IBM gives vision for future Macs

Originally posted by Rhino_G3
Also, what about most stories saying this chip will actualy go into production late next year?

It's a funny thing, all the rumor sites are reporting that the chips will either be available late next year, but the Press Release only states that they'll be available next year -- no general time is given.

Unless I miss my guess, "available next year" could be as soon as January, 2003-- which would make for an exciting MWSF indeed? :D

Anyone have anyting more definitive than what i've read?
 
By the time IBM makes the 1.8 ghz processor and bring it out into retail market, pc's would reach 5 ghz 64bit processors.

Apple seems will never catch up in PC speeds. Unfortunate this is...
 
Well the new P4 will be out soon, and dont forget the AMD hammer line, Opteron, Megtron, Clawhammer, sledgehammer....

Btw, Itanium sucks ass. When you consider a PC, you consider an AMD processor.

I was a bit exagerating, but the point is, the PC's have hell alot more performance for alot less $.

I am sure IBM will release a good chip, but i think it would be too late to make any significance towards the PC in performance.

I wonder how much theses chips will cost... No one has yet talked about it...
 
No doubt, they will be expensive at first. But they have a right to be. It'll be the first 64 bit chip on the market which is slated for a desktop. I've been looking to upgrade from my G3. (which I bought 2 weeks before the G4's debut :mad: )

I have been thinking about the dual 1.25 but with so much talk about this processor lately I'm gonna hold off till I have a little more info. I've stuck with ol' faithful for the past 3 years. What's another couple months :D

From what I know the Itanium is still the size of a cigarette package and runs hot enough to warm your house in the winter, and double as a stove all year round.
It's also supposed to run around 1 GHz.

The Hammer is a little more promising but I haven't heard any final numbers on it lately.

SSManicDevlin, as an AMD fan I'm sure you know that you can't compare processors of different families by pure MHz alone. Although the G4 may be slower than the Current P4's the difference is much smaller than you think.
 
Originally posted by Hobeaux
It's a funny thing, all the rumor sites are reporting that the chips will either be available late next year, but the Press Release only states that they'll be available next year -- no general time is given.

Unless I miss my guess, "available next year" could be as soon as January, 2003-- which would make for an exciting MWSF indeed? :D

Anyone have anyting more definitive than what i've read?

Well, when Forbes covered the same story they had this to say...
IBM said its new PowerPC chip would go into production late next year and process 64 bits of data at a time at 1.8 Gigahertz, or 1.8 billion cycles per second.
(http://www.forbes.com/technology/newswire/2002/10/13/rtr749520.html)

also... in the article from siliconstrategies it says this...
Apple would have to heavily rework its Mac OS, which has just gone through a major release cycle, to support 64-bit addressing. Therefore the company, which keeps a tight lid on unannounced products, might not be ready to detail its plans for the chip until the end of 2003.

maybe OS X.3, which would be scheduled for a release in the fall of next year?

So who knows. I guess it'll get here when it gets here!
 
AMD, good for single men and women during winter. They keep you warm when there is no one else to hold you.
 
Regarding new processors, I've experimented with overclocking my B & W G3 with the original Motorola 400MHz G3, and eventually upgraded to an IBM 500MHz G3. I wish I could get my hands on a PPC 750FX. It runs near or at 1GHz and supposedly has a vector processing unit. My logic board can support processors up to 800MHz, perfect for a 750FX.

I think I'm going to skip out on the whole G4 thing. The G4 is nothing more than a modified G3 anyway. Besides, when the new IBM PPC 970 becomes available in Macs, I'll buy the top of the Mac again and keep it 5 or 6 years before upgrading. $4000 spread over 5 years = $800/year = $2.19/day. I think I can afford that.
 
Originally posted by chemistry_geek
Regarding new processors, I've experimented with overclocking my B & W G3 with the original Motorola 400MHz G3, and eventually upgraded to an IBM 500MHz G3. I wish I could get my hands on a PPC 750FX. It runs near or at 1GHz and supposedly has a vector processing unit. My logic board can support processors up to 800MHz, perfect for a 750FX.

I like the sound of that! my 350 O/C'd to 400 is kinda feeling it's age.
I'm needing a new Mac but I'm really wanting to see what the next great offering is. From the day I purchased my G3 I knew that I would be skipping the G4... although I didn't think it was going to be this long before I purchased a new computer. I need something to add a little more zip to this baby to give me the ability to hold out just a little longer.

How fast have you been able to get that 500 up to?
 
Originally posted by Rhino_G3
I like the sound of that! my 350 O/C'd to 400 is kinda feeling it's age.
I'm needing a new Mac but I'm really wanting to see what the next great offering is. From the day I purchased my G3 I knew that I would be skipping the G4... although I didn't think it was going to be this long before I purchased a new computer. I need something to add a little more zip to this baby to give me the ability to hold out just a little longer.

How fast have you been able to get that 500 up to?

I got the IBM 500MHz G3 to overclock at 550MHz for about 30 minutes before a kernel panick occurred. I also have a processor cooling fan from an old AMD K7 mounted directly on the processor heat sinks now. I suspect the problem occured with the 1MB of cache memory probably not running right due to timing errors or heating issues. The cache memory of the G3 runs at one-half the processor speed, so it prolly didn't like being sped up 25 Megahurts. I know that going from the 400MHz to the 500MHz sped things up quite a lot; things certainly were zippier.
 
Originally posted by Hobeaux
It's a funny thing, all the rumor sites are reporting that the chips will either be available late next year, but the Press Release only states that they'll be available next year -- no general time is given.

Unless I miss my guess, "available next year" could be as soon as January, 2003-- which would make for an exciting MWSF indeed? :D

Anyone have anyting more definitive than what i've read?

According to this article http://news.com.com/2100-1001-961862.html, they will start selling this chip at the end of next year. If it takes them about 1 year to ramp the high-volumne production of this part in the plant, then they probably will be taping-out by the end of this year. It is remotely possible that if early samples come back clean that they could release Beta parts to Apple for their low volume systems (XServe, high-end PowerMacs) by summer '03. Just a guess ;) Even if P4 is running at 8GHz by that time frame it may not matter because the PPC970 can issue up to 8 instructions per clock and we may have a 64-bit MACOSX, and 64bit MACOSX apps. There are 64-bit versions of Linux running on Itanium, so it must not be too hard to convert open source projects to 64bit chips.
 
And with Apple owning/co-owning/partnership/licensing many of the core apps used, the updates will be pretty quick... I hope... keeping my fingers crossed. Forum discussions have gone so far and so deep. I am amazed at the things I have learnt in here too. Thanks everyone.
 
Originally posted by chemistry_geek
I got the IBM 500MHz G3 to overclock at 550MHz for about 30 minutes before a kernel panick occurred. I also have a processor cooling fan from an old AMD K7 mounted directly on the processor heat sinks now. I suspect the problem occured with the 1MB of cache memory probably not running right due to timing errors or heating issues. The cache memory of the G3 runs at one-half the processor speed, so it prolly didn't like being sped up 25 Megahurts. I know that going from the 400MHz to the 500MHz sped things up quite a lot; things certainly were zippier.

I had my 350 up to 450 at one time but it became way to unstable. This was in OS 9 quite a while ago. at 400 it's purring like a kitten, with no cooling fan at all. Running my heat gun on the heat sink showed an increase of 2 degrees celsius. I didn't think it was too much of an issue.

I think the only reason I was able to get it up to 450 was because of a cache control extension. I had the cache underclocked to be around the same speed as stock. I'm not sure how this is done in software, but it seemed to work. Is there anything simmilar for OS X?
 
Originally posted by Rhino_G3
I had my 350 up to 450 at one time but it became way to unstable. This was in OS 9 quite a while ago. at 400 it's purring like a kitten, with no cooling fan at all. Running my heat gun on the heat sink showed an increase of 2 degrees celsius. I didn't think it was too much of an issue.

I think the only reason I was able to get it up to 450 was because of a cache control extension. I had the cache underclocked to be around the same speed as stock. I'm not sure how this is done in software, but it seemed to work. Is there anything simmilar for OS X?

I wish there was something for Mac OS X to fiddle with the G3 L3 Cache, oh what fun I could have! With the fan running on top of the heat sinks, ThermoInDock tells me that the processor runs HOT (left on all day) at 74°F to 78°F. If I could get this thing to reach 650MHz or 700MHz (like the current iBooks), I would be very happy indeed.
 
Originally posted by chemistry_geek
If I could get this thing to reach 650MHz or 700MHz (like the current iBooks), I would be very happy indeed.

That's what I've been dreaming of ever since the current iBooks came out.

I just found a Copper IBM 533 MHz G3 that I may have to go with. I've read many reviews saying you can run this at 550 in the B&W's

$150 bucks doesn't sound too bad considering the alternatives.
 
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