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7700m, 7800m, 7900m Released TODAY

From what AMD has said, the 7970m is capable of achieving 70 FPS+ on BF3 at 1920 x 1080 on high settings! Sounds delicious! :eek:
 
Are there technical limits to using desktop variants in the iMac? I wonder if this will be an option in the next refresh since it seems to me that it is more and more common for people to game on macs...

Since I buy a computer every 4-5 years, I want to futureproof it as much as possible. Gaming on my 2008 MBP is no longer as fun as it was when it came out.
 
divamatt said:
Are there technical limits to using desktop variants in the iMac? I wonder if this will be an option in the next refresh since it seems to me that it is more and more common for people to game on macs...

Since I buy a computer every 4-5 years, I want to futureproof it as much as possible. Gaming on my 2008 MBP is no longer as fun as it was when it came out.
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Mobile GPUs are simply underclocked and volted desktop GPUs. Desktop GPUs tend to use quite a lot more power and hence run hotter. Due to iMac's unique form factor, it's unlikely that we will see desktop GPUs in them.
 
connor.e said:
From what AMD has said, the 7970m is capable of achieving 70 FPS+ on BF3 at 1920 x 1080 on high settings! Sounds delicious! :eek:
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For bragging rights, yes, it sounds delicious. But in my experience, the graphical difference between BF3's "low" and "ultra" settings were marginal at best. :rolleyes:

Still, it's a pretty nice benchmark.
 
I was also excited by this news. I'm picking up an iMac when the 2012 models are released and am hoping that they ship with the 28nm part. Speaking of which, I am disappointed to see surprisingly few leaks concerning the 2012 iMac now that Ivy Bridge is out. It is my opinion that Apple takes it too literally when we say "Shut up and take my money!".
 
russofris said:
I was also excited by this news. I'm picking up an iMac when the 2012 models are released and am hoping that they ship with the 28nm part. Speaking of which, I am disappointed to see surprisingly few leaks concerning the 2012 iMac now that Ivy Bridge is out. It is my opinion that Apple takes it too literally when we say "Shut up and take my money!".
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I bet we start seeing more leaks/news within the next week or so.

I would imagine end of May at the latest we'll see a new iMac released. Any later and Apple's competition gains an advantage on releasing their machines with newer hardware.

Granted we aren't comparing Apples to Apples (pun INTENDED), Apple still needs to remain competitive in the PC market against Dell, HP, Asus, Acer, etc.
 
divamatt said:
Are there technical limits to using desktop variants in the iMac?
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There's really only two reasons to want to switch to a desktop GPU: to get the fastest $500 gaming processors, or to replace the processor in the future.

Notebook check has a great chart of the processors:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6970M.43077.0.html

The 7970M is predicted to perform equivalent to the $200-250 range of desktop processors, which isn't bad. The more powerful desktop chips are almost certainly going to require active cooling and bigger power supplies, making the iMacs thicker, heavier, hotter and louder.

Switching to a desktop chip for upgrades would mean designing the iMac around a PCI slot for graphics cards, which would mean more space, a different form factor, and having to take into account the potential requirement for more power, different sized-cards, and different cooling needs. It's doable (see the HP z1 workstation) but would seriously change the iMacs design. It would be much easier for Apple to switch to the MXM format to allow users to swap the mobile graphics chip. They already use MXM, just a proprietary version of it.

I don't think that's going to happen through. Apple would rather you buy a new iMac from them rather than an upgrade from someone else when the graphics card becomes obsolete.
 
Johnf1285 said:
I bet we start seeing more leaks/news within the next week or so.

I would imagine end of May at the latest we'll see a new iMac released. Any later and Apple's competition gains an advantage on releasing their machines with newer hardware.

Granted we aren't comparing Apples to Apples (pun INTENDED), Apple still needs to remain competitive in the PC market against Dell, HP, Asus, Acer, etc.
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More like beginning of June, at WWDC (like they have in the past). The mobile chips were announced but there are no boards with them (yet).

I hate guessing on this stuff, but I'll say WWDC will have the official mtn Lion announcement as well as a slew of new mac's.
 
Steelgrave said:
More like beginning of June, at WWDC (like they have in the past). The mobile chips were announced but there are no boards with them (yet).

I hate guessing on this stuff, but I'll say WWDC will have the official mtn Lion announcement as well as a slew of new mac's.
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That does make sense :)

Ah the waiting game.....
 
Steelgrave said:
More like beginning of June, at WWDC (like they have in the past). The mobile chips were announced but there are no boards with them (yet).

I hate guessing on this stuff, but I'll say WWDC will have the official mtn Lion announcement as well as a slew of new mac's.
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WWDC will definitely have Mountain Lion. But there's no reason for them to sit on iMacs when they're due for a refresh and all the components are already available, and they don't tend to do splashy announcements for them these days anyway.
 
forty2j said:
WWDC will definitely have Mountain Lion. But there's no reason for them to sit on iMacs when they're due for a refresh and all the components are already available, and they don't tend to do splashy announcements for them these days anyway.
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Yes, they were still selling iMacs prior to the release of Lion...They just gave everybody effected a free upgrade to the new OS when it was released. Why not do the same with ML? My iMac is not due for upgrade this year, but I may well sell it in favour of a Pro if they refresh them soon.
 
forty2j said:
WWDC will definitely have Mountain Lion. But there's no reason for them to sit on iMacs when they're due for a refresh and all the components are already available, and they don't tend to do splashy announcements for them these days anyway.
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Apple is saying Mountain Lion will be out "late summer"... June is not late summer. Summer doesn't even start till late in June.
 
old-wiz said:
Apple is saying Mountain Lion will be out "late summer"... June is not late summer. Summer doesn't even start till late in June.
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I think it would be safe to say WWDC will have a close-to-complete developer preview and an exact date announcement for Mountain Lion.
 
Should be minimum 1gb Vram across all lines, took till 2012, but hopefully they'll see sense...
 
Johnf1285 said:
I agree with you on this! 512mb is ridiculous
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512 MB is ridiculous and pathetic. Even crap $500 computers with a nvidia gt 520m or amd 6470m have 1GB. Anything less is pathetic (shame on apple if they do this--the fact that crap gpus have 1GB proves they are deliberately hobbling the consumer.
 
connor.e said:
From what AMD has said, the 7970m is capable of achieving 70 FPS+ on BF3 at 1920 x 1080 on high settings! Sounds delicious! :eek:
Click to expand...

Nice, great to hear that from a mobile GPU. I wonder how much heat it will put out, its noise and power consumption (probably can Google that but yeah :D ).
 
iCFX said:
Nice, great to hear that from a mobile GPU. I wonder how much heat it will put out, its noise and power consumption (probably can Google that but yeah :D ).
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Yes, really nice! Esp considering that the HD7970 manages an average 80 fps or so on the same settings.
 
FWIW I read this yesterday - http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ling-amd-7970m-m17x-r3-illustrated-guide.html

Seems that these Alienware users are getting their hands on some OEM HD 7970m's for their notebooks as of a week ago. Very interesting.

Also very interesting that people from this thread were able to purchase heatsinks and other hardware directly from Dell without any issues. These were people coming from a GTX 5XXm series card to the 7970m card.

Not to hate on Apple, but try doing that for your Mac - getting a new heatsink directly from Apple (or other OEM parts), instead of paying huge markup through a third party... Thought that was interesting as well.
 
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