[ceilingfan]

Hey everyone,
I'm about to plunk down the cash for a Dual 2.0 (with a 9800 and more ram from Crucial), but I've got a few (admittedly simple) questions I'm hoping someone could help me with.

1. Are the processors upgradeable? Say in a year a Dual 3.0 is released, will I be able to buy the processors and pop them in to upgrade the machine? I know Apple itself doesn't sell processor upgrades, but third parties do (don't they?). The processors are in sockets, aren't they?

2. I used a 1.8 (with 512 ram and standard video card) at the Apple Store in St. Louis, and was not impressed at all. iPhoto still didn't resize dynamically and Minimizing/Maximizing Quicktime movies still wasn't as smooth as silk. Will having dual, 200 more mhz, improved video card and more ram make as much difference as I hope?

(Without anybody being able to use dual G5, it's hard to get an answer here. Did the G4 to Dual G4 make a big difference? I've only been able to use my 500mhz Icebook and have no experience with duals. How much does the FX to 9800 effect the OS performance?)

(I use iPhoto as one of my real world benchmarks-- I want a computer that doesn't stutter when resizing it. The 1.8 would hang the program for several seconds, white out the window contents, and then stumbled to the new size slowly. Doh!)

3. What's the real deal, in layman's terms, on the new IBM compiler? In real world applications, will we see the legendary 200% performance gains per program (after recompile) that NASA saw with their application? Or is this pipe dreams?

4. I can't afford a monitor, so I've got to use a crappy 15 inch one. The included Apple DVI to VGA cable will allow me to do this with no problems?

That's about it for now. Thanks.

[icruise]

Originally posted by ceilingfan:

1. Are the processors upgradeable? Say in a year a Dual 3.0 is released, will I be able to buy the processors and pop them in to upgrade the machine? I know Apple itself doesn't sell processor upgrades, but third parties do (don't they?). The processors are in sockets, aren't they?

I don't know if they are upgradeable or not (with Apple's recent behavior toward making upgradeable machines, I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't). However, you have to realize that even if they were upgradeable, that doesn't mean that you would see a 3Ghz upgrade coming out right away, and it would be very expensive when it did. In general I think it's a better idea to sell your machine and buy a new one rather than plan on upgrading the processor.

2. I used a 1.8 (with 512 ram and standard video card) at the Apple Store in St. Louis, and was not impressed at all. iPhoto still didn't resize dynamically and Minimizing/Maximizing Quicktime movies still wasn't as smooth as silk. Will having dual, 200 more mhz, improved video card and more ram make as much difference as I hope?

I think what will make the most difference will be Panther.

(I use iPhoto as one of my real world benchmarks-- I want a computer that doesn't stutter when resizing it. The 1.8 would hang the program for several seconds, white out the window contents, and then stumbled to the new size slowly. Doh!)

That seems pretty slow to me. iPhoto is never fast, but it's not that slow even on my 12" powerbook.

4. I can't afford a monitor, so I've got to use a crappy 15 inch one. The included Apple DVI to VGA cable will allow me to do this with no problems?

If I were you, I would get the 1.8Ghz and spend the rest of the money on a decent monitor. It's something that you stare at the entire time you use the computer. Beyond that, having a larger, higher res monitor on a slightly slower (but still very fast) computer is much preferable to using a fast computer with a terrible monitor.

[blackbird_1.0]

are they gonna re-release the 1.6, cus i'm getting one of those hopefully, i can barely afford a G4, i know nobody likes 'em but i'd like to get one when their fixed

[SuperM]

Originally posted by ceilingfan:
Hey everyone,
I'm about to plunk down the cash for a Dual 2.0 (with a 9800 and more ram from Crucial), but I've got a few (admittedly simple) questions I'm hoping someone could help me with.

1. Are the processors upgradeable? Say in a year a Dual 3.0 is released, will I be able to buy the processors and pop them in to upgrade the machine? I know Apple itself doesn't sell processor upgrades, but third parties do (don't they?). The processors are in sockets, aren't they?

2. I used a 1.8 (with 512 ram and standard video card) at the Apple Store in St. Louis, and was not impressed at all. iPhoto still didn't resize dynamically and Minimizing/Maximizing Quicktime movies still wasn't as smooth as silk. Will having dual, 200 more mhz, improved video card and more ram make as much difference as I hope?

(Without anybody being able to use dual G5, it's hard to get an answer here. Did the G4 to Dual G4 make a big difference? I've only been able to use my 500mhz Icebook and have no experience with duals. How much does the FX to 9800 effect the OS performance?)

(I use iPhoto as one of my real world benchmarks-- I want a computer that doesn't stutter when resizing it. The 1.8 would hang the program for several seconds, white out the window contents, and then stumbled to the new size slowly. Doh!)

3. What's the real deal, in layman's terms, on the new IBM compiler? In real world applications, will we see the legendary 200% performance gains per program (after recompile) that NASA saw with their application? Or is this pipe dreams?

4. I can't afford a monitor, so I've got to use a crappy 15 inch one. The included Apple DVI to VGA cable will allow me to do this with no problems?

That's about it for now. Thanks.

Why worry about this now? Wait till your Apple warranty runs out then check out http://www.xlr8yourmac.com to see if you can overclock. I did with my B&W G3 and that's satified me till now. I expect to get 5 years out of my G5 DP 2.0GHz.

[ceilingfan]

Originally posted by SuperM:
Why worry about this now? Wait till your Apple warranty runs out then check out http://www.xlr8yourmac.com to see if you can overclock. I did with my B&W G3 and that's satified me till now. I expect to get 5 years out of my G5 DP 2.0GHz.

The more I know now, the better. It's taken me a long time to save up for this, and I want all of the information I can get.

[trion]

you might want to check out the following:

http://www.barefeats.com/g5.html

Has some benchmarks for the 3 G5s and compares it with the dual Processor G4s

Hope it is helpful.

[chrisutley]

Originally posted by Icruise:
Beyond that, having a larger, higher res monitor on a slightly slower (but still very fast) computer is much preferable to using a fast computer with a terrible monitor.

Truer words have never been written.

[Big Mac]

Will you be able to upgrade the processors? It seems that they are on a socket, and if that's the case, it's likely. Some have brought up issues about CPU control of the fans, but that's handled be software anyway. We also know that while Apple stresses the half speed bus ratio of the G5s, the 970 can support other bus multiples. (That's important if you're going to try to couple a faster processor with a slower bus.) However, as another poster said, you'll be waiting around for the upgrades to come out, and they probably won't be very cost effective. Don't purchase a machine on the basis of future upgrade paths alone, but it's good to know about the potential.

The original poster is new here, so I'm assuming he or she is also new to the Mac. Window resizing performance in OS X has always been problematic, and from all accounts it will continue to be. Most people claim that our graphics cards simply aren't really designed to handle the new generation UI calculations imposed by Quartz because the cards were built for the previous display architecture. It is quite upsetting, but until something gives it seems that more CPU power won't fix the issue. Many are hopeful that the GPUs will catch up after Longhorn's release, due to Longhorn's mimicry of Quartz. Testing out a machine in the limited way the original poster did won't show much about true performance at all. The fact is, the resizing issue is a red herring. It's not getting any faster despite the CPU muscle thrown at it, so the CPU isn't the bottleneck.

The 1.8GHz is a very fast machine, and the DP 2GHz is the fastest personal computer available. Although, it's unfortunate that the 1.6 and 1.8 had to be singles, since the second processor seems to provide nearly twice the performance in many DP aware apps. According to Bare Feats, the DP 2GHz shaves half the time off of the DP 1GHz in applications like the unoptimized Cinebench and Bryce 5. And that's really great since one usually sees a loss of performance per MHz when a new processor family is compared to its predecessors. The first P4s, for example, lagged behind lower MHz PIIIs because of the short term cost of the P4's far deeper pipelines. Even though the G5 incurs an efficiency penalty because of deeper pipelines, the impact is minimized by increased clock speed, FSB speed and other architectural improvements.

If you haven't watched the WWDC webcast, watch SJ's bake-offs and see if you have any doubts when it comes to real world tests of the 2GHz. It does look like the DP 2GHz is far and away the best value, but not everyone can afford it. I'd say don't purchase sight unseen. When there's a 2GHz on display at an Apple Store, run through some real world tasks and see if it's worth your thirty-thousand dimes.

[striker100]

It doesn't make sense to upgrade the video card from the 9600 to the 9800Pro to use on a 15" monitor. Unless you're a big time gamer and play the latest games anyway you won't see a difference in performance between the two cards.

Take the approx $300 and put it toward a better monitor, IMHO spending the money on the 9800Pro would be a waste of your funds.

[Hydra]

iPhoto seems much more responsive on my dual 800 than my bro's 1 GHz iMac and it ain't just the extra cache my dual has over the iMac. so a dual should help there. The graphics card will do very little to help things like iPhoto speed up I'm afraid.

The new XLC compiler from IBM may make thing in the future run faster in performance critical apps but it will be a while for it to make in impact - it was just released as a beta. The biggest boost the G5 will get in the near term is Panther. Jaguar 10.2.7 is only a stopgap to get the G5 in customer's hands but 10.3 is what the G5's were born to run. Expect a big boost in usability and raw performance under 10.3.

I would second the suggestion that you buy a dual G5 and not get a Radeon 9800 BTO. Take the $300 and get a decent monitor. The 9600 that comes with the dual G5 is actually not a bad card (far better than the FX in the lower 2 models). It would be a waste to get such a graphics powerhouse and not be able to see what you paid for. You could always get a Radeon 9800 retail later if you feel you need it (unless you pick up an Apple Display - then you would need a $99 adapter).

To answer the ugrade question I think it will be far from economical to upgrade a dual G5 in 12-18 months (assuming a Dual 3GHz upgrade is available). It would probably end up being cheaper to buy a dual 3 GHz in a year and sell the 2 GHz dual model (one of the biggest advantages of Apple hardware is the relatively high resale value). I question why you feel you need to even consider an upgrade in the next 1-2 years anyway. If you are using a 500MHz iBook a Dual 2GHz G5 will be a HUGE boost in performance. I think it is too early to tell how difficult these new beasts will be to upgrade but if it is important to you you're gonna have to wait a bit and get a definitive answer from some of the upgrade companies.

I fully understand and respect your need to examine the entire situation and make an educated decision - I would do the same. Just keep in mind that if you had to save a long time to buy a dual G5 you will probably need to save a while to buy an expensive upgrade too.

-Jerry C.