Quad Processor G5

[Paintmonkey]

I'm never buy the A_revision of anything except for testing, but when Apple realeased the G5 quad yesterday I wasn't going to buy one either.

I bought two.

For over two years the G5 line has seen modest improvements, but what impresses me more than the Quad processors, or the unproven $1500 graphics card (which I did not purchase) is the PCI express changeover.

Does this mean hardcore Mac heads will have acess to the wealth of high end graphics processors and the SLI pipelines our PC pals have?
My guess is yes - how soon, who knows.

Both chip makers (ATI & nVidia) need to step it up for the Mac community and I think this change is hopeful. Despite having a universal AGP slot, I'm told the Mac GPU's are different beasts, but it looks like the PCI-e standard will have a cross platform effect that will benefit Apple users in the coming years.

Sure, the G5 is still lacking about 2 PCI slots and 3-4 drive slots to truly call it a pro machine, and why Apple won't resolve this is beyond me?

[ACLOBO]

Don't know how long the pci-e standard will be around. I have already heard about a different AGP in the works that will supercede pci-e. But then again, it is just heresay - however, I teach at a tech school where they are pretty on top of new developments. Who knows?? I run a PC and always expect to have a little buyers remorse. WHen I bought my bleeding edge PC, they came out with one that was a little better within two months... lol.. Nature of the beast...

-Adrian

[3dworks]

I'm never buy the A_revision of anything except for testing, but when Apple realeased the G5 quad yesterday I wasn't going to buy one either.

I bought two.

For over two years the G5 line has seen modest improvements, but what impresses me more than the Quad processors, or the unproven $1500 graphics card (which I did not purchase) is the PCI express changeover.

Does this mean hardcore Mac heads will have acess to the wealth of high end graphics processors and the SLI pipelines our PC pals have?
My guess is yes - how soon, who knows.

Both chip makers (ATI & nVidia) need to step it up for the Mac community and I think this change is hopeful. Despite having a universal AGP slot, I'm told the Mac GPU's are different beasts, but it looks like the PCI-e standard will have a cross platform effect that will benefit Apple users in the coming years.

Sure, the G5 is still lacking about 2 PCI slots and 3-4 drive slots to truly call it a pro machine, and why Apple won't resolve this is beyond me?

well, and if you read this

http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?id=3717

there seems to be even more acceleratin than the mhz numbers would seem to indicate!! i hope we will see the same speedbump in LW 9!!! call it fast occlusion...

[Darth Mole]

Wow - 8 processor cores = instant render farm. Don't know how much you spent, but to do the same with Mac Minis (you need 16) would cost at least £5760 - and because of the difference between the G5 and G4, plus network overheads etc, I reckon you need about 20. So that's £7,200!

People say you can build a cheap renderfarm from Minis, but two dual-duals looks like a better deal, power for pound.

[archiea]

Sure, the G5 is still lacking about 2 PCI slots and 3-4 drive slots to truly call it a pro machine, and why Apple won't resolve this is beyond me?

?????

Thats an odd assessment... how many slots do you need? HD's can be added externaly.