[10/14/2002]
DP 1250 scores
barefeats has some scores of the new PowerMac G4 Dual 1250MHz. It's obviously the fastest machine to date, but we were all expecting that... Mine has also arrived in the mean time, which was one of the reasons for not posting for a month... It's fast as hell... 400 FPS in Quake 3 1.31b5 in demo four, using my config here, up to 27.5 mnodes/sec in Distributed.net OGR (compare speeds here) and over 10GFLOPS in Altivec Fractal Carbon.
I don't know if I'm going to make an indepth speedtest of the machine, as most benchmarks I'm familiar with only work in Classic or Mac OS 9, which is not a good way to measure the speed of this machine, for various reasons. You'll see it if I decide in favor of it. Btw Jaguar kicks ass!

[10/14/2002]
4.7GHz P4 demoed
Slashdot has posted these news quite a while ago, but it's still remarkable. Needless to say it was just a demo, not a ready product, but it's still quite impressive. Note that tomorrow is the start of the Microprocessor Forum and IBm is expected to release or at least give some info on their new 64bit PowerPC chip, that is said to be a future Apple CPU.

[10/14/2002]
3Dfx' demise
FS also had this interesting insider story on the last days of 3Dfx. Aparently some people are still looking back at this company with wet eyes. How else can you explain the always returning articles? :P

[10/14/2002]
Various
xlr8yourmac.com has various interesting news on hard and software, also noting the new 1.32 test pointreleases for Quake 3. I've been testing them and reporting bugs and the current version 1.32 test 4 is fairly ok, apart from some issues with non US keyboard layouts and an anomaly in air physics.

[10/14/2002]
Microsoft Mac BU opening
the register has news that Microsoft might be looking for a new director of their Mac Business Unit, as the current chief seems to be going. However, I wonder if many people with some Macintosh background are interested in the job. (although there's still a lot to be improved)

[10/14/2002]
nVidia joins the AGP 8x battle
FS has reviewed nVidia's newest attempt to lure people into buying their graphics cards: Their new GeForce 4 lineup with AGP 8x support (vs AGP 4x in the last batch). Unfortunately it shows quite obviously that without the hardware that NEEDS AGP 8x, AGP 8x is just a marketing trick, not a measurable performance gain. So all of you thinking about upgrading: either get an ATI Radeon 9700 or wait for the next batch of graphics cards from ATI and nVidia (think GeForce 5). Latest word on the GF5 is that it's aimed at the Xmas season.

[10/14/2002]
RAM debate
MacObserver has an interesting thread on RAM. The users are debating whether more RAM will improve system performance or not and where the limits are between "not enough" and "more than enough". I have 1GB in my DP 1250 now and have never noticed any pageouts anywhere, but then again 1GB should be enough for most people today (notice I said today, unlike Bill Gates who carelessly left that word away when he said that 640kb was enough for everyone).

[10/14/2002]
Various Apple related news
MacNN has a lot of newsitems all around the Macintosh. A good site to check for general news now.

[10/14/2002]
MacGamer on the DP 1250
MG has a short review of the DP PowerMac 1250, of course also from a gamer's point of view. I haven't read the whole article yet, but I guess the feedback is rather positive. I wouldn't know how it could be different.

[10/14/2002]
Apple news
Slashdot's Apple page is choke full of new and tips how to fiddle inside Mac OS X (the unix part of it). Some great links there.

[10/14/2002]
Exciting CPU news
Slashdot already has news on the 64bit PPC from IBM, which is expected to be announced tomorrow. The new chip is expected to start at 1.8GHz and to ship sometime next year, most certainly the second half of it. It's going to be interesting to see if the chip si significantly faster than a G4 at the same MHz, and if Apple decides to sell them as dual configurations as well.
Yahoo has some more info on the chip...very promising.

[10/14/2002]
PowerBook rumors
MOSR has some new rumors on the next revision of the PowerBook G4. Speeds between 933 and 1200 Mhz are currently in discussion.