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Apple Dropping NVIDIA for Future Macs?

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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SemiAccurate claims that Apple will be dropping NVIDIA-based designs in their next iMacs and laptops for at least the next few years. They claim the reason is due to the recent NVIDIA manufacturing defects which affected a number of MacBook Pros.

The shift back to Intel-based chipsets was not entirely unexpected, however, as Intel and NVIDIA have been under a licensing battle over whether or not NVIDIA can even produce Nehalem-based chipsets in the future. Apple currently uses the Nehalem processors for their Mac Pro line, and is expected to adopt the mobile Nehalem processors for its mobile line later this year.


Article Link: Apple Dropping NVIDIA for Future Macs?
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2009/07/01/apple-dropping-nvidia-for-future-macs/
I hope a better agreement can be reached. Yeah, there were a significant amount of defects. Use that as a bargaining chip.
 
SemiAccurate is an interesting name for a website... in this case I think they're NotatallAccurate.

I'm pretty sure Apple will be sticking with nVIDIA.
 
The Nvidia chipsets were likely in the pipe when the GPU defect were coming to light. And the broken promises of the defect being fixed probably raised Apple's ire.

It isn't unusual for Apple to do everything they can to punish a vendor when there are pissed at them. Likely walking away from them for a couple years, and dropping their inclusion in halo products like Macs is the fitting punishment.

---

I think there was probably more to it, and it was the behind the door discussions about how much Nvidia and the insurance company would be picking up from the fiasco that finally broke the straw (edit: or the next mobile Intel CPU and the FSB issues.)
 
I don't really see this as being accurate, at least for the reasons they said because surely Apple knew about the graphics card defects affecting the Macbook Pro when they adopted the Nvidia chipsets. It just doesn't make any sense seeing as it was quite public knowledge even before Apple switched to the chipsets.

The Intel/Nvidia issue does seem more legitimate though - let's hope they can get that sorted out before the Nehalem chips are released.
 
Let's see here...

If they wanted to drop nVidia, THEY WOULD HAVE DONE IT AFTER THE FAULTS OF THE 8600M GT. NOT THREE REVISIONS LATER AFTER HAVING INCLUDED EVEN MORE NVIDIA CHIPS IN THEIR COMPUTERS. :D:rolleyes:

SemiAccurate?! No. NO. CanNeverBeTrustedAgain is more appropriate. :p
 
Since Apple is unlikely to replace their low end machines with inferior graphics capabilities, its far more likely that when Core i7 laptop parts become available Apple will simply hold the low end MacBooks, iMacs and Mac Minis and keep them using Core 2 Duo chips - just with (possible) speed boosts.

My guess is that the MacBook Pro and iMac lines will get dedicated graphics cards across the board come i7 (although with a low end chip at the bottom end of course) while the MacBook, Mac Mini and MacBook Air remain largely as they are but with possibly faster processors. Who knows, maybe Intel will give them some custom Core 2 Duo parts to keep those lines going a little longer.

Edit: Ah, I see Tallest Skil says the rumour's a lie. That probably means it'll turn out to be 100% accurate.
 
I'm happy with my NVidia 9400M. Mostly because my HP from last year only had a ATI Radeon 64mb graphics card!!!!! almost 10 year old tech!!! I couldnt play any games with my friends. Now I can play most games happily on Medium settings.

I remember the Intel chip in the 2007 Macbooks were poor as my friend had one. STICK WITH NVIDIA
 
The only good news that could come out of this is that it might force Apple to put dedicated graphics back into the low end iMacs...unless of course that recent price drop rumor is for the Intel Integrated model.

I agree with Tallest Skil, Apple would have dropped them long ago because of the failures. If true, it is due to the lawsuit between Intel and NVIDIA.
 
iAlexG said:
I'm happy with my NVidia 9400M. Mostly because my HP from last year only had a ATI Radeon 64mb graphics card!!!!! almost 10 year old tech!!! I couldnt play any games with my friends. Now I can play most games happily on Medium settings.

I remember the Intel chip in the 2007 Macbooks were poor as my friend had one. STICK WITH NVIDIA
Click to expand...

Your HP had more vRAM than your MacBook.
 
no one has seemed to mention ATI/AMD, which has been doing quite well against nvidia in the pc (desktop) graphics arena. they also have several mobile gpu's based on those desktop variants. and apple has used their GPU's across their range of products in the past.
 
neiltc13 said:
Your HP had more vRAM than your MacBook.
Click to expand...

If you knew enough about GPU 'stats' - you should know VRAM is not directly related to performance .. nearly at all.

That said, the 9400M can use up to 256mb .. 4x that of his previous "GPU"
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

It doesn't seem like this would be a smart move. Nvidia is pretty much the standard in high end graphics cards. I hope this proves to be false.
 
neiltc13 said:
Your HP had more vRAM than your MacBook.
Click to expand...

Not really. Yes it had more dedicated vRAM but the MacBook has 128/256MB of RAM dedicated to it from the total system RAM depending on whether it has 1GB/2GB+. This RAM is DDR3 and is a fair bit faster than the old 64MB of RAM in his Radeon card.
 
Willis said:
How? My GMA950 has 64mb same as that HP...
Click to expand...

Nope, it has 0MB of VRAM. It uses system RAM. Same as the 9400M though the 9400M kicks seven colours of crap out of the X3100 and especially the GMA950.
 
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