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Intel iMac disassembled...
- Thread starter yvovandoorn
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after reading all the previous posts (11 pages, call me nuts if you will), i can only say that i agree with both sides to a certain degree.
should Apple design their computer's interior to be beautiful?
yes, they should.
but should they had done it on this iMac?
i don't think so.
so i'd just cut them some slack, get myself a cup of oo-long, and be faithful that the next iMac will be better.
should Apple design their computer's interior to be beautiful?
yes, they should.
but should they had done it on this iMac?
i don't think so.
so i'd just cut them some slack, get myself a cup of oo-long, and be faithful that the next iMac will be better.
All Intel pro apps need 64-bit
If you need power, you need 64-bit...now. The 2 GiB RAM thing isn't the issue, it's the extra speed of the x64 ISA.
20% faster for x64 is typical - do you really want 32-bit?
Except that 64-bit is *faster* !!!steve_hill4 said:
If you need power, you need 64-bit...now. The 2 GiB RAM thing isn't the issue, it's the extra speed of the x64 ISA.
20% faster for x64 is typical - do you really want 32-bit?
some thoughts
I think Apple's design strategy this time was make the new iMac/Powerbook look as much like the old iMac/Powerbook as possible. The idea being you can't really tell it's an intel until you look so you feel more comfortable with the transision. The new spick and span design will be coming with the next iteration I bet with the super clean internals.
I think Apple's design strategy this time was make the new iMac/Powerbook look as much like the old iMac/Powerbook as possible. The idea being you can't really tell it's an intel until you look so you feel more comfortable with the transision. The new spick and span design will be coming with the next iteration I bet with the super clean internals.
You are probably right. But if Apple didn't want us to see a big difference with the Intel switch, they should have kept the insides nice looking.pizzach said:
Bah, I did!
If you'd like to bid on my iMac G5, in fact, here's the link:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8749917171&rd=1&sspagename=STRK:MESE:IT&rd=1
It's a great machine, yes. But I'm also one who believes in changing with the times. When a company tells you "Our *entire* product line will be Intel based by the end of 2006!" - that's your cue to prepare for change.
No, the new Intel-based iMac G5 won't immediately be "4x faster" overall. Maybe only in a few rare instances. But it clearly will be faster for the same price, and it will make full use of the universal binaries, which all respectable Mac vendors are rushing to convert their apps to using. Most importantly to me, it *will* also be able to natively boot and run Windows. I guarantee it won't be long at all before we see someone's freeware or shareware boot manager utility allowing dual boot of XP and OS X on these Intel-based Macs - and THAT is something I will certainly sell my exsiting Macs to upgrade to.
If you'd like to bid on my iMac G5, in fact, here's the link:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8749917171&rd=1&sspagename=STRK:MESE:IT&rd=1
It's a great machine, yes. But I'm also one who believes in changing with the times. When a company tells you "Our *entire* product line will be Intel based by the end of 2006!" - that's your cue to prepare for change.
No, the new Intel-based iMac G5 won't immediately be "4x faster" overall. Maybe only in a few rare instances. But it clearly will be faster for the same price, and it will make full use of the universal binaries, which all respectable Mac vendors are rushing to convert their apps to using. Most importantly to me, it *will* also be able to natively boot and run Windows. I guarantee it won't be long at all before we see someone's freeware or shareware boot manager utility allowing dual boot of XP and OS X on these Intel-based Macs - and THAT is something I will certainly sell my exsiting Macs to upgrade to.
Ilgaz said:Don't give away that iMac (G5) on eBay etc. If you actually believe that "4x faster" etc stuff , you are making a mistake.
Someone will pick it for dead price and happily encode video etc for years!
Speaking own exprience as a G5 1600 desktop user, just add RAM. Make it like 1.5 GB. You will be happy next 3-4 years. I mean using it fully.
If you get orphaned by Apple (no PPC OS X etc,impossible), sue them
Ilgaz said:If you mean the engineers claiming G4 500 is 3x faster than P3 500 are smart, we have a problem.
http://web.archive.org/web/19991013065614/apple.com/powermac/processor.html (yep, there, 3x for you)
Well when using AltiVec for they types of processing they listed... it was true.
shawnce said:Code:Index Refs Address Size Wired Name (Version) <Linked Against> 1 1 0x0 0x0 0x0 com.apple.kernel (8.4.1) 2 16 0x0 0x0 0x0 com.apple.kpi.bsd (8.4.1) 3 25 0x0 0x0 0x0 com.apple.kpi.iokit (8.4.1) 4 25 0x0 0x0 0x0 com.apple.kpi.libkern (8.4.1) 5 24 0x0 0x0 0x0 com.apple.kpi.mach (8.4.1) 6 12 0x0 0x0 0x0 com.apple.kpi.unsupported (8.4.1) ... 83 0 0x20a15000 0x3000 0x2000 com.apple.Dont_Steal_Mac_OS_X (4.0.0) <6 4 3 2>
Interesting
Which just goes to show that the engineers at Apple aren't complete idiots. I mean, if I was going to try to hack MacOS X (perish the thought
), the very first thing I would be trying to do would be to sit on any access points to such a suspiciously named module.The fact that there are no references showing is a fair old indicator that Apple's engineers have done something twisted and undocumented to access code held in the protection module. As a betting person, I would say that the module is encrypted, and that method entry points have been hardcoded elsewhere in the OS. Methinks that maybe a quick squizz at the dissassembled machine code for XCode may be rather instructive for would be hackers
I'd prefer 64 Merom, but 32 Yonah is brilliant too. I do understand that 64-bit is faster at the same clock speed, but how many applications fully utilise this? (Not rhetorical, a genuine question).AidenShaw said:
I'm here at the Apple Store, playing with a new 20" 2GHz iMac - this thing is blazing, watching 720p video with zero frames dropped, photobooth and iMovie loading with zero lag time, encoded a 5mb mp3 file to AAC at 38.5-40x (wow!) - the bitrate was only 56k, but granted it's pretty amazing. Pity I don't have PhotoShop installed on this display model to test out renderings, I can't really benchmark anything, but it feels amazing. Let's hope the MBP feels like this.
mongoos150 said:
GAH! If someone doesn't go and download non-universal binary X-Bench for the x86 iMac soon I'm going to have to go over to the Apple store after work and do it myself. This more then anything is going to give us a good idea where we are at wit running older apps.
AidenShaw said:
I call BS on the 20%. Please document where you get 20%, and in what applications.
To the average user hardware is going to make things more snappy then 32 vs. 64-bitness of an OS. People keep screeching like an ape that had its banana taken away from it. This isnt a big deal right now. In late 2007 it will probably be a much bigger deal. And frankly I think you are wrong on what performance increases you are going to get from a 64-bit OS.
kingtj said:
Why would you want to dual boot? I can understand why someone would want to run a Windows application on thier Mac. Lots of reasons for that. But why re-boot to do it? Wouldn't it be much better if you could run the Windows app on the Mac OS desktop? I expect Virtual PC to run MUCH faster (near native speed) Even PC games should run well under Mac OSX
If Virtual PC doesnot do it, then maybe VMWare, QEMU or Wine. Of these dual boot seems the least atractive.
The Intel Macs lack the old standard BIOS so any OS that depends on it will not run. Current 32-bit Windows depends on the BIOS. I hear Vista wil not.
SiliconAddict said:
I agree. 64-bits is NOT faster and can actually be slower if the only diference in the hardware is the word lenght. The reason 64-bits seems faster is only because 64-bits
is only implemented at the hight end There are no 64-bit 1.7Ghz Celerons and there are not 32-bit Opterons so when you see a 64-bit procesor it brings a larger L2 cache and other architecural feature along with the wider word.
THere is a down side to a wider word. It's called "code density". All those 64-bit pointers and addresses take up 8 bytes each but if the upper 32 bits of each is always zerro filled it is a wate. A (maybe the) major limit to performance is the limited bandwidth of the bus that connects the CPU to memory. Pushing pointless zerros across that bus can't be a GoodThing.
The reason for going 64-bits is so you can address more than 4 GB of memory (even if some of that memory is virual)
I still can't figure out why Apple selected Intel. Why not buy from both Intel AND AMD? Use the Intel chips in the notebooks and iMac where powe and heat matter and put AMD Opterons in the Power PC replacement. Even at 20 grand each 8-core Operon powered Macs would sell. Put what has Intel got Xeons?
ChrisA said:
Don't get your hopes high, especially thinking near native speed due only to the move to x86. VPC still only emulates a P3, even on a Windows machine. In addition, it doesn't support DirectX, so you will be stuck with software emulation, if the game supports it.
SiliconAddict said:
"2. Running Windows 64 and 64 bit software will be like having a nitrous oxide injection system under the "hood" of your PC. We saw an 8% to 37% gain over "32/32" and "64/32", depending on what application we ran."
32/32 = Windows XP Pro with 32 bit application or
64/32 = Windows 64 with 32 bit application
64/64 = Windows 64 with 64 bit application
PD = Pentium Dual Core (Pentium-D)
All from http://www.barefeats.com/dualcore.html ...
You'll see similar reports for any comparison of 32-bit vs 64-bit applications on x64. The 64-bit operating system usually doesn't help (or hurt) - it's recompiling the application for 64-bit that is the big win.
Apologies will be graciously accepted...
ChrisA said:
See previous reply comparing 32-bit and 64-bit on exactly the same machine.
You mean "data density".ChrisA said:
The upside of x64 is that the processor has more registers than the x86 processor, so you make fewer trips to memory and cache.
kainjow said:
Not it doesn't CFM is an OPTIONAL extension to EFI. Personally, I don't see why on earth Apple would implement an optional extension given the massively compressed design cycles imposed (cite interior design).
The only way I can see this happening is if they have taken a completely off the shelf EFI implementation that already has it.
BUT IT'S OPTIONAL AND NOT REQUIRED FOR A FULL EFI IMPLEMENTATION.
I'm happy to wait for Vista, I'd rather the BIOS crud wasn't knocking around in there, and anyhow, windows developers with Vista should be able to post soon and tell us if it boots Vista, which I assume it will.
AidenShaw said:"2. Running Windows 64 and 64 bit software will be like having a nitrous oxide injection system under the "hood" of your PC. We saw an 8% to 37% gain over "32/32" and "64/32", depending on what application we ran."
32/32 = Windows XP Pro with 32 bit application or
64/32 = Windows 64 with 32 bit application
64/64 = Windows 64 with 64 bit application
PD = Pentium Dual Core (Pentium-D)
All from http://www.barefeats.com/dualcore.html ...
You'll see similar reports for any comparison of 32-bit vs 64-bit applications on x64. The 64-bit operating system usually doesn't help (or hurt) - it's recompiling the application for 64-bit that is the big win.
Apologies will be graciously accepted...
Think someone needs to read up on 32 vs. 64-bit.
http://arstechnica.com/cpu/03q1/x86-64/x86-64-1.html
Which means what? A four year old article about AMD's *future* 64-bit extensions, compared to benchmarks from systems running today with those extensions (on Intel chips, no less)?SiliconAddict said:
Your statement that my 20% claim was BS, vs. my links to tests showing the improvement, and a report that said 8% to 37% improvement was seen with 64-bit?
If you think that I am in error about something (or everything), please explain what I have wrong.
EricNau said:
But is US the average iMac user or the the average macrumors member? People in here know that the intel iMac looks different on the inside, but most buyers wont.
IMHO the average iMac user will never open their iMac. The current iMacs (G5 and Intel), are much more laptop like and thus are much less "user serviceable" than a typical Dell desktop.Dale Cooper said:
The real test of whether Apple has stopped caring will be if the new PowerMacs (which more users will open) look any different than a Dell on the inside. (And IMHO Dell's are usually among the better looking PC innards.)
B
belvdr said:
Um... I think you aren't grasping the point. It doesn't matter that VPC only emulates a P3. On an Intel Mac, it won't have to emulate anything. It also won't have to "support" DirectX.
Windows, Direct X etc... will all run natively on the Intel Processor and directly support the hardware. It won't have to "emulate" Direct X, it will be _running_ Direct X.
arn