The amazing thing here is that for less than $13k (cheaper educational), I can get a system with 2 big flat panels that absolutely SPANKS the $40k SGI Octanes.Įxcept that the Octane's bus is theoretically much, much faster. There was no word about the heavily anticipated redesign of the 15' PowerBooks. A 3GHz processor will be available from IBM in 12 months.Īpple notes that recompiling apps for the 64-bit architecture is easy, and in some cases can be done in minutes. The G5 is 10 percent slower than the P4 and Xeon in SPEC int scores in single-proc units, but 20 percent faster in FPU scores, and the dual-proc G5 beats the dual-proc Xeon in all SPEC scores. And it is much quieter than its predecessor. It has four distinct 'thermal zones' with computer-controlled cooling with its nine (yes, nine) independent fans. It is an aluminum enclosure, with ports for FireWire and USB on the front, and a door on the side to get into the box. The case of the new machines is redesigned too, from the ground up, focusing on decreasing noise and heat. The 4x SuperDrive is now standard, and it can house up to 500GB of internal storage.įor video, the GeForce FX5200 is standard on low-end models, Radeon 9600 Pro on high-end models. USB 2.0 is now included, as are FireWire 400 and 800, Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme, and digital audio in and out. The memory bandwidth is one of the most talked-about features of the new architecture. So they can have up to 8GB of 128-bit DDR RAM, as it is efficient to keep data in memory. The bus is 1GHz ('fastest ever') and it is designed for dual processing and full symmetric processing.īeyond the many numbers, the bottom line is that the new machines have a new architecture, and that the memory speed is now the bottleneck, not the processor or bandwidth speeds. The new G5 machines, with the IBM 970 processor, use the 'world's first 64-bit desktop processor' (and the 'fastest 64-bit processor ever') but run both 64-bit and 32-bit apps natively, and run up to 2GHz. In the hardware part of his keynote address at WWDC, Jobs officially introduced the G5-based computers previously leaked on the Apple store.

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