Rick, Yeah, the G4 was a different story I think... They had a whole different problems back then (mostly marketing related)... The G3 was really nearing the end of it's design limits and they had to do SOMETHING to remain competitive (keep in my Intel CPUs are now running at, what, 3ghz? Not that this is the most important consideration, of course, but the marketing guys have done a job on selling this concept..)... The G5 from Apple, on the other hand, has CLEARLY been redesigned from the ground up.... I'm not saying there aren't going to be bugs in other areas (there might be), but as far as the CPU itself goes - I think we can safely say the G5 CPU will not be giving anyone headaches.... The G5 *DOES* give off a MASSIVE amount of heat, but it sounds like they've managed to engineer around that problem pretty well.. I'm not sure when/ if ever you will see this in a laptop though....
From a architectural perspective, I have to say, that the G5 is definitely NOT something I would associate with a desktop-type of system... I would expect to find this type of architecture in a well- designed UNIX workstation... Go look at Sun and SGI web sites, you'll see similar attention-to-detail.. For those people who might say $2500 is a lot, all I can say, is that in 1988 a Cray Y-MP set a record, at that time, for a sustained speed of 2.3 gigaflops. It is still *VERY* impressive performance even by todays standards (Note, PC manufactures use "peak gigaflops" not "sustained gigaflops" which will always be quite a bit higher, so it's not comparing apples-to-apples exactly): Pentium III 1.7Ghz: 1 gigaflop (this may be slightly off) Pentium IV 1.7Ghz: 1.7 gigaflops (this may be slightly off) PowerPC G4 733 Mhz: 2.9 gigaflops Apple G4 1.25 Ghz dual processor: 18 gigaflops (!) Apple G5 ??? (I can't find any figures yet - anyone know?)... Of course gigaflop performance doesn't really tell the whole picture, as it only benchmarks the CPU and it's floating-point performance... ... I'm definitely getting one because from my perspective it is going to be one of the lowest priced UNIX workstations I've ever bought... - Greg >Greg, stop it, you're making me drool on my keyboard. > >You're right though; I was initially suffering from niggling doubts fed >by memories of the first G4s -- which were not really as good in terms of >overall build as their almost-immediate successors. But that was because >Apple sort of show-horned the G4 processor onto the G3 motherboard or >something, whereas the G5s have apparently been built for the job from >the ground upwards, without 'making do' with older, rather unsuitable >stock components. Dammit, I sooo want one of these things. Some might say >that 2500 quid is a lot to spend for decent Unreal Tournament >performance, but it's all about priorities... Oh, and iSight looks >wonderful too. Can't wait. > >Rick
