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New Power Mac G4s Announced
benh57 writes "Apple today announced the new Power Mac G4 towers with new faces, running at dual-867MHz (US$1,699), dual-1GHz ($2,499), and dual-1.25GHz ($3,299). All are running DDR, the two higher end models at 166MHz FSB with Radeon 9000, the low end at 133 w/GF4MX." Check it out at The Apple Store, and keep your eyes peeled for an appearance on the Power Mac G4 site.
Thats front page news - apple becomes the first PC maker to go totaly to dual processor in it's pro desktops.
This is an excellent move for Apple. Solid UNIX high-end workstations making use of multiple processors, as a robust, pre-emptive multitasking system should. Let's hope Apple finds some what to make the public aware of this singificant spec of their tower machines.
Sadly...my dual G4 800 may be getting grey hair...
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
Much like the Xserve, it looks like they've managed to hack DDR onto the G4 processor, and its still running on a bus which is not doubled like the Athlons. Running the bus at 166mhz should make up for that a little bit though. Interesting that after all the commentary on the new cases having huge (7lbs) heat sinks, I couldn't find any images of them on the apple site. They must really be that big.
As an FYI:
These machines do have DDR memory and a DDR system bus but the G4's themselves are running at 133 or 167MHz (depending upon model). The system controller and memory are running full tilt though (266 or 333 depending).
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
I just bought a new Power Mac G4 (933). Yesterday!!! 12 f*cking hours ago!!!
Noooooooooooo!!!!
This space intentionally left blank.
I do enjoy when Apple puts out new products, it means their old products will become slightly more in my price range. Although I don't know how much longer I can wait for a deal on older TiBooks. I may have to whip out the credit card.
>:D
No sig for you!!
I never knew that I could be sexually attracted to a computer!
they do sorta show it in the VR of the innards.....
2 002_480.html
http://www.apple.com/hardware/gallery/pmg4_august
yes it is huge, and notice the holes in front of case venting through to the back plate that is all speed holes. i wonder if it is these dual processors that are that hot, or if Apple is just planning for the future speed bumps? also, look in the open case... there is a fan right about in the middle of the case blowing right across (or sucking air over) the heatsinks. they moved the hard drives out of the air path and use an Xserve-like (or the actual Xserve) low profile power supply strapped up to the inside top of the case. interesting layout changes inside.
The other shoe that dropped today was that they've now gone full-tilt with the eMac, adding a Superdrive and running it at 800 MHz for the same price ($1499) as the 15" Combo drive iMac.
Meaning that unless you really like the cool look of the iMac, you can save a couple of hundred dollars by getting an eMac instead, without giving anything else up (I believe they're based on the same motherboard spec) besides the cool screen. And the eMac has a pretty decent screen.
I've been leaning towards getting an iMac in the fall to replace my wife's old iMac DV 450 (we could use the DVD burner to make movies of the baby), but assuming no other drastic changes I'd be inclined to go with the eMac now instead. And Apple is steadily returning the CRT to it's place as the lower-end anchor even though LCD prices are starting to drop again (they also reduced the prices of all the other iMac configs). That's interesting.
Basically, I'm going to be watching the early fall with great interest - once these new configs are well-established there'll probably be some speedbumping of the whole line around October or so. My guess is that the iMac and eMac could hit 1 GHz, the PowerMac towers will start at 1 GHz and go to either 1.4 or maybe as high as 1.6 (Moto is supposedly sampling the 1.6 part now), and the PowerBook will probably get a speedbump to, say, 933 MHz at that point, too. They may not all be at once, but those are the next logical steps, and I'd expect to see them all before years' end (and before Christmas season, in particular).
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Hopefully Apple or a third-party mfr will offer an attractive Zip bezel for this case.
Also, those massive cooling vents on the front of the machine kind of have me worried that this thing is going to sound like a wind tunnel... but that is the bitter reality of it: you can't have all the speed and none of the noise.
Otherwise this looks like a damn impressive machine, and a long-overdue overhaul to the G4 line. I'm drooling already. Nice work Apple.
It's very likely that apple are pumping out dual g4 systems to simply get rid of the remaining g4 chips...
No, I don't think so. I think they're moving entirely to multiple processors in the towers for two reasons. First, they're more clearly distinguishing between the iMac and the tower. Yesterday, a low-end G4 seriously overlapped the top-of-the-line iMac. Today, the line is clearer.
The other thing is that Apple's proud of the degree to which Jaguar is threaded at low levels of the OS. Dual-processor machines really will be faster, even for just basic surfing and email and whatnot, than otherwise equivalent single-processor machines.
Incidentally, was anybody else slightly surprised that Apple didn't just double the whole product line, introducing "small" and "medium" dual-proc machines and a "large" quad-processor system at the $4,000 price point?
It's all about the software though. 10.1 is superb - 10.2 is alleged to be a big improvement.
Who cares how fast your G4 is clocked? It won't run OS X.
Uh... is there some joke in here that I haven't gotten?
Incidentally, 10.2 is a big improvement. I've been running 6C106 (the release was 6C115) for about 10 days now. It's heaven, really peppy even on 400-500 MHz G3 systems.
Yep.
Is it just me, or did the price on the 17" iMac increase by $100?
;-) I just realized that it is kind of ridiculous to be screaming bloody murder over a $100 price drop when they've cut the prices on their other machines and introduced rocking PMG4s. ;-)
(OH GAWD NO NOT $100 OH THAT'S BLOODY LARCENY OH THE PAIN OH MY GAWD NOOOOO.... sorry...
-- haaz.
Dude, did you somehow miss the part where they're selling dual-processor machines for the same price as they sold single-processor machines (modulo a hundred bucks or so) yesterday?
I can't believe the way you just glossed over that to talk about eject buttons on the optical drives! Your priorities are seriously out of whack.
I find it interesting that this move has been made so soon after recent announcements that Apple is considering a move to an x86 architecture.
:)
I felt those claims were groundless, but they gave me a really good laugh. This new product release is much more like the Apple that I have come to expect and love.
I think 4x AGP benefits from DDR (both ATI and nVidia have been using it for ages). According to Apple, the CPU can access the RAM twice per clock cycle, which (they claim) gives you up to 2.7 GB/s throughput - twice as much as PC-133 RAM. Also, the CPU has 2MB (1MB per unit, I think) DDR L3 cache.
As for why the system bus is still 133 or 167 MHz, I think it may be limitation of G4 processor - all the PDFs on Moto site say 100 or 133 MHz bus, depending on the model. More info at architecture page.
The case is not at all the same. Look closer. The components are all moved around and the ventilation is completely changed. The hard drives are vertical!
:)
Oh, you're trolling? nevermind.
the blue board is f'n gorgeous, but i NEED my zip drive!!!
I want 2D games back.
Let's see...
- Radeon 9000: The tragedy of a graphics card still too fast for anyone not looking for 150 fps out of Quake III (maybe you're anticipating EQ on Mac...)
- ATA-66?! Oh No! You can barely burst that kind of transfer rate, let alone maintain it. Besides, when was the last time you were copying 40GB from your second 80G drive to your forth 80G drive?
- FireWire 2 - it's nice in the same way having 80 gigs of RAM is nice - bragging rights. Nothing else. Do you see many FireWire 2 compliant products out? Do you see many Apps that say "40GB RAM required, 80GB recommended"? It can wait. Meanwhile, the lack of the North/South bridge allows a FireWire 2 PCI card to get better transfer rates when they come out. The flashiness of FW2 doesn't yet justify the price.
- I'll agree about no up front ports - it would be nice. But the vent holes are an important part of the equation.
- Eject probably won't eject both, just one. Which one? Maybe the selected one. Maybe the first one only. Maybe Apple will write a nifty add-on that lets you select. Maybe it isn't a huge concern for most people.
- This was an upgrade for the box, not the screens. You don't like the $2500 price tag? Buy a CRT - the VGA convertor is included. Sure, they are pretty, but even Apple knows that not everyone is going to spend $1000 on a 17" LCD when they could spend $250 on a 19" CRT.
- Bluetooth built-in would have been OK. Except that maybe 1% of the people will use it in the next year. Despite the attempts to make Bluetooth the short-range communications technology, cables are still pretty popular. It isn't dying, it just isn't pervasive enough to include. And I know how hard it is to have to reach around behind the case and plug something in once.
- Shitty G4s? I was just disagreeing with you until now. Do you have a general dislike of 1-digit numbers, or do you have no appreciation of the way processors work? G4 may not be Power4, but at least it's not Pentium 4.
*sigh*That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
(Not to mention the fact that when Apple quotes gigaflop figures they are talking about all-in-registers zero-pipeline-stall vectorized operation, not actually doing anything useful -- like reading from memory.)
Um. I'm no expert, but to me that sounds like any cache-resident vector function, like a 5x5 convolve or something. You take a small performance hit when you have to load the next cache line, but if you're lucky your pipeline is deep enough to keep the processor units going while that fetch happens.
I mean, how else are they supposed to quote processor performance if it's not this way? If you want them to talk about performance of the whole system, taking things like memory and busses into account, they're going to have to pick a real-world application to test with. They do that already, using Photoshop as their benchmark the same way the graphics board companies are using Quake as theirs. Apple's test shows the dual 1.2 GHz machine to be about 90% faster (or almost twice as fast) as a single-processor 2.5 GHz P4. And yet Apple still gets hell for using Photoshop as their metric.
Seems like you can never satisfy everybody.
Basically, the motherboard is a thing of beauty: DDR finally comes to Mac, dual procs, gobs of cache, ATA/100 AND ATA/66, a bitchin memory controller, 4x AGP and 4 PCI slots... This is the culmination of everything Mac users have been lusting over in a mobo.
But what the $&#*@ is up with that case??
It looks like Apple is so stubbornly hanging on to the 4 year old G3 design that theyre just cramming everything in wherever it will fit- some HDs mounted sideways, some flat. PCI slots on TOP? vents everywhere, ungly front bezel that looks like it was cobbled together last minute to accomodate the two optical drives, and a heatsink the size of an air conditioner. The engineers should have stopped and asked themselves if this was a good idea after they started perforating the thing like a cheese grater just to get air flowing through it.
----------------
www.overstim.net
"Eagles may soar, but weasels dont get sucked into jet engines."
* processor heatsink is considerably larger than previous models, but lacks a fan
Well, if you look at apple's site you can see a fan... but it looks like its up by the CD/DVD drives. What's up with that?
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
We have an Apple store across the street from where i work, and i ran over at lunch to check things out. They are getting the low end 867 and 1 gig machines in tomorrow, but won't be getting the 1.25 machines in for 2-3 months. Apparently, the 1.25 chips aren't even available yet, at least thats what the Mac dweebie said.
Yes, my girlfriend is a BitchX
I missed it before... you can see a second even bigger fan in the quicktime VR. Look under the drives, facing the massive heat sinks... Does a G4 really give out this much heat?? I wonder if this is a sign of a Power4 in our future :)
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
The memory bus is DDR, the processor bus is SDR.
There are two processors.
This means the memory subsystem can keep BOTH processors completely saturated. (the processor core could use more data... but there is NO way to get more data into the processor faster than SDR (except for L3 cache)
So essentially this is a HUGE improvement for heavy tasks which get a big improvement from bus speeds and processor count...
This is a very good thing. It'd be better to have the processors on a DDR bus... but and extra 33Mhz is definately welcome.
AltiVec is soooo powerful that an altivec algorithm generally runs at the same speed as your memory subsystem... the cpu is actually idling waiting for memory.
Increase the memory speed and you release the latent potential of the altivec unit..
In many ways its more important these days than processor speedbumps.
---
Live Long & Prosper \\//_
CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
Jedi & Last *-fytr
I'll agree about no up front ports - it would be nice.
There's two USB ports on the keyboard and two on the monitor... why put any on the front of the case??
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
i saw that too..... i guess someone more knowledgable in the art of DIY computer building would know..... but this is strange to me....
yesterday they had dual 1GHz machines in the quicksilver cases. the quicksilver case has little ventilation. no front vents, small back venting ports. today they have the dual 1GHz and dual 1.25GHz with a massive 7lb heatsink, fan directly blowing across it and it basically is sitting in a windtunnel with those front and rear speedholes. i can only guess this is for the next coming speedbumps? i think this 1GHz chip is actually a revised version of yesterdays 1GHz chip, so it might run a little hotter? also the DDRam and whatnot might be a lil warmer, but i would guess this is planning for the next speedbumps till they fully redesign the case (if they do anytime soon).
There are two processors.
This means the memory subsystem can keep BOTH processors completely saturated.
I don't thik so... This is the case of the Athlon, but that's for a very strange and unusual reason. Ever wonder why dual Athlon mobos cost so much? It's because the processor bus on the Athlon is point-to-point. That means each processor has its own bus, its own set of traces on the mobo. With a dual Athlon, 333MHz memory makes sense because even though each CPU bus is only 266, there are two independent buses. Each processor can use a full 266MHz of bandwidth at the same time.
The G4 bus (to the best of my knowledge--please provide link proving me wrong) isn't point to poit, just like the P3/P4/Xeon bus isn't point to point. That means all the processors share the SAME 133MHz bus. So, no, two G4 processors can't each use 133MHz of bandwidth to the memory at the same time. G4s, like their shared processor bus cousins the P4 and Xeon, must share their processor bus across the board.
The DDR memory is a good thing to be sure, and the memory subsystem could keep both CPUs saturated, but it can't. In fact, in standard SMP mobos (i.e. non-Athlon/Alpha dual mobos) there is NO way to ever saturate both CPUs.
Hope that helped.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
He must be using some wacky keyboard where the G is right next to the P
what do i have to do to run (2) 1600x1200 CRTs with the built in video? I'm willing to get the Ge4Ti BTO card, but it has 1 ADC and 1 DVI (w/ VGA adapter). Can I get an ADC-VGA adapter to run a second CRT?
(don't like LCD's: too expensive, lousy color gamut, way too expensive)
Anyone have any experience with this sort of setup on a recent G4?
Michael-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
Add 20% to these numbers.
Apple again shines... but only in their traditional strengths.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
The ATA66 is likely intended for the optical drives, neither of which would require an ATA100. From an engineering-meets-realworld-use standpoint, it makes perfect: a few pennies on a single machine mean profiting an extra few hundred grand on the whole.
hrmmm now there seems to be some confusion is these are running the previous 7455 PPC chip or a new 7470 PPC. i guess the rumors of 1.4GHz were all based on the assumption of the 7470 chip being brought in...... guess we have to wait till somebody molests one.
The Achilles heel in all this is backup, especially for Mac OS X Server. Every other version of UNIX out there has a built-in backup solution (except, unaccountably, Linux, which has no dump/restore, last I checked). Mac OS X has dump/restore too, but they only understand the UFS file system. Apple rewrote 'fsck' to understand about HFS+ file systems, but not dump/restore.
That leaves Retrospect as the only sensible solution for backup: a third party product. And the regular Retrospect Mac OS X client won't dump a Mac OS X Server system! Instead you have to spend $800 (!!!) for the Server backup software. That software will also dump Windows 2000 and NT workstations, whoop-de-do.
Whatever happened to UNIX as a self-hosting, self-supporting system? Gaaaah. I'm thinking hard about wiping our Mac OS X Server machine and just installing the regular Mac OS X, where at least we can afford the backup software.
Or maybe just dumping Macs entirely and going to FreeBSD on a dual-processor Xeon box. All hail Amanda! At least I could back up a box like that.
If it helps that much on his 500MHz iBook, then it should make a noticeable difference for your Lombard too. That model iBook does have 8MB vs your 4MB, but neither takes advantage of QE, so I would imagine the speed improvements are fairly similar.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Um. I'm no expert, but to me that sounds like any cache-resident vector function, like a 5x5 convolve or something. You take a small performance hit when you have to load the next cache line, but if you're lucky your pipeline is deep enough to keep the processor units going while that fetch happens.
Sorry, but I happen to be an expert on these things, and those 18 Gflops are just a theoretical peak of perfectly combined multiply-add operations in the vector unit. As soon as you can't match an add and a multiply your performance would drop in half. More important - that's the THEORETICAL peak. You will never see anything close to it in practice. Apple's own version of FFT performs at 1-2 gflops.
And the vector unit can't even do double precision, which is kind of important in science. For a double precision FFT the performance is LESS THAN HALF that of a current Athlon CPU.
And yet Apple still gets hell for using Photoshop as their metric.
Nobody is blaming Apple for using Photoshop. The problem is that they don't provide any details. In practice, it looks like they are only testing 3 or 4 filters that are heavily Altivec-optimized, so it is not typical for Photoshop performace. When third parties perform benchmarks based on a large set of Photoshop actions, the Apple machines are
much slower than current x86 offerings.
Those little holes that you're talking about are for air intake.
-braxton
About a year ago we had dual 800 MHz systems with 100MHz FSB, PC133 RAM (133 MHz), 2MB of L3 via a 200 MHz bus and single channel ATA/66. Just over one year later we have 1250 MHz systems with 166 MHz FSB, PC2700 RAM (166 MHz double pumped or 333 MHz data rate), 2MB of L3 via a 294 MHz[1] bus double pumped, and dual channel ATA (one ATA/100 and the other ATA/66).
So in a year...
1.56x increase in CPU clock speed (ignoring other CPU enhancements).
2.5x increase in RAM throughput.
1.66x increase in FSB throughput.
2.94x increase in L3 throughput (possibly only 2.5x).
over a doubling in internal disk storage support (not counting SCSI options).
Looking over things on the Intel/AMD side...
AMD had about a year ago 1.53GHz chips (1800+ Athlon XP) today 1.8Ghz (2200+ Athlon XP) (FSB speeds did not changed). Intel had about a year ago 2Ghz P4s with FSB of 266MHz (133Mhz dual pumped) and today 2.53GHz P4s with FSB of 533MHz (133MHz quad pumped, AFAIK).
So in a year...
AMD...
1.18x increase in CPU clock speed.
no change in FSB (from what I see).
Intel...
1.27x increase in CPU clock speed.
2.01x increase in FSB throughput.
AMD/Intel system have been using PC2100 for a while and are now starting to use PC2700 (some are starting to use DDR400 and/or going dual channel to RAM). This is side stepping the issue of RDRAM.
Again just as a frame of reference...
[1] Apple's current specs don't add up fully on this, one states that it stops at 500MHz DDR but the throughput numbers lead me to believe it is running faster then 500MHz DDR for the top end system.
p.s. I am doing the above math with a fever of 102+ so I may have messed up someplace... just don't tell the pink elephant sitting next me.
Don't you know anything?!?!? Blue motherboards are faster! ;)
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
Sorry, but they are not speakers. Those are air vents. It still has one speaker in front, near the top.
If you look at the QuickTime VR movie of the case opening, you can see where the bottom vent holes are, there is a mesh screen inside the case close to them.
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
Did you just make this up or something?? Nowhere on Apple's page does it say it has more than one speaker. And it does say it has a "Built-in speaker"
They are air vents. It has ONE speaker. Same HK speaker as the Quicksilver, but near the top now. Why in hell would it have 5 speakers anyway? Mono at that!
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
He's wrong. The small holes are vents.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Huh? $1700 is out of your price range?
Then just go buy an older G4. I'm certain you can find plenty of used ones on eBay or at the discounters...
Or just wait a few weeks and there will be a mess of them on apple refurbished area (I bet).
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
That digitalvideoediting.com site is even more biased than Apple. For instance, for their video performance benchmarks they use and orphaned unsupported application on the mac side-- one that isn't optimized.
A fair comparison would be to use Final Cut Pro on the Mac side and see how fast it does the comperable work.
IF you really want to compare how fast you can GET STUFF DONE, that is.
Unfortunately, most benchmarks out there are really pre-designed to give the answer the creator wants.
Apple is explicit when they say the 18Gflops is a max performance, not a typical one.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
I thought "spring loaded folders? who cares?" when I heard about it.
But now that I've been using it, its quite wonderful.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Apple doesn't have a factory they own making PCBs.
Apple contracts with others to make thier PCBs. (This is quite an industry, actually, you can take your desing file, email it to people and get a PCB back in a week.)
The colors vary from vendor to vendor, and don't really mean anything... so during prototype they'll have one color depending on which vendor made it (they probably use multiple-- one for overnight turnaround, one when they want to run a dozen and one when they want to run a couple hundred.)
The final PCBs are made by yet another company, probably in asia, which due to local supplier variation will likely produce PCBs with a different color than the US prototyping houses.
It doesn't really mean anything.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
...all the tests I have read have declared Firewire the winner. Explaination, USB 2 relies on your processor for the spead of throughput, Firewire has its own chip...nuff said..
What a waste that would be. (The drives to have eject buttons, if you ever need them.)
Your computer probably has a floppy drive built in. USe it much?
Haven't missed not having one...
Can you imagine what the iMac G4 would be like if they'd included a floppy drive? Sheesh.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
DOUBLE PRECISION IS IRRELEVANT.
Gigaflops are SINGLE PRECISION.
You don't get to redefine the term and then accuse apple marketing of redefining the term BACK.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Cutting edge for apple == two years ago for the PC world.
Really? Where are the PCs shipping with Firewire 2 that you complained Apple doesn't have?
And who would want USB 2 when Firewire 1 is twice as fast (in real world use)? Ok, I lied, its often ten times as fast.
Oh, and world+dog make Firewire devices, I've never seen nor heard of an external USB 2 device.
Oh, well, I'm having deja vu-- you posted this same list of whines awhile back and I pointed out the same sets of idiocy of it. Why feed the troll?
but I do LOVE the fact that you whine about the lack of firewire two and then claim the PC world had it two years ago. Heh.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
http://www.macosrumors.com
this is really an old argument. anyone with any inkling of computer knowledge knows that if you want all around power and nothing else, you get a p4 in the desktop world. no g4 or athlon is going to touch it. it also helps that they are much cheaper than the avg apple machine. however, people do not buyapple products strictly for their power. apple provides a combination of power, ease of use, versatility, and stability that no one can really match in the computer market. i bought a mac on the belief that computing was going to be fun again. i was not disappointed. that is a first. i have been continually disappointed with every x86 OS yet. Windows XP was almost gonna make it, back in the Beta2 times, but i believe it got to their heads.so yes, i bought an iBook 600, and bought just about every accessory i could semi-justify, because i just couldnt wait to get home and play. apple makes the best consumer operating system around, which is continually being improved. These improvements come not only in the way of under-the-hood changes, but with user interaction as well. As this improves, time spend doing work in the computer is cut by a factor much larger than any pentium4 or athlon can give you. kudos to the microprocessor manufacturers, its too bad we can't harness it. When it comes to the total package, there is no other choice but Mac OS X for the end-user/programmer/writer/artist/producer/etc. Notice i didnt say anything about servers. Well thats not what im talking about now is it?? :)
I got into the office this morning at 10:00, and I had a full charge on the battery. I used it all day to run OmniWeb, Mail.app, Word, Photoshop, InDesign, and maybe a few other things. I put it to sleep between 12:30 and 1:30, then finally plugged it into the wall at 3:30. I had 23% battery left then, according to the menu item, which probably would have lasted me about half an hour longer.
That's 4:30, +/- 30 minutes. I had the screen at full brightness, using the automatic power management setting in System Prefs (which, I believe, spins down the drive and cycles the processor speed), with my AirPort card off. I haven't timed it with AirPort on, but I'm guessing that might take 60-90 minutes off the battery life. But that's totally a guess.
If you only get 3 hours out of Jaguar, I'll be disappointed.
I don't want to start a flame war or anything, but the pc they were comparing the new G4 to was a goddamn dell, just a small point I want to raise. Dell machines are not known for speed, or anything besides cheap hardware. . .
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
What's your specific complaint? Dell is the biggest manufacturer of PCs, and the machine was equipped with that I believe is the fastest Pentium processor available. How was the test unfair?
I was going on the assumption that the new heat sink-- which is disproportionately large compared to the one in the dual 1 GHz Quicksilvers-- is there to accommodate four processors. Otherwise, it's overkill.
Interesting. I think I might be the only person who finds them an annoyance. When dragging files, I often linger on the folder while asking myself "is this what I really want to do?" When folders are spring-loaded, that can be a real bother sometimes.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
I too, once heard that Apple uses color-coded PCBs at different points in the design process. I don't remember where I heard it, so I would really argue with you, but the original poster is not alone in his belief.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
Yes, all the time. I've often bought systems for work and let them sit until I could get around to them, sometimes as much as a week. But for a personal system, yeah. I bought an iBook through at an Apple Store and made a friend drive me, just so I could open it in the car :)
Or even more evil: someone could buy a new Power Mac and sell the copy of Jaguar on eBay for big bucks.
The fact that you refer to the 4 new speakers on the computer as "holes for firewire or usb" pretty much sums up the value of all the comments you just made. :-)
The fact that you don't know how to tell a speaker from a vent hole says something about your own powers of observation..
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Simply put, the present-day Pentium4 processor kicks the G4's *ass.
You can state that sort of comparison either accurately or simply, but not both at the same time.
For example, I find that the G4 kick's the Pentium 4's ass, because the Pentium 4 can't run OS X. If it doesn't run OS X, it's not a computer, as far as I'm concerned. So by my criteria, the G4 kicks the Pentium's ass.
If your criteria is how well the processor runs Windows, then obviously the Pentium beats the G4.
If you care about running MSC.Nastran, then the Pentium 4 beats the G4 because there's no version of Nastran for the G4. On the other hand, if you care about running BLAST, then the G4 is 12-15 times faster than the Pentium 4, so in that case G4 wins.
So simply put, it's not possible to "simply put" this sort of thing.
Now, getting back to my point, a dual-processor G4 running at 867 MHz will feel faster-- more responsive and interactive-- than an otherwise identical single-processor machine.
Regardless of how the world works, he can take the machine back to compUSA and get his money back. If he bought from apple, that might be a different story
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Of course the downside to this is that all the PC manufacturers will be shoving dual systems in our faces now
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
The G4 bus (to the best of my knowledge--please provide link proving me wrong) isn't point to poit,
:(
That means all the processors share the SAME 133MHz bus. So, no, two G4 processors can't each use 133MHz of bandwidth to the memory at the same time.
Thanks, I checked up, I think you're right
Which just goes to hammer home how bad the memory speed situation is for a G4
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Live Long & Prosper \\//_
CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
Jedi & Last *-fytr
I did find something interesting today... Apparently the new controller allows the G4s to support "intervention" in their L3 caches...
basically, they only need to synchronise data if in fact that data is required by the other CPU.
That could provide a large benefit in a dual config.
Also I think the docs said that it didn't use the system bus, not sure though.
Anyway, it was the Technology Overview PDF for the new PowerMacs
Unfortunately, bomniweb has gone and lost the URL
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Live Long & Prosper \\//_
CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
Jedi & Last *-fytr