The first PM G5 Quad 2.5 GHz are shipping.
Chris is giving us his first comments:
I have received my Quad today!
This is the standard model with the Airport option.
When opening the computer, the first thing I have noticed if the rather short connectics for the second internal HD, as shown on this photo :
Indeed, the second connector for the Bay B is shifted when compared with the cable. I hope that with time it will not become an issue.
Another remark when using this Quad : it is rather noisy for a Mac; but when it does not really increase when launching heavy CPU processes, such as RC5-72; I hope it is not due to a problem with internal thermal probe calibration. With the application "hardware monitor" I could control that the CPU temperature was maintained around 60°C.
With 60°C, this dualcore processor is much cooler than the one of a PMG5 dual 2.5GHz which can reach 90°C.
Another reader, Hubert, has sent us a Cinebench test performed with his PMG5 Quad 2.5GHz featuring 2.5GB of RAM, the rest being according to the standard model.
One can notice that the multi CPU speedup ratio is 3.16 for 4 processors. With a Dual processor model, this ratio was around 1.86. In other words, if the Quad is indeed a beast, it also loose more "crunching" power, almost equivalent to the performance of a single core.
Panasonic will manufacture a universal burner controller.
This chips will be able to manage all type of burning process for CD and DVD media, as well as Bl-Ray 4x (equivalent to DVD 5.7x or 19MB/s, it would take 9 minutes to burn a 25GB media).
The maximal theoretical burning speed of Blu-Ray media will be 12x, equivalent to DVD 17x. This limit is given by the current physical resistance of media when submitted to a angular speed around 11,000rpm. If you go beyond this speed, the media could simply be destroyed due to extreme centrifuge forces. To achieve higher burning speed one will need to change media composition, but it could also cost much more to produce while the real gain would be minimal.
Panasonic should start producing this chips in December for sampling, when mass production planned in January 2006.
A security leak reportedly affects many iTunes versions, at least for PCs.
They'd allow remote execution of code on the machine and a potential way to control it.
No detail was made public on how to use this leak.
Apple should promptly react via an update.
When the PCI Express Powermac G5s were released,
the Apple Store went on selling Dual 2.7 GHz for those who required PCI-X. The week-end apparently was fatal to them, as the link that allowed buying them vanished. When switching from PCI to PCI-X, Apple waited much longer to withdraw older machines from the store.
[Upd] Those machines are still sold on the US Store.
Sonnet sell the
G5 Jive, allowing to add 3 more drives in a G5. Kai, a
Hardmac reader, bought one, and sent us his impressions. Here are the original, bare product, and the two drives our reader wants to add in his G5.
And here's another one installed in the G5, in front of the fans.
Whereas everything was working well, Kai was fed up with the G5 CPUs permanently turning faster. Because whatever they could say, the air input is strongly disturbed, which makes the CPU cooling more difficult. As he only needed two added HDs, he decided to modifiy his G5 jive. And here's the mode result.
He totally emptied the central piece so that the air would flow with no obstacle, and also painted it black [famous song inside...] so it won't be seen through the G5 front piece. Here it is back in the Mac.
For a single disk slot, his G5 got back to a sound level equal to was it was before. It's probably the best of compromises.
Daystar will propose next month a CPU upgrade for 15" Alubooks. As the CPU is soldered on the motherboard, it will take sending them the laptop to have your original CPU replaced by a 1.92 GHz G4. We don't know what kind of is used as well as the transformation cost.
