Voo,
The diagram, also showed a Dual 2.1 AMD lower than a Dual 2.0 G5. Also, if it was the chip of choice for gaming why would the Xbox...er Xbox2? Xbox 360? be using a PPC970 at its core and G5s for game development?
Anyways, why do you consider the AMD chip to be worse then intel? You must have your reasons but it goes against everyone else in the free world.
First off, I can't get over your "Free world" reference... WTF does that have to do with anything? I consider AMD worse than Intel because they always had the option of competing with IBM for the mac contract when motorola was terminated from G5 development. I simply cannot support any chip maker that chooses to support the M$.
Cobra,
No one in any form of processor power measurement recognizes game FPS. That's very correct though, you have successfully pointed out the flaw in Macs. We have a much more complicated form of graphics integration, and to that end a much less optimized and thus slower for tasks like gaming. Apple has recognized this issue and as a result has recruited a specialized team to work on OpenGL optimization (as seen in recent news).
I don't see this update as cause for concern. I personally don't think we will see the 970MP ever in a consumer level product. The fact remains IBM is still at the POWER4 stage of PPC. With the advancements since POWER4, I wouldn't be too shocked to see the PPC980 make a debut soon. Historically, we saw a 2.0GHz G5 send a 3.6-3.8GHz Intel P4 to hell. I'm not overly worried when I see that 2.7GHz G5. AMD will be the only company to provide the Dual-dual-core Processor setup. That's the only major threat.
The fact remains that this is the first chip ever made in recent PPC Generations entirely by IBM & Apple (without motorola). This is a very impressive chip produced by that partnership. IBM admitted when the first G5 came out, to this very day, they weren't spending too much too much time on this current generation of 970. I personally think that was a mistake. When they looked ahead, they ran into the temporary roadblock of the 90nm problem. That's the only area they have dropped the ball on this Generation.
We've seen the gap close with this Generation (G5) more than ever in recent history. It's closed so much that this very discussion is possible to have. That being that we can have the G5 so close to PC system clock rates. If this Generation was impressive, I think the PPC can carry on and perhaps even pass the PC totally with the 980 version.
Whilst this leaves the present in a bit of a weird state, it could mean that all of this will be for nothing in as short as 8 months.