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Intel HD 4000 vs GeForce 9600M GT: Noticeable Drop?

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Kyahx

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 21, 2011
27
0
My fiancé has a Mid-2009 MacBook Pro (4GB ram + SSD) currently and does some gaming (namely The Sims 3).

I am considering selling that machine and getting the entry level 13" MacBook Air. It seems like it should be comparable power-wise to the old Pro in every way except for GPU performance. She already has an SSD and the RAM is the same speed / size so I don't think she will notice much improvement on those fronts. I know the CPU will be faster but I'm not sure that is even noticeable to the average user anymore. I'm hoping that the 13" Air will be "just as good" as her current machine performance-wise, and an obvious upgrade portability wise.

My question: Has Intel's integrated graphics matured to the point of being as good as a 3 year-old dedicated chip? Or do you think there will be a noticeable drop in gaming performance?
 
R

randomhkkid

macrumors regular
Dec 30, 2010
101
7
Kyahx said:
My fiancé has a Mid-2009 MacBook Pro (4GB ram + SSD) currently and does some gaming (namely The Sims 3).

I am considering selling that machine and getting the entry level 13" MacBook Air. It seems like it should be comparable power-wise to the old Pro in every way except for GPU performance. She already has an SSD and the RAM is the same speed / size so I don't think she will notice much improvement on those fronts. I know the CPU will be faster but I'm not sure that is even noticeable to the average user anymore. I'm hoping that the 13" Air will be "just as good" as her current machine performance-wise, and an obvious upgrade portability wise.

My question: Has Intel's integrated graphics matured to the point of being as good as a 3 year-old dedicated chip? Or do you think there will be a noticeable drop in gaming performance?
Click to expand...


I've also been wondering the same thing, from what I've found online the HD4000 seems comparable if not faster in some cases. Take a look here

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9600M-GT.9449.0.html

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-4000.69168.0.html

I'll do a full comparison on my blog when I get my new rMBP on the 11th
 
C

CausticPuppy

macrumors 68000
May 1, 2012
1,536
68
Based on my testing (cinebench OpenGL) the 9600gt is barely faster than even the hd3000. So the hd4000 should be a noticeable improvement.
 
K

Kyahx

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 21, 2011
27
0
Great to hear! I'll pick one up over lunch and surprise her with it tonight :)
 
estrides

estrides

macrumors regular
Apr 8, 2012
158
0
New York
I think you will see a difference. I have the exact same laptop, with the 9600...it runs great. But my brother has the HD3000 the difference is drastic in games that use the source engine...etc. It can barely play them on medium and low. just my own experience.
 
R

randomhkkid

macrumors regular
Dec 30, 2010
101
7
estrides said:
I think you will see a difference. I have the exact same laptop, with the 9600...it runs great. But my brother has the HD3000 the difference is drastic in games that use the source engine...etc. It can barely play them on medium and low. just my own experience.
Click to expand...


I agree. I have tested the 9600m GT against a 410m and a 610m, it is pretty much equal to the 610m and is therefore faster than the HD3000.
 
SpyderBite

SpyderBite

macrumors 65816
Oct 4, 2011
1,262
8
Xanadu
I just picked up a 13" MBP & installed win 7 via boot camp in order to play swtor. My previous notebook had a nVida w/ 1gb on the gpu. Graphics quality is diminished on the MBP but performance is better.

In native OS X, games blaze. But they're not very demanding games. Torchlight, Diablo III, etc.
 
R

randomhkkid

macrumors regular
Dec 30, 2010
101
7
SpyderBite said:
I just picked up a 13" MBP & installed win 7 via boot camp in order to play swtor. My previous notebook had a nVida w/ 1gb on the gpu. Graphics quality is diminished on the MBP but performance is better.

In native OS X, games blaze. But they're not very demanding games. Torchlight, Diablo III, etc.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by graphics quality is diminished?
 
K

Kmistr01

macrumors newbie
Jun 26, 2012
20
0
SpyderBite said:
I just picked up a 13" MBP & installed win 7 via boot camp in order to play swtor. My previous notebook had a nVida w/ 1gb on the gpu. Graphics quality is diminished on the MBP but performance is better.

In native OS X, games blaze. But they're not very demanding games. Torchlight, Diablo III, etc.
Click to expand...

Hi, I am just curious...how big was your bootcamp windows partition to play swtor? Can I get away with a 30 gig bootcamp partition to play?

Thanks
 
R

randomhkkid

macrumors regular
Dec 30, 2010
101
7
Kmistr01 said:
Hi, I am just curious...how big was your bootcamp windows partition to play swtor? Can I get away with a 30 gig bootcamp partition to play?

Thanks
Click to expand...


In my experience windows 7 takes around 15gb (For 32bit) or 20gb for 64bit. This is before you get disk space back by deleting the hibernation files. I suggest at least a 40gb partition as SWTOR takes up 15gb by itself.
 
K

Kmistr01

macrumors newbie
Jun 26, 2012
20
0
randomhkkid said:
In my experience windows 7 takes around 15gb (For 32bit) or 20gb for 64bit. This is before you get disk space back by deleting the hibernation files. I suggest at least a 40gb partition as SWTOR takes up 15gb by itself.
Click to expand...

Thanks bud for the heads up
 
I

iPhonePunker

macrumors newbie
Nov 22, 2012
21
0
Ireland
Hi i had a 2008 unibody MBP it running core 2 duo 2.5Ghz Geforce 9600M GT Hybrid SLI with 9400M 256GB OCZ SSD 8GB ram DDR3 and it was quite a good gaming machine and when i had EVGA performance tool overclocking the GPU it was a lot more stable when gaming.
crysis = medium (bootcamp windows 7)
skyrim = medium custom to high (bootcamp windows 7)
star craft 2 =high (Mac osX Lion)
fallout New vegas = high (bootcamp windows 7)
SWTOR = high (bootcamp windows 7)
bioshock 2 = medium (bootcamp windows 7)
dirt 2 = low-custom to medium (Mac osX Lion)

so it proved my friends wrong that Macs where slow peace's of crap anyways it was stolen about 3 month ago hope how ever has it chocks on it but iv gotten a lend of a XPS M1710 off one of my friends but i have saved up enough for the newly announced Mac mini late 2012 running a dual core ivy-bridge with turbo boost from 2.5GHz to 3.5Ghz and hyper-threading i5, 4GB ram (will be upgradedto 8GB as soon as possable) 500GB HDD(with space for a second 2.5 HHDor SSD) and intel HD 4000 GPU now iv tried to stay away from integrated graphics for years but iv seen these videos and they look quite promising iv loads of PC games that i still need too complete and i think this will run them quite well
http://www.youtube.com/user/ThisisRends?feature=watch
also from experiences i would think the 9600GT is better than the HD 4000 but HD 4000 graphics support DirctX 11 which means more and newer games are supported and there is not much difference if u put ur shaders down to low or off so that's all i can say about the subject :rolleyes::apple::apple::apple:
 
J

jbzcar

macrumors regular
May 11, 2012
211
0
iPhonePunker said:
Hi i had a 2008 unibody MBP it running core 2 duo 2.5Ghz Geforce 9600M GT Hybrid SLI with 9400M 256GB OCZ SSD 8GB ram DDR3 and it was quite a good gaming machine and when i had EVGA performance tool overclocking the GPU it was a lot more stable when gaming.
crysis = medium (bootcamp windows 7)
skyrim = medium custom to high (bootcamp windows 7)
star craft 2 =high (Mac osX Lion)
fallout New vegas = high (bootcamp windows 7)
SWTOR = high (bootcamp windows 7)
bioshock 2 = medium (bootcamp windows 7)
dirt 2 = low-custom to medium (Mac osX Lion)

so it proved my friends wrong that Macs where slow peace's of crap anyways it was stolen about 3 month ago hope how ever has it chocks on it but iv gotten a lend of a XPS M1710 off one of my friends but i have saved up enough for the newly announced Mac mini late 2012 running a dual core ivy-bridge with turbo boost from 2.5GHz to 3.5Ghz and hyper-threading i5, 4GB ram (will be upgradedto 8GB as soon as possable) 500GB HDD(with space for a second 2.5 HHDor SSD) and intel HD 4000 GPU now iv tried to stay away from integrated graphics for years but iv seen these videos and they look quite promising iv loads of PC games that i still need too complete and i think this will run them quite well
http://www.youtube.com/user/ThisisRends?feature=watch
also from experiences i would think the 9600GT is better than the HD 4000 but HD 4000 graphics support DirctX 11 which means more and newer games are supported and there is not much difference if u put ur shaders down to low or off so that's all i can say about the subject :rolleyes::apple::apple::apple:
Click to expand...

The 9400m and 9600m in that model do not run in any form of SLI, in Windows or OSX. On the OSX side it is an either/or affair, and under Bootcamp, only the 9600m is even visible to the OS.
 
I

iPhonePunker

macrumors newbie
Nov 22, 2012
21
0
Ireland
jbzcar said:
The 9400m and 9600m in that model do not run in any form of SLI, in Windows or OSX. On the OSX side it is an either/or affair, and under Bootcamp, only the 9600m is even visible to the OS.
Click to expand...

I do now that but the configuration is called hybrid SLI which means the 9600mGT turns off when on battery mode and uses the 9400m to save energy and vice versa when on charge i was talking about just the 9600mGT vs the intel HD 4000 at the end of the comment so i thought that it was obvious but maybe not sorry about that. also i do refer to it at the start as "hybrid SLI" i wasn't saying at all the 2 GPU's run at the same time.
 
L

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,181
19,027
iPhonePunker said:
I do now that but the configuration is called hybrid SLI which means the 9600mGT turns off when on battery mode and uses the 9400m to save energy and vice versa when on charge i was talking about just the 9600mGT vs the intel HD 4000 at the end of the comment so i thought that it was obvious but maybe not sorry about that. also i do refer to it at the start as "hybrid SLI" i wasn't saying at all the 2 GPU's run at the same time.
Click to expand...

It not hybrid SLI. This is hybrid SLI: http://www.nvidia.com/object/hybrid_sli.html

In Bootcamp, the system is not even seeing the integrated GPU (as Mac uses a hardware multiplexing solution instead of a software one like hybrid SLI/Optimus etc.). And on OS X side, the OS has its own algorithms of managing the GPUs.
 
I

iPhonePunker

macrumors newbie
Nov 22, 2012
21
0
Ireland
leman said:
It not hybrid SLI. This is hybrid SLI: http://www.nvidia.com/object/hybrid_sli.html

In Bootcamp, the system is not even seeing the integrated GPU (as Mac uses a hardware multiplexing solution instead of a software one like hybrid SLI/Optimus etc.). And on OS X side, the OS has its own algorithms of managing the GPUs.
Click to expand...

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-9600m-gt
http://www.nvidia.com/object/hybridsli_notebook.html

back when i first got it in early 2009 it was advertised as "core 2 duo Nvidea 9600mGT hybrid SLI 9400m 4gb ram and 300GB HDD" in my local Harvey Normans shop so that's what I considered it was and when i checked on the net it was on the list of GPUs that supported hybrid SLI on Nvidea's website so i assumed that's what the system was called that switched the GPUs anyways really i couldn't give a crap what it was called it just worked. but i still didn't mention anything about the 2 GPU's running at the same time like on true SLI i was only talking about the 9600gt vs intel HD 4000 so cam down people it was just a mistake getting attacked from all sides over something like this is stupid. i was only given what i got from gaming on my Late 2008 15" MBP and a link to a youtube page to a guy gaming on the new base model late 2012 Mac mini using HD 4000 IGPU your welcome
 
L

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,181
19,027
iPhonePunker said:
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-9600m-gt
http://www.nvidia.com/object/hybridsli_notebook.html

back when i first got it in early 2009 it was advertised as "core 2 duo Nvidea 9600mGT hybrid SLI 9400m 4gb ram and 300GB HDD" in my local Harvey Normans shop so that's what I considered it was and when i checked on the net it was on the list of GPUs that supported hybrid SLI on Nvidea's website so i assumed that's what the system was called that switched the GPUs anyways really i couldn't give a crap what it was called it just worked. but i still didn't mention anything about the 2 GPU's running at the same time like on true SLI i was only talking about the 9600gt vs intel HD 4000 so cam down people it was just a mistake getting attacked from all sides over something like this is stupid. i was only given what i got from gaming on my Late 2008 15" MBP and a link to a youtube page to a guy gaming on the new base model late 2012 Mac mini using HD 4000 IGPU your welcome
Click to expand...

I am afraid my parsing algorithm broke down on this chunk. I have to retreat and debug for now...
 
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