[themexican]

Just wanted to note that 7800's are an option in the edu store

[hardcat1970]

Originally Posted by himself

a little detour from the ECC/non-ECC RAM discussion...

does anyone why it is necessary for Apple to bundle airport and bluetooth together, instead of separately? I really don't need an airport card for a G5 tower, but I do need bluetooth. Are they included on a single module or something?

Despite the fact that i ordered a new dual 2.0 from apple, i still think the pro machine has much less values than the new imac. I don't understand how they include a bigger hard drive and airport/bt for a $1299/$1699 machine and not on the pro machines.

[gurman]

A colleague was able to order one today with a Quad from the Apple Store online. Unfortunately, it centails a 5 - 6 week wait. AppleInsider claims it's because Apple is still testing the 7800T to make certain its fan is quiet enough.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by heavyboots

BTW, a Dual Core 2.3ghz/NVidia 6600/1.5gb RAM machine takes almost exactly an hour to run one loop. (Like an hour and 3 minutes, I believe.)

That seems a bit slow for a machine with 8+ GBps of memory bandwidth. In an hour you could get in close to 10000 write and read cycles.

[bernardb]

Originally Posted by WOPR

Why do they mention the '1tb of internal storage' ? I love the G5 but for a Mac that big it's absurd you can only fit 2 drives inside it. I do hope the Intel Macs are smaller.

Where would you put 'em? Look at the picture of the inside of the PowerMac....there is no extra room in there!

[hardcat1970]

Originally Posted by bernardb

Where would you put 'em? Look at the picture of the inside of the PowerMac....there is no extra room in there!

2 500gb drive of course.

[stevesnj]

can someone explain ECC v. non ECC

[galarneau]

My understanding is that ECC = Error Correction, which means that if your RAM has a bit that gets borked due to some stray cosmic ray, the RAM can fix the error.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by stevesnj

can someone explain ECC v. non ECC

Normal RAM has 8 bits per byte. ECC RAM has 9 bits per byte. The extra bit (along with some complicated math) is used to correct a bit that may erroneously flip from 0 to 1 or 1 to 0. Actual errors like this are very rare, as evidenced by the small number of systems that support ECC.

[JonYo]

Originally Posted by hardcat1970

2 500gb drive of course.

There are 3rd party solutions out there for the previous PM G5 towers which let you stuff more drives in there, and I think they'd work on the new models as well. I use the G5Jam from Wiebetech with my 2x2.0GHz G5 (June 2004 model), which mounts 2 more drives in the PCI area, taking the space that extra long PCI cards would take. Since all my installed cards are short (Seri-tek SATA card for the 2 extra drives, 9600XT video card), it works ok for me. So, I have a total of 4 250GB SATA drives in my G5. 250GB was about as big as I could find back when I hooked this all up. Another company also makes a bracket thing that lets you mount 3 more drives vertically in front of the CPU area. I would worry about proper cooling of the drives and/or the CPUs there, but they did post temperature test results, and it looked like it was no big deal. So, in thoery if both of these solutions worked for you (no long PCI/PCIe cards installed, plus room for 2 internal SATA bus cards), you could stuff 7 total drives in there. At 500GB a piece, that's 3.5TB. Yikes. I'm fine with my 1TB internal, plus another 1.5TB external (FW400). What am I doing with all that storage space? Futzing around with lots of video capture junk mostly.

- JonYo

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by stevesnj

can someone explain ECC v. non ECC

It was explained on page 2.

[kw14]

My memory may be faulty...but I thought with 9 bits you can only detect parity error. But it takes 3 extra bits, i.e. 11 bits, in order to decode the error position in order to fix it. No???

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by kw14

My memory may be faulty...but I thought with 9 bits you can only detect parity error. But it takes 3 extra bits, i.e. 11 bits, in order to decode the error position in order to fix it. No???

No. ECC RAM can manage with only one extra bit to correct every single-bit error and detect two-bit errors.

[dazzla]

How much difference will the 7800 make over the 256MB 6600 in some of the more demanding Pro apps?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by dazzla

How much difference will the 7800 make over the 256MB 6600 in some of the more demanding Pro apps?

BareFeats claims the 7800 will offer almost as much performance as the Quadro FX 4500 but at only a quarter of the price.

[cgmpowers]

Those were one of the things I absolutely wanted the most of that never gotten. I still want one..

Christopher

Originally Posted by new newton

Everything old is new again. Pivoting LCDs seem to be getting more popular. Anybody remember the Radius Pivot?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Simon

BareFeats claims the 7800 will offer almost as much performance as the Quadro FX 4500 but at only a quarter of the price.

Indeed it should; performance is not the difference between the 7800GT and the FX4500. Features like hardware anti-aliased points and lines for wire frame display, OpenGL logic operations, eight clip regions (GeForce supports one), hardware accelerated clip planes, optimization of memory usage for multiple graphics windows, support for two-sided lighting, hardware overlay planes, support for quad-buffered stereo for shutter glasses, and application optimization and certification are the difference.

[bentoon]

I have an itchy finger over at the Apple Site -
But I have yet to make the Dual Dual order yet - I don't know what's stopping me.
Perhaps I wanna hear about it first; perhaps I am still trying to talk myself into it, given it's the Last Great G5
(maybe I still feel like I should wait, but I can't until 2007)
and it is so much more of a deal than the lower end Machines....

Who'se taken the plunge and are anxiously waiting?
Inquiring minds wanna know

J

[JCT]

Who'se taken the plunge and are anxiously waiting?
Inquiring minds wanna know

I bit...ordered a Quad + 7800GT and Aperture.

Estimated Delvery Date of 26 Dec , but I can wait. I think.

JT

[BEIGE]

anti-aliased points and lines for wire frame display

that should work with any card. it works with any ATI card in a window and i can turn it on in GTKRadiant with my 6800ultra.

as far as the 16 GB of RAM making the G5 a server, tell Apple to make the OS less of a dog for multiple threads. OS X gets owned by Linux and if I were buying a machine for server performance, it wouldn't be a G5. maybe if it was running Linux.

[bentoon]

Originally Posted by JCT

I bit...ordered a Quad + 7800GT and Aperture.

Estimated Delvery Date of 26 Dec , but I can wait. I think.

JT

JCT,
Good for You - I am about to plunge myself, I can feel it,
just don't know exactly when,
J

[Simon]

I'd really like some take apart pics of the new PowerMacs, especially the new motherboard and heatsink design. Does anybody have a link?

[koukuubokan]

Who'se taken the plunge and are anxiously waiting?
Inquiring minds wanna know.

I ordered a Quad, 30" display and a 60GB Black video iPod last Monday (10/24). Received the 30" display in 5 days and expect the iPod before the spooks come out tonight.

The beastie is scheduled to ship 11/22. -SIGH-

Specs:
• 2.5GHz Quad-core PowerPC G5
• 4GB 533 DDR2 ECC SDRAM- 4x1GB
• 500GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
• QUADRO FX 4500 512MB SDRAM
• 16x SuperDrive DL (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

This makes my 10th Mac in 21 years but the first multiprocessor. I've had a 500 MHz G4 PM w/ 10.2.8 for too long waiting for my dream machine. I was disappointed when it wasn't announced at the WWDC last June. I was flying back from Japan when the news came out and I didn't pick up on it for a couple of days. The order was placed with 24 hours after that. I'm through the looking glass now.

I have some 3D CG that will be getting a big boost. Yahoo!

=RRW

[bentoon]

Originally Posted by koukuubokan

I ordered a Quad, 30" display and a 60GB Black video iPod last Monday (10/24). Received the 30" display in 5 days and expect the iPod before the spooks come out tonight.

The beastie is scheduled to ship 11/22. -SIGH-

Specs:
• 2.5GHz Quad-core PowerPC G5
• 4GB 533 DDR2 ECC SDRAM- 4x1GB
• 500GB Serial ATA - 7200rpm
• QUADRO FX 4500 512MB SDRAM
• 16x SuperDrive DL (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

This makes my 10th Mac in 21 years but the first multiprocessor. I've had a 500 MHz G4 PM w/ 10.2.8 for too long waiting for my dream machine. I was disappointed when it wasn't announced at the WWDC last June. I was flying back from Japan when the news came out and I didn't pick up on it for a couple of days. The order was placed with 24 hours after that. I'm through the looking glass now.

I have some 3D CG that will be getting a big boost. Yahoo!

=RRW

yeah that's a dream machine alright. Congrats

[KeyLimePi]

Originally Posted by JCT

I bit...ordered a Quad + 7800GT and Aperture.

Estimated Delvery Date of 26 Dec , but I can wait. I think.

JT

I feel your pain. My Quad w/6600 still shows a ship date of Nov 18. I still check almost daily.

There's a chance you might not have to wait much long than I. A story on AppleInsider says that Apple hopes to ship Quads with 7800s in mid-Late November (according to the article, one of the issues they're still testing is the noise in the 7800's fan).

Congrats on your buy. And to koukuubokan. That's a helluva Mac, alright.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by BEIGE

anti-aliased points and lines for wire frame display

that should work with any card. it works with any ATI card in a window and i can turn it on in GTKRadiant with my 6800ultra.

You cut out the important word, "hardware anti-aliased points and lines for wire frame display."
Turning on wireframe display in software isn't the same has hardware anti-aliased wireframe.

[wings_rfs]

Got here late for the ECC topic but I'm gonna post anyway.

While it may seem like magic to be able to correct a single bit error with only one extra bit added to each byte of RAM, the thing that most people overlook is that it can correct ONE single bit in error out of a single 64-BIT memory cycle. It actually takes 8 extra bits to pull that off (1 extra bit per byte, for 8 bytes in a 64-bit cycle).

[wings_rfs]

koukuubokan - I'm wondering, since you bumped the drive capacity to 500MB, why didn't you just order a 2nd 250MB and put the 2 of them in a striped RAID? You'll double the speed of your disk access and still have 500MB. That's what I did.

I ordered mine with Airport & Bluetooth, standard RAM and bought 2GB more from Crucial for about 200 bucks. Went back a week later after they started accepting orders for the 7800 video card and changed it to include that. And THAT set back my ship date to Dec 26th! (or sooner, they say) Also ordered an external firewire disk enclosure from OWC and I plan to put a 250GB IDE drive from my old system in it, for backup. I also had to order a special DVI to ADC adapter thingie for 100 bucks cause my current display is an older 20" Cinema that the Quad won't drive as is. To compensate for my disappointment about that they gave me 100 off on my order, so I got that thing for free.

I've been looking around for anything that can compare to the Quad G5 in the Windows world, just for grins. Closest thing I can find is a quad Opteron from HP that retails in its stock configuration for SIX grand - and zero bundled software other than the OS. And another model that appears to me to be the same thing for EIGHT grand. Can't wait for someone to put a Quad G5 up against a quad Opteron and lets see who got the most bang for their buck. (Of course, we're talking XP Pro vs MacOS, so even if the price figures were reversed there would still be no comparison.)

[nayr x]

I know this has been touched on throughout this thread, but as far as availability... For those of you who have placed orders, when is your est. ship date? I need one ASAP for a project. If I can't get a hold of one for another month I'm going to be screwed, and will have to order an older model or go pick one up at the apple store, which will kill me, because I have my devastatingly pimped-out model all picked out and my money ready to go.

[themexican]

using the 7800 option pushes back the ship date on 2.3 duals until late Dec... without the 7800 option it ships in 3 days. I took took the 3 day option

[mduell]

Originally Posted by wings_rfs

koukuubokan - I'm wondering, since you bumped the drive capacity to 500MB, why didn't you just order a 2nd 250MB and put the 2 of them in a striped RAID? You'll double the speed of your disk access and still have 500MB. That's what I did.

<snip>

I've been looking around for anything that can compare to the Quad G5 in the Windows world, just for grins. Closest thing I can find is a quad Opteron from HP that retails in its stock configuration for SIX grand - and zero bundled software other than the OS. And another model that appears to me to be the same thing for EIGHT grand. Can't wait for someone to put a Quad G5 up against a quad Opteron and lets see who got the most bang for their buck. (Of course, we're talking XP Pro vs MacOS, so even if the price figures were reversed there would still be no comparison.)

Since the PowerMacs lack hardware RAID, you'd have to use software RAID. You can't do RAID0 in software on your boot volume (only RAID1). Also, software RAID0 isn't that fast (it certainly won't halve your seek time, nor double your throughput), and of course it doubles your chance of losing all your data.

If you want a comparable PC, look for dual dualcores not quads. The motherboards alone for quads cost a fortune, and the quad-capable Opterons are not cheap either. Polywell has four core Opteron workstations starting around $3100 with a pair of dualcore Opterons, 1GB ECC RAM, hardware RAID controller, DVD burner, etc.

[Thinine]

Um, no, you can boot RAID-0.

And koukuubokan, why did you get ECC RAM?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Thinine

Um, no, you can boot RAID-0.

Sounds like a neat trick, do you know how they do it?
Some OpenFirmware trickery to get the array up before the OS is loaded?

[bentoon]

Originally Posted by wings_rfs

koukuubokan - I'm wondering, since you bumped the drive capacity to 500MB, why didn't you just order a 2nd 250MB and put the 2 of them in a striped RAID? You'll double the speed of your disk access and still have 500MB. That's what I did.

Please explain Wings,
You mean an external drive is faster - how exactly do you configure a striped RAID?
Thanks,
J

[bentoon]

Originally Posted by themexican

using the 7800 option pushes back the ship date on 2.3 duals until late Dec... without the 7800 option it ships in 3 days. I took took the 3 day option

Wait a second...
Dual Duals in three days?
What?
If this is true it seems like I would almost rather but a 7800 and put it in later...Sell the other on ebay...
I am considering this anyway since I will be doing HD video
and I wonder if ther is there a better V card for the Mac that I should consider ?????
(The Quadro fo 1600$ seems to be a bit much)

Advice Please
& Thanks
J

[JCT]

Originally Posted by bentoon

Wait a second...
Dual Duals in three days?
What?

No, the three days is only for the single dual cores. The Dual Duals still come up as 3-4 weeks with the standard card and 6-8 with the 7800GT.

JT

[KeyLimePi]

Originally Posted by bentoon

I am considering this anyway since I will be doing HD video
and I wonder if ther is there a better V card for the Mac that I should consider ?????
(The Quadro fo 1600$ seems to be a bit much)

Advice Please
& Thanks
J

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but unless you're doing a lot of AE or Motion work I don't think you'll see as much of a benefit from the 7800. That said a better card will give almost everything a little boost so, like you, I'll probably add a 7800 later when it becomes available. Personally, unless you're doing some very high-end 3D modeling, I think the Quadro is overkill.

[bentoon]

Originally Posted by KeyLimePi

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but unless you're doing a lot of AE or Motion work I don't think you'll see as much of a benefit from the 7800. That said a better card will give almost everything a little boost so, like you, I'll probably add a 7800 later when it becomes available. Personally, unless you're doing some very high-end 3D modeling, I think the Quadro is overkill.

Good Thanks

[nayr x]

Well, just a follow up:

As I said above I need one of these kajiggers ASAP, so I called Apple Sales Dept, and had them guarantee me that it would arrive before the end of this month. So... I placed my order... bwaa haaa haaa haaaa!

//Begin: "The Jeffersons" theme music:

-2.5GHz Quad Core
-500GB HD (+ the 150GB I currently have in my old blue-and-white G3 networked to my laptop)
-2GB ram (will probably get an additional 2GB from a 3rd party online.)
-GeForce 6600 (will update later and sell the 6600 on ebay or something. Can't afford the 7 week delay for the 7800!)
-20'' flat panel
-extra lazers
-sporty rear spoiler and groundFX kit
-All the other bells and whistles.

I am as excited as a kid in some kind of store. This will allow me to put my 1st gen PBG4 out to pasture. I have worked it like a rented mule for 4 some-odd years, basically running my graphics/video business from it.

Now I just have to try not to bite through my lower lip while waiting....

[KeyLimePi]

Congrats on the system nayr x. It's definately big pimpin'.

The waiting is the toughest part. My Quad isn't scheduled to ship for two weeks, so I called Apple the other day to see if I could change the RAM config. They said I could, but it would essentially mean canceling my current order and placing a new one, which would mean an additional 1-2 weeks added to the ship date.

Needless to say, I passed.

[JCT]

Originally Posted by KeyLimePi

My Quad isn't scheduled to ship for two weeks, so I called Apple the other day to see if I could change the RAM config. They said I could, but it would essentially mean canceling my current order and placing a new one, which would mean an additional 1-2 weeks added to the ship date.

Needless to say, I passed.

LOL, not a tough decision in the least! Wow, 2 weeks --- getting close!

Can't wait to hear your report when it arrives.

JT

[koukuubokan]

I would like to claim temporary insanity. Unfortunately it's permanant. I'm doing some 3D modeling and have yet to render the whole enchilada. When I do, I'll need the power but I haven't worked through the process of getting the software to run on several CPUs. From what I've read so far, it should work. So I can't be sure that I will ever tax this machine. But I'll give it my best shot.

Until a few years ago, I had spent the previous 20 years working with high-end engineering workstations and servers. This machine fits in that class. My gut instinctively went to the ECC memory. ECC memory is just one of those things that has always defined an engineering workstation. But I have also experienced memory errors on my current Mac G4 and the weird behavior was never easy to diagnose as memory problems. So I'm OK with my choice of ECC memory. But I might have considered buying some third party memory to save money. On the other hand, my wife is a teacher and we got the education pricing which helped.

I've usually configured my servers with RAID partitions but never used it on a workstation. So it just never occurred to me to buy 2 disks and configure for RAID. I also went with the 500 GB drive because I have about that capacity today in 4 drives on the G4 and I'd like to get back to one drive, for a while.

If the 7800 had been available, I might have gone that route. But I was a bit determined to get my order in the queue. At that, I'm twiddling my thumbs until the scheduled 11/22 ship date. This is going to be one helluva system and I'm looking forward to using it.

=RRW/koukuubokan

[wings_rfs]

Originally Posted by bentoon

Please explain Wings,
You mean an external drive is faster - how exactly do you configure a striped RAID?
Thanks,
J

No, I didn't mean an external drive, I meant adding an identical 250MB internal drive to the 250MB that comes as standard on the Quad. Then in Disk Utility you drag the two disk icons into the list, choose "Striped RAID Set" from the popup, and poof, you got it. Of course before you did all this you backed up everything that came on the original drive and restore afterwards. Also, I think you would have to boot from the restore DVD since RAIDing will erase everything on your boot drive.

My reference to an external drive was that I plan to remove a 250MB IDE drive (IDEs won't play inside the new G5s) from my current G4 machine and stuff it into an external firewire drive enclosure, to be used solely as my backup device.

I'm adding a second 250MB to my Quad as soon as I get it, but first I'm waiting to see what brand & model they will ship with my Quad. That's never a known thing until you open it up and look. Although it isn't necessary to have identical brands & models for a striped RAID, I want it that way for my own comfort level.

Also, I explained to to Apple tech support what I plan to do and they gave it their blessing, so based on that I'd have to conclude that the OS can certainly boot from a striped RAID.

56 days and counting.

[Thinine]

Ordered my quad with 1GB RAM, wireless kit, and modem today. I hope I get it by the first week of December.

[bentoon]

Interesting,
although it pertains to notebooks,
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1359
with Powermacs coming probably in 2007 (certainly Rev B, which I would hold out for)

Nevertheless, Seeing this has me hesistent to buy the dual dual. -
Though I just got my Apple loan approved and with edu discount it puls in about 3800 - 4000 maxed out with the 7800,

I just Dont know what to do...
...Luxury Problems...

[Chad A Wright]

I ordered a Quad 2.5 as soon as the store came back up after the announcement. I figure I can get a 7800 later and put it in myself. Ordered it CTO with 1GM Ram and the Wireless Kit.

I cannot wait until I get it. They already shipped the 30" display. Now it's just sitting on my desk without a computer powerful enough to run it. We'll be done with my new office the same weekend I get the computer. It's supposed to ship on the 17th, and I paid for overnight shipping, so it better be here by Friday so I can have the weekend to get everything loaded and running.

[awcopus]

There should be no rush to order a $3000+ computer that is not widely available and has not been well-reviewed. My approach is to wait for some real-world testing results so that I can make an evidence-based decision about whether this computer is worth buying, explicitly in terms of the performance gains it offers. Just a thought for those of you like me whose current wealth level does not render this kind of issue moot. I own a dual 2.5 with 6GB of RAM and every PCI-X slot filled (Apple fiber, ATTO SCSI, Sonnet external SATA, ATI X800) and most apps (except Motion, dammit) really move. The dual dual (essentially two more of my current processors plus PCI-Express and other board I/O improvements) would have to deliver some extremely impressive gains for me to absorb all of the costs associated with this kind of upgrade (new RAM, new PCI cards that may not even be available yet).

Staying cool, waiting to see.

[Chad A Wright]

I would normally agree with you, but I have been waiting for something like this for almost a year. I was fully prepared to buy a dual 2.7 for $2,999 the day before, so a Quad 2.5 for $3,299 isn't that much of a stretch. Plus, it's a business expense, so it works out nicely. As you can see from my signature, I have been doing heavy design work and light video editing on very light hardware. It was well past time for an upgrade, but I really wanted to get the most possible for my money. I was ready to buy 3 months ago, but held off on rumors for the dual core chips. I figured if I had suffered for so long on the old machines, a little longer wouldn't hurt.

[Dzokayi]

Impressive setup, awcopus. I'm curious about your ATTO SCSI card. Did you replace the stock drives with SCSI units? It seems that I'm one of the few advocates of SCSI in primary workstations. I've been using 15k drives for years and I just cannot accept the lower performance levels of Apple's SATA implementation (no NCQ, 7200 RPM drives).

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Dzokayi

It seems that I'm one of the few advocates of SCSI in primary workstations. I've been using 15k drives for years and I just cannot accept the lower performance levels of Apple's SATA implementation (no NCQ, 7200 RPM drives).

Are you sure Apple's new chipset for the PowerMacs doesn't support NCQ?
15kRPM drives are great if you need blistering seek performance, but for most of us the cost just doesn't make sense. For the price of a single 147GB 15kRPM drive you can get 8 250GB 7.2kRPM drives or 5 74GB 10kRPM drives.