Many of you have been wondering just how the AtAT staff has managed to remain as calm as we have, given the fact that our dual-800 MHz Power Mac G4-- mere weeks ago, the absolute pinnacle of Macdom-- is now no longer the fastest Mac available. The answer is simple: there's no unpleasant situation that can't be improved with a heaping helping of good old fashioned denial. Motorola finally shipped a 1 GHz PowerPC chip? Shyeah, right... next thing you'll be telling us that the Patriots won the Super Bowl. Pull the other one.

Of course, another helpful tactic has been focusing in on the graphics performance of the new systems versus that of the primary AtAT workhorse. Sure, the nVIDIA GeForce4 MX sounds new and sexy, but Accelerate Your Mac! revealed that the GeForce3 in our own beloved Power Mac is actually faster at pumping out those polygons. So we got to cling to that little shred of comfort as we slowly came to terms with the fact that, let's face it, processor-wise, our former Tower of Power is now little more than a rapidly depreciating doorstop well on its way to full-on dinosaur status. (Pardon us while we breathe into a paper bag for a minute.)

Ha ha, no, we're just being silly; obviously we'll be able to derive many weeks' worth of Mactastic enjoyment from our now hideously unfashionable dual-800 MHz rig. Especially since our GeForce3 will continue to wipe the floor with what's in the newer Macs... well, for another month, anyway. Faithful viewer Lonnie Robinson summarily shattered whatever illusions we managed to cling to regarding superior 3D graphics performance when he informed us that Apple issued a press release announcing the impending availability of the GeForce4 Titanium as a build-to-order option.

Whereas the MX is a "basic" card, the Titanium is the real deal: 128 MB of DDR RAM on a 4x AGP card feeding a chip that can crank out 4.9 billion textured pixels per second-- four to five times as fast as the MX model, and, we assume, a fair margin faster than our own GeForce3. Plus, if you're willing to shell out extra for a DVI-to-ADC converter, apparently you can plug two Apple displays into this thing at once and feed them both digitally, without having to resort to using a VGA port. In other words, in a month even our graphics card won't be king of the hill anymore, and therefore we'll have to take our own lives in shame.

Or maybe not. It appears that we can postpone throwing ourselves under a bus for at least another day, because faithful viewer Coxi just noticed that Apple's press release has been recalled: "We are advised by Apple Computer Inc. that journalists and other readers should disregard the news release... as it contained some erroneous information." (Just to unnerve you still further, the recall notice has the words "KILLKILLKILL" plastered across the top. Yeesh-- point taken, guys.) There's no clue as to what the "erroneous information" might be, but if you wander over to nVIDIA's site, there's a conspicuous lack of GeForce4 info, and a teaser hinting at a big product intro on February 6th-- tomorrow.

Whoops! Looks like Apple jumped the gun a little with that press release. Suppose this little error might make Steve a bit more understanding about when ATI did the same thing to Apple a year and a half ago? All we can say is, now that half of Apple's products rely on nVIDIA technology, here's hoping that nVIDIA doesn't hold grudges like Steve is rumored to do...