Apple Migrating to NVIDIA Chipsets in new MacBooks

[MacRumors]

Appleinsider reports that they have "confirmed" that the new MacBooks will utilize NVIDIA's new MCP79 platform. While Intel will continue to supply the main processor for Apple's notebooks, the underlying support chips will be made by NVIDIA:

Kept uncharacteristically secret by NVIDIA for most of the year, the MCP79 platform is so far considered a substitute for Intel's Centrino 2 "Montevina" platform, offering support for the same 1066MHz front side bus, optional DDR3 memory and PCI Express 2.0 interfaces.

AppleInsider lists several design advantages over Intel's chipset, including:

- Smaller physical size using one chip rather than two
- DriveCache, which uses Flash storage to speed up boot times
- Hybrid SLI which switches from discrete to integrated graphics when battery is low

Apple may or may not choose to take advantage of these technologies, but the option exists. The biggest advantage in using the NVIDIA chipset, however, will be its enhanced graphics capabilities.

NVIDIA is believed to use a new set of GeForce 9300 and 9400 series integrated GPUs which "will theoretically blow past" the Intel integrated graphics chipsets that currently power Apple's MacBooks. Still, the integrated graphics chipsets will lag behind the dedicated ones that are used in Apple's higher-end notebooks. The use of NVIDIA chipsets will also be of importance when Apple releases Snow Leopard, which will be able to offload general processing onto GPUs.

While there had been speculation that Apple might adopt NVIDIA's chipsets, MacSoda first reported confidently that the chipset would be NVIDIA's.

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[Eidorian]

Must wait until it hits the refurb store to buy one...

 

[11800506]

Well that is really great news then!

 

[Clayne]

Must wait until it hits the refurb store to buy one...

Haha, can you do that?

I don't think I can wait..

 

[Orlandooo]

Ooooh how sneaky, deleting my post and correcting the mistake!

Anyway, this sounds like the update should be worthwhile, even if one of the main improvements (general processing on GPUs) is only evident when Snow Leopard arrives!

 

[ChrisN]

Sounds awesome and do you think you could run some year old games like TF2 at a decent framerate like 50-60 maybe 70?

ChrisN

 

[Eidorian]

Sounds awesome and do you think you could run some year old games like TF2 at a decent framerate like 50-60 maybe 70?

ChrisN

Half-Life 2 gets about 30 FPS at 1280 x 800 and Medium/High settings on my GMA X3100. Keep in mind I'm using Intel's latest drivers.

 

[MasterNile]

This is very interesting and probably the best reason (for me) to get a new MB

EDIT-but I'll probably wait to get it refurbished as well

 

[Merkuryy]

Good!!!! That mean we'll have MB as Tony Parker, and MBP as Lebron James. MB does not got as much power and strength as MBP, but got enough speed to do things well, While MBP　ｓｔｉｌｌ　ｇｏｔ　ｐｏｔｅｎｔｉａｌ　ｐｏｗｅｒ　ｔｏ　ａｃｈｉｅｖｅ　ｍｏｒｅ　ｄｕｔｙ

 

[blashphemy]

wow, big diss to Intel I can't understand how Apple can do this, considering Apple's big thing has been "our things just work", not "high-performance" - nVidia had that big manufacturing flub with a rather large number of their chips including, as I recall, some that were in MacBook Pros? Intel has been making extremely reliable chips for some time now.

 

[portishead]

It would be great to see Apple move away form integrated graphics. I hope they do the same for the Mac Mini.

 

[DsurioN]

Awesome! Bring on Tuesday 1 PM EST!

 

[ChrisN]

Half-Life 2 gets about 30 FPS at 1280 x 800 and Medium/High settings on my GMA X3100. Keep in mind I'm using Intel's latest drivers.

Does TF2 run the same or does it take more power, but 30 on X3100 sounds good so on a Nvidia hopefully 50

ChrisN

 

[NewSc2]

Are there any benchmarks or tests comparing the GeForce 9300/9400 GPUs to the Intel ones and the current MBP dedicated graphics cards?

 

[Twenty5]

Hopefully these new Nvidia chipsets wont self implode like those 8600M's did haha....

Seriously... i hope they dont...

 

[NintendoChick]

Sweet! Better graphics will be a huge plus with the MacBooks...

 

[Eric S.]

This has to be the worst-kept secret of the year.

 

[Eidorian]

Does TF2 run the same or does it take more power, but 30 on X3100 sounds good so on a Nvidia hopefully 50

ChrisN

I don't have TF 2 to test out otherwise I would.

Are there any benchmarks or tests comparing the GeForce 9300/9400 GPUs to the Intel ones and the current MBP dedicated graphics cards?

I'd take a look at the 8400M GS benchmarks. It's the same GPU.

Hopefully these new Nvidia chipsets wont self implode like those 8600M's did haha....

Seriously... i hope they dont...

It's a new batch and a different GPU but there's still that slight worry isn't there?

 

[MasterNile]

This has to be the worst-kept secret of the year.

lol I think someone is forgetting the new iPods

 

[Jak3]

these are still integrated...good news that it's NVidia though

 

[Eric S.]

It would be great to see Apple move away form integrated graphics. I hope they do the same for the Mac Mini.

The Macbook (as opposed to the Macbook Pro) will still have integrated graphics and it should. That's a big factor in Apple being able to reduce the price.

 

[Eidorian]

these are still integrated...good news that it's NVidia though

A 8400M GPU built into the MCP79 chipset and the option to include dedicated VRAM.

 

[vixapphire]

nice to see the macrumors folks are apparently working overtime in advance of this laptop update. nice work!

 

[ventro]

nvidia is unreliable. steer clear apple!

 

[winterspan]

Are there any benchmarks or tests comparing the GeForce 9300/9400 GPUs to the Intel ones and the current MBP dedicated graphics cards?

The Geforce 9100M is the only currently known integrated/motherboard graphics chipset for nVidia laptop motherboards. According to the rumors, the macbook 'MCP79' board will have a new integrated graphics chipset based on the discrete Geforce 9300M (there actually isn't a "9400M" -- the marketing name refers to teh combination of a 9300M and an integrated chipset running together in parallel "Hybrid SLI" mode). What performance and specifications it will have, we don't know yet. If I were to guess, I'd bet the performance will similar to the existing "9300M G" discrete card (which would be nearly 2X as fast as the latest Intel GMA).

Also, for the MB Pro, hopefully it also uses an nVidia board and Apple implements their "Hybrid Power" technology. It will allow the Macbook Pro to turn off it's discrete GPU when not in heavy use and use the integrated chipset instead to save power.

I put together this graphic just to serve as a rough performance comparison between nVidia's latest mobile GPU generation.

notes:
- On the graph I included the 8600GT which is the current Macbook Pro card to show as comparison. I believe the current Macbook uses the GMA X3100.
- SP stands for "Stream Processors" (shaders) which are the SIMD processing units that make up a nVidia's modern GPUs.
- Nvidia GPUs have three separate clock frequencies -- one each for the main clock, shader processor clock, and memory clock. On the graph, only the shader clock is listed.
- 3DMark05 and 3DMark06 are standard graphics performance benchmarks.
- I did the best I could and double-checked the data, but I can not make *ANY GUARANTEES* about the accuracy of the information on the chart.