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.

Comments

dual processors - all of them

[eshefer]

Thats front page news - apple becomes the first PC maker to go totaly to dual processor in it's pro desktops.

Re:dual processors - all of them

[johnpaul191]

all dual combined with the faster motherboard should make these really fast running 10.2. can't wait to see the benchmark tests. it is also the first Mac since the Beige towers that have two full sized front bays. if you look at the new case modifications, you can see that this is meant to move a TON of air through the case. the whole back panel seems to have speed holes, and there are ports in the front of the case for full air pass through (older G4/G3 case had no venting in the front and most of the back was sealed up except the fan ports). it also has a monster heatsink. apple.com has some VRs posted of the inside and outside of the case. besides the already listed stats, here are some other interesting bits of information. the full breakdown is now up at Apple.com as well.

from macminute.com-

* the ability to have two internal optical drives via a build-to-order option that adds a second DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive ($250)

* support for four internal hard drives (two ATA/66, two ATA/100)
* support for up to 2GB of DDR RAM with four slots (266MHz in the dual-867MHz, 333MHz in the dual-1GHz and dual-1.25GHz)
* dual-867MHz and dual-1GHz feature 1MB of DDR L3 per processor, dual-1.25GHz features 2MB per processor

* processor heatsink is considerably larger than previous models, but lacks a fan

* the return of an audio-in port

* ATI Radeon 9000 Pro replaces NVIDIA's GeForce4 MX in the mid-range and high-end models, but a GeForce4 Ti card is still available for an additional $250 (or $350 on the low-end Power Mac G4)

* video cards feature ADC/DVI connectors; VGA is supported through an included adapter

* dual-1.25GHz system delivers 18.3 gigaflops, versus 15 gigaflops for the previous generation dual-1GHz (20% increase)

Re:dual processors - all of them

[foobar104]

In the meant time, I suppose I can just wait for Jaguar (10.2) to ship. Apparently it is almost as fast as a harware upgrade on a CD.

That's a really good description of the 10.2 experience. Apple could have marketed it that way. I have 6C106 running on several machines, G3s and G4s, but my personal machine is a 500 MHz iBook. OS X 10.2 6C106 makes my machine (get this) more responsive, more capable, more energy-efficient, and cooler!

I mean, I could understand faster and more features; that's what OS upgrades are good for. But something in the new power management subsystem has tripled my battery life (no kidding) and seriously reduces the amount of heat that my iBook generates. I used to get uncomfortable after using my laptop for an hour or 90 minutes because the trackpad and palm-rests were hot to the touch. It was okay, though, because the battery would be almost flat by that time. But now I get three plus hours of battery and the machine is always cool to the touch. I don't know if that comes from hard drive spin-down or from processor cycling, but I love it.

Incidentally, that three-plus hours is doing stuff like surfing and email and MS Word, but it's with the AirPort card on.

Mac OS X 10.2 really is like a hardware upgrade on a CD, at least for us laptop owners.

DDR, yes -- but no the CPU

[blakespot]

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

Oh yeah!

[Raster Burn]

I never knew that I could be sexually attracted to a computer!

Pretty sweet, but the other big news

[jht]

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).

Re:Zip bay, vents... ?

[Spencerian]

Why would you NEED a Zip drive as a built-in option when you can burn a CD that holds over 6 times as much?

You can still buy a USB or FireWire Zip drive and connect it externally, but now Apple doesn't dedicate a place in the case that is a waste of space for anything other than a Zip drive.

Re:What this also means..

[foobar104]

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?

Re:18.3 Gigaflops!

[foobar104]

(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.

As a frame of reference...

[shawnce]

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.

Re:The holes in the front

[DavidRavenMoon]

/. keeps down-modding my posts about this bit of info which I think is pretty informative... the holes on the front aren't vents, they are little speakers.

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!