Forums | MacLife

mrreet2001 wrote:

I agree the mac pros are priced way to high ... but some1 was saying that there was never a mid end G5

http://apple-history.com/?page=gallery& … amp;range=

because this guy fit the bill just fine (when compared to the power g4 offerings. )

Sorry about that, I forgot about the single CPU 1.6 and 1.8 Ghz G5s that existed for a little while, before being phased out and un-replaced with similar, mid $1000s single CPU towers.

One thing I remember was that the difference between the clock speeds in the original line of Minis was the result of 3 resistors. And that by removing or moving them around, one could buy the low-end mini and end up with same clock speed as the top of the line Mini.

MacAddict provided a tutorial on how to do so, it was one of the only overclocking articles I had ever seen in the magazine, beyond the G4 processor upgrades.

wellfleation wrote:

Hey, at least Apple gives us a high quality OS at a fraction of the price (not to mention confusion) of M$. But those aren't exactly lofty standards either.

I have by no means given up as I remain a repeat Apple customer. Being so I can say that I've never been treated better than at my local Apple Store. They have repeatedy bent over backwards for me and have gonr way above and beyond on more than even a few instances. Oustanding is all I can say regarding my local Apple Store which in concept is really one of Apple's best moves. I think Apple gives it's store managers the okay to make decisions on a case by case basis which is a humanistic approach.

One could easily argue that Apple charges more for it's OS than anyone if one attributed the spread between the value of Apple's hardware and the cost of said hardware to software charges.
Am I really spending more for the OS when I spend $200 on OEM Windows for an $800, quad core@3ghz system or when I spend $2400 for a dual core iMac and get the OS for "free"?
Bringing in the quality of Apple support always seems a desperation move. A fall back position now that the argument that Apple's stuff is built better in the first place has been soundly refuted. And after I had a good week of hands on with a brand new 24in iMac last year I would dispute that even the basic design is even average. Both the mouse and KB felt like junk under my hand, the glossy screen and the incredible amount of heat spewing from the top vents under modest load.
The whole experience left me feeling I was dealing with a machine built far more for looks than to be used as a tool in any serious way. Kinda the same way I feel after taking a stroll thru a Sharper Image store.

Nonsense, Pariah - a 3GHz Quad core still costs over $500 just for the CPU.

You're obviously building an $800, quad core @ 2.5GHz.

Thought fwiw, the service at the Apple Store is usually quite good. At least compared to some of the competition.

Well.. this isn't good. Apple is now saying that anyone who actually believes their ads is a tool- in a legal brief, no less.

..However, after years of ads attacking competitors that could easily be said to stretch the truth Apple's penchant for wild claims is finally catching up to it.  Two iPhone commercials were taken off the air in the UK for false advertising, after claiming the iPhone could browse all the web (it can't) and showing it loading webpages faster than it really can.

Inspired by the UK rejections, William Gillis, a San Diego resident and disgruntled former iPhone user, has filed suit against Apple in Californian court over Apple's claims that the iPhone 3G ran "twice as fast for half the price".  He says this is blatant false advertising.

Apple filed a nine-page legal response which contained a rather unusual passage, which basically equates those who believe its ads to fools.

Apple states, "Plaintiff's claims, and those of the purported class, are barred by the fact that the alleged deceptive statements were such that no reasonable person in Plaintiff's position could have reasonably relied on or misunderstood Apple's statements as claims of fact."

Michael Ian Rott, Gillis's attorney points out that a company saying that you would have to be stupid to believe its ads is a rather strange tactic. [..]

I'm betting that doesn't make it into an ad. There's no good way to spin it... I would like to see Jon Stewart have it at it, tho. Maybe they could spoof an ad claiming Macs transmute lead to gold. (Or houses, whichever's worth less at the time).

Apple in Court Case: No Reasonable Person Would Believe Our Ads

Apple: Our Ads Don't Lie, But You're a Fool if You Believe Them

Last edited by Bat (2008-12-04 12:43 am)

The longer that Apple holds to this assertion, the deeper the cracks in their customer service and integrity.

With a 800$ system, you don't need a closet PSU, you will easily have 50$ for a silent and efficient  Antec Earthwatts..
A perfectly good CPU cooler (Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 for instance) is 25$.

Last edited by pirloui (2008-12-04 11:22 am)

At 400€, mine is close, except for the closet

Last edited by pirloui (2008-12-04 1:12 pm)

Things have obviously changed. This is the only one I currently see.

Note - mine might actually be a 2.7GHz - I'll have to look at the box the cpu came in.
cpuspeed may not be accurately reporting the fraction of a GHz.

If you BIY/DIY and plan well, you can upgrade the CPU later when prices have dropped. With each mobo, you can usually count on one, sometime two upgrades in its lifetime.

dvpierce wrote:

Pariah wrote:

resedit wrote:

I suppose some people really do need quad core 3 GHz, but I bet most desktop users with that CPU and run it on demand rarely use anywhere near the full power of the CPU.

Ya, ya...
One might not need 3ghz now but needs grow. Time was a dual 500mhz G4 was the top of the line and in discussions here that same "need" argument would come up. In 2000 a dual 500 might have been overkill for most people but today that would be inadequate for pretty much anyone.
Times change, demands grow and while a Quad 3ghz might be monster now it will be pretty pedestrian in three years. I look to the future when I make my purchase plans..

Diminishing Returns.

The difference between a 2.5GHz and 3GHz is so minimal though, that if you're on any kind of budget, the money is almost certainly better spent on some other performance enhancement. Boot from a striped RAID array of Raptor 10ks, get DDR3-1066 instead of DDR2-800, PhysX card for gaming, or even just a nicer monitor/printer - the list of possibilities is even longer than the number of potential performance bottlenecks.

For the sake of comparison, if you're using, say, a 1.8 GHz Single-CPU G4, you're roughly octupling your CPU power regardless of which one (2.5 or 3.0 GHz Core 2 Quad) you get.

In the context of your analogy, the Dual 450 MHz G4 was just as overkill for most people back then, and is just as outdated now. But if hypothetical-apple-customer had gone with the 450MP they would have saved, what, $1000?

Actually I tend to agree with that. I guess I was thinking more about the dual/quad choice that is presented now.
I speculate that the additional cores in the quad will be brought into increasing relevance over the next 3 or four years, giving a quad system considerably more longevity than a similarly clocked dual system.
For my own DIY system I would choose to go a step or two down from the bleeding edge. Save a couple of hundred bucks and make up for it latter with OCing latter if speed really became and issue.

Pariah wrote:

Actually I tend to agree with that. I guess I was thinking more about the dual/quad choice that is presented now.

I speculate that the additional cores in the quad will be brought into increasing relevance over the next 3 or four years, giving a quad system considerably more longevity than a similarly clocked dual system.
For my own DIY system I would choose to go a step or two down from the bleeding edge. Save a couple of hundred bucks and make up for it latter with OCing latter if speed really became and issue.

Gaming is not a concern of yours, but equally this refers to "only" a game:

GTA 4 (PC) - Summarization
The PC version of GTA 4 has CPU power for breakfast - independent on clock speed, L2 cache or number of cores. The latter ones are very important, because without quad-core power GTA 4 is noticeably less enjoyable. For example: A Q6600 is about 52 percent faster than the dual-core E6600 when both CPUs are running at 2.4 GHz. If the clock speed is increased, the difference gets smaller, but is still huge and a QX6850 is 47 percent faster than an E6850. Dual-core processors have a serious disadvantage and only with 3.6 GHz an E8500 is able to beat the Q6600, but GTA 4 nevertheless suffers from frequent lags on dual-core systems - no matter if an AMD or Intel CPU is used. The Phenom X4 9950 easily passes the Q6600 and theoretically is on the same level as the Q6700 (not included in the benchmark).

AMD's Athlon 64 X2 6400+ is doing fine compared to the E6600 and beats Intel's Conroe CPU, while the X2 5000+ is equally fast. A single-core CPU is unsuitable and only reaches single-digit results and additionally the game freezes and the animations of the characters is running in slow motion sometimes. Increased L2 cache results in about 8 percent more fps.

GTA 4 (PC) - Processor benchmark review: Conclusion
GTA 4 benefits from quad-core CPUs as no game did up to now. Even a 4.0 GHz E8500 is not able to compete with a quad-core that has 25 percent less core frequency. Both, the K10 and the K8 architecture are doing quite well.

This game is multithreaded enough so that 4 cores vs. 2 outweighs clockspeed and architecture to a very substantial degree. This is the current trend.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6695 … rs/?page=2