So what mood are you in: reckless optimism, or cautious skepticism? Because we've got something for everyone, today. If you feel like continuing the headlong plunge into the rampant G5 frenzy that currently has a sizeable portion of the Mac community foaming at the mouth, be our guests-- and go check out the recent articles at Architosh that faithful viewer William Bonde sent us. There's some special stuff in the latest, which notes Motorola's very own published PowerPC roadmap (just posted last Friday) and specifically what it has to say about the G5 architecture. If you're one of the folks nervously clutching your credit cards in anticipation of amassing great debt come next month's anticipated Stevenote G5 introduction, surely you'll drool ever harder at Motorola's mention of "RapidIO Interconnect Architecture," "0.13 micron process with SOI," and speeds of "800 MHz to 2 GHz+."

What's more, Architosh also has another article which will, if anything, give your salivary glands even more of a workout. (Remember to stay hydrated.) Reportedly Apple will "trounce PCs in 2002" performance-wise; Architosh repeats much of what we've all heard before-- such as that January's G5s will ship at "only" 1.4 GHz (or perhaps 1.6)-- but definitely contributes some new juice about the other nuts and bolts under the hood of these mysterious Power Mac G5s. In addition to the previously-rumored 400 MHz bus, Architosh has "adequate reason to suspect" that Apple's next Power Macs will boast graphics acceleration (courtesy of that Raycer buyout a couple of years back) that can boost some functions by "10x - 20x." Meanwhile, Architosh also believes that Gigawire (widely held to be Apple's name for the double-bandwidth FireWire 2) is actually "a technology that allows plug-and-play clustering" of the new systems for massive parallel processing capabilities.

Okay, time to reel those tongues back in; if you just want a slight tug back to earth, Architosh entreats its readers not to be "surprised if Power Mac G5s don't show up at San Francisco." But if you're in the mood for a far more significant downer, look no further than Think Secret; faithful viewer Jef Van der Voort notes that today that site is flat-out predicting that there will be "no true G5 Power Mac" at the next Stevenote-- although there will be a new Power Mac joining Steve onstage. Confused?

Don't be. See, Think Secret is dishing the most pessimistic dirt we've yet unearthed on this subject, stating that while we will indeed get a new professional desktop Mac next month (complete with 266 MHz DDR RAM, "upgraded" FireWire, and maybe a better software bundle), it'll "just" be a new G4 and not a G5 as everyone is expecting. The chip at the heart of these otherwise spiffy new Macs is said to be a PowerPC 7460, more widely known as the "Apollo" G4. Of course, that's not necessarily a real problem, as these new G4s are indeed still expected to ship at up to 1.4 GHz as we've all been hearing; they just won't actually be G5s.

Got that? Well, hang on a minute, because faithful viewer MacSawdust just pointed out that The Register has decided to make everything as clear as brick by building upon a little scenario that the Naked Mole Rat first broached about a month ago: namely, that there is a Power Mac G5 headed our way, but the "G5" chip that Apple may be putting into the "Power Mac G5" may in fact just be a G4 after all. In other words, Apple's marketing team said, "Hey, this new Apollo G4 processor sure is zippy-- and it's finally running at clock speeds greater than 1 GHz. Why don't we just call it the G5?" Of course, The Reg isn't actually sure whether or not this actually happened.

So there you have it: every single fact (sort of) known about the upcoming Power Macs. They may or may not be coming next month, they may or may not be Power Mac G5s, and if they are, they may or may not actually have G5 chips inside them. Now that everything's 100% crystal clear, you can plan your purchasing accordingly. And don't tell us we never did anything for you.