Apple Store Down • Non-Gaming • Apple, Mac, and iPod • Eurogamer.net

TennesseeStiff 27 Apr 2005 13:15:28 372 posts
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I predict paltry PowerMac upgrades.

ssuellid 27 Apr 2005 13:19:05 19,142 posts
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Taking all the 'Wiley' published books off?

Deleted user 27 April 2005 13:43:23

Yup:

Apple today refreshed its Power Mac G5 desktop line, featuring dual 64-bit PowerPC G5 processors running up to 2.7 GHz and including Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger". The new Power Mac G5 line delivers higher performance graphics options with more memory and built-in support for Apple's breakthrough 30-inch Cinema HD Display on the 2.7 GHz model. The new line also includes larger hard drives, a faster 16X SuperDrive with double-layer support and 512MB of memory in each model. The new models will be available this week from the Apple Store, Apple retail stores, and other authorized retailers.

deem 27 Apr 2005 13:46:25 31,667 posts
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ssuellid 27 Apr 2005 13:53:03 19,142 posts
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Why the second thread TS?

lost_soul 27 Apr 2005 13:54:01 9,372 posts
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Jeez, when will Apple put decent ammounts of memory in its PCs?

lost_soul 27 Apr 2005 13:56:05 9,372 posts
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Hyoushi wrote:
Apple does PC's?

I knew you would pick up on that.

And yes, they do.

TennesseeStiff 27 Apr 2005 14:24:07 372 posts
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It isn't too bad. I mean the market for big bad tower computers is shrinking all the time as what are called consumer machines keep getting more powerful. The only reason they are still so prevalent on the PC side is because of games. We need machines that we can upgrade and tinker with ..... normal people don't need towers.

Graphic artists, Illustrators and desktop publishing users were all PM users in the old days ...... they don't need duel G5s these days to run those apps fast.

That leaves videographers, people who work on a lot of 3D rendering and some scientific and engineering users who can still use all the cycles you can give them. There are of course gamers but as I said, I just don't think that figures in the Mac world.

For the video guys, they are often locked in by Apple's top class video software. This update should keep them happy for a little while longer. The other markets just aren't Apple strengths so at worse, this update won't let them make any new progress.

What is disappointing is the price rise and the lack of any updates to the case to allow it to accommodate 3 HD unmodified. That's naff.

Speaking of retarded, the single processor model, which would be very useful for a lot of people for whom the limitations of the iMacs are a problem (anyone wanting duel screens to give one example) is still crippled and very bad value for money.

Apple is doing a mini on this one. People were screaming for a Mini like machine for years before Apple put one out and to its own, but no one else's surprise sold them by the truck-load.

When Apple starts making a none crippled single CPU model for a fair price, they will sell a load of them also.

On the plus side, I'm impressed to see that the FSB is still scaling at 1/2 the CPU speed.

I predict we will see another round of updates to PM in a less than 6 months. Lack of PCIe will become more of a problem in a few months. Expect to see due cores and PCIe and I hope a new case.

Edited by TennesseeStiff at 14:25:35 27-04-2005

TennesseeStiff 27 Apr 2005 14:33:37 372 posts
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Displays are also down in price .... very good ... they are now the same price as the almost same spec but ass ugly Dell models.

Actually the Dell's are still bettter speced slightly.

ssuellid 27 Apr 2005 14:37:28 19,142 posts
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ecosse_011172 wrote:
Also, Why is there so little progress with the G5 CPUs?
Still no dual core nor 3.0GHz+.

'Sometime this year' was the dual core ETA. Seems IBM are having a little trouble ramping up production, speed and cores.

Bit of a worry for both the XBox 2 and PS3 using IBM tech.

TennesseeStiff 27 Apr 2005 14:42:02 372 posts
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ssuellid wrote:

ecosse_011172 wrote:
Also, Why is there so little progress with the G5 CPUs?
Still no dual core nor 3.0GHz+.

'Sometime this year' was the dual core ETA. Seems IBM are having a little trouble ramping up production, speed and cores.

Bit of a worry for both the XBox 2 and PS3 using IBM tech.

No worry at all as the Cell and Xbox CPU use PPE based designs that are much simpler and considerably smaller than the 970 based G5s. You can get more than two PPEs onto the same area covvered by of a single 970.

ssuellid 27 Apr 2005 14:44:45 19,142 posts
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The size of the silicon is not really the issue as IBM have not much luck with 65nm or high clock speeds at all.

TennesseeStiff 27 Apr 2005 15:52:52 372 posts
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Ah ... sorry my mistake ..... you were referring to clock speeds.

Well, since the Cell has been shown off and we are not really that far away from Xbox and PS3 being revealed, we can be pretty sure that what ever clock speed these PPE based designs were targeting is very much achievable at this stage. We wouldn't have heard a thing from IBM about Cell otherwise.

Remember that as well as being a significantly simpler design than G5 processors, the PPEs also have a much deeper staged pipeline ..... dare I say a bit like the P4s. They will clock in the 3-4 GHz range ... I'm quite confident about that. Now whether they perform well at these clock speeds and how much programming effort it takes to get the best out of these simple processors with almost no OoO execution I don't know.

PPE are very interesting because as well as being in the IBM developed part in the core of Cell, it will almost certainly be the element which forms the three core Xbox2 processor. By extension, I think that we can also be fairly sure that Nintendo Revolution will it in there in some way.

All this development going into this core makes it very likely that Apple will end up using it somewhere, sometime .... and I think it may not be too far. Remember, the PPEs are 64 bit and have VMX extensions aka IBM's implementation of AltiVec ...... /insert dramatic music

As for "much luck with 65nm", we don't know how their luck with 65nm has been .... or for that matter anyone's luck. Do you mean 90nm? As far as I am aware no one is yet selling CPUs made on a 65nm process.

sam_spade 27 Apr 2005 15:57:21 15,745 posts
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Man, the Wiley did pick a bad day to get some Macheads on their side about being dropped from Mac stores for having the gall to publish a book about Steve Jobs.

ssuellid 27 Apr 2005 16:01:09 19,142 posts
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Intel has been sampling at 65nm for a while and they were late. Nobody else has AFAIK. The Cell chip was supposed to launch at 65nm. IBM have rumoured to have some experimental samples at 65nm so it will be interesting to see what the Xbox 2 CPU is actually made at.

As for the rest its speculation. The cores will be Power based but there could be a vast difference between the 3 cores used by the console manufacturers. Looks like MS will use a core similar to a desktop core and Sony an embedded core.

Edited by ssuellid at 16:20:28 27-04-2005

deem 27 Apr 2005 16:07:40 31,667 posts
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Post deleted

TennesseeStiff 27 Apr 2005 16:47:46 372 posts
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ssuellid wrote:
Intel has been sampling at 65nm for a while and they were late. Nobody else has AFAIK. The Cell chip was supposed to launch at 65nm. IBM have rumoured to have some experimental samples at 65nm so it will be interesting to see what the Xbox 2 CPU is actually made at.

As for the rest its speculation. The cores will be Power based but there could be a vast difference between the 3 cores used by the console manufacturers. Looks like MS will use a core similar to a desktop core and Sony an embedded core.

Edited by ssuellid at 16:20:28 27-04-2005

Yeah sampling .... not producing .... and Intel has been first to every design node that I can think of in the past 3 years so no surprise that they will get there 1st again. IBM and AMD will get there after them by a few months as usual ... this doesn't mean they have any more bad luck than usual. They are always behind Intel by a few months.

I agree, Cell was supposed to be produced at 65nm but then again Intel were saying the P4 will be at 4 GHz by now. Also, we don't know when PS3 will go on sale (as opposed to first shown) so by then it may be on 65nm.

As for the consoles, I think you are getting your terminology mixed up. None of these CPUs will be Power based; they are all implementations of the PowerPC ISA but not based on the Power CPUs. That would be like saying Athlons are based on Pentiums because they're both implementing the x86 ISA.

Power is what IBM calls its implementation of PowerPC for its UNIX machines. So the Power4 and Power5 are examples of Power based CPU. The 970 or the G5 as Apple calls it is a derivative of the Power4 so you can call that Power based too.

The PPE which is at the core of Cell implements the PowerPC ISA but is a completely different design from the Power family of processors.

With several details about the Xbox being semi-confirmed, such as its cache size being identical to the PPE in Cell, as well as the fact that it has VMX (Altivec) and that it can execute 2 threads at once ... I think we can be pretty damn sure that the three cores in Xbox2 are PPEs with little or no modification from the single PPE in Cell. Cell of course has + 6 bad ass vector units to go with it PPE so lets see which is the better approach.

A brand new CPU design costs a lot of resources to develop and keep in development ..... IBM or anyone else for that matter will not have the resources to keep three very different high performance designs going for Sony, MS and Nintendo.

Trust me PPE is the core component of both these consoles. The difference will be how many or what other elements are bolted on to them. Nintindo may still end up using a derivative of the processor it uses at the moment (basically a modified G3) but chances of them using the PPE (PowerPC Processing Element) in some shape or form are quite high.

Edited by TennesseeStiff at 16:48:17 27-04-2005

ssuellid 27 Apr 2005 16:55:34 19,142 posts
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No I'm not getting my terminologies mixed up. I develop for embedded PowerPC at the moment. By based on 'Power' simple means it is based on the Power Architecture - covers all of the cpus and cores.

edit. Just look at IBMs website for the 'Power Architecture'

Edited by ssuellid at 16:56:21 27-04-2005

TennesseeStiff 27 Apr 2005 17:36:21 372 posts
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ssuellid wrote:
No I'm not getting my terminologies mixed up. I develop for embedded PowerPC at the moment. By based on 'Power' simple means it is based on the Power Architecture - covers all of the cpus and cores.

edit. Just look at IBMs website for the 'Power Architecture'

I don't know what the hell some IBM marketing gimp has put up, but when I'm talking about POWER, I don't mean an ISA .... and when I am talking about a processor architecture I certainly don't mean its ISA.

When IBM made their Cell presentations they didn't say PPE = POWER Processing Element. It was "PowerPC Processing Element".

ISSCC 2005: The CELL Microprocessor

eviltobz� 27 Apr 2005 18:04:20 2,609 posts
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/harry enfield scouser voice on
calm down, calm down
/end stoopid accent

so, no-one here is getting their terminologies mixed up really. ibm are inconsistent with it themselves. bunch o useless wankers.

ssuellid 27 Apr 2005 18:31:20 19,142 posts
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TennesseeStiff wrote:
I don't know what the hell some IBM marketing gimp has put up, but when I'm talking about POWER, I don't mean an ISA .... and when I am talking about a processor architecture I certainly don't mean its ISA.

Power has been used to describe the core for donkeys years - even back in the 820 era even. Not just for the ISA tho as its just a part of the core as a whole.

PPE is just IBMs new marketing buzzword for a Power core.

edit. As eviltobz said. New buzzwords for the same thing pop up everytime a new product containing old tech is launched.

Edited by ssuellid at 18:33:39 27-04-2005

Deleted user 3 May 2005 13:38:15

And again.

Deleted user 3 May 2005 13:58:56

Reduced iBooks too I think.

Shinzou 3 May 2005 14:03:04 887 posts
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havent forgiven think secret yet for saying ipod minis were going to get colour screens.

/strokes 30gig iPod photo

Shivoa 3 May 2005 14:04:11 6,314 posts
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Well, still a bit out of my price range considering I'm not really interested in the monitor but standardising 512MB is a good idea considering the thirst of X and putting 128MB 9600s across the series is hopefully a sign of things to come with the lower end products (specifically the 12" iBook/PowerBook and the Mac mini, one of which will be my next mac purchase and I'd like it to be a mini to complement my old iBook rather than a replacement - Core Image isn't incredibly important to me, yet, but I do want that added memory size to prevent my desktop slowing down.)

TennesseeStiff 3 May 2005 16:47:48 372 posts
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I'm really pleasantly surprised by the 128 MB of VRAM. I'm a little behind with my graphic cards at the moment but I guess the Radeon 9600 is quite a bit faster than the Mobility Radeon 9700. That 128 MB of VRAM will make the iMacs great for duel screen type set-ups, once you have the hack.

I'm really glad that they went for an upgrade like this rather than bumping up the processors by a few hundred HZ. The iMacs now have gigabyte ethernet. They didn't have that before I don't think. They also come with 512 MB as standard and DVD+ and - support and Bluetooth 2.0 as standard.

As far as I am concerned this makes them, for the first time, really complete machines for most users. Frankly anyone not wanting to play a lot of games should be buying one of these. There is simply no excuse for home and 70% of corporate users to be using a PC as the total cost of ownership of one of these would be much lower. They would also be a lot less hassle for relatives like me who have to act as tech support.

The eMacs also got the new GPU with 64 MB of VRAM which is more than enough for them. They look pretty sweet too now.

The iMac update is really solid ..... I hope it does well for them. I hope the iBooks get a good upgrade soon also.

ssuellid 3 May 2005 16:51:10 19,142 posts
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Did the new 6GB iPod Mini with the tripled battery life ever get released or was that just a rumour?

Nemesis 3 May 2005 17:00:18 20,312 posts
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Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm, iMac.

Stop it Nem, stop it. You don't NEED more Mac stuff.

Shinzou 3 May 2005 17:03:53 887 posts
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ssuellid wrote:
Did the new 6GB iPod Mini with the tripled battery life ever get released or was that just a rumour?

indeed. the 4 gig and 6 gig minis now have 18 hours of battery compared to about 8 previously.

bainbrge 3 May 2005 18:31:16 1,687 posts
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interest free credit at the moment too...

I'm really torn between migrating to apple + console, or staying on the PC. The only thing keeping me on PCs is the hazy prospect of some good gaming, although I've only really enjoyed playing HL2 in the past 2 years.