PowerMac G5: World's Fastest Desktop Computer

[mjones4th]

oh and check this out:

if you use a processor at 100% capacity 20% of the time, and 10% capacity 80% of the time (and I think that's very generous for the average computer user, for the Mac types its probably a lot closer), then you average out to 28%, right?

Now, say you buy a computer that's twice as fast. 100% theoretically becomes 50% and !0%, 5%

So your average drops to 14%

So unless you double your productivity, you are wasting your money.

In the audio world we add effects until we can't, just because we can. When we run out, we think that its our machine's fault. But do we really need eighteen compressors on our mix?

What did they do at Electric Ladyland? Buy more 1176s?

I'm not saying that more isn't better, but we all will still be on G4s or G3s or, heaven forbid, 8600s

I think I'll get a G5 next summer

 

[mjones4th]

i mean 8500s

 

[mjones4th]

And Oh yeah,

Just kidding

 

[Wonder Boy]

Re: Re: I've made decision...

Originally posted by Frohickey
No one here is forcing you to like the new PowerMac.
No one here is forcing you to buy the new PowerMac.

Thats why freedom is so great. You can be a putz, and I can call you one, and there ain't nothing the government can do about it.

Just kidding.

i hope everyone but me likes them and buys one. hell, ill get a rev 2. all i said was that i am not crazy about the new g5. and just so you can sleep sound tonight, i never felt pressure from anyone to like them. freedom of choice...

 

[Wonder Boy]

Re: Re: I've made decision...

Originally posted by frozenstar
If aircraft-grade anodized aluminum alloy looks cheap to you, then I don't even want to know what you thought of the transparent polycarbonate used in the previous generation of Power Macs.

A valid point, nevertheless, i think they could have done better in terms of design. we're talking about apple here...

 

[MacBandit]

Re: By the way.

Originally posted by Brother Mugga
Just before I toddle off to bed...

Am I correct in presuming that the antennae for bluetooth and airport are external because of the G5 case acts as a Faraday Cage?

I'm wary of bringing this up, because my last passing reference to decibels produced a slew (a word I've always longed to use in polite conversation) of physicsesque discussion, thereby revealing our true geeky natures to the watching world.

Just a thought.

Nighty night


Brother Mugga

PS: Apologies if this has already been discussed, but I didn't see it previously?

Here's a great pic of the antennas on the new G5. Oh, and yes I think you are correct. With all the aluminum and different angles inside and even the cheese grater would cause a sort of interference worse then a flat sheet of metal on top of all the fans causing noise I think the external antennas were a good idea. Not to mention this opens up the 3rd party industry to make real antennas.

 

[SubGothius]

Re: G5powerbooks far off?

Originally posted by jaison13
does anyone else think that by the looks of the tower with mesh front and back and 7? fans that this chip ain't working in a powerbook. it would catch on fire. i think a lot of work is still needed o make a G5 powerbook.

Apple-polly-loggies if someone's addressed this already, but...

IIRC, the new G5 (machine) actually has 9 fans, yet (also IIRC) the 970 (chip) actually dissipates less heat than the G4.

The G5 has all those fans and all that open ventilation not because the 970 runs hotter, but rather, because Apple wanted to make the G5 run quietly. Instead of the olde-skoole approach to cooling used heretofore -- i.e., having a couple-few high-speed, noisy fans moving a lot of air thru a few (relatively) small vents, producing a lot of noisy turbulence -- Apple gave the G5 a bunch of independently-controlled, low-speed (thus less-noisy) fans in separate cooling zones that only spin up when their particular zone needs cooling, and moving volumes of air silently with as little restriction and turbulence as possible.

IMHO, from what I recall reading, the 970 chip may actually be better-suited to portable use than any G4 chip used in the past.

 

[Sun Baked]

Re: Re: G5powerbooks far off?...

Originally posted by SubGothius
The G5 has all those fans and all that open ventilation not because the 970 runs hotter, but rather, because Apple wanted to make the G5 run quietly. Instead of the olde-skoole approach to cooling used heretofore -- i.e., having a couple-few high-speed, noisy fans moving a lot of air thru a few (relatively) small vents, producing a lot of noisy turbulence -- Apple gave the G5 a bunch of independently-controlled, low-speed (thus less-noisy) fans in separate cooling zones that only spin up when their particular zone needs cooling, and moving volumes of air silently with as little restriction and turbulence as possible.

I'm so glad everybody thinks the G5 is a cool chip, even though it is a 50W chip at 1.8GHz and the 2.0GHz is a bit more than that.

Plug two of those things into the computer and your talking over 100W in the box.

To put this in perspective the Easy Bake Oven uses a 100W bulb in the box and creates enough heat to cook brownies and/or a cupcakes.

Drop a couple 2.0GHz G5s in a laptop, get rid of some of the fans, put it in your lap and begin cooking.

Editorial Review from Amazon.com
Children love toys that help them master grown-up activities such as cooking and caring for others. That's the attraction to Hasbro's Easy-Bake Oven & Snack Center, where kids can create real miniature baked goods to share. Young chefs also can use a special warming tray on the top of the oven to melt cheese or chocolate for dips and toppings. Designed for safety, the 14-by-7-by-7-inch electric oven is heated with a 100-watt light bulb that's installed behind a secure panel. Children move food items in and out of the baking chamber by using a long-handled, plastic "pan pusher" that keeps small hands out of harm's way. Each set includes two 3-inch round baking pans, two tiny cooking utensils, a warmer cover, two warming cups, a pan pusher, and a recipe booklet. Three cooking mixes are also provided. You'll need to contribute the light bulb, assembly with a Phillips screwdriver, and a good deal of adult supervision. --Joan DeClaire

 

[Bazil]

What next?

I've heard alot of rumors about the G5, and I'm happy to say that even the wildest ones didn't hold a candle to the reality. The only beef I have with the system is the price, I like the way it looks, I love the operating system. Being able to flip off my hardcore PC friends helps. But they will be able to pay for ISDN, apps, games, and new hardware as I continue to make payments on my extremly pricey system. Personaly I think I'll just get a 12" PB for now, maybe as time progresses and I get into college I'll get something diffrent. Frankly I don't believe the average computer user needs so much speed. I'm happy to know that some day that kind of speed will trickle down to me. I was hoping they would come out with new iBooks, or maybe a new PowerBook, something I could afford, use, and get a pretty good life out of it. I do think that if Apple wants to win users they need to make a middle of the road tower that can hold it's own against price comparable MS machines. But watcha gonna do? The G5 didn't just catch up to MS but they left them bloody in a ditch, if they keep it up it will be a much happier world.

 

[ddtlm]

mospeada:

Yeah I just saw that at Slashdot. Now its the other side's turn to make a counterclaim.

 

[chanoc]

Time To Start a Fire

Originally posted by ejb190
I was looking at the speed comparisons posted on the Apple's G5 page. They are showing how the Dual 2 GHz is faster than the current top of the line single processor Intel and ADM offerings.

I always cringe when I see things like this. Part of the story is always left behind. But alas, that's marketing!

But I wonder what happens to those results when you use a dual Intel or ADM chip or a single G5?

Apple/Veritest have used a few "cheats" to make the G5 look better.
While this is one awesome machine, and the fastest out of Cupertino so far-- it is not the "world's fastest personal computer".G5 Really That Fast?

 

[Frohickey]

Re: Hmmmmmm...

Originally posted by Brother Mugga
I think it might grow on us all.

Remember how everyone didn't like the Smurf Tower (aka blue and white PowerMac G3) when it first came out?

 

[Frohickey]

Re: Expandability still Lacking...

Originally posted by BobX
Only TWO PCI slots and ONE PCI-X slot. Now that the next-generation PowerMac will have only TWO PCI slots, anyone feel two is too few? Also, not seems to have much room for extra drives, especially optical drives.... (but I can't imagine anyone needing more than two optical drives in a box... there's always Firewire to pick up the slack when it comes to attaching more drives). Lacking a "big tower" option, two PCI slots seem too little.

There are 4 slots in the PowerMac G5. Slot 1 is AGP Pro.
Slot 2 is PCI (33MHz for 1.6GHz, 100MHz for 1.8GHz and dual 2.0GHz).
Slot 3 is PCI (33MHz for 1.6GHz, 100MHz for 1.8GHz and dual 2.0GHz).
Slot 4 is PCI (33MHz for 1.6GHz, 133MHz for 1.8GHz and dual 2.0GHz).

PCI is a subset of PCI-X. So, if you want, you can put 33MHz PCI cards on Slot 3 and 4, it will just work, but at 33MHz.

If you put a 100MHz PCI-X card on Slot 4, it will just work, but at 100MHz.

If you put a 133MHz PCI-X card on Slot 2, it will just work, but at 33MHz.

 

[Bob Knob]

Shipping date

Sorry if this was already mentioned, I did a quick sift and didn't see it.
The shipping date for Dual 2GHz G5s is now "on or before 09-02-03" (my order was placed in the first hour the store went back up)

 

[plumbercrackboy]

Originally posted by ddtlm
plumbercrackboy:
So Boxx would refuse my check if I sent it to them? I bet they'd have the Opteron to me before Apple could get me a dual G5.

I can count the people on both hands that know about Boxx and the Opteron workstations. I cannot even begin count the people that know about Dell and Xeon workstations. It is a completely different ballgame. But you seem to just want to stick your head in the sand and ignore this.

Why would Apple show benchmarks for systems that no one knows about/uses. It only makes sense for them to have good marketing. Take the #1 competetor and show benchmarks that make them look bad. Why would you bring up a processor that really no one uses? You can buy one, but that does not make it widely available for consumers.

I was thinking more about this and the benchmark that was missing from the slides was the G4. Again, I know why Apple did not show that one. It would have shown the age of the G4 against the P4. And then why would people want powerbooks with G4's when they can get a P4 laptop. I know that P4-e is a lot slower than a real P4 but isn't marketing a great thing. I also know that the FSB of the G5 is not 1Ghz nor is the FSB of the P4 800 or 533. The G5 is actually 500Mhz and the P4 is 200 or 133. Sure they have the bandwidth of a 1Ghz, 800 or 533, but this is NOT the clock speed. You gota love sales people.

 

[Zaid]

Thought you guys may find this interesting: In a telephonic interview with the guys over at /. an Apple VP defended the benchmarking. Here's what he had to say.

Greg Joswiak, vice president of hardware product marketing at Apple, in a phone interview today, defended Apple's performance claims for its upcoming Power Mac G5, after they came under fire in the wake of yesterday's announcement. Read on for the details.
Joswiak went over the points in turn, but first said that they set out from the beginning to do a fair and even comparison, which is why they used an independent lab and provided full disclosure of the methods used in the tests, which would be "a silly way to do things" if Apple were intending to be deceptive.

He said Veritest used gcc for both platforms, instead of Intel's compiler, simply because the benchmarks measure two things at the same time: compiler, and hardware. To test the hardware alone, you must normalize the compiler out of the equation -- using the same version and similar settings -- and, if anything, Joswiak said, gcc has been available on the Intel platform for a lot longer and is more optimized for Intel than for PowerPC.

He conceded readily that the Dell numbers would be higher with the Intel compiler, but that the Apple numbers could be higher with a different compiler too.

Joswiak added that in the Intel modifications for the tests, they chose the option that provided higher scores for the Intel machine, not lower. The scores were higher under Linux than under Windows, and in the rate test, the scores were higher with hyperthreading disabled than enabled. He also said they would be happy to do the tests on Windows and with hyperthreading enabled, if people wanted it, as it would only make the G5 look better.

In the G5 modifications, they were made because shipping systems will have those options available. For example, memory read bypass was turned on, for even though it is not on by default in the tested prototypes, it will be on by default for the shipping systems. Software-based prefetching was turned off and a high-performance malloc was used because those options will be available on the shipping systems (Joswiak did not know whether this malloc, which is faster but less memory efficient, will be the default in the shipping systems).

As to not using SSE2, Joswiak said they enabled the correct flags for it, as documented on the gcc web site, so that SSE2 was enabled (the Veritest report lists the options used for each test, which appears to include the appropriate flags).

 

[the future]

Let's settle this argument by saying that whatever the tiny little details of the benchmarks may be, speed isn't a reason to not buy a Mac anymore... while Windows WAS, IS AND WILL BE FOREVER a very good reason not to buy a PC.

Oh, and the people who think the new case is ugly are just insane.

 

[jbomber]

Re: Re: Hmmmmmm...

Originally posted by Frohickey
Remember how everyone didn't like the Smurf Tower (aka blue and white PowerMac G3) when it first came out?

Hehehehe... Yeah, but i think that was the initial gut reaction to it not being beige. "Computers can be blue?? Weird." This thing is legitimately ugly. Nice material to be sure, but it feels like an intermediate design certainly not a final design. If I had turned this in to any of my industrial design professors back in college, I'd have gotten a D. C- at best...

 

[frozenstar]

Re: Re: Re: Hmmmmmm...

Originally posted by jbomber
Hehehehe... Yeah, but i think that was the initial gut reaction to it not being beige. "Computers can be blue?? Weird." This thing is legitimately ugly. Nice material to be sure, but it feels like an intermediate design certainly not a final design. If I had turned this in to any of my industrial design professors back in college, I'd have gotten a D. C- at best...

As you know, it's not just about appearance. It's about simplicity and efficiency as well. And in those regards, the new case is astounding.
They've managed to create four compartmentalized thermal zones in a case with a total of nine fans, while still keeping the decibel level below 40db. That is impressive.
And on top of that, they've still been able to retain easy-access to the internal components.
If your professor would have given you a C for designing the Power Mac G5 case, then he shouldn't be teaching industrial design.

 

[anonymous161]

I have a question: Does anyone know what the internals of the single proc. G5s will look like? What I mean is, the Dual 2 gig model has two big G5 heatsinks with two big fans infront and two big fans behind, will the single proc models have only one heatsink but keep the 4 fans? Or will the single proc models only have 2 fans? Will the heatsink be centered on the board? I was just curious.

 

[ddtlm]

Cubeboy:

Read my previous post, Hyperthreading hurts single cpu SPEC which was why it was turned on for those tests, Hyperthreading was turned off for the SPECrate tests, where it would boost by a significant amount. Hyperthreading boosts performance in threaded programs and multiprocessing, it will no doubt boost SPECrate (which is really just SPEC to test multi-processor configurations). That the VP would say such a obviously wrong thing really annoys me.

Is he really wrong? He's the one on the podium and he knows people who know will rip him a new one over his public, unmistakeable, direct statements of what he claims is truth. I'm inclined to believe him (despite HT theoretically helping SPEC Rate).

I mean honestly, if Apple really cared about hyperthreading hurting performance, why would they leave it on for single cpu SPEC?

Didn't he only say HT slowed things down in SPEC Rate?

chanoc:

Hey get with the program, Apple's man has already defended Apple's position and it looks to me like now the ball is in haxial's court. Actually I see Zaid posted the text here.

the future:

Course all the other Macs are still lacking in the speed department.

 

[the future]

Originally posted by ddtlm
Course all the other Macs are still lacking in the speed department.

But they are – except the xServe – for consumers who don't need that kind of speed anyway.

 

[DeepIn2U]

WWDC June 2003

Sorry about this thread but......
Does anyone have the WWDC June 23/03 presentation by Steve Jobs as one complete QuickTime File (Audio & Video included) so that I can download and save onto CD?? Pretty Please!!!!!

Just PM me with how I can download or FTP it thanks!

Much Appreciated.
PowerMac G5 5.1 surround sound! Simply SiCK! and Wicked!

 

[Cubeboy]

Originally posted by ddtlm
Cubeboy:
Is he really wrong? He's the one on the podium and he knows people who know will rip him a new one over his public, unmistakeable, direct statements of what he claims is truth. I'm inclined to believe him (despite HT theoretically helping SPEC Rate).

Here's what he said:

Joswiak added that in the Intel modifications for the tests, they chose the option that provided higher scores for the Intel machine, not lower. The scores were higher under Linux than under Windows, and in the rate test, the scores were higher with hyperthreading disabled than enabled. He also said they would be happy to do the tests on Windows and with hyperthreading enabled, if people wanted it, as it would only make the G5 look better

SPEC rate basically takes your standard SPEC int/fp benchmark suites and runs it n times simultaeneously, of which n represents the number of cpus in the system. Considering that hyperthreading basically allows for an a pair of cores on a single CPU that share some common resources and cache, SPECrate scores should be higher versus a comparable system with no hyperthreading since no penalty is incured for 2 additional cores while running multiple threads.

I also don't agree with him on the operating system part considering that both AMD and Intel use Windows when trying to attain the highest SPEC score possible for each of their respective cpus.

Of course, to answer your question, I really don't know what to make of it, on one hand, the technical aspects seem to contradict what he's saying, on the other hand, would he really make such a statement without having some serious proof to back it up?

Originally posted by ddtlm
Didn't he only say HT slowed things down in SPEC Rate?

Yes he did, I was pointing out that the tests where Hyperthreading did hurt performance was SPEC int and fp, but Apple left Hyperthreading on in those tests despite having it turned off in SPEC rates where it might have helped boost the scores and providing justification for doing so in claiming that it hurt the P4's SPEC rate performance and thus had to be turned off. (Ironic isn't it)

Of course, none of it matters anymore, it seems now that Apple actually turned hyperthreading off in SPEC int/fp and left it on in SPEC rate. Than again, that doesn't really go along with Jozwiak's comments above, which was trying to justify disabling HT in SPEC rates.

 

[Brother Mugga]

High Ives (ooooh, see what I did there?)

Hey - check out Ives talking about the G5 case here:

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,59381,00.html


He even says 'minimalist'...

...so maybe *I* should get into industrial design?

Yes, it all seems so clear now...


Brother Mugga