Apple Power Mac G5 now shipping.

[Eug]

Yahoo Finance New York Times Apple front page

 

[Go3iverson]

I'll buy mine when I see the new displays and possibly that bluetooth mouse and keyboard option

 

[0roo0roo]

i wanna see a review where they take it all apart with lots of pics

 

[digitalsm]

Now maybe we can have some fair and accurate as possible benchmarks.

Three way shootout, Dual Opteron 246s vs Dual Xeon 3.06s vs Dual G5 2.0s. I have a hunch the Dual Opteron 246s will win, though it would be the priciest system in the shootout.

 

[kuk]

I want that cardboard box!!!

 

[Nebor]

Er... 800mhz FSB and yet, 333mhz memory? How's that work exactly?

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: Nebor
Er... 800mhz FSB and yet, 333mhz memory? How's that work exactly?

The same way an Athlon XP can run a 266FSB but a 333 memory bus. Asynch.

- M4H

 

[Tab]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire

Originally posted by: Nebor
Er... 800mhz FSB and yet, 333mhz memory? How's that work exactly?

The same way an Athlon XP can run a 266FSB but a 333 memory bus. Asynch.

- M4H

uhh (I know this is stupid and I a most likely wrong) but doesnt it just downclock the ram to the FSB's speed?
Oh why did Gigabyte Advertise their upcoming K8 board having a 800Mhz FSB when their isnt one.

 

[Nebor]

So you're saying that apple isn't running a 1:1 ratio. A divider implies asynchronous transfer, right? So then the processor bus is running faster than the memory bus.

Hrmmm, it seems like to take full advantage of an FSB that high, they should have used PC4000 or something faster.

But then, I don't suppose their customers ever read past the "World's fastest personal computer" line.

 

[bernse]

Whoop-dee-fricken-doo!

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Nebor
Er... 800mhz FSB and yet, 333mhz memory? How's that work exactly?

M4H is right. The memory bus runs at a different speed compared to the front side bus. The memory bus speed is fixed at either dual channel 333 or else dual channel 400, and the FSB runs at half the CPU speed.

Anyways, you're looking at the 1.6 GHz model.

Single 1.6 GHz model: 800 MHz FSB, 667 MHz memory bus (dual channel DDR333)
Single 1.8 GHz model: 900 MHz FSB, 800 MHz memory bus (dual channel DDR400)
Dual 2.0 GHz model: 1. 0 GHz FSB, 800 MHz memory bus (dual channel DDR400)

BTW, the dual Power Macs have independent pipes for each CPU. OTOH, dual Xeons share a single bus. I'm not sure how dual Opterons work but I think they also get dual independent pipes.

Hrmmm, it seems like to take full advantage of an FSB that high, they should have used PC4000 or something faster.

The fastest memory that is approved is DDR400 (PC3200) I believe. Approved DDR500 does not officially exist (even though you can get it, for $$$$).

It's possible that a 2004 G5 Power Mac could use DDR500, but that's only if it's relatively inexpensive and it gets approved (both of which I doubt by then).

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: digitalsm
Now maybe we can have some fair and accurate as possible benchmarks.

Three way shootout, Dual Opteron 246s vs Dual Xeon 3.06s vs Dual G5 2.0s. I have a hunch the Dual Opteron 246s will win, though it would be the priciest system in the shootout.

I dunno, depends on the benchmark.

For some stuff I'm guessing that sometimes the dual Xeon will win. For bandwidth intensive stuff and some other stuff, sometimes the dual G5 2.0 will win, and I think the dual G5 2.0 will also do very well with Photoshop (partially because Adobe is releasing a G5 optimized version tomorrow). Somehow I'm not overly optimistic about the dual Opteron however, until there is better Opteron support. Maybe I'm wrong about the Opteron I dunno.

BTW, I'm talking Windows vs. OS X. In terms of Linux it's another set of variables to consider. It'd be RedHat on x86 and Yellow Dog on PPC for a Linux comparison.