a weekly basis, this really isn't an issue anymore, or the user just doesn't understand that with a PC and / or a MAC things need to be kept clean, drivers need to be updated and disk defragmented.

It is all about user preference. If I couldn't play a good game of F1 2002 or battlefield 1942 every once in awhile, I would probably hate the computer, as my life revolves around them, sitting in front of one for about 6 to 10 hours a day... so a bit of fun is a necessity.

By the way, I used a 38GB video file (uncompressed .avi) and converted the video to an MP2 stream for DVD and guess what, my lowly 2Ghz machine was about 30% faster in the compression than my friends dual processor G4. The G4 also had faster ram.

The point is, computers these days are incredible pieces of equipment, be it a MAC or a PC. I tend to enjoy the fact that 90% of the available software runs on my PC... as opposed to 20% for the MAC. For me that is the only difference. In fact, from a design standpoint, nothing comes close to the MAC and I realize that it would look much better in my office, espeacially with that lovely 23" monitor.

Cheers,

OS
 
Warren Liebman said:
in reverse order

1.6GHz $1999 1.8GHz $2399 Dual 2GHz $2999
Enclosures! 9 fans!. but quieter,
System - G5 System Controller - dedicated bandwidth to each
subsystem. IBM is fabricating it. 6x faster than G4, 8GB
bandwidth, 1processor doesn't slow down the other one. 400mhz
DDR memory, AGP 8x Pro, 133mhz PCI-X slots. Hypertransport. Serial
ATA. 1.5GB/s bandwidth. independent interfaces to each drive. Rest
of the i/o - high performance. optical digital i/o and analog i/o,
fw800 ,usb 2.0
Single/Dual processors. Up to 8GB Memory. Can talk to mem @
6.4GB/s. 4x Superdrive in each. Geforce fx5200 in lower, radeon
9600 pro in higher mode.
Introduced Dr. Johnny Kelly the 3rd on stage.
This is a new generation architecture.
Massivly parallel. Up to 250 inflight instructions. -- can be
processed at the same time. The G4 can do 16. Floating point
"monster". Two fully symetric integer units. massive branch
prediction logic.
fastest front sidebus - ever. designed for dual processor systems.
We're calling it the G5. It is a 64-bit processor. The first first
64-bit desktop processor. Runs our existing 32-bit apps no
problems.
The Chip - we turned to IBM several years ago.
The Chip, the System, The Product
We are delivering today - the Worlds Fastest Personal Computer.
Click to expand...
--
The meaning of EOS: Empty Our Savings*
 
Al Malin said:
Don't bother. None of those "40% of the store" software can run on
it. The Itanium cannot run a single Windows 32-bit application.
You can do it on an AMD 64-bit but only in emulation. However, the
G5 will run the 64-bit OS, 64-bit applications, and 32-bit
applications concurrantly --- all natively.
Click to expand...
Well, I'm a Mac fan, but another poster indicated that the Opteron can run both 32-bit and 64-bit apps. Perhaps someone else could confirm this for us. The Itanium isn't the G5's real competition. It's slow and very expensive. The real race is between the G5 and the Opteron and Athlon 64.

Can any AMD fans out there clarify the situation regarding Opteron and Athlon 64 development? Can either of these run both 64-bit and 32-bit apps simultaneously? Is the Athlon 64 even available yet? And, how much do these systems cost?
Al Malin said:
OliSim said:
As soon as Apple makes inroads on software, then I will be the
first to line up. However, I go to CompUSA or similar and see 2
shelves for Mac software, but 40% of the store selling PC software.
That is the real difference, choices!!!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
If CompUSA is your source for Mac info, you're seriously misinformed. Try going to an Apple store. Better yet, shop online and check out software download sites like VersionTracker.com. There are already over 6,000 apps for Mac OS X, many more OS 9 apps that run in OS X, lots of UNIX ports that run in OS X or Darwin, and much more on the way. Not a whole lot of games, though. According to Steve Job's recent keynote speech, the number of OS X software developers has tripled to over 300,000 in the last year.

--
'May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.' -
Dwight D. Eisenhower
 
Warren Liebman said:
in reverse order

1.6GHz $1999 1.8GHz $2399 Dual 2GHz $2999
Enclosures! 9 fans!. but quieter,
System - G5 System Controller - dedicated bandwidth to each
subsystem. IBM is fabricating it. 6x faster than G4, 8GB
bandwidth, 1processor doesn't slow down the other one. 400mhz
DDR memory, AGP 8x Pro, 133mhz PCI-X slots. Hypertransport. Serial
ATA. 1.5GB/s bandwidth. independent interfaces to each drive. Rest
of the i/o - high performance. optical digital i/o and analog i/o,
fw800 ,usb 2.0
Single/Dual processors. Up to 8GB Memory. Can talk to mem @
6.4GB/s. 4x Superdrive in each. Geforce fx5200 in lower, radeon
9600 pro in higher mode.
Introduced Dr. Johnny Kelly the 3rd on stage.
This is a new generation architecture.
Massivly parallel. Up to 250 inflight instructions. -- can be
processed at the same time. The G4 can do 16. Floating point
"monster". Two fully symetric integer units. massive branch
prediction logic.
fastest front sidebus - ever. designed for dual processor systems.
We're calling it the G5. It is a 64-bit processor. The first first
64-bit desktop processor. Runs our existing 32-bit apps no
problems.
The Chip - we turned to IBM several years ago.
The Chip, the System, The Product
We are delivering today - the Worlds Fastest Personal Computer.
Click to expand...
--
Pekka
http://photography-on-the.net
 
.. but not the lies!!
C.P said:
C.P said:
... fastest front sidebus - ever. ...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Well, I am not actually sure about this one??
C.P said:
C.P said:
The first 64-bit desktop processor.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Wrong!!
C.P said:
C.P said:
the Worlds Fastest Personal Computer.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Wrong!!

But other than that I am sure that the G5 is a fantastic computer and surely a lot faster than my own PC! I just do not understand why Apple resorts to lies to do their marketing, when they have done all their other homework right?

--
Kjeld Olesen
http://www.acapixus.dk
 
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