• This forum is for posting news stories or links from rumor sites. When you start a thread, please include a link to the site you're referencing.

    THIS IS NOT A FORUM TO ASK "WHAT IF?" TYPE QUESTIONS.

    THIS IS NOT A FORUM FOR ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW TO USE YOUR MAC OR SOFTWARE.

    This is a NEWS and RUMORS forum as the name implies. If your thread is neither of those things, then please find the appropriate forum to ask your question.

    If you don't have a link to a news story, do not post the thread here.

    If you don't follow these rules, then your post may be deleted.

New Powerbooks and Powermacs after all?

Joined
Jan 8, 2005
Messages
6,188
Reaction score
254
Points
83
Location
New Jersey
Your Mac's Specs
Mac Pro 8x3.0ghz 12gb ram 8800GT , MBP 2.16 2GB Ram 17 inch.
why would you want a 300gb hd, when you can get a 400gb hard drive.
 
Joined
Nov 24, 2004
Messages
726
Reaction score
11
Points
18
Your Mac's Specs
Black Colorware PowerBook 1.67 GHz G4, 2 GB DDR2, 100GB 7200 RPM
lil said:
If anything the fact it runs much cooler means that heat generation is less of an issue, meaning less drastic cooling required, quieter computers and in the case of iMacs, Mac Minis, PowerBook etc. - less chances of overheating.

Vicky

Oh, naturally it's a better processor than the P4. Incidentally, when they got rid of the PIII was when I lost my faith in Intel as a company in the first place. What I was getting at is, 'Is a dual-core M a better processor than a dual-core G5?' And although it's very efficient for its clock speed, can they push its clock speed much farther?
 
Joined
Apr 11, 2005
Messages
398
Reaction score
1
Points
18
Location
Cleveland Ohio
Your Mac's Specs
Dual G5 powermac
Honestly, i thought a dual CPU anything will outperform a Dual Core. I know for a fact HT is just a cheap imitation of SMP, you only get roughly 30% of a performance boost
 
Joined
Mar 30, 2004
Messages
4,744
Reaction score
381
Points
83
Location
USA
Your Mac's Specs
12" Apple PowerBook G4 (1.5GHz)
Intel dropped the Pentium-III because it couldn't scale to faster speeds, and AMD was breathing down its neck. The Pentium-4 was less efficient, but it did have room for growth.

Only with the P-M was Intel able to ratchet up the Pentium-III's clock speed.

MadSkillzMan said:
Honestly, i thought a dual CPU anything will outperform a Dual Core. I know for a fact HT is just a cheap imitation of SMP, you only get roughly 30% of a performance boost
A dual-core CPU has two complete processor cores, with shared access to on-chip caches. Performance should be about the same, possibly better, than two individual single-core processors.

More importantly, it's cheaper to manufacture than two singles.
 
OP
L

lil

Guest
Meyvn said:
Oh, naturally it's a better processor than the P4. Incidentally, when they got rid of the PIII was when I lost my faith in Intel as a company in the first place. What I was getting at is, 'Is a dual-core M a better processor than a dual-core G5?' And although it's very efficient for its clock speed, can they push its clock speed much farther?

Yes. Witness the problem with the 970FX, 3GHz?

You're kidding the 2.7GHz needs water cooling. The new 970MP may have room for growth but not as much as Intel.

But -- here in lays the rub. The Power Mac will probably be the last to switch to Intel IMO. I have gone into the reasons in great detail before, but put succinctly, the 970MP is rumoured to have a 3.5GHz ceiling - that gives a lot of breathing space for Apple to continue producing a PPC based Power Mac whilst through consumer (read not mission critical) Macintoshes switch to Intel for all the bugs to be ironed out.

By this time the Pentium M with the Yonah core will be very well developed and ready for release into the Power Macintosh range, and by that I mean late 2006 or early 2007.

I could be very wrong though.

As for the Pentium 4, as technologist said in a better way than me, the Pentium 4 was an easy way for Intel to ramp up clock speeds, even if in reality they were slower than the PIII to start with. Witness how the Pentium III Tualatin 1.13GHz ran as fast as a 1.7GHz Pentium 4.

Vicky :flower:
 
OP
L

lil

Guest
Dual cores will be quicker than dual processor, physically they are much closer together allowing quicker access to registers instead of being routed out of the CPU onto mainboard and into the second CPU.

Also dual core CPUs are designed to work as a pair, so they are 'aware' of each other and thus can intelligently optimise their data processing accordingly. Dual CPU even though quite intelligent, each CPU is still kind of working along the idea that I'm the only guy in here slogging my guts out, when really its not. Dual CPU tends to need more software optimisation (Read: designed to use 2 CPUs, this could be done to the OS level) to make use of the two processors, where as dual core tends to be a much more hardware based thing.

Does that make sense?

Vicky
 
Joined
Feb 24, 2005
Messages
150
Reaction score
9
Points
18
Your Mac's Specs
iBook G4 1.2 1.25Gig RAM Emac 1.42Ghz 1GB RAM
technologist said:
A dual-core CPU has two complete processor cores, with shared access to on-chip caches. Performance should be about the same, possibly better, than two individual single-core processors.

That's not really true - depends on what you're doing.

Two individual CPUs have two paths to memory. A dual core chip means each individual core has to share the same bus to memory.

It's really hard to find valid comparisons between a single dual-core process and a dual processor rig. Simple reason being, there arent any dual processor P4s so such a comparison is lopsided (ie comparing a dual core P4 to a dual Xeon is not the same).

That said, there are dual Opteron systems that can be compared to dual core opterons. The results favor the dual opteron systems over the dual core systems, sometimes by a wide margin.

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/cpu/insidespeccpu2000-part-l.html

Near the bottom of the above link, you find a dual core Opteron compared to dual single core opterons. The single core opterons were running at 2.4Ghz, the dual core opterons running at 2.2Ghz. The comment below was concerning a comparison of a single dual core CPU vs dual CPUs :

"The general performance gain in SPECfp_rate2000 is from 16 to 40%. It speaks in favor of true dual-processor systems based on Opteron (and NUMA in particular) versus dual-core (SMP-like) solutions."

Basically what they are saying is that the dual single core opterons beat the single dual-core opteron by 16-40%. Give them 10% for the clock speed difference and you find that the dual setup will still beat a single dual core by 6-30%. Problem with making that adjustment is that dual core processors are pretty much universally running at a lower clock speed than the single core systems.
 
Joined
Nov 24, 2004
Messages
726
Reaction score
11
Points
18
Your Mac's Specs
Black Colorware PowerBook 1.67 GHz G4, 2 GB DDR2, 100GB 7200 RPM
This still doesn't address the problem that so many applications don't take advantage of dual processor systems, whereas dual core distributes tasks among its cores on its own.
 
Joined
May 12, 2004
Messages
81
Reaction score
0
Points
6
Location
Atlanta, GA
Your Mac's Specs
15" MacBook Pro, 2.16Ghz, 1GB ram
isight with new powerbooks?

I know this is not related to the topic you are discussing, but will the new powerbooks have the isight built in? I heard that rumour at some places...or is that going to only be with the powerbooks with the intel chips? or not at all? Thanks.
 
Joined
Jun 11, 2003
Messages
4,915
Reaction score
68
Points
48
Location
Mount Vernon, WA
Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Pro 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo 4GB RAM OS 10.5.2
I sure hope so, now that would be smooth :)
 
Joined
Nov 24, 2004
Messages
726
Reaction score
11
Points
18
Your Mac's Specs
Black Colorware PowerBook 1.67 GHz G4, 2 GB DDR2, 100GB 7200 RPM
As long as there's no FrontRow and it doesn't cost extra battery power, sounds great. I had an old Vaio with a built-in camera about five or six years ago, and that was really cool, but I never used it. I guess I'll just need to get some friends with webcams.
 
OP
G

ghostrida

Guest
to me it would seem that in order to maintain the price range of the current DP PowerMacs, Apple would have to release single dual-core chip PowerMacs in addition to the double dual-core (quad) setup. Otherwise they would totally lose the current price range market. There is no way a dual core is equivalant to a single core in price, we are talking about new chips here right?
 
Joined
Feb 24, 2005
Messages
150
Reaction score
9
Points
18
Your Mac's Specs
iBook G4 1.2 1.25Gig RAM Emac 1.42Ghz 1GB RAM
ghostrida said:
to me it would seem that in order to maintain the price range of the current DP PowerMacs, Apple would have to release single dual-core chip PowerMacs in addition to the double dual-core (quad) setup. Otherwise they would totally lose the current price range market. There is no way a dual core is equivalant to a single core in price, we are talking about new chips here right?


I basically agree with this, and I suspect we are in for a letdown.

As I posted earlier, a dual processor system is generally faster than a single dual core box.

The biggest letdown I can see is having the two lower end powermacs replaced with single dual core chips. That would have nothing to do with improving performance but rather nudinging Apple's margins higher. Even if they had pci-e, we're not talking about improving performance much. Sadly, they will probably dupe a lot of people into thinking a single dual core box is better than a dual single core box.

At the price points they are selling powermacs at, I would really expect to see a dual 2.3ghz single core at the bottom, dual 2.7ghz in the middle, and perhaps a dual-dual core 2.5ghz box. All of them should be updated to pci-e with the possible exception of the bottom line dual 2.3.

But my sinking suspicion is that they are going to stick us with single dual core boxes, which would really suck.
 
Joined
Mar 30, 2004
Messages
4,744
Reaction score
381
Points
83
Location
USA
Your Mac's Specs
12" Apple PowerBook G4 (1.5GHz)
lonerider said:
That's not really true - depends on what you're doing.

Two individual CPUs have two paths to memory. A dual core chip means each individual core has to share the same bus to memory.
...

It really does depend on what you're doing. The G5 and Opteron are very different in this regard. Apple's G5 systems have both CPUs connected to a system controller, which in turn connects to memory. With the Opteron, each single-core CPU has its own memory controller.

Since the G5 doesn't have a memory controller, and the link to memory through the system controller is slow (compared to the G5's bus speed) the two chips share their caches. With single-core G5s, this cache-sharing takes place over the frontside bus (which runs at half the CPU speed.) With a dual-core G5, both chips can access each other's cache at full speed. Whether this will make a noticeable difference is anyone's guess.
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top