[booboo]

Are they any quieter? (Is there any change in the fan layout/number/size of?)

Any improvement in memory bandwidth?

Has the audio problem (noise on ground) been fixed?

The low-end model looks conspicuously worse than its predecessor (wouldn't we all rather have dual 867's than a single 1GHz, especially when we can't - and don't want to - boot OS9?)

Unless there is any categorical reason, it looks like I'll be hacking on with this 8600, and waiting for the next generation...

[Pepi Picklefoot]

Originally posted by booboo:
Are they any quieter? (Is there any change in the fan layout/number/size of?)

Any improvement in memory bandwidth?

Has the audio problem (noise on ground) been fixed?

The low-end model looks conspicuously worse than its predecessor (wouldn't we all rather have dual 867's than a single 1GHz, especially when we can't - and don't want to - boot OS9?)

Unless there is any categorical reason, it looks like I'll be hacking on with this 8600, and waiting for the next generation...

Yes.

No.

Yes.

...and yes...do not go for the low-end.

[ajprice]

I think this is the first time this has happened, but new macs have come out, and I'm happier now than I was before. I have a quicksilver single 867, and I just gained 734Mhz on the base model MDD G4. And for anyone who bought a dual 1.25 yesterday, for £2600 (or however many $ that is), you have my sympathy, but I cannot give you your £1000 back, maybe if you ask Steve nicely...

[Superchicken]

Anyone who bought a 1.25 yesterday... should give me their money 500 bucks and I'll tell em the perfect time to buy next time they need a new Mac

[iamnid]

as a gamer... I'd rather have the single 1Ghz than the dual 867s... performance will be much better as hardly any games can use both processors.

[tikki]

Originally posted by iamnid:
as a gamer... I'd rather have the single 1Ghz than the dual 867s... performance will be much better as hardly any games can use both processors.

you're nuts.

dual processors have advantages beyond the extra 133mhz you gain in your q3 game.

[AssassyN]

Unless the Mac architecture in utilizing dual procs. is MUCH different than that of the PC, he's right. In games, the single 1Ghz proc. will own the Dual 867Mhz procs. all day long. Why? Because to a GAME it's just like there's only one proc. in the machine...now to a select few programs such as maybe Dreamweaver or something of that sort, it will utilize both procs., but to this day I've yet to hear of a game that can or will take advantage of 2 procs. at the same time.

Of course I'm a Mac newbie, so this could be completely wrong, but I AM sure of what I said about the PC & using dual procs.

[iamnid]

No Tikki I am not nuts... go to xlr8yourmac.com and check it out for yourself... even aside from gaming, most programs will run faster with a faster single processor than two processors that are slower.

Thanks for sticking up for me bamboo. There are actually some games that DO take advantage of dual processors. Quake III is one of them and so is Giants: Citizen Kabuto -- not very many when you consider how many games don't take advantage of the second processor.

[AssassyN]

I stand corrected about "no games" taking advantage of it, but as stated, 90% or more, a single faster proc. will yeild you more good than two slower procs.

[Chun Hsu]

Originally posted by iamnid:
as a gamer... I'd rather have the single 1Ghz than the dual 867s... performance will be much better as hardly any games can use both processors.

Ack! The 1Ghz is only 15% faster in CPU than an 867. Generally a video card upgrade will increase your framerates more than a CPU upgrade like this.

The big reason to have dual processors is so that you can do things in the background while you play games. I do this all the time and it's absolutely fantastic! Quicktime encoding, EyeTV recording, you name it, as long as you are running just one of them, you can play games anytime you want without noticing a difference.

Granted, not everyone runs long running tasks like this, but when it happens, being able to continue using your computer is a god send.

[Mac Zealot]

Originally posted by tikki:
you're nuts.

dual processors have advantages beyond the extra 133mhz you gain in your q3 game.

I'm thinking the same thing.

Quake 3 = MP enabled. That means my dual 800 g4 will readily whoop a single ghz G4's arse any day of the week.

btw: in MP apps the 'speed' boost is roughly 50%, a single 1.2ghz would compete with a dual 800, but you'd still lack bandwidth.

And by that I mean having 2 2mb L3 caches, etc. HUUUGE advantages

[DaedalusDX]

Originally posted by AssassyN:
Unless the Mac architecture in utilizing dual procs. is MUCH different than that of the PC, he's right. In games, the single 1Ghz proc. will own the Dual 867Mhz procs. all day long. Why? Because to a GAME it's just like there's only one proc. in the machine...now to a select few programs such as maybe Dreamweaver or something of that sort, it will utilize both procs., but to this day I've yet to hear of a game that can or will take advantage of 2 procs. at the same time.

Of course I'm a Mac newbie, so this could be completely wrong, but I AM sure of what I said about the PC & using dual procs.

You'd be surprised how many games work with dual processors. Quake 3 arena works DP. Jedi Knight 2 in multiplayer works dp...

and DP has the inherent advantage that the operating system and any other background tasks are not always stealing processor time from the task at hand, be it a game or Microsoft Word...

The OS itself figures out which processor is least loaded at the moment and assigns threads to the processors... so there is ALWAYS an improvement with dual processors in OS X.

OS 9 was completely different... all apps ran on one processor unless specifically written to do diffirently.

[DaedalusDX]

Originally posted by Chun Hsu:
The big reason to have dual processors is so that you can do things in the background while you play games. I do this all the time and it's absolutely fantastic! Quicktime encoding, EyeTV recording, you name it, as long as you are running just one of them, you can play games anytime you want without noticing a difference.

Granted, not everyone runs long running tasks like this, but when it happens, being able to continue using your computer is a god send.

Bingo.

That's precisely the way i work on my machine. I like to have everything running at once, including various server apps and such.

Tests you may have seen don't consider multitasking as much as single tasks... of course the faster single chip will run one application faster than 2 slower chips...

say you're running the MP unaware microsoft word. when you're working with word, basically all of the background tasks are idle on both systems... so Word would run faster on the sigle proc machine with faster chip...

however, if you have a whole bunch of stuff active in the background while you are doing word, the single processor chip would have to divide its attention, while on the DP machine, the word process isn't nearly as deprived because there is a second processor there doing work.

[booboo]

Originally posted by Pepi Picklefoot:
Yes.

No.

Yes.

...and yes...do not go for the low-end.

Pepi, I'd like to know what your sources are for them being quieter - and for the audio problem being fixed...

[CheesePuff]

Originally posted by booboo:
Pepi, I'd like to know what your sources are for them being quieter - and for the audio problem being fixed...

MacCentral.com article with Apple themselves... they said it was their number one complaint (duh) and its fixed.

[iamnid]

Jedi Knight II does not work with both processors in single or multiplayer modes... Brad Oliver himself attested to this in the games forum here at macnn.

http://xlr8yourmac.com/G4CARDS/giga_...z/index3G.html

the charts on this page clearly show that a single 1Ghz upgrade card can perform exactly the same in games such as Quake III and Unreal Tournament as a dual 1Ghz.

I'd definitely rather have that single 1Ghz than the dual 867 for games ... sorry to disappoint you.

[booboo]

Originally posted by iamnid:
Jedi Knight II does not work with both processors in single or multiplayer modes... Brad Oliver himself attested to this in the games forum here at macnn.

http://xlr8yourmac.com/G4CARDS/giga_...z/index3G.html

the charts on this page clearly show that a single 1Ghz upgrade card can perform exactly the same in games such as Quake III and Unreal Tournament as a dual 1Ghz.

I'd definitely rather have that single 1Ghz than the dual 867 for games ... sorry to disappoint you.

Iamnid, I think you are clutching at straws here.

Bottom line is, if YOU only ever do one thing at once on your Mac, or only use the increasingly few app's that aren't multi-threaded, you'll see less advantage in having a DP machine, but as far as most peoiple, particularly power-users, are concerned, a DP 867 if a far better bet than a single 1GHz.

Plus the clock speed difference between 867 and 1GHz is only 15% - barely noticeable - equivalent to the difference between, say 25MHz Quatra and a - uh - 29MHz Quadra. Hardly worth writing home about. (Apple never bothered with a 29 or 30MHz Quadra, they went straight to 33MHz, for a more noticeable speed bump...)

But you are obviously entitled to prefer whichever you choose, it is us that don't want you to be disappointed.


PS: Anyone have any news on the audio ground problems (noise on audio out) and whether it's been fixed?