G5 - When will we see it and how will it be?

M

Manimac

Registered
G5 When and what will it be?

As resposible of bying Hardware for a small company running on 25 G3's and 9 Bronze Powerbooks 3 G4's, my question is:

Any idear when the G5 will come?

Our experiences are that G3's we have are very close in General work to the G4's and there for instead of bying more G4's I would wait for the G5.

The lates informations I have showes a real jump in proformance. Any coments or inside information??

I normaly read the to keep me informed on what's going in the industry in general and I have untill now heard some reallly positive things regarding the G5.

So now you guy's at Apple, please do tell me what I should do!!
Wait for the G5 or won't we see it untill year 2003?

Bye the way I love the OS X but still think we need some more real chip/bus power , to have real fun and game with it.

G3 350 boosted to 450
640 mb ram
OS 9.2.1 (90% of my time)
OS X 10.1 ( sorry, only 10 %) need more speed :-()
Adaptec 2960 SCSI
 
...and MWSF '02 will be here in less than 2 months. Can you wait that long to buy your hardware?

If you can, I would suggest you would, because of two things:

1) Either you can get the new, more powerful hardware at the current prices for G4s (sicne it would be a bad move for Apple to replace the PowerMac G4 line with G5s and up the prices), or

2) You can get the "old" hardware (which is today's new hardware) for cheaper prices.

Either way, you'll benefit by waiting.

As for your interests on the G5, it seems there are two likely possibilities -- the first being that Apple will upgrade the G4 to the Apollo processors which run at speeds up to 1.2 GHz, or Apple will introduce PowerMac "G5"s: in other words, G5s that don't have all of the features that were first planned for. This is what happened when Apple first introduced the G4s.. they didn't have all the features that Apple was hoping to get out when they set their roadmap.

From what I've heard, the G5s seem to be pretty powerful, and I can only hope that they will be introduced at MWSF, since I'll be going! :)
 
SOund logical what you just wrote. I'll wait and see. at the end what most important is cost/spec's when buying. G4 or G5's. So let's hop there will be some interesting options when I have to make my decisions opon the final buy..

Manimac
 
The following comments are not meant to sound pessimistic, I'm purely going on my personal experience and gut feeling. I have no evidence whatsoever for any of the following:

The G5 will NOT arrive before summer of next year. When it does, it will be a modest improvement over whatever the current line is at the time, which will probably be G4s at around 1 GHz.

As for the Altivec thing, I bought one of the very first G4s, literally. I proceeded to do a battery of tests comparing speeds for all kinds of operations relative to a G3. My conclusion in simple terms is that Altivec is not al it's cracked up to be. Even in so-called Altivec enhanced Apps like Photoshop and After Effects and Media Cleaner, the improvement was unimpressive. Is it faster? Sure, it's a bit faster overall. IN some rare cases it's quite a bit faster. But following Apple's own 90/10 rule, 90% of the time there is little to no difference (other than pure MHz increase). I expect the same from the G5.

Apple is great at hyping the numbers, and so far I've fallen for it every time. I have very high, perhaps unlrealistic, expectations of the kind of performance I should be getting. My next purchase won't happen until I actually go into Apple's Chicago store and try out whatever the latest. greatest is in person.

As for the next expo, always, always, always, always wait for the next expo if it's only a couple of months off. I bought my second G4 for the office two weeks before the last expo when they dropped the prices and upped the Hz. What the hell was I thinking? Major dumb.
 
According to Motorola...there is still one gneration of 4 that is not out yet.....that ....according to Apple ....might end in the new Titanium...well. I dunno... but i think we will have twait a little longer before we see G5.....but...that is just my 2 cents


Andy
 
The only stuff I've read about the G5 was also at the Register, so of course I can't believe everything I read, but I hope so much that we're going to see some impressive mhz numbers. It will help Apple SO much in marketing to be able to say 1.7ghz instead of 867mhz. When people see my computer and are impressed by the look they ask how fast it is, when I tell them 500mhz, they scoff *pfff* my PC is 700mhz! Even though the chips are a different architecture, it's a hard sell. I'd also myself like to get a super fast Mac running at crazy gigahertz with a shiny new G5 designation :D
 
The wait for the G5 will probably be worth your while.
Mindbend, you do sound a little too pessimistic indeed. Bear in mind that the G5 will
a) incorporate more secondary processing power (AltiVec style)
b) be faster (maybe significantly faster) Mhz-wise
c) have its sytem architecture noticeably improved.
All three together shd make for a nice speed-bump.
The real question, of course, is: Will Apple stay with Motorola ? What's up with IBM ? Will AMD come in ?
If you're interested in that sort of questions, www.macosrumors.com is a good place to go.
On a final note: Do wait out the current G4 line. If the G5 doesn't deliver, get some older G4s as simX suggested.
 
Apple should be more open about their future planes!!

In allmost all industries you have an idear about what to come, but with apple you don't .......only guess that maybe you should wait.

Of cause it's in Apple's interest to sell all the old chip's still produced but I do think that we should have an idear about what to come or what planes Apple have for "US" buyers/consumers.

If I knew what to expect and even knew that the future computers would be more expencives but more powerfull I would mind pay the price knowing that something really powerfull to come.

Just look at Silicon Graphics. You allmost know what they are coking..

Manimac
 
Something to consider regarding "pumping up the numbers"...

Looking at the current G4 PowerMac line for SINGLE processors:

867MHz G4
733MHz G4

The 867MHz G4 PowerMac is (867 - 733) / 733 * 100 = 18.3% faster than a 733Mhz G4. Assuming Altivec is cranking out / pumping numbers as fast as it can, when will the system bus (133MHz) bandwidth be the limiting factor? Unless Apple increases the bus speed significantly, I don't see MAJOR speed gains coming from even 1 + GHz G4's or G5's. If the databus in the current Macs are 32 bits wide and Altivec is 128bits wide, it appears that something is going to be a bottleneck somewhere. Anyone have any suggestions / comments from this point of view regarding performance?

Consider what the use of the computer is before going out and fattening Steve Jobs wallet and stock options. Remember the Megahertz myth? I think the system bus speed (bandwidth) CRUNCH is the limiting factor in performance. Pay attention to the numbers.

chemistry_geek
 
Originally posted by Dekatophil
Bear in mind that the G5 will
a) incorporate more secondary processing power (AltiVec style)
Click to expand...

according to the register ;) and macosrumors( :rolleyes: ) as of right now AltiVec acceleration is almost non existant on the G5's. I'm sure it will get better but I'm not holding my breath.
Although I'm already saving up for the G5 :) I can't wait to get it. I'm looking to get it next summer (realisticaly) but if it comes out in 2 months all the better.
 
According to "The Registre", the latest test machines running G5's out there are using a bus speed of 400mhz which trully sounds like a important step in overall speed improvments. If true. wow. just calculate for your self what this means.

G4- 867 mhz on 133mhz bus =
G5-1.6Ghz on 400mhz bus =

Let's hope this will be what's cooking :)

Manimac
Barcelona
 
Altivec is not non-existent in the G5, it is just not up to the performance they have achieved in the current line of G4s.
The G5 will be a significant improvement over the G4 and it will scale well in Ghz.
Bus speed as noted here in earlier posts, is probably going to be the most important factor contributing to the performance increase.
 
I'm excited that the new chip uses DDR ram-

Since most of the applications I work on involve rendering, video, crunching large data sets, etc. etc. the DDR speed will be welcome. Unfortunately I might not be able to get a new machine until the revision after the G5.

crossdude- are you sure about the altivec not being on the G5? I thought I read that it was on there, but not doing very well just yet.
 
dev-dude, I said that it was NOT non-existent as stated by an earlier poster. See macosrumors.com for more dirt on the latest G5, including a statement that rev .8 of the G5 has par Altivec performance with G4s at the same clock speed.
Altivec is there, and will be in a big way in the future Gx processors from MOT.
 
I'm hoping like hell that Motorola will introduce the clockless PowerPC
The world wouldn't know what to do with itself. I know they introduced a clockless pager and the battery life doubled.

I'm not betting the farm that the G5 will be clockless, but it would be just as impressive as the G4 was when it came out.

We will probably also see Firewire 2 and USB 2 on the G5.

I have to dissagree with mindbend that the G4 isn't A LOT faster than a G3.
I had a 400MHz G3 and replaced it with a single 500MHz G4. I was blown away by the speed improvements. Altivec Fractal Carbon showed that the G3 was running around 800 megaflops and the G4 was cranking around 1.5 gigaflops. I now have a Dual 500MHz G4 and I can acheive 3.6 gigaflops with it. If I turn off Altivec and the second processor, it drops down to ~800 megaflops.

These are just numbers of course, I really care about how long it takes to export Quicktime movies and render scenes in Maya.

Just my .02
 
If you look at some recent benchmarking, the 700mhz iMac did as well or better then the low-end 733 G4 see this example
Disk, bus, altivec and video processor improvements is the only thing that brought the G4 ahead of the G3.
Every computer can benefit from the above.
 
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