Apple orders 40,000 970s

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mightyjlr

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According to looprumors.com

"We received word that two large shipments of Power PC 970 processors went to Foxconn in Taiwan, under a purchase order from Apple computer. Twenty thousand 1.4Ghz PPC 970's and forty thousand 1.6Ghz PPC 970's have already arrived in their hands. IBM's inventory contains fifty thousand 1.8 Ghz PPC 970's, of which forty thousand are destined for Foxconn tomorrow (Wednesday).

IBM has listed as pending 2Ghz parts as well, which means that it will be in inventory within a month if their fab in East Fishkill produces sufficient volume of them, and from what we hear they should be in stock by mid-June. Apple has stated that they need a minimum of 40 thousand in order to make a production run, and from what we understand this is for dual processors because normally their production runs are twenty thousand units. It is not IBM's policy to comment on other vendor's unreleased products. We have also been briefed that the PPC 970 will come in 2.3 and 2.5Ghz configurations by the end of the year, and as well some preliminary specs on the upcoming 980 processor, which is a Power 5 derivative."
 
Cool, sounds like it could be something!
I am beginning to trust LoopRumors, they seem to be fairly accurate most of the time.
 
OOOh yeah... ;). I'm sure a 1.8GHZ 970 will outperform a 3.06GHZ Pentium4 HT. BTW, are the 970's multi-threaded?
 
I wouldn't be do quick to claim that it'll outperform a P4 at less than 2/3's the clock. It seems as if it will come fairly close though.

There's been great discussion of the chip at Ars Technica. The link is in the "PPC970 at WWDC" thread.
 
i don't care at this point if it beats or doesn't beat a P4 chip.

one thing's for sure though, it'll be a step up from G4 chips, and will definately help the server market.

(also, if anyone wants to get their hands on a nice 1.42 DP powermac, those prices should come tumbling down soon).
 
Well, I'm getting a DP 1.25Ghz tomorrow... my first PowerMac...

Hope not to be really mad in the near future... ;)
 
ArsTechnica has a new article on the PPC 970. Very very technical, but also very very good. Even if not closing the perfomance gap instantly and completely, Apple would be definitely gaining some ground. If the PPC 970 will scale as well as people think it will, once on 90 nm and at around 2.5 GHz it will compete head tot head with the rest of the chips out there. When we will pass on to the PPC 980 after that, there are good hopes of re-gaining the performance crown ... :)
 
Jobs could put them in the xServe first... just to wind us up even more... but I think Apple knows that people would be plenty annoyed if that was the case (since it's the PowerMac users that are truely screaming for this processor).
 
The odds of this chip going into portables right away are slim to none. I believe it runs hotter than current G4 chips. Plus chips in laptops are almost never the exact same chip as in desktops as far as I know.

XServe, PowerMac at launch, I'd say the iMac would be, I don't know, 6 months or so behind? I think they want to squeeze some more out of the current configuration.
 
Look at the discrepency between G4 Power Macs and G4 Power Books and answer the question: "Will Apple install 970 chips in desktops and laptops simultaneously?" You should come up with "no."

I'd project seeing Power Mac 970's and XServe 970's in the near future, if these rumors prove true.

What I want to know is how Apple is going to redesign their tower cases. They can't keep the current design forever, even though it is stylish, functional, and easy to utilize. Nothing ever stays the same forever (with the possible exception of architecture).
 
That's a good point. With the XServe we have the purely functional box. The Minitower for the G3/G4 desktops is getting rather long in the tooth. For awhile everything was clear pastic and colored plastic, usually graphite (Cube, G4, first iBook). But now the consumer line is white plastic (iBook, iMac, iPod) and the pro line in laptops is all about metals, the brushed metal in the OS is supposed to play a larger role in 10.3, and the Xserve already uses it. I wouldn't be surprised to see this show up in a new tower at some point soon.
 
I really thought I've read somewhere that the power/heat consumption of the 970 was less than the G4. If that's true then it would be optimum for powerbooks.

I tend to pass that off as some pipe dream influenced by the mad rumor craze happening lately. And even if it was cooler, Apple would probably put it in powermacs first.
 
I'd have expected it would appear in the XServe and PowerMac configurations simultaneously, but the article implies that they have ordered enough for a production run of only one type of product... I wonder which it will be?

If and when Apple chooses to implement it on the PowerMac, they will be able to claim the crown of having the first 64-bit desktop, which would be excellent publicity if nothing else.

Since I'll probably be looking for a new desktop at the end of this year, this looks like good news to me. I will just have to hold out until after the January MacWorld. :)
 
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