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.

I just read that apple is now inside the top 5 computer makers (they were 6th before), granted it was on a fan site but if it's true that says a lot for the little ipod company that could. In addition I've read that because the information is not split up into two seperate processors just one processor using two cores the single dual core is faster then the dual single core's, but come on who's going to even wanna look at a single dual core processor anymore when they have the "quad" out. It's soooo beautiful. ::wipes drool from chin::

I'm sort of with jack on the memory issue. I think that they have to offer the memmory in pairs because that's how the destributed information works (hince hwy no single 2gb stick). However I would LOVE to have the option of just buying two 2gb sticks (ecc or not) instead of 4 1gb sticks and then upgrading whenever I got the job or money to pay for it. The intereting thing to me is that the hard drives aren't quite as big of a rip off as I thought they would be.500gb sata for $500.

Just bought the new dual 2.7 a few months ago. Ugggg.

BUT, it's great that Apple continues on with pushing the edge even further! Plenty of items for the Christmas list this year.

The Xeons are a joke. AMD's dual cores are waaaaay better. Apple is waiting for the next gereration of Intel chips, the Xeons were just pushed out there to prove they are in the dualcore game.

I read a performance review of the new machines, can't remember where... basically, a dualcore 2.3 beats a dual processor 2.5... but not by much. Essentially dualcore has advantages in memory sharing speeds... think of the path between processors now being shorter and a wider set of lanes. Is that worth something to you? Probably not, but the new video cards, larger memory expansion and set of PCI Express slots might make the newer, "faster" machines worthwhile.

Mark, you do have a good point about the Intel deal. I have to admit, with knowing that's down the road, I'm likely to hesitate on getting anything new until that point (since my most recent G5 is just a couple of months old)

...But I think for anyone who was going to buy a new computer between today and the point of the Intel Apple's becoming available will be very lucky to have this G5.

As far as the AMD thing. You may be right, I don't know, as I have not done graphic or video work on a PC since 1998. For me though, it's not just the speed alone, it's the whole workflow/interface/programs that Apple provides that appeals to me.

well for us its like i said its in your need and software capabilities...

our bottle neck for us has always been the procs, especially when rendering, after effects, dv to mpg, and lightwave stuff...if i can squeeze out an extra 15 minutes out of procoder its worth it to me...

the new xeons might very well be a joke...i will wait till the ht dualcores come out before i make any judgements..

I didn't mean to imply these aren't great machines... in fact, I think if you need something for the next 2 years, these are a great way to go... But if you JUST bought, how much improvement are these machines performance-wise? We have to wait for FCP, After Effects, etc. tests to really know. Then people can make informed decisions... but dualcore vs. dual processors, dualcore done well will win.

For those waiting for the Intel macs... do you REALLY want your biz to rely on a NEW OS on a NEW processor running NEW apps? I think most of us will wait for the second revisions and a lot of bug fixing before making the dive, performance increase or not, if you have to deal with crashes, that gain is lost. But the prospects are exciting...

Didn't take it that way at all. It's all good. :)

One of my friends tells me EVERY day that an AMD is faster, but I remind him, I don't like Windows and I'm a much bigger fan of Final Cut Pro. I've been using it for 6 years now.

Of course, I agree with him that had Apple gone to AMD instead of Intel, I wouldn't be buying a Quad to keep me out of Intel for an extra year or two (which translates to 4 years).

heath