All I can say is, it's gonna be a VERY interesting WWDC... or not. <br><br><br>Visit Me At My .Mac Site

I believe there were many changes to the processor when it was in development, first it was going to debut at 1.4GHz to 1.8GHz, then they had better than expected performance and said it would debut at 1.8-2.5GHz with a new sever announce with the 2.5GHZ processor to be released this summer with improved performance. It will be vary interesting indeed! <br><br>

One correction, it was originally planed for 1.2-1.8GHz not 1.4-1.8GHz. Here is an article on the blade server with the PPC 970 CPU.<br><br>

Ahhh, that makes sense. As usual the sites I saw about "debuting" at 1.8 were only talking about the maximum speed...typical <br><br>

So, if those specs are right, you'd be using:<br><br>1) New chips, currently not-produced or used anywhere<br>2) A new motherboard to accomodate DDR and<br>3) A new motherboard interconnect - HT - which currently isn't used in any PC motherboards despite it being developed by AMD<br>4) the requirement to pair Ram modules, though other DDR solutions do not require it<br>5) PCI-X on the motherboard, which isn't currently found on Macs, and is generally reserved for workstations/servers<br><br>Let's compare that do going from the Smurf G3s to the first G4s.<br><br>1) Memory stayed largely the same<br>2) Motherboard connects (PCI) stayed the same<br>3) Didn't have to deal with dual-processors in the same transition<br>4) (not sure - Did the ATA interface jump from 66 to 100 in the saw-tooth jump? even so, the Yikes models still served as a bridge so some of the initial G4 towers didn't even have to make the AGP transition)<br><br>So, if all those things are true, I'd be mighty impressed. And if they were all true for a decent price, well then you could knock me over with a feather.<br><br>neye<br><br>

<br><br><br><br>Great wits are sure to madness near allied.--John Dryden, "Absalom and Achitophel"

Heh heh heh <br><br>Once it's shown to be true, I'll come back to the thread and see if I'm pushed out of my chair by the force of the improbabilities, aligned with the mechanism of the feather.<br><br>Until it actually happens one way or another though...<br><br>

Oh I agree--just couldn't resist the invitation <br><br><br><br>Great wits are sure to madness near allied.--John Dryden, "Absalom and Achitophel"

Ok, some of your points are not entirely correct:<br><br>1)The PPC 970 is in production now, and will be going into mass production; it will also be used in IBM Blade servers.<br>2,3,5)It is not unheard of for Apple to change their systems dramatically. PCI-X is (i think) backwards compatible with PCI and will give improved performance, so i would expect the switch to come soon (but not necessarily now).<br><br>Also look at the differences between the preformas (68XXX-16bit) and the PowerMacs (PPC-32bit), it was a completely different architecture. Also Mac OS 9 to X<br><br>

Clearly you and Greenme know more about hardware than I do, but why would it be so surprising if Apple had major motherboard changes? Of course, there are many rumors of new motherboards being manufactured already this spring, but I won't bother to list the rumor sites, because they're no more credible than the rumors about the chips. <br><br>Also, is there any real reason why it would be accurate to compare the transition from G3 to G4 to the transition from G4 to Power 970? Are the differences in each succession significantly similar? I have no idea.<br><br>I'm not saying that I believe these rumors, I'm just enjoying the anticipation that comes with it, but I'm confused about your reasons for why it seems so impossible?<br>