Finally: dual-core Power Macs!
 

http://www.apple.com/powermac/

Dual-core, Quad! 64 bit! G5! Awesome for HDV editing!

heath

Cool! I thought we'd never see this.

I'm really pumped!

heath

Dang, and I just bought a Mac Mini a few weeks ago. Still, I'd like to see the numbers before jumping right in, I'm mostly waiting for the Intel switch.

Also, it's going to be a while before we know what alternative memory options are, Viking has a 2gb ECC DDR2 stick for $300, times this by two ($600) and it certainly beats the $3,000 for two 2gb sticks that Apple's charging. Bad form not to offer 2gb of memory in one 2gb stick or 4gb with two 2gb sticks. =P

Well I wouldn't feel too bad about that since the mini costs $2,800 less than the quad :-)

But I'm glad to see they aren't just dumping on the G5 during the Intel transition as some have feared. This should help keep sales strong while we wait for the Intel Macs. Was just reading an article in Barrons that said Apple saw a 48% rise in computer sales last quarter (not including iPods) which is way, way beyond anything in the Wintel world.

The good thing about having less than 5% market share is that there's LOTS of room to grow!

They're always profitable, which is good. They've seen a nice increase in their market share:

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS00259505

heath

JUST got a dual 2.5 ghz and apple does this to me? argh!! - I wonder how much difference the intel chips will make when apple comes out with them

Depends on what speed they are. I'm not too impressed with the hyper-threading technology. Sure, it makes a single processor act like two, until you're rendering in After Effects and encoding in Final Cut Pro 5, then the processor stalls one and focuses on the other intensive task.

heath

oh is that how it works? hmmm that's not really the most efficient in terms of editing then is it?

Heath was referring to the single processor Intel chips, they "fake" dual processors using a tech called hyper-threading. But the move to Intel for Apple will not be until dualcore chips are available from Intel. And Apple can still always put 2 dualcore Intel chips in a box like the are doing with the 2 dualcore 2.5GHz G5 mac....

actually intel's dual core xeons are out...

http://www.pcworld.com/resource/arti...RSS,RSS,00.asp

and the next move is dual core HT xeons which means two cores per chip each core with Hyper Threading... 2 physical cores 2 virtual cores per chip...

a dual chip setup would have 8 procs showing in xp

but the real treat for end users mac or pc is in the software not the hardware...how optimized are you apps?

for instance windows xp is written to only take advantage of 4 procs, you get no performance gains after that, so having HT with dual core might not give you the speed you might think you get...but having one dual core HT chip in laptop would help more i guess...

Is a dual-core 2.3 ghz G5 faster than a dual single processor 2.3 ghz G5?

heath

That's something I want to know too–-price point for price point.

How much faster is the new ones compared to the same model it replaced?

The new dual-core 2.0 ghz compared to the old low end dual 2.0.ghz

Especially since the old ones are at closeout prices. Can't wait to read some reviews.

I only saw a $200-300 drop on the former models.

heath

As someone else said, when your market share is miniscule you've got lots of room to grow. Considering that just the top 5 PC makers acconted for 96.2% of all computer sales, if we optimistically assume that Apple captured half of the rest that's only 1.9%. What's impressive here is that Apple continues to thrive in spite of such low numbers, which have long been considered below the threshold necessary to sustain a computing platform. Gotta give 'em credit for continuing to attract enough business to keep going against all odds.