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yeah but you said Pentium 4 with RDRAM-that's a system not a processor. And a faster system would be the dual xeon with rdram.

The reason why I said Pentium 4 with RDRAM is because Intel is promoting DDR so much even though it is an bottleneck to Pentium 4.

apart from not being cost efective for IBM to fab. how much performance will be lost in cache reduction for desktop units (1mb? 2mb?), the cost increase to apple to make new mobo design with higher pin count, higher wattage required to run it. it all adds up. require active cooling (making teh hush hush imac no longer hush hush)

The new iMac G4, little that you know, actually uses active cooling. But of course, you wouldn't notice because they use a very good heatsink, a very good geometrical casing shape and also a very quiet fan. Of course, except #2, all of what iMac does to make the iMac "hush hush" is available for PCs.

We don't know how fast a future CPU would be, but I can assure you that future iNTEL and AMD CPUs will be faster than they are today, and most certainly because they are pumping a lot of money into making desktop and low end server CPUs (Itanium is a chapter of its own, so lets not include it yet).

And the very fact of such stiff competition forces both AMD and Intel to overperform and underprice the other.

IBM on the other hand doesn't seem to like desktop computers that much (or harddisks), and Motorola isn't too into putting a huge effort into desktop CPUs.

They are pushing desktop computers. But not those based on Power4 nor PowerPC. They are pushing, ironically, Intel stuff. As for HDD, IBM sold it off because it wasn't profitable. But heck, they made the best hard drives around for the past few years.

And, on a personal note, good design can be joined with practical issues. I would never buy an imac, it is just way to impractical. The Cube should have been the iMac, but at $1,000 (and not a cent more).

From the physics stand point of view, the iMac G4 had much better heat management than the Cube mainly because of its shape. If they ship the rice bowl (the base) and the stick (the LCD) seperately, they could meet your demands, however.

A POWER4 "Lite" will be slower than the full POWER4 but there's no reason to suggest x86 will be able to beat it.

You really didn't read the first part of his comment? He said that because of the small difference in performance in the full blown current top-of-the-line POWER4 and Pentium 4. So in other words he is saying it would be futile, because it would be slower than Pentium 4 anyway.

It may indeed be slower than x86, I don't know. It depends on the implementation and I don't expect IBM are likely to mess this up. IBM are not Motorola!

It also depends on the processor. The processor speed relies much on the cache and other stuff that needs to be striped out before going into a Mac.

Indeed, but not to the same degree, 2.53GHz P4 are already 0.13um whereas POWER4 are 0.18um, that means an immediate boost and further boosts in the future since IBMs silicon process is better than Intels.

Intel would be (and probably is using) IBM's silicon process. Besides, while waiting for Power4 to come to 130nm, Pentium 4 might have already started using 90nm transistors (they are planing this for next year, IIRC).

Apple could offer pSeries boxes running OSX rebranded as Apple servers, to complement their recent Xserve line.

I don't think this would work out. For one, because Apple has to pay money to IBM as well as make a profit, it's custom version would be more expensive. Also, people trust IBM more in servers than Apple, and would buy an IBM, even more so with cheaper prices. Also, I don't see how Darwin could compete with Linux for server stuff. Maybe some other BSD like FreeBSD, but not Darwin.

aren't motorola's ppc assets up for an option by apple this summer? and if so, they would need a fab partner. perhaps this has much to do with the sony/ibm partnership... eliminate mot and bring in a capable partner--sony.

But then again, AMD or perhaps Intel could outprice Apple and buy off Motorola's PPC assets. Also, I don't see how Sony fits into all of this. Sure, Apple is trying to be the Sony of USA, but Sony uses Windows for a reason - not because they can't afford making their own OS, but because of the applications. So in other words, Sony is not such a worthy partner, as they wouldn't use the PPC chips

Apparently Windows 2000/XP doesn't like high speed CPUs such as the Pentium 4 2.8 GHz. The result is an unstable system that would crash often. The same symtoms can be seen when combining a slower clocked P4 with a high speed chipset like the Intel 845G.

I'm wondering: Why, if you have an unreleased fastest CPU for 32-bit workstations out there, you would want to use Windows 2000?

I tested two extremely similar systems, one with 1200Mhz Celeron and the other with a 1600Mhz P IV.

Could you like use processors from the same timeline? The 1.2GHz Celeron is so much newer than the 1.6MHz P4 (sorry, they had modernized from roman characters to modern ones

because mhz isn't a TRUE measure of processor power, what's the best bang for your buck processor/ram combo out there right now?

Three words: Advance Micro Devices.