And on my favorite topic, which with great effort I don't mention every day, Ars Technica's Hannibal has posted the second part (the good part) of his IBM PowerPC 970 article. This is going to be the new brain in high end Apple machines. Should show up sometime between late June and September. Needs to be a home run, and it looks like it might be.Finally, turning once again to Apple's use of the 970, I believe that Apple is poised for a huge overhaul of its hardware line based on this processor and a renewed relationship with IBM. I'm finally convinced that Apple's days of wandering in the wilderness with Motorola are over, and that personal computer users will be able to see the Mac as a real option again in terms of desktop, and not just portable, performance.
"that personal computer users will be able to see the Mac as a real option again in terms of desktop, and not just portable, performance. "
By portable does he mean laptops? If so, how is a laptop better than a desktop other than that it's portable?
He means that presently Apple's laptops are performance competitive with Wintel laptops. But Apple's desktop machines are much less powerful than Wintel desktop machines. So Apple laptops are a real option if you are a power user looking for a laptop, but Apple desktops are not a real option if you are a power user looking for a desktop workstation (I mean like rendering 3d scenes all day - high end professional uses. Cinema4D; Bryce; etc... For stuff we do they are fine.)
This is because one advantage (maybe the only advantage) the G4 has (the brain Apple presently uses) is very low power requirements and thus very low heat dissipation. This means Apple can put basically the same chip it uses in it's fastest desktop machine into the very tiny Powerbook. On the Wintel side they haven't been able to do this.
The P4 (and the Athalon) are massively powerful chips that run rings around the G4 in almost all compute intensive tasks. But they suck down power and throw off tons of heat making them unsuitable for laptops (they have to be clocked down - run slower - to decrease power use in such environments.) Intel's new Centrino campaign (you've seen the ads no doubt) is an effort to combat this, but the G4 still looks good in this niche.
But the 970 will put Apple back in the race at the highest end. And it maintains the low power, low heat dissipation profile. So we'll see it in laptops as well (I guess by very early next year.)
Gotcha, thanks. Cool!
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- jim 5-14-2003 6:27 pm
"that personal computer users will be able to see the Mac as a real option again in terms of desktop, and not just portable, performance. "
By portable does he mean laptops? If so, how is a laptop better than a desktop other than that it's portable?
- steve 5-14-2003 6:33 pm
He means that presently Apple's laptops are performance competitive with Wintel laptops. But Apple's desktop machines are much less powerful than Wintel desktop machines. So Apple laptops are a real option if you are a power user looking for a laptop, but Apple desktops are not a real option if you are a power user looking for a desktop workstation (I mean like rendering 3d scenes all day - high end professional uses. Cinema4D; Bryce; etc... For stuff we do they are fine.)
This is because one advantage (maybe the only advantage) the G4 has (the brain Apple presently uses) is very low power requirements and thus very low heat dissipation. This means Apple can put basically the same chip it uses in it's fastest desktop machine into the very tiny Powerbook. On the Wintel side they haven't been able to do this.
The P4 (and the Athalon) are massively powerful chips that run rings around the G4 in almost all compute intensive tasks. But they suck down power and throw off tons of heat making them unsuitable for laptops (they have to be clocked down - run slower - to decrease power use in such environments.) Intel's new Centrino campaign (you've seen the ads no doubt) is an effort to combat this, but the G4 still looks good in this niche.
But the 970 will put Apple back in the race at the highest end. And it maintains the low power, low heat dissipation profile. So we'll see it in laptops as well (I guess by very early next year.)
- jim 5-14-2003 6:46 pm
Gotcha, thanks. Cool!
- steve 5-16-2003 6:43 pm