Hooray!
Awesome! This is great news. Could you imagine the possibilities.....good games actually come to mac??
Awesome! This is great news. Could you imagine the possibilities.....good games actually come to mac??
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Apple Migrating to NVIDIA Chipsets in new MacBooks
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For the people who say "Why does the Macbook/Macbook Pro need decent graphics capability? Just buy a gaming PC" ---
1) Graphics acceleration is NOT limited to gaming. First of all, the entire OSX interface runs on OpenGL. More importantly, professional video/graphics applications (based on CoreImage and other frameworks) utilize OpenGL for accelerated graphics processing and rendering. Remember the "Pro" in Macbook Pro?? 3D modeling, animation, CAD/CAM, video editing, compositing, etc all need decent graphics acceleration. Even Photoshop is supposedly going to be hardware accelerated in CS4.
2) Apple's OpenCL will make it much easier for applications to utilize the parallel processing capability of modern GPUs to offload certain types of processing.
3) Many people CAN'T AFFORD buying a dedicated computer just for gaming AND a Macbook/MB Pro. They want ONE device that can do it all.
4) nVidia's graphics chipsets have much better hardware HD video decoding than Intel's GMA. The image quality and enhancement features are better (iDCT, deinterlacing, upscaling, etc) and they use a lot less CPU power during decoding. (Even hardware video decoding uses some CPU time.. and the amount depends on the implementation. AMD's GPUs are even better than nVidia in this regard)
1) Graphics acceleration is NOT limited to gaming. First of all, the entire OSX interface runs on OpenGL. More importantly, professional video/graphics applications (based on CoreImage and other frameworks) utilize OpenGL for accelerated graphics processing and rendering. Remember the "Pro" in Macbook Pro?? 3D modeling, animation, CAD/CAM, video editing, compositing, etc all need decent graphics acceleration. Even Photoshop is supposedly going to be hardware accelerated in CS4.
2) Apple's OpenCL will make it much easier for applications to utilize the parallel processing capability of modern GPUs to offload certain types of processing.
3) Many people CAN'T AFFORD buying a dedicated computer just for gaming AND a Macbook/MB Pro. They want ONE device that can do it all.
4) nVidia's graphics chipsets have much better hardware HD video decoding than Intel's GMA. The image quality and enhancement features are better (iDCT, deinterlacing, upscaling, etc) and they use a lot less CPU power during decoding. (Even hardware video decoding uses some CPU time.. and the amount depends on the implementation. AMD's GPUs are even better than nVidia in this regard)
So, with the "optional DDR3 memory" what are we looking at for user-installed memory options? I'm certainly no hardware genius when it comes to computers, but I have been planning on buying my own memory and upgrading, since, as everyone knows, Apple charges ridiculous amounts of money for the same memory. I know DDR3 is going to cost more and, at least currently, is worse on latency, so does this chipset allow for DDR2 and DDR3 memory? I suppose we'll have to wait and see if the new notebooks will accept the same memory as the old ones. I need to buy my Crucial memory!
They had a manufacturing issue with solder that would fail at high heat levels and have since switched to a different material without the problems. The units that are having problems are months to years old. Especially given their $250 million write-down for repairs, I'm sure they've made sure everything is working correctly.
Imagine the 9800GTX or one of the newer ATI 4800 series in the pro, now that would be a pro laptop
ChrisN
ChrisN
The current video processor is one of the reasons I waited several months for this update.. Im excited!!
Awesome! This is great news. Could you imagine the possibilities.....good games actually come to mac??
Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 are coming to Mac the same time it's coming to PC. Blizzard rocks!
No that would make a gaming laptop. A real professional laptop aka mobile workstation should have a mobile nVidia Quadro or ATI FireGL card option. It's actually odd that Apple doesn't offer a MB Pro Quadro card considering its not only a "pro" laptop, but the Mac Pro has one so obviously driver issues regarding the extended OpenGL feature set and application certifications have already been worked out for CAD/CAM/3d animation/etc.
Does anyone know why Apple doesn't offer a professional OpenGL card (nVidia Quadro, ATI FireGL, et al ) for the Macbook Pro? Have they done it in the past for a Powerbook or other laptop?
this is interesting! I wonder if the consumer level video capabilities will now be equal to, or outpace my first gen MBP!
It makes sense that they would have more powerful chipsets to handle all that blu ray video! *crosses fingers*
It makes sense that they would have more powerful chipsets to handle all that blu ray video! *crosses fingers*
Awesome! This is great news. Could you imagine the possibilities.....good games actually come to mac??
Seems like things are going that way. It looks like they're trying to get into gaming with the iPod Touch. Besides, why not get into the gaming market a little more seriously? In these times of woe and want, who doesn't want to forget their troubles by blowing stuff up?
sa-weet!!!
This was why I held out past the current generation...I was praying for the harkening back to iBook days where we had the dedicated ATI Mobility 9200
I'll be at teh store the day they're available....yes.
This was why I held out past the current generation...I was praying for the harkening back to iBook days where we had the dedicated ATI Mobility 9200
I'll be at teh store the day they're available....yes.
Now my current MacBook will be highly obsolete.
Such is the cost of progress. You could always sell it and cut your losses, then get a new one.
I figure I'll wait till they've got them refurbished, by then most of the faults with the Rev A will be known and if they seem too much then I indeed will be waiting for Rev B with you as well
really? so we'll have a dedicated-integrated video card lol
err...VRAM is your GPU accessing your ram to work faster IIRC, right? if so, it could help, until the 8400 can't be pushed any farther or bottlenecking occurs...
remember that pipes and shaders are just as/more important as megabites when talking about GPUs
either way, this will blow the current integrated intels out of the water
I always thought it was odd to go with nVidia for one generation of laptops (and possibly iMacs now as well), and then have to turn back to Intel next year with the mobile nehalem chips arrive.
nVidia doesnt have and probably will never get a license for them to be able to make chipsets for the Nehalem-based chips. So when the mobile versions come out, Apple pretty much has to go back to an Intel-based chipset and their craptacular integrated graphics.
Now maybe Apple is doing this to send a message to Intel - get off your ****ing ass and make integrated graphics not suck. Intel's huge attempt to get into graphics (Larabee) wont arrive until at least 2010 for laptops - discrete and integrated. Maybe Intel gets their act together for the mobile 5-series chipset and makes the integrated video at least as good as the 9300M we'll see in the new MacBooks. We can only hope.
nVidia doesnt have and probably will never get a license for them to be able to make chipsets for the Nehalem-based chips. So when the mobile versions come out, Apple pretty much has to go back to an Intel-based chipset and their craptacular integrated graphics.
Now maybe Apple is doing this to send a message to Intel - get off your ****ing ass and make integrated graphics not suck. Intel's huge attempt to get into graphics (Larabee) wont arrive until at least 2010 for laptops - discrete and integrated. Maybe Intel gets their act together for the mobile 5-series chipset and makes the integrated video at least as good as the 9300M we'll see in the new MacBooks. We can only hope.