Apple Fastest Retail Personal Computer.

I can't believe no one has written about this. Apple has just introduced the Fastest Retail Personal Computer. By that, I mean that no other company that sells complete personal computers to the public is offering a computer this fast. Here's the details:

2 dual-core 2.5ghz powerpc g5 processors (4 processing cores)
1.25ghz frontisde bus (Not shared)
1mb l2 cache per proc
up to 16gb of 533mhz ddr2
Nvidia quadro fx 4500 512mb (available - standard is an nvidia 6600 with 256mb)
ships with 250gb 7200rpm sata hard drive
1 16x-pci express slot
2 4x-pci express slots

Here's some quotes:
"The Power Mac G5 Quad delivers the workstation performance our creative and scientific customers demand," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing in the press release. "With quad-core processing, a new PCI Express architecture, and the fastest workstation card from NVIDIA, the new Power Mac G5 Quad is the most powerful system we've ever made."

 

And strangely, I bet my single core 2.8GHz AMD64 would beat the snot out of it in terms of responsiveness and everyday power. The PPC architecture just...sucks.

 

It might render that photoshop file 10 seconds faster.... wow!!!!

 

Aw c'mon. If you really thought that you'd still be using a 486 to browse the internet and check your mails.

If it's about 10 times faster than my iBook (which I guess spec-wise it ought to be), it'll be amazing. But I can't see it really.

 

Considering it can only run with a 6600 tops and not many games run on macs, i think this system is geared towards the person who wants to encode videos and CAD. I wouldnt doubt a intel or amd processor would match it or beat it though, remember folks..its not just about the ghz.


Edit: Drop that, read that wrong, i see it has a 16x PCi-E slot. Hmm, i wonder what its performance will be then. Cant wait to see some reviews and a price. I'm guessing somewhere in the 3-5grand level with a 7800GT.

 

Meh. It's Apple.

 

Base price of $3300
Available now.
http://store.apple.com

 

Lol..Thats only with 512megs of ram, a 6600gt, and no lcd.

With 16gigs of ram, a 30" display, Bluetooth, and a terrabyte of storage it runs in around 19,271.

 

Apple are pretty good at PR. Their machines aren't faster than x86 computers when you weigh everything up, so to be able to make claims like "Fastest Retail Personal Computer" they just offer expensive professional-level computers to consumers.

 

Yeah, because you need 16 gigs of ram. Spec it realstically, even 4 gigs, and you knock TEN THOUSAND dollars off the price. Yeah, that high-density ram doesn't come cheap! I just bought Dell's 20" WS LCD which uses the same screen as the Apple for $400 shipped (yay!), half the cost of Apple's, though naturally not giving off quite the same virtual real estate of the 30". But it just hit me... I have a 32" WS TV and that thing is HUGE (and stupidly heavy, but that's irrelavent); I could hardly envision a monitor only two inches smaller diagonally on my desk.

PPC machines are better at some things than x86, gaming not being one. "fastest", though probably marketing BS, means more than "omg i gets two more fram3z in fear than j00!!!11" (as if someone typing like that could get the right "than/then" with anything more than chance, so I'll give the benefit of the doubt). Aside from the potential issue of x86 "owning" the phrase 'Personal Computer', it's a fair claim if it IS faster for some things, because even if Dell did sell AMDs, you won't find a dual dual-core opteron system (or dual dual-xeon I suppose) in their "home" section, which is what PC tends to refer to.

I'll bet coolmeister's Dualmaster (dual dual-core opties) will be faster for what most of us would be doing. It REALLY depends on what you're doing, if your apps are threaded, what you're doing, what you're doing, and your system's specs.

 

You're right, it's about the architecture. And the PPC architecture just can't hold a candle to the current gen of x86 processors. You would essentially have a $30k hunk of useless metal and silicon, because honestly, what are you going to do with it?

 

even though the ppc architechture sucks osx runs so smoothly and so do programs even on the G4 processors. also those power macs are nice and powerfull look even nicer with apple 30" monitor. i am so happy the apple is going intel because if osx can run perfectly on ppc how would it run on intel?

 

..Smoothly? Have you ever actually used OSX? It's glitchy and slow, things fail to open constantly, and if you watch CPU usage, it will randomly spike during complete idles, or even peak and stay there while doing mundane tasks such as browsing the web, and it will totally die while doing things where you expect some CPU power. I'm actually typing this on a G4 iBook, so you can't really call me a Macbasher, or an OSX basher, I'm simply stating the facts. X86 walks all over PPC, any day of the week. The Mactel release is the only hope Apple have, IMO, of producing a properly powered computer.

Oh, and "look even nicer with apple 30" monitor." Do you have $3k to drop on a monitor that only works with a select few video cards and takes up more desk space than any sane person has? If you do, think about sending some of that cash my way

 

I'd tap it.

 

What, again? Weren't they slapped by Advertising Standards for making such claims before?

 

That's precisely my point, you won't find an equally specced x86 machine aimed at "home" users because it's overkill. All Apple are doing is labelling a higher-level computer as a "home" PC and saying "look at us, look what we can do!"

 

Who sais what is a home pc and what is a workstation pc? It certainly isnt dell, ibm, HP, alienware, or anyone else. Just because ONE place has a a home and a business section doesnt mean crap. Hell, dell even puts there XPS systems under there home section. I think that the only thing that is 'marketed' towards a CAD/business pc are the CAD videocards, in which apple offers and then there are the 'supercomputers'. Everyones home pc would be considered a 'personal computer', even an overclocked AMD X2 or cranked Pentium D.

I highly doubt that apple's new computer is the 'fastest personal computer', Everyone will just have to wait for someone to benchmark (if you can even do that with an apple?) the hell out of it to see if there claim is actually true.

 

Quote of the week:

I love it.....

(For the record, the powermac is considered part of the "pro" line.)

 

Benchmarks lie. Everyone seems to be ignoring the point here -- PPC is an awful architecture. No matter how well it performs in benchmarks, it lags to hell in everyday use, and is extremely unefficient. Plus, what are you going to do with 4 cores? The majority of programs aren't multithreaded, and most servers are still old PIIIs or the like, because people don't need any more. At work, running 8 point-of-sale machines, the entire credit card and check authing system, a Western Union money transfer system and a computer that creates money orders, plus the 4 pharmacy computers that _need_ to work, and work well, we still are only running a dual processor PIII rig with 1GB RAM. Why? Because we don't need any more. It runs everything fine.

And any huge corporation trying to run a mahoosive system isn't going to use an overpriced, underpowered computer just because of marketing... Plus, Apple is known for not being easy to work with as far as corporate packages and such go. I say again: What is the point?

 

Lol, that was my whole point. I was trying to not say that the system sucks, because then i would of gotten into an arguement with some random apple fan. Just...wait for the benchmarks ^_^.