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PPC 970 Powerbooks and Powermacs in Production?
Thadddius_Brinks writes "MacWispers.com
is reporting here
that apple is currently in production of a redesigned single processor PowerPC
970 Powermac system and a 15.4 inch Powerbook. They (MacWhispers.com) are also standing by
their earlier claims about the speed of the new processor."
This article consolidates many of the major rumors surrounding WWDC including
the rumor of a new case for the Powermacs, but it raises the ultimate question: 17" Powerbook, or PPC 970 Powerbook?
June 09, 2003
OEM Report: The PPC 970 Transition
With the entire Mac world abuzz with (often conflicting) reports of the Apple transition to the IBM PowerPC 970 processor family, we have decided to report a summary of all that we know at this time... not from regurgitated rumors obtained from other web sites, but from our own OEM contacts in the Apple supply pipeline.
We have no software information sources; all information we receive comes from people working in various positions in and around plants in Taiwan that actually supply parts or perform hardware assembly operations on Apple products. So, we have to leave the software speculation to sites such as Think Secret and, it now seems, eWeek.
What we know at this point is as follows:
- The IBM PPC 970 chips are now actually in volume production for only two specific end uses: IBM's own servers, and for Apple Computer.
- The plant contracted for assembly of the new Power Mac is now actually manufacturing production Power Macs with single PPC 970 processors.
- The plant contracted for assembly of the new 15.4-inch Powerbook has just now begun manufacturing production Powerbooks with the PPC 970 processor.
- The new Power Mac has a sister model with a 2-processor motherboard that is not yet in actual production, but that could be put into production at any time.
- The new Power Mac has a new case design with "metallic look plastics," and a front panel "mostly made with the same anodized aluminum surface" as the newest Powerbooks.
- The new Power Mac retains "handles," though not in the same form as the current design.
We have no sources or contacts within Apple Computer, so we cannot state that company's actual release plans for these products. However, we can say that both the new PPC 970 Power Mac and Powerbook will have substantial inventory already produced by the time of the upcoming WWDC keynote.
In closing, we want to address the performance of the new PPC 970 machines, as we do have direct information on this topic, and we consider that information to be highly reliable. Despite the recent flurry of confusing claims published by eWeek and others, we stand by our report that the new Power Mac and Powerbook have overall performance approximately 1.25 to 1.5 times that of a similarly clocked G4 on non-Altivec optimized applications. On Altivec optimized tasks, these machines have as much as 2 to 2.5 times the through performance as a similarly clocked G4. Our understanding is that this performance is occurring using bone-stock OS X 10.2.6 on pre-production single processor PPC 970 machines... an OS with none of the optimization now being rumored as being needed for supporting the PPC 970's performance potential.
-- My hovercraft is full of eels.
512MB SDRAM - 2 SO DIMMs
60GB Ultra ATA drive
Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) AirPort Card
Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English
15.2-inch TFT Display
Subtotal $2,228.00
Dell Inspiron 600m
1.6GHz Pentium M w/ 1MB L2
512MB DDR 2100
60GB UATA Drive
DVD/CD-RW combo drive
Intel ProWireless 802.11b card
14.1" XGA Screen
64MB Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics
$1991
Wow...much faster and still $300 less... I need to remember to use HTML and hte preview button..