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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > Get Those Rev A MBPs Ready for eBay!

Get Those Rev A MBPs Ready for eBay! (Page 2)
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phazedowt
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Mar 13, 2006, 12:46 PM
 
Intel has said to the media that they aren't going to do this, they say it drives up production costs and wastes die space. They also said that increasing cache size is better use of die space.
This is exactly what worries me about Apple exlcusively going with Intel. The most painful bottleneck of the G4 was the FSB, by far. Part of what allowed AMD to have the performance crown in the x86 space since the Opteron is basically not having to care with that FSB is. The most bandwidth limited access is always going to be the RAM, and having an on-die memory controller means you could care less what the FSB is. I worry that Intel's route will leave us chugging along with a slower-than-can-be FSB sometime in the near future.
15" MBP, 2.33 GHz C2D, 120GB HD, 2 GB RAM, OS X 10.4. 4GB iPod Nano.
     
Tuoder
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Mar 13, 2006, 12:50 PM
 
Originally Posted by phazedowt
This is exactly what worries me about Apple exlcusively going with Intel. The most painful bottleneck of the G4 was the FSB, by far. Part of what allowed AMD to have the performance crown in the x86 space since the Opteron is basically not having to care with that FSB is. The most bandwidth limited access is always going to be the RAM, and having an on-die memory controller means you could care less what the FSB is. I worry that Intel's route will leave us chugging along with a slower-than-can-be FSB sometime in the near future.
I don't usually make a habit of second-guessing guys whose name starts with "Dr." when it comes to their specialty. If one method were vastly superior to the other in practice, I might complain a bit.
     
DekuDekuplex
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Mar 13, 2006, 12:59 PM
 
Originally Posted by PurpleRabbit73
damn! so i should have waited?!?!?!
No. Think: If you wait, you'll simply repeat the same kind of experience with the next model, no matter how long you wait. You'll be waiting for the next improvement, then for the one after that, then for the one after that, and so on, ad infinitum. With that kind of logic, you might as well not buy anything in the first place; then you'll never regret anything (but you'll never get anything, either).

Listen to harrisjamieh; viz.:

Originally Posted by harrisjamieh
Waited. what for!? The MBP JUST came out, its on the cutting edge of technology (~ish). You can wait your entire life to buy a computer, telling youself, 'i'll just wait for the next one because it will be better and faster'. Totally pointless. The MBP is the current model, and will be for the next 6 months or so. It is literally impossible to keep up with computer technology today. As they say, as soon as you take it out of its box, its obsolete.
Agreed!

-- DekuDekuplex
PowerBook® 17-inch [Rev. A] @ 1 GHz
512 MB RAM, 60 GB HD, AEBS, APP/PB
"Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto."
-- Matsuo Basho
     
SiliconAddict
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Mar 13, 2006, 04:53 PM
 
I don't think so. I'm holding onto my MBP for about 2 years. By then I fully expect to see OLED laptop displays starting to hit the market. Blu-ray burners will be mainstream, wi-max will be the norm, and 802.11n will be out in force, and 200GB+ 2.5” SATA hard drives that spin at 7200 RPM’s. Oh and the possibility of fuel cells being standard. There is a TON of new tech on the horizon beyond the CPU. I'm more then willing to hold off for a few years to see it show up in my next MBP.
[FONT="Arial"]Jonathan
-iPod Photo 60GB
-PowerBook Pro Core Duo 2Ghz/2GB RAM/100GB[/B][/FONT]
     
mrmister
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Mar 13, 2006, 05:29 PM
 
Keep dreaming--there is no way that will all be the norm in two years.
     
wintermute1
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Mar 13, 2006, 08:46 PM
 
Well, as long as "some" of it becomes the norm in the next two years I will be happy. After all, if the "ebay upgrade" route is to remain viable, we can't have Apple roll out everything that quickly.

: )
     
john h
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Mar 13, 2006, 09:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by cpac
excellent.

I can wait for a MWSF '07 Rev B. MBP (and I can hope that other innovations make that time frame - maybe even a new case design...)
I do not want to be the village idiot but how do you tell if you have a Rev A or B model? I cannot find it in the system profiler?
     
john h
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Mar 13, 2006, 09:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by LagunaSol
Let's relax with all the buyer's remorse guys. We're in Intel land now. The days of insignificant speed bumps every 6 months that we experienced for years on the PPC platform are behind us now. Faster machines on a regular basis are going to be a given with Intel (and perhaps, someday, with AMD?). So buy what you need when you need it and enjoy, accepting the fact that something better and faster will always be right around the corner. Always.
Sort of like a wife. You just cannot go out and get a new model when yours slows down.
     
DekuDekuplex
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Mar 14, 2006, 05:36 PM
 
Originally Posted by john h
Sort of like a wife. You just cannot go out and get a new model when yours slows down.
Oh yes you can. Just get a good lawyer and make sure not to have any children. I've seen it done before. Celebrities do this sort of thing all the time.

-- DekuDekuplex
PowerBook® 17-inch [Rev. A] @ 1 GHz
512 MB RAM, 60 GB HD, AEBS, APP/PB
"Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto."
-- Matsuo Basho
     
DekuDekuplex
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Mar 14, 2006, 05:50 PM
 
Originally Posted by john h
I do not want to be the village idiot but how do you tell if you have a Rev A or B model? I cannot find it in the system profiler?
That information is not listed there, or anywhere else in any of the materials that comes with your Mac.

"Rev. A" refers to the first edition of that type of model; "Rev. B," to the second. You need to know whether a nearly identical, but slightly older, edition of the same model of Mac had debuted previously to determine this data.

For example, my own PowerBook is a 1.00 GHz 17-inch G4. It was one of the first-edition 17-inch G4 PowerBook models, so it is referred to as a "Rev. A" edition model.

The next edition of the 17-inch PowerBook, if I remember correctly, was a 1.25 GHz model. Therefore, that was referred to as a "Rev. B" edition model.

The one after that was a "Rev. C" edition model, and so forth.

Usually, the "Rev. A" edition models of most Macs have annoying bugs that get corrected in later edition models. Incidentally, my own one, however, was a lucky anomaly, which did not have any annoying bugs. Many PowerBook users therefore refer to it as the "Rev. B" edition model of the "Rev. A's."

-- DekuDekuplex
PowerBook® 17-inch [Rev. A] @ 1 GHz
512 MB RAM, 60 GB HD, AEBS, APP/PB
"Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto."
-- Matsuo Basho
     
mduell
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Mar 14, 2006, 07:43 PM
 
Originally Posted by SEkker
Moore's law (in any form you like) predicts a doubling of performance every 18 months.
Not only is "peformance doubling every 18 months" not Moore's Law, it's also not true.
     
DekuDekuplex
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Mar 14, 2006, 08:49 PM
 
Originally Posted by mduell
Not only is "peformance doubling every 18 months" not Moore's Law, it's also not true.
Indeed.

Just for the record, according to Webopedia, Moore's Law is defined as follows:

Moore's Law

(môrz lâ) (n.) The observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. In subsequent years, the pace slowed down a bit, but data density has doubled approximately every 18 months, and this is the current definition of Moore's Law, which Moore himself has blessed. Most experts, including Moore himself, expect Moore's Law to hold for at least another two decades.
-- DekuDekuplex
PowerBook® 17-inch [Rev. A] @ 1 GHz
512 MB RAM, 60 GB HD, AEBS, APP/PB
"Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto."
-- Matsuo Basho
     
SEkker
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Mar 14, 2006, 10:57 PM
 
Originally Posted by mduell
Not only is "peformance doubling every 18 months" not Moore's Law, it's also not true.

There are MANY revisions to Moore's Law, including my personal favorite that measures it using estimates of the cost of computation over time. Versions of this idea have been applied to hard drives and their capacities over the past 20 years as well. I'm one that uses a flexible definition based on concept.

Regardless of how you measure this upward slope, there has normally been a relentless increase in CPU horsepower over time in the semiconductor industry. We've actually been experiencing a plateau with the G4 processor in laptops -- with relatively little notable improvement over a 3 year time window.

I'm just happy we're now with a roadmap that seems to once again scale with Moore's Law -- no matter how you define it.
     
all2ofme
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Mar 18, 2006, 08:01 PM
 
Originally Posted by DekuDekuplex
"Rev. A" refers to the first edition of that type of model; "Rev. B," to the second. You need to know whether a nearly identical, but slightly older, edition of the same model of Mac had debuted previously to determine this data.
The silly thing is that while this is accepted use here it doesn't really make sense. The first *revision* of something is the second *version* of something. Therefore the next MBP should be a revA model. Or a v2
     
 
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