i unapologetically am a mac evangelist. in the industries of entertainment, architecture, visualization, publishing, and other creative endeavors the mac platform is the only solution. the tools work and excel on mac OS X and the power mac machines. just listing the applications is a who’s who in the software pantheon: final cut pro, DVD studio pro, photoshop, illustrator, dreamweaver, shake, pro tools, indesign, and maya define entire industries.
last week apple announced three new power mac systems, all with dual-core CPU and access to the fastest GPU’s available from NVIDIA. expect the fastest ATI GPU’s in a future announcement. all machine also inherit faster RAM, and a new PCI-express (PCIe) architecture, a change from the AGP and PCI-X motherboards of previous generations. the old PCI standard was a parallel strategy whereas PCIe is serial, much like the move from IDE/ATA drives to SATA drives.
the user community welcomes the new systems, especially the power mac G5 quad, a sight to behold when it comes out next month. some users are balking that their investments have come to a crash, as PCIe systems will not allow the use of PCI-X or PCI conventional cards at all. PCIe is an entirely new architecture, not just a faster revision of the PCI workhorse cards. this is not a driver issue, but the cards don’t fit, much less work. maybe in the future a riser may come along that bridges from PCI conventional/PCI-X to PCIe, but not today.
in some professional industries the PCI investment may exceed 2 or 3 times the investment in the system, with VBR MPEG-2 boards, SDI boards, audio boards, and connectivity boards easily surpassing $1000 and up. the one consolation to these folks is the CPU rating stayed the same in the 2.0 GHz and 2.3 GHz dual G5, and while they last in the marketplace, the PCI-X machines, along with PC3200 RAM, are still available. get them while you still can, because in a few weeks the only thing out there will be PCIe and PC2-4200 RAM.