[stevesnj]

Just seen this on CNET.News... video clip from the MacWorld G5 intro. Click on "Apple: New G5 outperforms Windows PC" end of interview with Apple guy says not gonna happen anytime soon in Laptops.

Sorry if this was shown before.


CNET Video

[David Hagan]

I had seen this video before, but I wanted to watch it again. Something caught my ear the second time around.

Coursey: Does the G5 get into a notebook anytime soon? When I see all of these fans, and the big heat sinks, and the enclosures, I wonder about managing that kind of a processor.

Joswiak: The Power Mac G5 is very high power processor and as you can see as this unit spins around it has fairly significant cooling system including heat sinks that mean it's probably not going into a PowerBook anytime soon.

What is wrong with that statement? Well it's sounds as though Joswiak is inferring from the Power Mac that the G5 can't work in a PowerBook in its current state. Read it again: "It's probably not going into a PowerBook any time soon." Maybe he doesn't know for sure. But it does leave a little wiggle room, doesn't it? Probably!

[MaxPower2k3]

Originally posted by David Hagan:
I had seen this video before, but I wanted to watch it again. Something caught my ear the second time around.



What is wrong with that statement? Well it's sounds as though Joswiak is inferring from the Power Mac that the G5 can't work in a PowerBook in its current state. Read it again: "It's probably not going into a PowerBook any time soon." Maybe he doesn't know for sure. But it does leave a little wiggle room, doesn't it? Probably!

i think you're reading a bit too much into this..

[icruise]

Originally posted by MaxPower2k3:
i think you're reading a bit too much into this..

Definitely.

[OptimusG4]

It took 2 years for the G4 to be placed in the Laptop, it could take that long for the G5.

[Esquare]

Originally posted by OptimusG4:
It took 2 years for the G4 to be placed in the Laptop, it could take that long for the G5.

No, it took 1 year and 4 months. So something like January 2005 would be the equivalent timepath for the G5.

[beachmark]

Originally posted by Esquare:
No, it took 1 year and 4 months. So something like January 2005 would be the equivalent timepath for the G5.

So this year we get the increased G4 and then the new Powerbook G5 at MWSF in Jan 2005. Great timing as they tend to say.

By the way: for 80 per cent of the Powerbook users their current speed is more than efficient for what they do with it and eventhen it is only in use half of the time..

[The Placid Casual]

January 2005 would not surprise me at all.

However, if Moto got themselves together, and produced a G4 on a 0.13 process, clocking to about 1.6Ghz, with a decent FSB (perhaps real DDR), I don't see what the rush for the G5 Powerbooks would be...

[Link]

Simple.. what they say isn't always what they mean..

Remember this was supposed to be the "year of the laptop", so far it's been a lousy year for laptops as the ibooks have barely been changed, the powerbook is still the same (minus the 12"/17" which are aging), and you really never know!

However the desktop line has been bumped up, perhaps the biggest bump in history.. about 8 times the speed increase on the bus and around 2x on the speed scale itself...

or so they say.. more like 1.5x

Anyway, point being, you really never know. The powerbook could very well go G5, with lower scaled (or maybe even lower power) 970 processors, perhaps in the 1.2-1.4ghz range.

REMEMBER the g5 case was designed for the "worst case scenario", not to mention the machines we've seen so far were typically dual 2.0ghz machines. ... roughly 2.25x the heat o_O

in a laptop that'd be 1/4 the heat problem at the most, not to mention other things such as scaling down the CPU speed..

Now if apple came up with a simple way of solving the heat problem.. which they already have seemed to.. perhaps the next powerbook WILL be a g5!

FRANKLY I see no reason why not, besides you people being disillusioned by the dual 2.0 and it's dual heatisnks and such..

[rambo47]

Oh, I have no doubt that the PowerBook will migrate to the G5 eventually. Early 2005 is probably a good call. Think MWSF. Any hopes of a G5 PowerBook sooner is just foolish. You'll be setting yourself up for one dissapointment after another. But keep grasping at those straws if it makes you feel better

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by Link:
Simple.. what they say isn't always what they mean..

Remember this was supposed to be the "year of the laptop", so far it's been a lousy year for laptops as the ibooks have barely been changed, the powerbook is still the same (minus the 12"/17" which are aging), and you really never know!

However the desktop line has been bumped up, perhaps the biggest bump in history.. about 8 times the speed increase on the bus and around 2x on the speed scale itself...

or so they say.. more like 1.5x

Anyway, point being, you really never know. The powerbook could very well go G5, with lower scaled (or maybe even lower power) 970 processors, perhaps in the 1.2-1.4ghz range.

REMEMBER the g5 case was designed for the "worst case scenario", not to mention the machines we've seen so far were typically dual 2.0ghz machines. ... roughly 2.25x the heat o_O

in a laptop that'd be 1/4 the heat problem at the most, not to mention other things such as scaling down the CPU speed..

Now if apple came up with a simple way of solving the heat problem.. which they already have seemed to.. perhaps the next powerbook WILL be a g5!

FRANKLY I see no reason why not, besides you people being disillusioned by the dual 2.0 and it's dual heatisnks and such..

Have IBM announced low power/slower G5s? are they even road-mapped?

Does the G5 have power management features?

Do we know if 1.2-1.4 G5s exist?

Do we know how hot the G5 actually runs considering it hasn't even shipped yet, and won;t do so for a few more months?

Is there any need AT ALL for a G5 to appear in the laptop at the moment?

A lot of your points are very much based on conjecture and supposition, with very real proof to back any of it up...

Apple have come out and said that they G5 will not be in the Powerbook 'any time soon'. Is that so hard to get our heads around?

Also I am curious as to what real 'benefits' a G5 will bring to the laptop table at the moment?

The benefits of the G5 and '64 bitness' in general are centered around the server and workstation, database fields.... The ability to address large amounts of RAM, hmm, ... Not really something you need in a laptop machine. We should also consider that the current 970 has inferior Altivec performance to the G4.

IMHO, what we need for the moment, is a decent FSB and a die shrink to gain some clock speed, nothing more...

Then we could perhaps see the 980 or such like in laptops a year down the line, when we find some more uses for it...

[Link]

well gee THANKS dude, you just corrected me on my every sentence (ya know I really should throw a spelling error in next time and see if you get me on that too.)

I'm just trying to think of reasons there MIGHT be, I'm not jumping out the window yelling it will happen NOW!

But if this is the case, then I'm not going to reccomend a powerbook to anyone anyway lol. Honestly.. apple finally does ONE thing right and we don't see any real benefit except in some huge cheesegrating monster.

anyway, uh.. yeah.. dude.. enjoy your little 12" powerbook and I hope it NEVER goes obsolete!!!

besides that.. who are YOU to judge what is and what's not enough for people? I think right now apple laptops are LOUSY considering that the last few times I've had a good chance to really USE them (as in sit and mess around with everything) I found the tisd powerbook (as I didn't have much time to mess with the 17") about as jumpy as my bro's 800mhz imac.. sure it was powerful enough to play wolfenstein.. but otherwise I'd hate to try and run 14 programs at the same time on that thing..

Not to mention the ibook was a sheer dissapointment, a joke of sorts.. those things can hardly run games released a year ago.. and I know they're laptops.. but geez.

Yeah, I know, if I want to play games I should invest in a gamecube (am already saving for that alongside a 17" pb), and that laptops aren't powerhouses, but I'd really like a laptop that could take a load and i *DONT* want a 17" toshiba..

Anyway.. yeah.. I guess I'll calm down now. A faster g4 WOULD do ok but seeing how darn hot the powerbooks get right now they'd have to make the new one like swiss cheese in order to keep it cool.

[neutrino23]

Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
Have IBM announced low power/slower G5s? are they even road-mapped?

Does the G5 have power management features?

Do we know if 1.2-1.4 G5s exist?

Do we know how hot the G5 actually runs considering it hasn't even shipped yet, and won;t do so for a few more months?

Is there any need AT ALL for a G5 to appear in the laptop at the moment?

...

Also I am curious as to what real 'benefits' a G5 will bring to the laptop table at the moment?
...

On the IBM site they talk about power management features coming for the 970.

IBM doesn't have to make a special 1.2 or 1.4GHz G5. A G5 capable of 1.8GHz can always be run at the slower speeds to lower the power requirements.

IBM has published some power requirements. However, for a laptop you'll want to know detailed specs for the power consumption including power management. Also, for the laptop we need to consider the power requirement of the ASIC Apple designed for the support functions as well as the power consumption of the memory bus which runs much faster in the case of the 970 than it does with a G4.

A G5 laptop would be great. I would use it as a desktop replacement. It could convert music to AAC format faster, edit movies more smoothly, prep movies for DVD burning more quickly, render Keynote presentations more smoothly and more.

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by Link:
well gee THANKS dude, you just corrected me on my every sentence (ya know I really should throw a spelling error in next time and see if you get me on that too.)

I'm just trying to think of reasons there MIGHT be, I'm not jumping out the window yelling it will happen NOW!

But if this is the case, then I'm not going to reccomend a powerbook to anyone anyway lol. Honestly.. apple finally does ONE thing right and we don't see any real benefit except in some huge cheesegrating monster.

anyway, uh.. yeah.. dude.. enjoy your little 12" powerbook and I hope it NEVER goes obsolete!!!

besides that.. who are YOU to judge what is and what's not enough for people? I think right now apple laptops are LOUSY considering that the last few times I've had a good chance to really USE them (as in sit and mess around with everything) I found the tisd powerbook (as I didn't have much time to mess with the 17") about as jumpy as my bro's 800mhz imac.. sure it was powerful enough to play wolfenstein.. but otherwise I'd hate to try and run 14 programs at the same time on that thing..

Not to mention the ibook was a sheer dissapointment, a joke of sorts.. those things can hardly run games released a year ago.. and I know they're laptops.. but geez.

Yeah, I know, if I want to play games I should invest in a gamecube (am already saving for that alongside a 17" pb), and that laptops aren't powerhouses, but I'd really like a laptop that could take a load and i *DONT* want a 17" toshiba..

Anyway.. yeah.. I guess I'll calm down now. A faster g4 WOULD do ok but seeing how darn hot the powerbooks get right now they'd have to make the new one like swiss cheese in order to keep it cool.

Sorry, my apologies! I reread my post and it was a bit critical, and I didn't mean it have that tone... I was just being a bit more pragmatic and playing devils advocate!

Anything as you say is possible, but it seems that a G5 powerbook would be a bit much to ask for at this time...

You are right, I can't judge what people need a machine for, but you can get a good 'general' idea what they need it for... and bearing this in mind, I really think a reduced die and quicker G4, increased FSB and decent graphics card/chipset across the ranges would be ideal, even if it doesn't say G5 on the tin. This could be done in a very short time, using basically the same form factor and minimal R&D, and really turn around sales without having a machine you would need an air conditioning unit strapped onto to work...

I agree, Apple line up is looking short on power, and really needs an overhaul across the board when compared to some of the centrino machines.

However, the benefits of the G5 are much reduced in laptop form, and make the project much less urgent... the G5 will arrive when it is ready. The sky isn't going to fall in if it doesn't arrive for a while, and there are always other options

As for my Powerbook 12", it is alas gone... Sold to fund my Dual 2Ghz G5. I am writing this on a G3 466SE Clamshell iBook, (that still does decent graphics work in Quark and Photoshop, plays mp3s, plays DVDs, runs my databases, surfs the net on my cable modem, runs Word, and x11... and also became obsolete a long time ago!) ...

Peace,

Marc

[rambo47]

We have at least 2 or 3 more revisions of the G4 processor going into PowerBooks before the 970 arrives in portables. I think it's pretty clear that Centrino's battery life has set the next bar for Apple to match. Lower power chips and smaller die sizes for efficiency are the coming trend for the G4.

[Esquare]

Originally posted by rambo47:
We have at least 2 or 3 more revisions of the G4 processor going into PowerBooks before the 970 arrives in portables. I think it's pretty clear that Centrino's battery life has set the next bar for Apple to match. Lower power chips and smaller die sizes for efficiency are the coming trend for the G4.

I think you're right: the first very soon, the second Spring 2004, the third Autumn 2004. G5 (or something like that): early 2005.

EE

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by rambo47:
We have at least 2 or 3 more revisions of the G4 processor going into PowerBooks before the 970 arrives in portables. I think it's pretty clear that Centrino's battery life has set the next bar for Apple to match. Lower power chips and smaller die sizes for efficiency are the coming trend for the G4.

Very feasible...

[j0nkatz]

I have a friend that works at Apple and he has seen the G5 and had a chance to use it a bit. He said no way a chip that hot is ready for a laptop of any kind.

[cowerd]

Have IBM announced low power/slower G5s? are they even road-mapped?

see below

Does the G5 have power management features?

from ars, quoted from WWDC SESSION: Thermal management isn't really about cooling, it's about noise.
<!--SNIP-->
Normally, the machines are running at about 2/3 their total clock speed (for 2GHz machines, this is 1.4GHz), this jumps up to the full speed whenever it's required. The ramp time up or down is ~1ms, but the CPU is running normally during this time, so there is no performance "hiccup". This results in about 60% power/heat savings, which jumps up to about 85% savings if the machine is idle and they "turn on other power saving features". When idle, the CPU fans are barely turning.

Is there any need AT ALL for a G5 to appear in the laptop at the moment?

At ~5% marketshare, anything that will help you sell more computers is a plus don't you think?

Also I am curious as to what real 'benefits' a G5 will bring to the laptop table at the moment?

see below

The benefits of the G5 and '64 bitness' in general are centered around the server and workstation, database fields

64-bitness is something for fools to hang their hats on. The real benefits are 2FP units, altivec unit coupled with a frontside bus with 6.4GB/s theoretical throughput (nice considering that a 533mhz G4 running a tightly coded VMX routine can choke Maxbus), better OOE execution (which means better execution of "non-optimized" code, longer pipeline (1.6GHZ at introduction and the chip should scale to higher clock speeds), and a chip mfg that seems to be aggressively pursuing future iterations.

We should also consider that the current 970 has inferior Altivec performance to the G4.

I don't see where you're getting this from, unless you're quoting benchmarks for unoptimized code running on the 970.
from ars:
OK, I got a version of Xbench and looked at the "Altivec Basic" ... which IMO ought to be called "Altivec Dumb" ... as gcc says it is really minimal: a pure load + VFPU bench.
If they remove the DST it ought to run just fine on the 970 IMO; at least at the Hz ratio.

[The Placid Casual]

*Edit* Can't be bothered to argue anymore... Although I really don't see what the above post brings to the discussion.

Yes the G5 is a better chip than the G4, in many areas.

I hope it makes it to the Powerbooks soon.

I hope that people aren't disappointed by the wait.

/Marc Out.