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Updated Power Macs at Apple.com
Gropo writes "Same old 'scary cyclops' quicksilver face. Up to 1.42 Ghz, FireWire 800, 802.11g and entry-level pricing has dropped. " With the SuperDrive and one of those massive LCD screens, you have a one highly desirable chunk of hardware.
I am suprised no one noticed that the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro is now a BTO option.
Still listed as "coming soon" though.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
big price drop on the LCDs, but the towers are upgraded. being the first or among the first machines to ship with Firewire800, 802.11g ready/equipped. it also says blutooth-enabled and bluetooth ready somewhere else, i don't know what the means exactley but .... hrmm... it seems in the stoe the top of the line BTO is Bluetooth included and the others are "ready". i dont know if it's the same little usb nub or some slick integration, but overall the upgrades and price drops are nice.
What do you mean, lower your prices? This is already (I believe) $100 cheaper than the low end machine they were selling YESTERDAY, and it's faster!
.edu channel, this was what I had priced out on their low end model:
:)
To compare: as of yesterday, in the
$1643.00
867Mhz PowerPC G4
256MG SDRAM
40GB Ultra ATA drive
Combo drive
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro
64 MB DDR video memory
(+ 17" Mitsubishi monitor and Apple Pro speakers, and - internal modem)
On that model there was no FireWire 800, no Bluetooth, no Airport 800...
Right now, I'm looking at a low end machine with a faster CPU (1 Ghz), 20 gig more drive space, GeForce4 MX (better?) video, and faster ram, plus all the bells, whistles, and ports listed above, for $8 more than yesterday. If they want to give me all of that for an extra eight bucks, I'm not going to complain
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
They save money by bundling them with a boatload of adware, spyware, trialware, demoware, advertisements, ISP offers, etc. About 7 gigs on a 15 gig HDD was full of ad-ware bloat. A quick format and reinstall and you're all set.
,HP, or Dells') 200 watt PSU to replace the 145 watts they ship with. 20 bucks apiece.
As for the PSU, get a replacement (it's flex atx 5" wide, 4" deep - usually sold as 'for eMachines
The PSUs in there arent really 'cheap' per se, but if you want to add HDDs and whatnot, it's worth 20 bucks. At least that's what I did with the P3-era machines I bought.
My only hassles with eMachines was trying to retrofit a real drive cage into one of 'em so I could mount more HDDs. But thats generally par for the course with boxed brands. I also had trouble getting the goofy HSP modem in the little riser slot to work since they only provided ME drivers. I didnt need or use it anyways, I like my external USRobotics, so no biggie.
The mobo is micro-atx form factor, with a fairly low profile CPU cooler, I just finished moving all of an eMachine into a slick looking little VCR-style case with a cheap TV out card. Makes a nifty media player.
You get a lot of bang for your buck in those cheap boxes. Usually cheaper than the components would cost seperately. And like I said, the cheapness is because of kickbacks from all the spyware bloat thats preinstalled, so install your own OS of choice over it.
I dont think it's fair that only the editors get to slashvertise stuff. Buy an eMachine.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Apple updates Power Macs, releases 20 inch display:
I hope so... I don't want my next Mac to end up looking like this...
Still, a bit expensive for the casual user. For a small business, this baby rules.
In terms of upgrading an existing machine, I still have my first generation G3 desktop machine that I bought in 1997. I have upgraded this machine several times over the years to keep it semi-up to date. I put in a 400 MHz G3 for about $200 (probably 4 years ago now), tons of extra RAM, a bigger HD, and added a FireWire/USB card. This machine runs OS X (although the GUI is much slower than on my 500 MHz G4 Titanium PB) and is still perfectly functional. I have friends who own PC's from that same era and they have long since had to abandon them (or change them to linux boxes, e.g.). Games are another matter - I was a bigger gamer in the past, but now play games like Civilization 3 and Sims that run fine on my PB. Twitchy first-person shooters (Unreal, etc.) really do need the power and graphics cards that you can't get in a laptop. If you are big into those types of games, laptops are NOT the way to go. On the other hand, the desktops are very upgradeable, especially now that Apple has AGP, uses IDE drives, etc.
As far as PB's breaking down, that would cost a bundle (as would any laptop), but you can get a 3-year extended warranty (covers EVERYTHING) for about $300. I thought it was worth it but will also be happy if I never need it (haven't had to invoke it yet).
Hope this helps.
...Now these microinstructions execute at a rate directly proportional to the overall frequency of the machine
This is *vastly* oversimplified - there are complexities to processor design & trade-offs to be made that make clock speed almost useless for the sake of comparisons between chips with different architectures - even if they DO perform the same number of instructions per cycle (which often isn't the case).
there can be, and usually are, parrallel microrocessing units inside of each processor, so this can increase the operational speed
And this is one of the differences between PowerPC and Intel architectures - in general PowerPC has chosen to sacrifice clock cycle speed to do more instructions per cycle while Intel has chosen to sacrifice the number of instructions to get more speed. In other words Intel usually chooses to do one thing at a time really fast while PowerPC chooses to do several things at once more slowly. Right there you have a *partial* explanation for the MHz (now GHz) gap.
Fact: Intel chips have been extended to include all the same vector processing functionality included in most PowerPC chips.
I'm no expert on this but most reviews & articles from fairly non-partisan sites have concluded that Altivec is superior to the Intel alternative and that this shows up in real world scenarios.
The final upshot is that *in general* the PowerPC does more per cycle than an Intel chip. How much more (or even if it's more at all) depends on what exactly it's doing. But the fact remains: for most applications, especially multimedia applications that use Altivec, the PowerPC outperforms Intel chips of the same clock speed.
BUT intel is so far ahead in speed that even taking the "MHz Myth" into account Intel is still far ahead of the PowerPC in overall performance. Apple has got to get it's old AIM partners to step up or it will have to abandon the PowerPC for Intel (or intel compatible)
I'm no expert on this but most reviews & articles from fairly non-partisan sites have concluded that Altivec is superior to the Intel alternative and that this shows up in real world scenarios.
I've actually programmed both SSE and Altivec, and you're right in one way: Altivec is far easier to program, provides a much cleaner vector instruction set, and does more per cycle.
The only problem is that it doesn't do TWICE as much per cycle in practice (save a couple of photoshop filters carefully selected by Apple), so the raw clock of x86 still makes Intel the winner in most cases.
Intel have also worked hard on getting their compilers to automatically generate SSE/SSE2 code, which really improves performance on _all_ programs. There is no such thing for the PowerPC - if you want altivec you will have to handcode it. (And no, all the new altivec support in gcc is limited to the compiler supporting the altivec C language wrapper instructions - it will not generate them automatically).
Motorola probably did the right thing FOR THEIR PRIMARY MARKET. Most PPC chips are doing signal processing in built-in systems where it is perfectly OK to handcode a filter for better performance/lower power consumption. The problem is that most general PC programs benefit more from Intel's approach which is more automatic.
Finally - Apple/Motorola has a bigger problem: it makes sense to invest time in handcoding SSE/SSE2 for a CPU with 95% of the market, but usually not for one with 5% of the market.
"My 4 THz Intel Pentium IIIVIXXX is father then your 16 KHz G101"
For those of you who have not read ALL of the CPU articles at ArsTechnica. Go there now and do so. Before posting any of your inane babble about clock speed and processor power.
It IS true that Motorola has fallen behind Intel - sort of.
There are other advantages to hardware other then Intel based systems.
Since this is an Apple thread I'll focus there - One of the most note worthy (My opinion) Is apple's System controller.
Go READ the articles at ArsTechnica!
Rather than re-writing I'll simply cut & paste.
Fast system controller: The system controller, first introduced in Apple?s highly-regarded Xserve line, coordinates and transfers data and instructions among the processor(s), PCI bus, memory, graphics and I/O buses of the Power Mac G4. Controller speeds in the new Power Mac G4 configurations run as high as 167MHz.The PCI bus is what really impressed me.
Direct PCI bus: In another example of superior architecture, the Power Mac G4 optimizes PCI performance by connecting the PCI bus directly to the system controller. In a typical PC architecture, PCI devices connect to the I/O controller through a bridge, a bottleneck in the data path where all connected PCI devices are slowed down to avoid overloading the system controller. Going through this bridge constrains PCI throughput to 133Mbps (the bus speed on Pentium 4 systems), even with otherwise fast PCI devices. This slowdown of data to and from PCI devices results in greater overall system latency. The Power Mac G4, on the other hand, features a direct 266-MBps bus to the PCI slots to guarantee high throughput and low congestion ? in effect, lowering latency. The Power Mac G4 also supports write combining, which allows write instructions to be grouped into one large instruction, further increasing data throughput.
Then Apple oficially slams PC architecture.
On the Power Mac G4, FireWire, Gigabit Ethernet and even the ATA/100 bus are built into the system and integrated directly into the system controller. (The ATA/66 bus has its own controller.) This dedicated connection reduces PCI congestion and guarantees low latency, resulting in optimal FireWire, Ethernet and hard drive performance. And as a side benefit, it also keeps the computer?s PCI slots free for your specialized audio and video cards instead of using them to provide basic technologies.
I got this info here.
Go READ the articles at ArsTechnica!
Apple is not the end all - be all of systems. Two of the greated systems are made by DEC & H/P. The UltraSparc kicks the crap out of anything Motorola & Intel have to offer.
And let's not forget the Alpha. The Pentium - Pentium III architectures were based on technology stolen from DEC. Technology that Intel is still paying for today.
It basically falls down to system preference. Mac users DO NOT CARE if you can build a PC for $400. Mac users DO NOT CARE if only a few of the best selling game titles are ported to the system.
Having more game titles available is a Good Thing - naturally -but I find myself being... PRODUCTIVE instead of having my time eaten away by games - Linux users also what I'm talking about - unless they've downloaded BZFlag or Crack Attack.
Go READ the articles at ArsTechnica!
___________________________
I'm not a geek, but I play one on TV.
You know, the 1.25GHz macs were never overclocked. Take off the heat sink and see "7455A 1250" on the chips. This rumor started to spread after Motorola didn't update their G4 specs to include 1250MHz availability. The likely explanation is that these parts are only available to Apple.
Marko Karppinen