“Apple Computer on Monday broke the 1GHz barrier not once but twice with the delivery of new Power Macs. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company unveiled faster Power Macs that analysts and Mac users say could close the “gigahertz gap” with PCs. […] Apple shipped three new Power Macs, with the top-of-the-line model packing two 1GHz PowerPC G4 processors. The other new models have single 800MHz or 933MHz processors. […] The company also shipped Nvidia’s GeForce 4 MX graphics processor, about a week before the card’s scheduled announcement.” Read the rest of the report & analysis at ZDNews.
New Power Macs Break 1GHz Barrier
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I don’t care how many times Apple and its pundits haul out the “MegaHertz Myth” comparison, or how true it may be. None of that matters in the perception of the majority of computer buyers. The Intel/AMD world has Apple beat, perception-wise, and I doubt Apple will be able to do anything about it, if ever, as long as they stay with PowerPC chips that are “slower” on a MHz basis than an Athlon or Pentium.
I think it is great that Apple finally has GHz machines. The fact that they are including the next generation GeForce card in a reasonably priced system is good too. Unforutunately everything I’m reading sounds like an apologist’s spin than some ground breaking news report Both the ZDNet and Maccentral articles say, this is a great speed increase. However they then go on to explain about style versus speed, or GHz myth problems. It’s the same story on a different day. Apple needs a true quantum leap in performance for the high end market to remain with Apple. While these systems definately place them back equal with the top performers on benchmarks in digital video and multimedia content, it will still not be enough to entice users from their current platform to the Mac. This is what Apple really wants, but they will need more horsepower to do it.
Before I start another PowerPC battle, I’ll tell you what I want from Apple. I pine for the days back in the early 90’s when the PowerPC platform was so much ahead of the x86 platform that you could run an x86 software emulator faster than the top of the line x86 hardware machines of the day. That was also the time where the PowerPC was at least twice as fast in some operations, and ten times faster in some operations, than the top of the line x86 offering. I don’t think such an advance is feasible anymore. Hopefully they will at least be able to hold neck-in-neck with the x86 line.
“Apple needs a true _quantum_ leap in performance for the high end market to remain with Apple.”
I think they need a larger leap rather than a very, very small one.
All I have to say is apple needs to turn the rumors of a G5 into reality .that would win alot of Converts .I should know i’m a PC user and I want one http://www.macxcess.com/commentary/28112001_ppcg5.html
Intel/AMD market and sell CPU clock speed, while Motorola/Apple/IBM market and sell CPU power. These are 2 different concepts acheiving the same goal!
It’s almost like some car enthusiasts are more turned on by top speed while others like power take off… get my drift?!
I hate them already…. !! 🙂
Just to quote the Merriam-Webster dictionary, so you understand the use of the phrase “quantum leap” in modern english:
Main Entry: quantum leap
Function: noun
Date: 1956
: an abrupt change, sudden increase, or dramatic advance
I’ve been a Mac addict since I was old enough to pronounce the word computer, and I have to say that even from my side of the street, the new PowerPC offerings are, with the exception of the dual 1Ghz configuration, pretty lame. An increase of 67 and 33 Mhz to the 733 and 867 machines is probably the smallest speed bump ever seen by a processor maker. As painful as it is to admit, Apple is shooting itself in the foot by keeping all its eggs in Motorola’s basket, because it’s obvious where that basket is headed. It’s time for Apple to jump ship and find a new chip maker; my vote would be for AMD. Port OSX to the Athlon XP and watch that baby fly. Then you get the best of both worlds. People who like Mac hardware can have real performance gains from a reliable chip manufacturer, and people who don’t want to pay the premium can still run OSX, a superior OS, on their own AMD box.
>>Port OSX to the Athlon XP and watch that baby fly. Then you get the best of both worlds. People who like Mac hardware can have real performance gains from a reliable chip manufacturer, and people who don’t want to pay the premium can still run OSX, a superior OS, on their own AMD box.<<
Ain’t going to happen!!! And furthermore I am quite happy with the PPC techno, but Motorola does need to get off their rear and make the G5 a reality to the consumer before summer. Other than that, by the looks of it, we have beaten Sun Microsystems to 1 GHz (a megahertz myth and concept flaw x86ers like to believe in and worship by)!
Look I am not making fun of Mac people. I like the PPC, its a really good processor. However the G3,4,5 are aimed at the embedded market, not the desktop market. IBM and Motorola make tons of money selling PPC to companys like Ford, GM,Cisco etc etc etc. IBM and Motorola have zero incentive to spend really huge amounts of money to make the G whatever go really fast just for Apple.
Apples market share is just too small to justify the R&D. Embedded people care more about power consumption than speed.
Yes I know clock speed is not everything, but it is very important. Spin it any way you want to the G whatever is not as powerful as a Pentium or Athlon.
Rigged photoshop demos at Mac world do not hide the fact that the PPC is falling behind.
>>Ain’t going to happen!!! And furthermore I am quite happy with the PPC techno, but Motorola does need to get off their rear and make the G5 a reality to the consumer before summer. Other than that, by the looks of it, we have beaten Sun Microsystems to 1 GHz (a megahertz myth and concept flaw x86ers like to believe in and worship by)!<<
There’s no market incentive to do so. Who’s buying the most powerpc chips from Motorola? Apple of course. Does Apple’s purchasing power fall into line with the volumes of other products Motorola produces, probably not. It might just not be worth the engineering effort for them, as i’m sure its not 100% complete yet.
While i to believe their is a “Megahertz Myth”, i also believe that G4’s are still sub-par to the performance that can be obtained from the x86 cpu’s they are comparing it to. The only benchmarks we ever see from apple are Photoshop benchmarks, which don’t mean much. We’ve all seen Photoshop filters in Windows take a big hit going from 5.0->6.0. Things like blurring, etc are no brainers and should rarely if ever need to change unless its for the better. It makes one think that the performance hit between versions was intentional on Adobe’s part. Though now they’re showing Q3 benchmarks on their page now, the framerates are still way under what x86’s are doing with similar graphics hardware. IMHO, they’re only saving grace at the moment is MacOS X. It sure isn’t their price/performance.
You are forgetting about IBM, Apple’s other partner in the PowerPC design alliance. IBM is extremely capable of turning out lots and lots of high quality PowerPC chips. How do I know? They are Nintendo’s manufacturing partner for the Nintendo GameCube, which is powered by a 486 MHz PowerPC G3 derivative. Nintendo has about a gazillion GameCubes on the market already, and a jillion more in production. If IBM turned completely to IBM (who, by the way, are also a DESIGN partner* with the PowerPC), then we’d have had G5 PowerMacs announced at MacWorld and possibly a 1 GHz iLamp. Well, that may not be true, but they would’ve beaten the pants off Motorola easy. While AMD could be a good partner for them to have, they do NOT have to abandon the PowerPC at all. IBM could just gobble up Motorola’s Titanically mismanaged semiconductor division and merge it with their own. Thus they would get a whole bunch of really talented engineers. Apple would then have all the PowerPC assets and teams in one place, backed by a partner who will most likely not be going anywhere soon (there was a time when IBM was bleeding hundreds of millions of dollars a year, enough to sink almost any company, including IBM, but they survived).
Of course, there is the rare chance that Motorola could get their collective rears in gear, but to do so quickly enough for Apple’s needs would be a miracle…
–J.M.
*IBM uses a dramatically enhanced version of the PowerPC architecture for their Supercomputers and mainframes. I believe the POWER3 and POWER4 series have been discussed even here on OSNews.
Here is a good article on the Power4 processors from IBM.
http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?articleid=RWT101600000000
An apt quote,
“It is now quite apparent that the succession of glorified embedded control processors that power Apple’s Macintosh line are the result of the unwillingness of IBM to focus serious resources on that market, rather than a lack of first class MPU architects and circuit designers.The POWER4 processor core is a deeply pipelined, out-of-order execution superscalar RISC design that implements the 64-bit PowerPC instruction set architecture (ISA), but will also run POWER binaries.”
You seem to forget that Apple is not the only one who uses the PPC for computer platforms. The others are just overlooked and/or not realized. And since I get to work around all 3 CPU platforms on a daily basis (UltraSPARC/x86/PPC) I can see the difference in real performance (in human terms). MHz isn’t a top priority to companies like Apple, IBM, Motorola and Sun Microsystems, only to AMD and Intel it seems?!
Intel knows that they cannot compete with Motorola, IBM and Sun at the same level, so they push clock speed and use marketing propaganda like the “megahertz myth” in their favor in order to fool any unsuspecting PC buyer that the higher the number on the clock speed (MHz/GHz), the better the performance (which is not totally true, it’s just a piece of the performance puzzle)! As for the G4 being an embedded chip, you should go check your resources again, the latest PPC fits both sectors and that is what we call efficiency in design, it is able to be easily adapted to all sorts of hardware, where as Intel must build a series of chips, ones that they must underpower to fit critical design constraints like laptops and other small devices, Motorola and IBM doesn’t! So who has the better design?!
>>Yes I know clock speed is not everything, but it is very important. Spin it any way you want to the G whatever is not as powerful as a Pentium or Athlon. Rigged photoshop demos at Mac world do not hide the fact that the PPC is falling behind.<<
Benchmark tests are not very unreliable, I have been from one site to another and seen totally different numbers, they are nice to say “oh wow” or just yawn if not impressed, all are probably rigged as far as we know… who cares! You need to go play with and test the equipment for yourself so you can better fit your needs! Every machine serves a purpose, smoe better than others depending on what you are applying it to!!
The sad fact is that the wool has been brought over PC users eyes and no one elses! You guys (or gals) are like a bunch of rabid dogs feasting on such a simple number that has made you believe that is the answer to everything, boy were you fooled! Once you have worked around the riff raff of hardware from the likes of Sun, Apple and you name it PC maker… you will then realize that MHz don’t matter when different CPU architecture is being compared! Because if MHz did matter, then companies (big or small) wouldn’t going out spending anywhere from $5000 to $20000 (depending on what they are getting) on machines such as Sun Microsystems Workstations and Servers, and guess what… they are running similar clock speed as Apple/IBM/Motorola and Sun’s machines are not under-achievers !!!
These 2 quotes sum it up best;
“Apple faces the same misperception it has always faced, as far as clock speed goes,” said Tim Deal, an analyst with Technology Business Research. “It is a misperception that more clock speed means a better machine. It’s a marketing ploy.”
Robert Crisler, a Web developer and Mac enthusiast from Lincoln, Neb., agreed.
“Anyone in the market for high-end Apple machines is well aware of the folly of using megahertz as a yardstick for performance, especially between processor families,” he said.
Well you heard it here folks!!!
For shame, you should’ve quoted this one:
Main Entry: 2quantum
Function: adjective
Date: 1942
: LARGE, SIGNIFICANT <a quantum improvement>
which would’ve done the same no matter how you split up the sentence. And it predates your phrase.
🙂
“MHz isn’t a top priority to companies like Apple, IBM, Motorola and Sun Microsystems”
Oh and how do you know this? do you work at all three of these companys deep in their R&D section? Tell me is Steve really like people say he is? Did you have lunch with Scott today?
“Because if MHz did matter, then companies (big or small)
wouldn’t going out spending anywhere from $5000 to $20000 (depending on what they are getting) on machines such as Sun
Microsystems Workstations and Servers,”
People buy Sun so they can run Solaris, and certain apps, usually scientific ones that are only avaliable for Solaris. In some markets Linux on x86 is killing Sun.
“You seem to forget that Apple is not the only one who uses the PPC for computer platforms”
Other than embedded systems or one game console can you show me a consumer pc that uses the PPC? Other that Apple that is. I would love to be able to go out and buy an ATX style motherboard that uses a G4,5 hey guess what you can’t unless you got about 4000$ for one of these. And thats just for a bare motherboard.
http://www.penguinppc.org/articles/tgall/pop.shtml
“Intel knows that they cannot compete with Motorola, IBM and Sun at the same level, so they push clock speed and use marketing propaganda like the “megahertz myth” ”
Ah I see so Intel can’t compete with Motorola, IBM or Sun so they give up and mass produce a processor that runs at very high clock rates, has a 90%+ market share on consumer computers and scores quite high on spec. Those clever devils at Intel, they are just trying to confuse Motorola. AMD must be in on it as well because they are able to produce really fast processors too.
You do know that IBM has been buying and using an Intel product called Itanium right? IBM built a supercomputer with 3300 Itaniums in it. If Intel can’t compete with IBM then why is IBM using Intels processors? IBM giving out charity to poor old Intel?
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/0809teragrid.html?nw
CattBeMac I think you need to stop drinking the PPC cool-aid at mac world.
it’s about time…
>>People buy Sun so they can run Solaris, and certain apps, usually scientific ones that are only avaliable for Solaris.<<
Actually I think people buy Sun for both, I have worked closely with Sun hardware/software the last 3 companies I’ve worked for, including the one I work for now. The other top choice use to be DEC VAX/VMS (I loved those machines). VMS is still used for critical applications.
>>In some markets Linux on x86 is killing Sun.<<
We are currently testing a Linux workstation (Dual AMD Athlon 1.6 GHz… I posted this excitement on the RedHat article 🙂 and it is currently running RedHat 7.2 with KDE x-windowing some of our Solaris programs, Linux is doing a great job for us in lots of areas, but Solaris and the Sun hardware have too good of a reputation from my experience and people still buy that reputation without flinching!
>>Other than embedded systems or one game console can you show me a consumer pc that uses the PPC?<<
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/products/
I thought about buying one myself !@#$%^&*?
http://www.amiga.com/products/one/specs.php
I’ll admit the Amiga is a cheap date, but I had to post it!
There are others I’m sure, but I am too lazy to look.
>>Ah I see so Intel can’t compete with Motorola, IBM or Sun so they give up and mass produce a processor that runs at very high clock rates, has a 90%+ market share on consumer computers and scores quite high on spec.<<
Below the belt… OUCH! (ha ha) Anyways, I meant when taking 2 chips side by side at a pure MHz/GHz (clock speed) level, like taking an Intel PIII 400 MHz x86 CPU and comparing it to a Motorola/IBM G3 400 MHz PowerPC CPU, there is a difference in performance, you should check that out for yourself though to be convinced. So what I am getting at is that Intel tries to keep a wide margin on clock speed to their advantage for both technical merit and marketing hoopla! Ford more than likely sells more cars than Mercedes Benz, doesn’t make Ford a better product, they both sell to 2 different markets!
Of course other factors are important when comparing CPU performance, like the operating systems themselves, so that just totally makes benchmark tests hardly accurate and/or reliable!
>>You do know that IBM has been buying and using an Intel product called Itanium right? IBM built a supercomputer with 3300 Itaniums in it. If Intel can’t compete with IBM then why is IBM using Intels processors? IBM giving out charity to poor old Intel?<<
IBM is almost like Xerox PARC, except they actually produce and sell their wizardry! When I think of IBM, I think of a company that can perform miracles… they are just a muli-billion dollar run experiment, and they are cool doing it. On the other hand thay also produce PowerPC technology, now why would they waste their time doing that if Intel has all the answers?!
>>CattBeMac I think you need to stop drinking the PPC cool-aid at mac world.<<
The cherry flavor is my favorite 🙂
>>People buy Sun so they can run Solaris, and certain apps, usually scientific ones that are only avaliable for Solaris. In some markets Linux on x86 is killing Sun.<<
One more note;
Solaris also runs on x86 hardware!!!
I may have been a little nasty, sorry.
People(me included) take these arguments too personally.
Ultimatly its just a waste of time, all of these systems do the same things.
In the end we are both right. Whats most important is to use what works, best tool for the job.
Have a good day
Yeah Solaris runs on x86 hardware. However Sun says they are going to discontiue the x86 version of Solaris. Sun also won’t creat a version of Solaris for Itanium.
Looks like Sun wants to be Sparc only.
http://www.linuxworld.com.au/news.php3?nid=1168&tid=4
Ask yourselves this question:
What can’t the current line of powermacs do – for what are they underpowered?
Obviously, even for playing Quake3 it’s good enough. Office apps work properly, sound/video/graphics editing apps all run more than adequate (some would argue even better than on PC – but in all likelyhood they say that because of the software side). The only thing I hear people complain about is the speed of OS X itself, but I’m assuming it’s because it’s still rather immature and unoptimized.
I’m a PC user myself. I mostly use a dual celeron 550, and had no incentive to upgrade. (Yes i have used a 2ghz machine, and it’s true it’s faster – but it doesn’t make me feel like i’m missing out on something)
What people are forgetting is that you’re getting diminishing returns. We’re using double digit clock multipliers for the cpu’s but the memory subsystem has pretty much been running at the same speed until very recently. Don’t get me started on the speed of harddrives – you don’t actually believe your harddisk is saturating that sparkly ATA100 bus do you? Fact is, cpu’s are speeding up faster than memory or harddrives can.
If i’m going to be bottlenecked anyway, I much rather have some real advances, like having good stuff for the rest of my system (and cruft-free) – and I have to hand it to Apple, they have been making alot of right choices:
– openfirmware instead of crufty old PC bioses that are buggy/unreliable/slow
– dumping adb (which wasn’t bad just a bit old) in favour of usb for keyboards/mice/other
– dumping nubus for pci (66mhz and 64 bit i might add)
– adopting firewire early on
– adopting 802.11b early on
– getting a decent OS up to speed, and managing the impossible: marrying a unix with a decent desktop.
– dumping their own 3D api, and adopting opengl.
Apple often has severe NIH (not invented here) syndrome, but it’s to their honor that they’re actually daring to question their own tech, and adopt competing ones.
They have gone overboard sometimes (scrapping the newton, opendoc, etc)
All in all i find Apple hardware to be way better balanced. Aside from cpu and memory, they really have been trying to incorporate innovative hardware. They just got unlucky with Motorola’s lack of enthusiasm for the desktop computer market;
I wish they were even a little more innovative on the software side (Aqua is a nice gui, but it doesn’t change/improve anything fundamentally – same old concepts) But that’s another story.
My next computer will probably be an Apple.
>>I may have been a little nasty, sorry.
People(me included) take these arguments too personally.
Ultimatly its just a waste of time, all of these systems do the same things.
In the end we are both right. Whats most important is to use what works, best tool for the job.
Have a good day
<<
I am not sweating it, I always learn alot from these forums no matter who I am having a discussion with (especially when I get put in my place), it is all a learning experience to me. I don’t take these arguments or discussions too seriously anymore. Your last 2 sentences are most correct, so enjoy using whatever you like using and be glad we have an exciting computing world to play in… if there was only one type of computer available, I would be bored I think!
>>Yeah Solaris runs on x86 hardware. However Sun says they are going to discontiue the x86 version of Solaris. Sun also won’t creat a version of Solaris for Itanium.
Looks like Sun wants to be Sparc only.
http://www.linuxworld.com.au/news.php3?nid=1168&tid=4<<
Yeah the Solaris x86 clan is having a cow over this and Sun is rethinking its decision from what I have gathered.
2 megs of cache! that is going to make these babies fly. for x86 2 megs of cache qualifies a machine as a server.
the doctor:
>”It makes one think that the performance hit between versions was intentional >on Adobe’s part.”
That’s exactly my opinion on this oddity. I also opened a thred about it in Arstechnica’s Battlefront forum.
Quote:
>”Apple boasts unbelievable Photoshop benchmarks regarding their G4 CPUs vs x86.
>It doesn’t make any sense that years after Adobe got the specs for various x86 >optimizations (MMX,3D-NOW, SSE…) they still can’t figure out how to make a >1GHZ PIII deliver against a 450MHZ Mac.
>Unless of course, it’s deliberate.
>
>Here’s the deal:
>Apple pays Adobe a handful chunk of greens, while adobe deliberatly insert >code that hampers the performance of the x86 version.
>
>They don’t worry about PC market share, after all there is no comparable >raster image editor with the wealth of features of PS. No risk at all.
>
>Where are the comparisons for Office suites (MS and others), Macromedia >products, Server applications, 3D-modeling programs, Games?
>For some reason Apple don’t publish any of those, after all you can’t buy them >all.”
http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=48…
For those of you who have been wondering, believe me, I am NOT trolling.
I obviously don’t have any proof for such a “scheme”, so I can’t say for sure that it’s true, but I am quite sure that something here doesn’t smell right
Prog.
Good thing they have 2Mb cache.
(And on the ‘quantum leap’ thing, how on earth did common usage come to mean what it means when by definition, a quantum is the SMALLEST unit of something?)
Adobe isn’t deliberately hampering X86 versions. Yuu may not be intending to troll, but the effect is the same.
The bottom line is that (some) Photoshop filters use “vector math” on CPUs, and that Motorola’s AltiVec just stomps on Intel’s competing SSE/SIMD. Adobe has had optimization help on the former from Motorola and the latter from Intel; it’s pretty likely that both versions are doing the best they absolutely can.
As far as the megahertz myth, I agree that it’s important for Apple to start trying to match the X86 world for marketing purposes. The best way to do it would be for them to start making midrange dual-CPU machines. Put two, say, 650-Mhz CPUs in a box and call it a 1.3 GHz Mac. Sure, geeks who understand what they’re doing would cry foul–but that’s marekting, baby. (And, hey, I wouldn’t mind a desktop PowerMac with two G4 650’s in it.)
I’ve got a question:
Who here thinks Apple’s market share is gonna increase over the next 2 years due to OSX and the new machines? I don’t wanna debate the technical whatsies. Just tell me if you think it will increase or decrease from where it is now.
My thoughts? I say in 2 years they’ll have a smaller piece of the pie than what they have now.
I pretty much care less as long as Apple is still selling computers, have $h!tloads of cash and keep innovating and releasing great products like they do now… screw the market share!
“Quantum Leap” (1989)
[TV-Series: 1989-1993]
Complete credited cast:
Scott Bakula …. Dr. Sam Beckett/John Beckett
Dean Stockwell …. Rear Admiral Albert ‘Al’ Calavicci
Deborah Pratt …. Narrator/Ziggy
Dennis Wolfberg …. Gooshie
Directed by
Anita W. Addison
Debbie Allen
Writing credits
Donald P. Bellisario (story)
Toni Graphia
Plot Outline: Scientist Sam Beckett finds himself trapped in time–“leaping” into the body of a different person in a different time period each week.
User Comments: The best tv series ever
Runtime: 60 (97 episodes)
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color
Sound Mix: Stereo
Considering the trouble with IBM and Motorola collaberating to continue developing and producing higher-end PowerPC processor, G5 (GHz 1.2 up to 1.6) might not happen until late 2002 or ’03. Dual 1GHz G4 Power Mac is far more impressive compared to new iMac, esp. for mid-level to professional Mac users with too much dough.
Methinks I’ll stick with Power Mac 7300 desktop beige (Sonnet Technology 400 MHz G4, 512 MB RAM, Powerlogix Rapidfire PCI) for a while now.