Oh yeah, I'm not banking too much on this rumor. Heck, look at how successful the rumors have been of late... NOT!<br><br>But if they do offer a "roadmap to 970" then the machines better not be too far behind, cause the slow sales of powermacs will drop down to NO sales of powermacs when that happens. I bet.<br><br>

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>Apple knows that they must reach at least the 2ghz barrier soon, and it is apparant to most people that if we rely on Motorolla, that is at least a year or two away - by then Intel/AMD will probably be at 4ghz.<p><hr></blockquote><p>According to Intel's road maps they plan on reaching 5GHz by the end of 2004 or beginning of 2005! <br><br>

But isn't that with the Pentium line? <br><br>By 2004/2005 Apple (with IBM) and AMD will be using next generation 64bit processors that will probably be better than the Pentium 4 at any reasonably close clock speed right?(give or take a gigahertz ) Not to mention efficiency in power consumption as well as whatever benefits there might be to being "64-bit" (I don't know precisely what they are yet in today's desktops). <br><br>Eventually the Pentium 4 is going to have to be replaced with something else that most likely will debut at something "slower" than their last released P4 (Itanic 2?). Then what? This ridiculous Hz race has to end sometime.<br>

I don't know whether or not it will be a P4 processor, but it's a completely new core so you can never tell. I doubt that IBM will want to get sucked into the GHz race, so they may be a while until they reach 5GHz...<br><br>

Here's more on the Intel Tejas CPU:<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>the Tejas will be introduced at well over 4 GHz, using an 800-MHz front-side bus. Tejas will ship on the then-established 90-nm process, and will also feature an enhanced version of the hyperthreading technology found on the Prescott, new instructions, and an improved level-1 cache. <p><hr></blockquote><p>And:<br><br><blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>Tejas will definitely top 5 GHz over its lifetime, although Intel hasn't officially defined at what frequency Tejas itself will be end-of-lifed. Unsurprisingly, the Tejas is expected to outperform Prescott on a clock-per-clock basis....<p><hr></blockquote><p>So it's supposed to be faster than current P4's at the same speed and it will reach 5GHZ...<br><br>

Given that the Pentium 4 is slower than the Pentium 3, we'll probably have to wait and see.<br><br>

Yeah, it will be interesting....<br><br>

I'll be happy when that sucker actually ships. <br><br>[color:blue]Go Kentucky Wildcats!!</font color=blue>

<em>Given that the Pentium 4 is slower than the Pentium 3, we'll probably have to wait and see.</em><br><br>This definitely *was* true, and probably still is true, but comparisons between the two are getting more difficult. First, the P4 has added more cache, better prefetch, hyperthreading, and much more bandwidth than the original northwood models. Prescott will add even more features (both architecturally in addition to another doubling of L2 cache to 1024 KB).<br><br>Another thing to think about - at higher speeds, bandwidth becomes more and more important. So, if a P3 were 50% more effective per clock with it's 133 Mhz memory interface at 1Ghz, it may only be 20% more effective per clock with the same memory bandwidth at 2Ghz (numbers made up by me, but meant to illustrate the idea).<br><br>INTC really seems to be serious about getting some high-performance chips out there. Seems like the A64 is almost doomed from the start. Maybe not the opterons (due to more cache and dual-channel mem), but INTC is cranking up the heat, that's for sure.<br><br>neye<br><br>

Just a little more fuel for the fire from SecretMac. I have never even seen this site before, so there is no more reason to believe them over anyone else... but the specs may be a bit more realistic. The one thing I don't quite understand is that way back when (last fall?) IBM first mentioned this chip they said it would "debut at 1.8 GHz". If they debut at 1.8, why would Apple have 1.4 and 1.6 versions? Ohhh.. rumors. I'm just going to keep dreamin' I'll have one this fall.<br><br>here's the text:<br><br>One of our sources told us that the new PowerMacs with a PPC 970 processor will be announced at WWDC with Panther, as expected. They will ship later in the summer. Hopefully, they will be available for Create (formerly MacWorld New York). <br> <br> The specs seem to be the following : <br> Processor : single 1.4 ghz, single 1.6 ghz and dual 1.8 ghz <br> Drives : Combo (1.4ghz), DVD-R (1.6 ghz) and DVD-R (dual) <br> HD : ATA 133 interface <br> Expansion : PCI-X <br> ports : Firewire 800 and USB 2 <br> Wireless : bluetooth and airport extreme <br> RAM : 4 DDR slots (Ram modules have to be paired) <br> Others :Hypertransport motherboard <br> Enclosure : new silver enclosure <br> <br> The prices are expected to be the same as the current tower line.... which would make them very interesting, considering that those computers are 64 bits. <br> <br> Concerning the performances, our source claimed that those new PowerMacs are 3 times as fast as the current ones for most tasks....<br><br>