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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=822
More PowerMac oddities
By ron carlson, Insanely Great Mac
August 20th 2002
As the alpha geeks dig deeper, Apple''s pro desktops get curiouser and curiouser
An off-the-beaten-track website, USS Clueless has an interesting write up on Apple''s
new G4 PowerMacs that posits a.) the still unavailable 1.25GHz models will use
overclocked 1GHz CPUs, b.) Motorola has ended development of the G4 and, thereupon,
c.) Apple''s latest pro desktops are a stop-gap measure until IBM can begin
manufacturing its Power4 line of PowerPC CPUs.
"But though [Apple] determined that enough 7.5x [bus] G4''s could run at 167 MHz,
SDRAM cannot. Its base speed is 133 MHz but it''s possible to buy selected SDRAM which
will run at 150 MHz", states USS Clueless "But there isn''t enough of it that will run
at 167 MHz, so for these new machines Apple had to switch to a faster RAM technology,
DDR-SDRAM."
The article goes on to say that Apple specifically created a motherboard chipset to
partly overcome -- i.e. a kludge -- the problems with Moto''s CPUs.
This torrid mouthful in combination with my story yesterday on the additional 286
watts the new PowerMacs power supplies offer paints a vivid picture -- Moto has left
the desktop CPU market and IBM is Apple''s knight in shining armor.
A reasonable conclusion?
Believe it? There are still too many questions unanswered: What are the upcoming
64-bit super-scalar, eight-way PowerPC CPUs'' power requirements? Is Apple''s new
167MHz chipset a true DDR product (will it allow for full 333MHz performance once
Power4 CPUs become available)? Will Big Blue''s CPUs even run at 167/333 MHz? Does
Apple''s new chipset have other surprises in store for us.
That Moto is suffering is no secret. That it has slashed PowerPC R&D isn''t either.
Also, IBM''s increasingly attractive PowerPC credentials (i.e. chewy 1GHz G3
processors, lower-power designs and proprietary manufacturing processes) look better
with each passing day.
What do you think? Are the latest PowerMacs merely a stop-gap kludge designed to get
Apple from point A to point B and stave off our vitriol? Or, are the "new" pro
desktops really the best that Apple and Moto -- buddies to the end -- can manage?
Post your comments at:
http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=822
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