Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

[shovenose]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

Intel is where it's at, sorry guys. PowerPC processors were already outdated when they were sold.

Sure, I'm glad Apple wasn't using Intel back when Netburst was around, because they would have tried putting a Pentium 4 into a thin laptop with insufficient cooling... that would be the end of them...
But the worst Intel CPU is better than the best G5...
A Dual G5 can hold it's own against a Core Duo in benchmarks, but you can't run anything newer than OS X 10.5, Firefox 3.6, etc, on it...
G4/G5 computers, sure they're theoretically fast enough for doing most things (especially the Power Mac G5 Duals), but they're lacking the software support to do.

I'm sure an alien spaceship would use Intel, sorry,
Even when the Apple back when used the I-forget-what-it's-called chip in the Apple I it was plagued with incompatibility with the standard Intel chips.
It's gone back a long long way, and they finally realized their inefficient, hot-running CPUs were a bad idea and switched to Intel.
I'm not saying Intel is flawless and perfect, (look at P4, Pentium D, etc. which was a pile of shit), but they've been the standard for a long time and they will continue to do so.
Even AMD, who wiped the floor with intel when the Athlon 64 came out, is now relegated to the back as Intel's Core i3/i5/i7 and Xeons beat the pulp out of anything AMD...
Edit: damn that was a longer post than I thouhght!
Edit2: no I'm not bashing Apple really lol. I like my MacBook Air. Just some of their decisions in the past weren't great.

[toastygoodness]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

you realize that the fastest supercomputers in the world all use powerpc variants right?

the worst intel cpu is definitely NOT better than a G5. it's inherent in the architecture.

[shovenose]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

Oh sorry.
Why can't I use any new software on my PowerBook G4 then???
I don't care if it's used in fast supercomputers, if it's useless then it's useless.
I'm grumpy right now, don't take it personal
-shovenose

[ratdude747]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

Oh sorry.
Why can't I use any new software on my PowerBook G4 then???
I don't care if it's used in fast supercomputers, if it's useless then it's useless.
I'm grumpy right now, don't take it personal
-shovenose

support for the cpu

so much mac use is intel anymore that the demand for PPC mac software is pretty low, hence why most software is made for intel only... also, the g4 is pretty old by today's standards.

[b700029]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

you realize that the fastest supercomputers in the world all use powerpc variants right?

Are you sure about that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500#November_2011

In the top 10, it's almost all Xeons and Opterons.

[kc8adu]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

space applications are limited to qualified parts.
have to meet certain reliability standards and be "space hardened"
the random glitch we might get here due to a event may be nothing but an inconvenience.in space it may doom the mission.so the choice is to pay for the part you want to be qualified and radiation hardened or select an off the shelf qualified part.
this has nothing to do with architecture.
i doubt any current procs in desktops and phones will ever be qualified.

well, the hubble telescope is powered by an INTEL 486 DX.

most space probes use embedded type cpus... the 486 an386 were still inproduction until 2006 (386) and 2007 (486). why? embedded aerospace use. why? its what the designs call for and it is tried and true.

space probe cpus thus are oriented the same way as desktop cpus. there, where every milliamp matters, and reliablilty is a must, you pick the cpu that does the job, no less, no more. .

[brethin]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

Untill Intel moves away from x86 based CPU's for good they will allways be slower than anything else built on a faster interface, single core to single core speed (Intels failure to break the 4GHz barrior). Thats why AMD, PowerPC, NexGen, Etc were/are faster but not the standard hence less support, less software and less life on the market.

[toastygoodness]

Re: Why did my motherboard catch fire? Also, what can be saved?

Are you sure about that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500#November_2011

In the top 10, it's almost all Xeons and Opterons.

that's TOP500, they do currently running stable systems (so they've been in production status for a while, not really cutting edge stuff). was mostly talking about IBM's supercomputers, and some of the new NECs. Cells are PPC derivatives and the newest Blue Gene, which runs entirely on PPC and is supposed to be in the 20~ petaflops category, so it blows most of these away. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Sequoia

opterons were previously used cause they saved the most energy and were cheap, but sequoia is supposed to be 3000 Mflops/watt, so it will be the most power efficient supercomputer when it is completed... early this year.