The G5 is now the fastest dual-core desktop chip in the world?

[Eug]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1877406,00.asp

G5 970MP dual-core 2.5 GHz:

SPECint - 1438 <-- Not so impressive
SPECfp - 2076 <-- Very impressive

BTW, the max power of this chip is 100 Watts (50 Watts per core)

 

[Cooler]

Soon intel and Amd will kill that number next year.

 

[RichUK]

yeah but its for apple mac crap, as its not x86 it dont matter 😛

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Cooler
Soon intel and Amd will kill that number next year.

I agree, but that doesn't stop IBM from doing the same of course.

Mind you, if the dual-core G5 gets a boost next year, that may very well be the last G5.

 

[Cooler]

Soon Intel will be in Apple and maybe too amd(at least I hope)so G5 market is coming to an end in PC.

 

[LTC8K6]

What are some other scores for comparison?

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
What are some other scores for comparison?

SPECfp
SPECint

Note that these are peak scores for AMD, not base (which is what IBM usually reports). Base will be slightly lower. What this means is that each core of the new G5 is slightly faster than an Opteron 152 2.6 GHz in floating point and faster than the Xeon 3.6 too, but it's only about the speed of an Opteron 146 (2.0 GHz) or Pentium 4 3.2 GHz for integer.

The fastest dual-core Opterons are currently 2.4 GHz, and the fastest dual-core Pentiums are 3.2 GHz.

In other words, for dual-core chips:

Integer: AMD > Intel = G5
FP: G5 > AMD > Intel

Ironically, Apple is switching from the G5 to Intel. 🙂

 

[carlosd]

But that's a shame apple is wasting PPC CPUs to grab intel ones. Isn't that funny?

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: carlosd
But that's a shame apple is wasting PPC CPUs to grab intel ones. Isn't that funny?

A few things:

1) Jobs really likes Intel. He's friends with the CEO and actually presented at one of the Intel developer conferences.
2) Jobs seems to have been itching to switch for a long time. OS X's roots were developed primarily on x86, but at the time of OS X's introduction a switch to x86 would have been disastrous, because of the heavy dependence of people on OS 9 software. OS 9 software will not run at all on x86. OS X runs just fine on x86. Software can be ported, and for G3 compatible OS X software, Rosetta will run it on x86.
3) Apple's biggest concern is laptops IMO at this point. While the G5 is very powerful, so far it hasn't been a competitor to Pentium M in terms of power utilization. Apple only does well in laptops because people like Apple's overall laptop designs, and raw performance is often a secondary concern in laptops. However, with laptop sales starting to overcome desktop unit sales, Apple needs every laptop advantage it can get, and hence the desire for Yonah, Merom, etc.
4) I think Jobs is sick of swimming upstream. Having only one viable desktop CPU vendor is a precarious situation to be in. If IBM screws up, Apple gets screwed. OTOH, if Intel screws up, Apple can jump ship to AMD easily (after the contract runs out).

 

[lifeguard1999]

In regards to item (4), if Intel screws up, I am not sure if Apple could jump to AMD. Intel has many fabs for its chips; AMD does not. Technically they could make the jump, but could AMD supply the market with enough chips? That is one reason why Dell has not gone AMD (among many other reasons) --> AMD's limited capacity.

 

[Aenslead]

Yes, that makes sense. I agree.

 

[Furen]

Originally posted by: lifeguard1999
In regards to item (4), if Intel screws up, I am not sure if Apple could jump to AMD. Intel has many fabs for its chips; AMD does not. Technically they could make the jump, but could AMD supply the market with enough chips? That is one reason why Dell has not gone AMD (among many other reasons) --> AMD's limited capacity.

That would be true if Apple's marketshare wasnt so insignificant. Dell holds like 40% of the market, Apple holds a bit less than 5%, which AMD can supply easily (or at least, it will be as fab36 production ramps up).

 

[Eug]

Just to be clear on the numbers:

US market share
Dell: 33%
Apple: 4.3%

Worldwide market share
Dell: 18%
Apple: 2.3%

I think AMD would welcome Apple switching to them say in 2008, even if Apple managed to double its worldwide market share by then. I don't think such a switch will happen though, as I'd expect Apple has signed a (partial?) exclusivity agreement for several years. Intel's offerings for next while look reasonable too (one hopes). However, it never hurts to have options.

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: Eug

Originally posted by: Cooler
Soon intel and Amd will kill that number next year.

I agree, but that doesn't stop IBM from doing the same of course.

Mind you, if the dual-core G5 gets a boost next year, that may very well be the last G5.

If I remember correctly I think I read on Slashdot that you are looking at the last G5 pre Intel.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: dnuggett
If I remember correctly I think I read on Slashdot that you are looking at the last G5 pre Intel.

Slashdot knows about as much as we do. ie. They don't know either.

Anyways, remember that Jobs said the transition will end in 2007, which is 1.5-2 years from now. My guess is the PowerBooks and consumer machines will transition first, and the Power Macs and the Xserves will transition last.

Supporting this half-@ssed theory is the fact that IBM and Apple's contract doesn't end until the second half of 2007. Furthermore, the desktops and Xserves don't really need a speed boost. However, Apple's laptop do relatively soon.

Basically what I'm saying is I expect one more speedbump to the G5 970MP before Intel. So, sometime in 2006, maybe we'll see 2.8 GHz 970MP chips, for a nice fp boost yet again. 🙂

 

[dnuggett]

Agreed on the Slashdot idea. We'll see how it pans out.

 

[OhNoPoPo]

Originally posted by: Eug

Originally posted by: dnuggett
If I remember correctly I think I read on Slashdot that you are looking at the last G5 pre Intel.

Slashdot knows about as much as we do. ie. They don't know either.

Anyways, remember that Jobs said the transition will end in 2007, which is 1.5-2 years from now. My guess is the PowerBooks and consumer machines will transition first, and the Power Macs and the Xserves will transition last.

Supporting this half-@ssed theory is the fact that IBM and Apple's contract doesn't end until the second half of 2007. Furthermore, the desktops and Xserves don't really need a speed boost. However, Apple's laptop do relatively soon.

Basically what I'm saying is I expect one more speedbump to the G5 970MP before Intel. So, sometime in 2006, maybe we'll see 2.8 GHz 970MP chips, for a nice fp boost yet again. 🙂

That's probably a reasonable conjecture. One of the main reasons Apple switched to Intel was because IBM failed in creating viable laptop chips at the speeds they promised to Apple and in the time frame they promised to Apple as well. The desktop speeds were fine for Apple. To prevent confusion (Intel P-M's in laptops and IBM PPC's in desktops) and software issues, I guess the only logical choice for Apple was a wholesale switch to Intel.

 

[SickBeast]

Is it just me or does AMD never get into these "exclusive" arrangements? Maybe there's something to their antitrust case after all.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: SickBeast
Is it just me or does AMD never get into these "exclusive" arrangements? Maybe there's something to their antitrust case after all.

Well, Apple likes Intel already, and my guess is that AMD couldn't offer the killer deals Intel was offering, nor the breadth of the product line. Remember, I mentioned that the G5 was fine for desktops, but not for laptops. Right now the laptop CPU king is still Intel. Plus Intel has the compilers, which they've promised to port to OS X (yes the end of the world is near 😛), and they've got all sorts of chipsets and stuff like EFI that I'm sure Apple will take advantage of.

 

[thelush84]

I can see it now: Apple PowerBook with the new 64-bit "Dual Core" Pentium M that is due out next year and paired with possibly the Go 7300 from Nvidia. Now that would be a HUGE reason to switch to Apple, right?

 

[stratman]

Originally posted by: thelush84
I can see it now: Apple PowerBook with the new 64-bit "Dual Core" Pentium M that is due out next year and paired with possibly the Go 7300 from Nvidia. Now that would be a HUGE reason to switch to Apple, right?

Right now nobody would switch to Apple for the hardware. Bad, hard to replace, and expensive graphics cards (almost all apple laptops, maybe all, are using Radeon 9200's. Gimme 7300GO over those any day), outdated mobo's, and processors that have been around for a long time now (especially the G4 for laptops).

I'm considering a switch to Macs for productivity work because of the awesome interface that comes with Apple's awesome os. Any of you guys used Tiger? My friend showed me his iBook, and the trackpad functions on it are out of this freaking world. Drag two fingers down and to scroll down webpages or any other pages, give a flick in the counterclockwise direction and the OS organizes all the windows you have open and displays them all arranged, a flick of the trackpad to the top-left and it hides all your windows, showing the desktop. Another flick to the top-left and all the windows come back. It's hard to explain, but OSX has an amazing feel, and the features are actually useful.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: thelush84
I can see it now: Apple PowerBook with the new 64-bit "Dual Core" Pentium M that is due out next year and paired with possibly the Go 7300 from Nvidia. Now that would be a HUGE reason to switch to Apple, right?

Not really, since something similar would exist on the PC side too. They're just commodity Intel and nVidia chips after all.

However, chips aside, I usually prefer the Apple laptop designs, and of course I very much like the OS.

BTW, I suspect XP will never run on Apple Intel laptops. Windows Vista may very well run on it, but an Apple compatible version is probably not going to be out for a while. Apple sure isn't going to be writing drivers for it (if necessary).

 

[carlosd]

Originally posted by: Eug

Right now the laptop CPU king is still Intel.

I don't think so, it seems that the turion pataform is for now a better mobile solution, also cheaper and open, I don't see right now intel being better in laptops. Also the turion has the additional features that PM doesn't have.

 

[hooflung]

Originally posted by: Eug

Originally posted by: carlosd
But that's a shame apple is wasting PPC CPUs to grab intel ones. Isn't that funny?

2) Jobs seems to have been itching to switch for a long time. OS X's roots were developed primarily on x86, but at the time of OS X's introduction a switch to x86 would have been disastrous, because of the heavy dependence of people on OS 9 software. OS 9 software will not run at all on x86. OS X runs just fine on x86. Software can be ported, and for G3 compatible OS X software, Rosetta will run it on x86.

OSX's roots were mainly developed on Motorola 68k series chips, NOT x86. OSX's roots are Next Step and Open Step. Mach Kernel was not built on x86. FreeBSD 4.4 is not x86 specific and the code they used isn't neccessarily the x86 code tree, as they have a powerpc tree and it is binary compatible with NetBSD which as a tremendous support for non x86 arch. OSX has the ability to port over to x86 because of the the use of a microkernel that is mixed with a freebsd which just happens to be multiplatform.

3) Apple's biggest concern is laptops IMO at this point. While the G5 is very powerful, so far it hasn't been a competitor to Pentium M in terms of power utilization. Apple only does well in laptops because people like Apple's overall laptop designs, and raw performance is often a secondary concern in laptops. However, with laptop sales starting to overcome desktop unit sales, Apple needs every laptop advantage it can get, and hence the desire for Yonah, Merom, etc..

I agree this is probably the big deal with their switch. Future Intel CPUs for the desktop probably will never reach critical mass that a dual core G5 would. AMD run too hot for the laptops compared to the Pentium M's, the only thing Intel has done right since the BX chipset.

 

[hooflung]

Originally posted by: stratman

Originally posted by: thelush84
I can see it now: Apple PowerBook with the new 64-bit "Dual Core" Pentium M that is due out next year and paired with possibly the Go 7300 from Nvidia. Now that would be a HUGE reason to switch to Apple, right?

I'm considering a switch to Macs for productivity work because of the awesome interface that comes with Apple's awesome os. Any of you guys used Tiger? My friend showed me his iBook, and the trackpad functions on it are out of this freaking world. Drag two fingers down and to scroll down webpages or any other pages, give a flick in the counterclockwise direction and the OS organizes all the windows you have open and displays them all arranged, a flick of the trackpad to the top-left and it hides all your windows, showing the desktop. Another flick to the top-left and all the windows come back. It's hard to explain, but OSX has an amazing feel, and the features are actually useful.

I wouldn't say OS X is productive at all. Pretty yes... productive... not really. You can teach a GUI new tricks but how you arrange your icons doesn't make your photoshop render faster, infact it can make it slower, and it doesn't make your SDK studio any faster.