[Ryan Trevisol]

Did you just buy a K-5 and feel the need to justify that purchase over the K-30 ? Just curious.

sayin what I've been thinkin for a while.

[Anvh]

I'm not denying that, but just looking at manufacturing price alone doesn't really tell you anything significant technically about the chip.

Many CPUs cost exactly the same to manufacture, but are somehow artificially locked (clock speed, multiplier, etc) and sold at different price points, for example. I think it makes little sense to talk about CPUs here. One does not go out and buy an imaging chip separately and swap the one in their camera anyway, like can be done with a PC.

Did you just buy a K-5 and feel the need to justify that purchase over the K-30 ? Just curious.

That could very well be and i didn't meant it cost less for the chip manufacture, i meant that the chip cost less for pentax to buy.


I've the K5 for over a year now but i don't see what that has to do with it.
I only said that the Prime-M doesn't look like an improvment over Prime-II when it comes to RAW, i've yet to see anything that disproof this.
It seems to me you're trying to justify the planned purchase off the K-30, you start to argue about money, die size. No idea what that has actually has anything to do with my observation?

[Ryan Trevisol]

Well, it just seems like, for someone with no interest in buying the K-30, you sure seem very interested in finding and debating every shred of evidence to support your observation of its (as-yet-unknown, potential) shortcomings. I for one am glad we had this whole repartee, because I learned a lot about image processing, and you just might have convinced me to pick up a K-5 instead of a K-30.

[Anvh]

I find technology in general quite interesting, you also see me happily debate about the green house effect or aircrafts.

Now back to the processor, you probably know the thing better then me now. Like has been said many times the K30 isnt out yet so his real world potential arent known yet.
Besides it's never K5 against the K30 but the Prime-M against the Prime-II so far we can tell the prime-M is better in almost all aspects if you ask me.
If you're thinking about the 2 cameras there are points they differ far more then the hardware.

[madbrain]

That could very well be and i didn't meant it cost less for the chip manufacture, i meant that the chip cost less for pentax to buy

That's even less relevant then to the technical specifications of the chip, if contracted, the foundry sets the price, say, based on number of units ordered.

I've the K5 for over a year now but i don't see what that has to do with it.

Well, that fact might introduce just a very slight bit of bias.

I only said that the Prime-M doesn't look like an improvment over Prime-II when it comes to RAW, i've yet to see anything that disproof this.

Yes, you have made that claim, but also many others.
This is getting to be a silly discussion. I also have yet to see anything that disproves that the Prime-M chips inside the K-30 will not come in pink ! Or maybe the Prime-M is very powerful, but has been purposefully underclocked for models like the K-01 and K-30 . Who knows ?

I don't think you can conclude very much about the chip itself from the specs from a marketing department about an unreleased camera with unfinished firmware that no one has seriously tested.

Even when the K-30 does eventually get tested, the test results will tell you about the performance of the camera system as a whole, not just the Prime-M chip by itself. The results will also depend on buffer size which is outside the Prime-M, the SD writer bus speed, what kind of SD card is in there, whether you are using MF or AF, shutter speed, etc.

It seems to me you're trying to justify the planned purchase off the K-30, you start to argue about money, die size. No idea what that has actually has anything to do with my observation?

That's an interesting statement - you are the one who first brought up price, not me ! All I have been saying is that price is not closely correlated with the technical specifications of the chip, and thus price doesn't enter into whether one chip is technically better than the other. I wish we would stop talking about it finally because this is very uninteresting. Prices fluctuate widely, the specs of a camera and chip don't after it's produced.

I do have a K-30 on order. I'm upgrading from a K-r, not from a K-5. I have other reasons why I chose the K-30 over the K-5 - namely the native AA battery support. The K-30 would have to be a horrible camera for me to regret the purchase. I don't think it will be worse than the K-r.

[cbaytan]

You people cracking me up, this is like discussing about an unborn babies behavior, we haven't seen one single unbiased pkoto of K-30 yet. I am wondering if you will go out and take pictures and post here so enthusiastically just like you discuss electronic mambo-jambo here when you get the K-30.

Sorry just had to say it.

[Anvh]

Why would they pay full price for a processor and then underclock it, it doesn't make sense. it's like buying the i7 and underclock it to i3, then why not buy a i3 instead? And why only underclock it for RAW? With the K-01 you can come up with technical reasons like the liveview or maybe a small buffer but the K30 doesnt have that excuse.

Ur right about the price might not mean that a chip is technical better or worse but as pentax you do try to strike the best performance you can get for the less money right. Thats all i'm saying, that the Prime-M ticked all off the boxes pentax need for his new cameras and that it did come at a maybe more favourable price. but this pure speculation off course but i never brought this as a truth but as a plausible reason.

The K30 will hopefully be a lot better then the Kr, at the least you got a better sensor in it.
I actually don't question that at all, i'm just not sure that we will see a Prime-M in a top segment unless it's underclock like you say or if the numbers are very different in real life.

[Anvh]

You people cracking me up, this is like discussing about an unborn babies behavior, we haven't seen one single unbiased pkoto of K-30 yet. I am wondering if you will go out and take pictures and post here so enthusiastically just like you discuss electronic mambo-jambo here when you get the K-30.

Sorry just had to say it.

Already doing that , i'm here to take a break from that

And come on, this is much more fun the talking about a FF camera, this at least has some basis...

[Ryan Trevisol]

As to why buy a chip and underclock it, that's done ALL the time. The i7->i3 comparison is a bad one. One is dual core, one is quad core. It's more like a dual-core i5->i3 comparison. It's the same manufacturing process, but one has less cache installed and is underclocked. Chips like the Celeron were often decontented versions of better processors. Why? Because it costs more to design and tool up for multiple processor architecture than it does to run them on the same lines and have some clocked slower to save power or fit a specific application. Anything that's manufactured has three costs: Engineering cost (which is the cost of taking the Milbeaut and packaging it with any addon subprocessers, the buffer ram and possibly designing the circuit board that houses them), the Tooling cost (to setup the production line to create the chips as requested), and a price per unit with a minimum order. It makes the most financial sense to Pentax to create one image engine for their entire platform and defray the cost of the design/tooling across the largest number of units and time, e.g. the K-01, the K-30, and the K-3, which will all have a 2-3 year lifespan, and will be introduced over a 6-9 month period.

Also, you mentioned the MP-per-second limit of the Milbeaut. Nikon uses the Milbeaut in its Expeed engine and they have I'm sure a much higher throughput than that with Full Frame burst shooting. Why, even the updated K-5 firmware maintains a higher throughput than that with the Prime II. I'm guessing the Prime M and Expeed employ multiple Milbeaut cores. As chips go, these low-power RISC chips are very cheap. Probably not even the second-most expensive component in the camera.

[Anvh]

Who says they use Milbeaut, they could very well use other brand.

I'm actually thinking the Prime-M isn't a Milbeaut to be honest.


About the price of the Milbeaut M-6, sample price is 7000 yen around 38 dollar

[madbrain]

Why would they pay full price for a processor and then underclock it, it doesn't make sense.

it's like buying the i7 and underclock it to i3, then why not buy a i3 instead?

Chip makers lock their chips in various ways all the time just to capture difference price points in the market. It doesn't always make sense technically, but that is what marketing people decide to do. It certainly is confusing for consumers. The chip with the top clock speed sometimes costs 3x the price of the one with the locked entry level clock speed. But they might really be the same except for the locking.

And why only underclock it for RAW? With the K-01 you can come up with technical reasons like the liveview or maybe a small buffer but the K30 doesnt have that excuse.

I don't have the answer there. I don't think anyone does. We can theorize all we want. I haven't seen the buffer size published for the K-30. I am not sure it was published for the older Pentax cameras either. If anything, RAW should be much less demanding on the processor than JPEG. Buffer size and bandwidth are probably more important factors. IMO, the specs that have been published by Pentax are probably slightly incorrect, maybe conservative, or might just reflect early firmware. I wouldn't be surprised if the real performance is different by the time the camera is released.

Ur right about the price might not mean that a chip is technical better or worse but as pentax you do try to strike the best performance you can get for the less money right.

Not necessarily, as a business you try to extract the most money from your customers. That's your duty to your shareholders. You might use the same chips in two different cameras but artificially limit one to sell it cheaper. The lower-end camera may have lower margin, and definitely has a lower absolute profit than the higher-end camera. If they only had one camera, then I agree with you that it wouldn't make sense to limit it.

Thats all i'm saying, that the Prime-M ticked all off the boxes pentax need for his new cameras and that it did come at a maybe more favourable price. but this pure speculation off course but i never brought this as a truth but as a plausible reason.

I think we should just close this topic because speculating in this area doesn't help much

The K30 will hopefully be a lot better then the Kr, at the least you got a better sensor in it.

Yes, for sure.

I actually don't question that at all, i'm just not sure that we will see a Prime-M in a top segment unless it's underclock like you say or if the numbers are very different in real life.

Well, we should know soon enough. Once all the old stocks of K-5 are sold, expect Pentax to make an announcement for their replacement flagship.

[Anvh]

But from the batch chip makers chose the best ones for the top segment and the worst of the batch will be their lower tier processors since if there is a fault in one of the chases for example they simply shut it down. That's what most do and AMD had triple core process, those where quadcores by design but with a faulty core most of the time, you could get luck that you did get a triple core you could unlock to a good working quadcore but not all the time for example.
Normally these would have been binned so now they are simply extra profit.

But we are talking about processors now and we have no idea who actually supply the prime-m processor and what kind of processor they are based on, it could very well be a totally different supplier and processor then the Prime-II.
Beside why couldn't pentax have chosen for a chip aimed at liveview, video and jpeg performance for their more entry level camera's it actually make sense that those things had priority, certainly when looking at the K-01.

I doubt they will look purely at the stock, photokina is over a couple a months no doubt they will have something there.

[twitch]

The sooner Prime-II is put out to pasture the better. Anyone thinking it is good enough for the K-5 has lower standards than I do at least, the image processing time on the K-5 is a constant frustration for me, I can't tell you how many shots I've missed because the buffer was full and the time to empty it was glacial

[Anvh]

Yeah need to do some machine gun shooting to get it full...

[Pentaxor]

the question is, is the K30 a worth buy?

for someone who already owns the K-5, it might not be.

for someone who doesn't own a K5, might be.

for someone who needs the control of the K5, it might not be.

for someone who wants some better or additional functionalities, it might be.

for aesthetic reason, the K30 might be.

IMO, I don't see any Pentax camera successor that is worse than it's predecessor. so all these assumptions about the K30 hardware is much worse than K-5 is more like a way of finding fault of a camera that is already reported to be better. it would be stupid for Pentax to sell an $850 K30 against a $900 K-5 if it doesn't perform well. Pentax already did good with the K-5, so why would they gamble their increasing reputation just to make more profit by obviously crippling a successor?