[wings_rfs]

Since IBM sampled some dual core G5s to Apple last August, and AMD has announced it will be shipping dual core chips in 2nd half '05, I betcha Apple will beat them to the punch. So I'm waiting for the dual dual-core G5 @ 3GHz.

[tdgrmsn]

Originally posted by Rampant Desire:
That seems very unlikely to me. It's too new. Perhaps next year.
I'm holding my breath for dual-core G5's. Think of the money that could be saved in manufacturing! It only makes sense that we would see the benefit of the possible savings.
-RD

Hahahahaha! You mean the money saved that increases Apple's margins. They would/will make such a marketing blitz if/when this happens that there will not be any significant price drops, probably the opposite.

[tdgrmsn]

Originally posted by P:
Guesses for the speed? Single 2.0 970FX, dual 2.2 970FX, dual 2.6 970FX (watercooled) and dual 3.0 970GX (watercooled, which will be plagued by delivery issues). Same motherboard, but with a Geforce 6200 (on AGP now) as the low-end graphics board and likely more built-in spaces for HDs.

I'm going to have to move to a bigger apartment or modify my desk to handle a case any bigger than current G5s. Any chance towers will ever slim down or are they so damn hot they'll just keep growing?

[booboo]

Remember that magical time when the slowest G4 of the new range was as fast - or faster than - the fastest model in the previous line-up . . . ?

That came after a disappointment with the previous range not meeting their targeted speeds . . .

Deja vu?

maybe . . . perhaps . . . .

[Ixion]

Single 2.0
Dual 2.2
Dual 2.5
Dual 2.8

That's a rather conservative estimate, and unless there is some sort of miracle, I'm guessing that 2.8 is as high they will go, and whoever said that we won't see 3.0 until the summer is probably right.

Never will you see an adopted Cell processor in a PowerMac. It's been said before, and I'll say it again, Apple has way too much invested in Altivec to make a switch to anything that isn't Altivec enabled, amongst other reasons. That's obvious.

As far as the Ram situation goes, it'd be criminal to sell a 256mb Power anything from here on out. It's a rather safe bet that base models will start at 512mb, and most likely, across the line.

The thing that upsets me the most about these supposed 'professional' or 'workstation' systems, the PowerMac series that is, is the absolutely ridiculous graphics card they offer as the base configuration. Of course, not everyone on a PowerMac is a graphics artist or what have you, but, come now. These cards they're offering, the Fx5200s and, more likely the newer 6200s, aren't even mid-range graphic solutions. They're budget cards, through and through. And once again, I'm no zealot, but it'd be nice to see a base-line ATi offering, at the very least, over nVidia. Just keep your fingers crossed that nVidia Turbo Cache technology doesn't make its way into the PowerMac lineup.

[Link]

Neutered single 2.0
Neutered Dual 2.2
Dual 2.5 (same board, same crappy lack of PCI-E)
Dual 2.8

Can't disenfranchise the dual 2ghz owners!

Maybe 2006 will be more interesting when they finally intro the damn 3ghz G5

[BrettOZ]

More than 2 internal drive bays would be nice

[booboo]

2.2 SP
2.2 DP
2.5 DP
3.0 DP

(this is approx. +20% accross the range . . . )

No more crippled 4 RAM-slot PCI-only MOBO's.

The 2.2 and 2.5 will use a slightly revised PCI-X mobo with some of the AMD controller issues sorted out.

The 2.5 and 3.0 will use a new MOBO featuring PCI Express in addition to PCI-X

The cases will remain the same, and so will the prices.

These are the facts, you have been told!

[Skypat]

Ixion I do agree with you about the cards.

And I hope they will introduce PCI-Express. If the next PM still have AGP cards, we will never be able to find new AGP cards in 2 or 3 years, when maybe you will want to upgrade your graphic card with a more powerful one.

But I fear Apple will stick with entry-level AGP cards ... I guess they know what their customers want

[osxisfun]

Originally posted by booboo:
2.2 SP
2.2 DP
2.5 DP
3.0 DP

(this is approx. +20% accross the range . . . )

No more crippled 4 RAM-slot PCI-only MOBO's.

The 2.2 and 2.5 will use a slightly revised PCI-X mobo with some of the AMD controller issues sorted out.

The 2.5 and 3.0 will use a new MOBO featuring PCI-Extreme in addition to PCI-X

The cases will remain the same, and so will the prices.

These are the facts, you have been told!

when? next week or within 8 weeks...

[Commodus]

booboo:

Seeing as how the technology is called PCI Express, you may wish to reconsider your observations.

Anyways, my (fairly optimistic) predictions:

* single 2.3 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 120 GB drive, GeForce 6200
* dual 2.3 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 120 GB drive, GeForce 6200
* dual 2.5 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB drive, GeForce 6200
* dual 2.8 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB drive, GeForce 6600 (or X700 Pro, if AGP support is available)

This is partly based on the Xserve lineup; in the past they've cost much more than their equivalent PowerMacs did, but this was almost entirely due to the costs of OS X Server and specialized hardware. It's still true now: a cluster node Xserve, right now, costs as much as a top-end PowerMac. This is despite having slower processors, half the disk space, and no video card. I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a bottom-middle PowerMac at $1999, or at the upper-middle point at $2299.

[booboo]

Originally posted by Commodus:
. . . you may wish to reconsider your observations.
. . .

Sir, you are not wrong . . .

[booboo]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
when? next week or within 8 weeks...

6-6 Weeks

[osxisfun]

thanks booboo...

i was going to pick up a dual 1.8 g5 on tuesday... 6 weeks is too long for me to wait so i'll go ahead and pick the 1.8 up...

edit: that looks around the time that big video show is in vegas... maybe an announcement of final cut at the same time...

[Waragainstsleep]

Don't forget about immersion lithography. 3GHz next revision should be perfectly feasible, if not quite likely.

[hedgehogfrenzy]

I don't think the cell will ever be used by itself in a Mac. The instruction set, from what I have read, is severly reduced.

The new batch will max out at Dual 2.8, then Dual 2.5, Dual 2.0, Single 2.0.

I hope I'm wrong and they bring more.......

[SierraDragon]

The top end at 4 processors one way or another, most likely 2x2, so the clock speed of each processor will not matter much.

[sodamnregistered2]

CPU speeds are ok. It is typical that Apple said 3GHz is right around the corner, and it's not, but hey, Mac fans are used to this and are not surprised.

Video Cards: They need to sit ATi down and tell them to make a serious OpenGL card for Mac. I'm thinking about home building a PC for my 3d work soley because I can get decent 3d video cards.

Hard Drives: Ditch things like 160GB drives and make a 250GB drive standard. The G5 is the serious computer and sells for a pretty decent chunk of change. What's the price difference to Apple between 160GB and 250GB drives? $50?

Cripple: Stop crippling the bottom models. All it does is create confusion and help stunt demand for the higher end features. PCI-X adoption would go faster if all G5 towers had it. If it's the future, then freaking roll with it G.

Expansion: It's almost the standard reaction to my G5 when people see it. "Man, that thing is huge." So, why can I only put 2 hard drives in it? Drives are cheap, I want to put like 4 of those things in there.

Pimp the OS: They need to pimp OS X harder. At this point, it's a mature OS and as demonstrated with Mac Mini, you just need to get people on the platform to keep software development active.

Mac Daddy: Car companies do it all the time. The Viper, the Ford GT. Make one G5 the Mac daddy. A quad 2.0 with room for 8 drives and some good OpenGL video card options.

[Link]

Power Mac G5: [same great machine with slight redesign to handle more cards, possibly move the HDs to the front of the CPU area to allow for an extra HD and more card space]
DP2ghz
DP2.3ghz
DP2.6ghz [2 PCI-e X8, 2 PCI-X, 2 PCI-E x4?
DP3ghz

Power Mac XL: [room for dual optical and 4x HDs]
DP2.6ghz
DP3ghz
QP2.6ghz
QP3ghz

If only if only.

Oh what the hell.

Power Mac G5 Cube:
2ghz $1499
2.5ghz $1699
512mb ram (up to 6gb with 2gb dimms)
3.5" HD of whatever size
Slot loading superdrive
Radeon X700 or something like

Would compete with similarly specced imac G5s but lack a display. Same size as G4 cube, still bigger than a mac mini by far, but upgradable and more powerful.

[jamil5454]

Apple is discontinuing their PowerMac line. Be prepared for something totally new.

[osxisfun]

?

[Commodus]

ATI has announced AGP versions of the X800 XL and X850 XT video cards.

So if Apple still uses the 'old' mainboards and thus has to use AGP video, they still have the option of newer video cards at the top end.

[P]

Originally posted by tdgrmsn:
I'm going to have to move to a bigger apartment or modify my desk to handle a case any bigger than current G5s. Any chance towers will ever slim down or are they so damn hot they'll just keep growing?

I don't think the towers will be any bigger than they are now, but there is space for more drives inside them. All that's missing is the drive bays, you have to buy those extra from 3rd parties.

[macaddict0001]

my guess as to cpu speeds is
sp 2.0
dp 2.0
dp 2.5
dp 3.0

[Pierre B.]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
?

He just likes joking .

[Tyre MacAdmin]

Things I want to see:

PCI Express - maybe even the highend models feature an SLI version with true 16X and 16X pci-express lanes.

Legacy PCI-X - More than one controller. Take example from the SGI Tezro which has 4 pci-x controllers and can do multiple streams of HD in real time. (2k, 4K) One controller is not enough for a workstation marketed at HD.

G5 chip - Built in memmory controller and upgradability to dual core modles... taking queue from the Opteron model. Hypertransport between cpus.

Drive subsystems - More hardware raid. Perhaps legacy from the xServe controllers. SCSI hardware controllers and SATA hardware controllers with command queue technology.

New Case Design - It's getting old, quick.

[osxisfun]

dupe.

[osxisfun]

>New Case Design - It's getting old quick



the case is still practically new... mods to current might be in the next rev but this case is beautiful and has lots of life IMO.

[Link]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
>New Case Design - It's getting old quick



the case is still practically new... mods to current might be in the next rev but this case is beautiful and has lots of life IMO.

Or cheesy and 70ish, all you need is to put fake wood grain on the side.

I love the idea about seperate PCI-X busses, howabout going all out and making the firewire + firewire 800 controllers seperate suckers too? That'd be a real powerhouse :]

[Tyre MacAdmin]

Originally posted by Link:
Or cheesy and 70ish, all you need is to put fake wood grain on the side.

Agreed. I love my G4 model. I like the door... it looks more finished than a pop-off panel. The G5 reminds me of my Lian-Li case... I come to the Mac to get away from my PC. Sure the case is heat efficent but it would look more complete and stylish with, say a G4 design that is all aluminum... rounded corners in metal looks beautiful and finished. Imagine a G4 case that's Aluminum and not plastic. And why not an optional light kit / window kit? As long it was done tastefully it would look great... maybe a bto to pick your color cold cathode (or none at all)

I love the idea about seperate PCI-X busses, how about going all out and making the firewire + firewire 800 controllers seperate suckers too? That'd be a real powerhouse :]

Those should definately be separate as well. Anything that needs it's own processing should have it's own chip... like the sound. Throughput should be the goal of any good workstation. Supermicro's already making x86 motherboards with multiple pci-x chips/buses now.... Apple should take note.

[efuseakay]

Originally posted by BrettOZ:
More than 2 internal drive bays would be nice

http://www.transintl.com/store/categ...?Category=2490

[BZ]

This is driving me crazy.

Please, Apple, don't make me wait till June... PLEASE NO!!!

BZ

[osxisfun]

>And why not an optional light kit / window kit? As long it was done tastefully i

Oh man. No i know you have no taste

Next you will telling me that you love those lowered honda civics with the night-glo trimming at the bottom of the car... ahhhh....

[Tyre MacAdmin]

Originally posted by osxisfun:
>And why not an optional light kit / window kit? As long it was done tastefully i

Oh man. No i know you have no taste

Next you will telling me that you love those lowered honda civics with the night-glo trimming at the bottom of the car... ahhhh....

I was thinking built in NOS purge values too... for the G6 that is

[osxisfun]

Originally posted by Tyler McAdams:
I was thinking built in NOS purge values too... for the G6 that is

what will be cool is someday we will have OLED type "paper" that we can then wrap around the whole cases... then drive whatevere animation or video or graphics that we like on it..

that will be cool... someday..

[BrettOZ]

Originally posted by efuseakay:
http://www.transintl.com/store/categ...?Category=2490

Without the need for a 3rd Party

[3.1416]

Originally posted by Ixion:
Never will you see an adopted Cell processor in a PowerMac. It's been said before, and I'll say it again, Apple has way too much invested in Altivec to make a switch to anything that isn't Altivec enabled, amongst other reasons. That's obvious.[/B]

The Cell's primary processor does support Altivec.

[Commodus]

Originally posted by 3.1416:
The Cell's primary processor does support Altivec.

The problem with that, though, is that if you ignore the SPEs, you have a fairly emaciated processor. Combine that with all the proprietary Rambus I/O equipment, and you can see why Cell isn't a very attractive option right now.

Oh, and regarding the next G5: I've made this claim in the past, but I'll reiterate that I think the next PowerMac update will either be in March (likely the Ides of March) if it's modest, or June if it's not.

[BZ]

Apple you are KILLING ME!

I go to Apple every day. Put together a machine, price it out and move on.

Rumor sites have nothing.

The next thing I heard, was March 15th (Tuesday of course).

BZ

[David Thompson]

Originally posted by tdgrmsn:
I'm going to have to move to a bigger apartment or modify my desk to handle a case any bigger than current G5s. Any chance towers will ever slim down or are they so damn hot they'll just keep growing?

I have a DP800 that's getting a little long in the tooth (and is becomming less cost effective to further upgrade)--or I'm itchy for something new!

I also have a PB 1.33 15" connected with a KVM switch to a 23" Cinema Display. So, as an upgrade an iMac is out (don't need the display) as is a mini (lack of expansion). I don't necessarily need a huge amount of cpu power but would like something relatively compact. I was thinking of a DP1.8 but those are MONSTERS! (Looks like there's a LOT of empty space inside!) It sure would be nice if Apple would develope a headless unit that'll let me have 3-4 full-sized drives, superdrive, a replaceable video card and a reasonable number of IO ports in a form factor maybe like the Shuttle? I'd JUMP at it!!

[3.1416]

Originally posted by Commodus:
The problem with that, though, is that if you ignore the SPEs, you have a fairly emaciated processor. Combine that with all the proprietary Rambus I/O equipment, and you can see why Cell isn't a very attractive option right now.

True, although I'd expect a 4GHz Cell to beat a 1.5GHz G4 even with 0% SPE usage. I agree that Rambus could be a problem for a number of reasons.

[badtz]

-PCIe
-Double-Layer DVD-R/RW
-4 spaces for hard drives (by default, instead of 3rd party)
-internal power brick to drive the Cinema Display (instead of the current external brick)


i really hope apple adds these updates on the next release.

[nforcer]

I'm guessing

Low end: 2.0 Dual G5
Mid range: 2.2 Dual G5
High end: 2.5 Dual G5

With reduced prices to compensate for the lack of significant progress.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by 3.1416:
True, although I'd expect a 4GHz Cell to beat a 1.5GHz G4 even with 0% SPE usage. I agree that Rambus could be a problem for a number of reasons.

Definitely. If you do a comparison of SPE and a hypothetical 2GHz G4...

G4
6 instructions/nanosecond (3 issue @ 2GHz)
Mostly in-order
512k cache
Slow bus
1 Thread

SPE
8 instructions/nanosecond (2 issue @ 4GHz)
Completely in-order
512k cache
Fast on chip memory controller and IO
2 Threads

The SPE comes out a ways ahead by my estimate. Now the 8641D changes the equation some, since suddenly the G4 is dual core and has a nice on chip memory controller. Not sure how it would compare.

just for fun, here's the G5 at 2GHz as well:

970:
10 instructions/nanosecond, with restrictions (5 instruction group @ 2GHz)
Out of order
512k cache
High bandwidth (but high latency) bus
1 Thread

It gets more interesting with more cores thrown in, since the G5 is hotter than the SPE.

[hedgehogfrenzy]

When I was at my local mac store to pick up a cable, I was eyeing a G5. One of the associates asked me if I was looking to buy, and I told him that I was checking the rumor sites and being patient till the updates came out. He told me it wouldn't be till June. Don't know how true that is, but figured I'd pass it on.

- David

[illume]

My thoughts and hopes are in this directions.

1. - Quad processors ... think about it.

Tiger will have a multi task processing ability, why not give it more to processes with.

2. - Only one internal 500 GB serial hard drive, for system and applications software.

The current G5 is too big, and that's because of the space for the extra drives. By making all extra drives external, you cut down on the heat and power drain. Plus if you're using a powerful computer, I'm sure you have an external RAID and backup drive setup anyway. Extra external firewire, usb and serial ports would be added as well.

3. - 6 PCI / PCI-X slots.

3 slots is too small with all of the Audio and HDTV processor cards that are needed to do high quality work. Plus the Fibre Channel Cards (more than one) that would allow for higer level RAID configurations, and for RAID sharing in a Node processing situation (Logic, Maya etc.)

4. - Eveeryone gets one for free, but only one



James -

[Tyre MacAdmin]

Originally posted by illume:
My thoughts and hopes are in this directions.
1. - Quad processors ... think about it.

I would rather see dual processorces with mutliple cores, on die memory cotrollers and SMT (something about SMT makes me fight to understand it better)

Tiger will have a multi task processing ability, why not give it more to processes with.

huh?

3. - 6 PCI / PCI-X slots.

I would rather see multiple pci buses... one for low badnwidth and a couple for pci express and pci-x. That way the low bandwidth cards don't fsck the bandwitdh of the entire bus.

[borgobello]

I think new PowerMac will be some big surprise, possibly with Power 5 derivate processor. And I think they will be announced before the end of the month, otherwise we had a speed bump with other little advancements at MWSF05. IBM is using Power 5 more than six month ago, and Apple's derivate should be developed together... It's time to see it!
So, my (optimistic) guess is:

- PMG6 1x2.4sc/120HD/512ram/DL-DVD�RW/9600 or 5700 AGP (G5 Mobo) 1299$
- PMG6 2x2.4sc/160HD/512ram/DL-DVD�RW/9600 or 5700 AGP (G5 Mobo) 1699$
- PMG6 1x2.8dc/160HD/512ram/DL-DVD�RW/x700 or 6600 PCI-E 1999$
- PMG6 1x3.2dc/250HD/512ram/DL-DVD�RW/x700 or 6600 PCI-E 2499$
- PMG6 2x3.2dc/300HD/1024ram/DL-DVD�RW/x800 or 6800 PCI-E 2999$

for all slightly modified (smaller and more rounded) aluminium case, PCI-E models are water-cooled, 2 internal drive bay but 2 external S-ATA ports, new Apple mouse, new keyboard with four ports USB2 hub, AGP model immediately available, PCI-E in two, four and six weeks.
There's a car spot here in Italy that says: "all other will become unexpectedly old"!

BTO:
- a new MacQuadro or MacFireGL graphic card for PCI-E Models
- price drops for extra ram and HD
- no combo drive or CD-RW available



I'll be the first to order the 2.8!

[P]

Originally posted by Catfish_Man:
just for fun, here's the G5 at 2GHz as well:

970:
10 instructions/nanosecond, with restrictions (5 instruction group @ 2GHz)
Out of order
512k cache
High bandwidth (but high latency) bus
1 Thread

It gets more interesting with more cores thrown in, since the G5 is hotter than the SPE.

While the memory controller is not integrated on the chip (which is what really kills latency on the Cell, the Opteron and the Power5), the G5 has a lower memory latency than most chips. The memory bus is split in 2 32 bit unidirectional buses, which means that the latency is lower than one 64 bit bidirectional bus.

[BJNY]

Originally posted by borgobello:
I think new PowerMac will be some big surprise, possibly with Power 5 derivate processor. And I think they will be announced before the end of the month, otherwise we had a speed bump with other little advancements at MWSF05. IBM is using Power 5 more than six month ago, and Apple's derivate should be developed together... It's time to see it!
So, my (optimistic) guess is:

- PMG6 1x2.8dc/160HD/512ram/DL-DVD�RW/x700 or 6600 PCI-E 1999$
- PMG6 1x3.2dc/250HD/512ram/DL-DVD�RW/x700 or 6600 PCI-E 2499$

for all slightly modified (smaller and more rounded) aluminium case, PCI-E models are water-cooled, 2 internal drive bay but 2 external S-ATA ports, new Apple mouse, new keyboard with four ports USB2 hub, AGP model immediately available, PCI-E in two, four and six weeks.

I'll take either the 2.8GHz or 3.2GHz dual core.
Hope you're not just guessing borgobello, and have some real inside info.