Apple Migrating to NVIDIA Chipsets in new MacBooks

[John Jacob]

So to sum up all the rumours, then - on Tuesday will unveil a new all-Aluminium MacBook with NVIDIA integrated graphics and Blu-Ray that costs a measly $800.

 

[MasterNile]

So to sum up all the rumours, then - on Tuesday will unveil a new all-Aluminium MacBook with NVIDIA integrated graphics and Blu-Ray that costs a measly $800.

lol well doubt all that will be in the $800 MB, but also the rumors say the MB/MBPs will have Blu-Ray support not Blu-Ray drives, which means to me that perhaps 10.5.6 will be released Tues.

 

[jdaco6]

That's what I was thinking, which is why I didn't get his point, glad I'm not the only one.

Sorry Guys, should have elaborated! I meant that AMD seems to be keeping a tighter rain on ATI these days, as they see it as the major selling point when you go with AMD. I know before it has not made a difference but I think moving into the future AMD exculsivity could very much be the case...

 

[MasterNile]

Sorry Guys, should have elaborated! I meant that AMD seems to be keeping a tighter rain on ATI these days, as they see it as the major selling point when you go with AMD. I know before it has not made a difference but I think moving into the future AMD exculsivity could very much be the case...

I think that would be a bad move unless Nvidia continues to completely mess up or ATI comes out with GPUs that completely and unarguably blow Nvidia out of the water

 

[DaveTheGrey]

great news, finally we will get away from these integrated gma graphics!

 

[Admonitor]

I still think that with so many SKUs planned, we still may be seeing discrete over dedicated in some of the 13" models, whatever they may be categorised as.

 

[OS X Dude]

As lovely as it'd be to have one of these new Macs, I can't justify it. My C2D from 2006 is still lightning fast and i'm going to stick a 200GB 7200rpm drive and 2GB RAM in it, and with 10.6 it can only get better. It's clean and runs a treat. If it ain't broke, don't fix it i suppose.

Anyhoo, anyone got any performance specs for the 9400M? And would it be significantly better than the GMA, as in could I play new games at medium-maybe high resolution?

 

[Yixian]

Why are people talking about the 9600M GT? It says "9600M". I contacted the author of yesterdays article about NVIDIA chipsets and he replied saying that probably Apple would use a newer refresh of the 9600M line in the new MacBook Pros, particularly one that is 55nm.

The 9600 GT is 6 months old, 65nm and not much of an improvement over the 8600M GT given how long it's taken to refresh the MBPs tbh.

Currently there is a 55nm, 96**M card that is a more substantial improvement over the 8600M GT - the 9650M GT. It would be incomprehensibly stupid for Apple to put a 9600M GT in over a 9650M GT when it's smaller, runs at the same temp and requires the same power draw.

And there's always a chance of a new iteration, one that might be announced by NVIDIA at that event on the 15th.

Thoughts?

 

[richmlow]

Without getting into an argument, let me just say that your experience with the MacBook vs. iBook (in relation to graphics performance) differs from my experience.

Quake 3 (old, I know, but still perfectly adequate for this comparison) runs like crap on my iBook's Radeon. Runs great on my gf's MacBook. Same thing with Homeworld 2 on high. The mobile radeon 9000 just wasn't in the same league, in my experience.




I bought an iBook at the beginning of 2006 for around $1200 bucks. It replaced a $2000 VAIO that I had bought in 2003. When I bought it, I did so because it was cheap, small, and 'pretty good', and I wouldn't cry too much if it got stolen while I was travelling, and working in the bush. The iBook has been the best computer I've ever owned, and the VAIO that preceded it was the worst: the iBook has crashed ONCE in the entire time that I've been using it (including 2-years of design and development work), and the VAIO couldn't run for more than an hour without overheating and shutting down, weighed 10 pounds, and LITERALLY smelled like canned tuna whenever it got hot.

This says to me that Apple's 'pretty good' is a lot better than a lot of companies' 'high-end'. Or at least that was the case at that point.

I hate to tell you this, but the fact that Apple has two lines of notebooks is, by definition, a concession to the fact that in order to hit certain price points, they need to cut some corners, and make a line of "pretty good" notebooks. For those that see the value and have the money, they also make "freaking great" notebooks. You can't have something for nothing... You want better? Pay up to the next level and get an MBP.

Or settle for a cheap HP or Dell (or VAIO), and get "stinky and broken" instead.

 

[makowb]

In the same boat, want to buy RAM now due to poor AU$ and current cheap prices.

My guess is that we'll see DDR2-800Mhz being utilised in these new laptops (currently DDR2-667Mhz).
Early adopters will be finding out about compatibility for us. Lets hope the Nvidia chipsets are more forgiving of RAM.

This will not happen. Apple is switching to nVidia not just because of intel's crappy graphics but because of intel's poor power management. Yes intel's new chipset offers DDR3 too, but nVidia's chipset sucks up less power in general.

Anyways, the point of the matter is while DDR3 has a slower latency, it has a faster clock speed to make up for it, as well as sucking up less power. DDR2 800 is a slight difference over DDR2-667 w/ a marginal increase in clock speed (800 vs the 1066 DDR3 gets).

The mini should also get a MCP79 chipset solution.

Sony offers laptops with both intergrated/discrete graphocs-whether Apple will, remains to be seen.

SLI isn't seen on any Mac-even Mac pros.

SLI with laptops isn't the same as with desktops at all. SLI with desktops is to increase video performance wheras with laptops it has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with power savings. It switches from the dedicated card to the integrated whenever it is doing things that don't require as much graphic intensive processing. IE browsing firefox vs using photoshop.

 

[wheelhot]

MB battery life is longer then the MBP due to it uses integrated GPU, MB is aimed towards student, student usually will prefer longer battery life notebooks, my fren starts not to like his M1530 because its battery life is short, he don't do much GPU intensive stuffs, but because his laptop uses a dedicated GPU its draining his notebook battery life.

He prefer his notebook to last longer.

 

[lastochka]

This really sucks. While the fanboiz and uneducated Joe Public may be raiving about the shift, the fact is that nVidia's chipsets have had terrible track record as far as reliability is concerned, in particular in the peripherials/IO department. I'm not talking about the recently exposed GPU problems due to manufacturing process. There have been countless hardware bugs and glitches in practically every revision of their south bridge (SATA, USB et al).

It is also very naive to believe that nVidia is somehow magically can outperform Intel's modern solutions in terms of performance vs. power consumption. While integration of both bridges onto one piece of silicon is likely to make power consumprion more efficient, the more powerful GPU would negate that. Furthermore we are talking about integrated graphics here, and whatever is inegrated into the chipsed will never deliver enough processing power compared to discrete slutions because of thermal limitations (unless nVidia somehow found a way to bend the contemporary laws of physics).

While I agree that utilization of GPGPU computing today would be a major step forward and a real blow to the competition (requiring tight integration of software and hardware) it would be a huge mistake in the long run to choose nVidia. I was hoping to get a MacBook Air next week, but it looks like it's going one of the Vaios

 

[MattInOz]

Why are so many people in love with ATI?

We've stopped buying Macs with ATI graphic chips as their support for OpenGL is flaky and brakes under most Professional CAD or rendering software.
Even Coverflow can send the screen nuts under the wrong conditions.

 

[MattInOz]

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.

Isn't the issue with nVidia/Intel Dispute over QuickPath Licensing and and a trade for SLI. None of the Mobile Nehalem uses QuickPath, they use DMI which nVidia chipset already support.

Apple would only need to go to Intel for Mac Pro's and Xserve. Apple are free to go where they get the best for the price they are building for.

This is why Intel wanted a deal with Apple in the first place, Apple have the ability and resources to show case and move to the best tech on offer. They still get the Processor sales

 

[iCantwait]

Bring on guitar hero 3 for my MacBook!!!

 

[Bitslong]

This will not happen. Apple is switching to nVidia not just because of intel's crappy graphics but because of intel's poor power management. Yes intel's new chipset offers DDR3 too, but nVidia's chipset sucks up less power in general.

Anyways, the point of the matter is while DDR3 has a slower latency, it has a faster clock speed to make up for it, as well as sucking up less power. DDR2 800 is a slight difference over DDR2-667 w/ a marginal increase in clock speed (800 vs the 1066 DDR3 gets).



SLI with laptops isn't the same as with desktops at all. SLI with desktops is to increase video performance wheras with laptops it has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with power savings. It switches from the dedicated card to the integrated whenever it is doing things that don't require as much graphic intensive processing. IE browsing firefox vs using photoshop.

Fair point re DDR3, and I'm not arguing against it - i'd like to up-spec to 4GB through channels other than Apple for obvious reasons. [Edit removed, found 4GB DDR3 SoDimms plentiful in US, just not Aus ]
Do you think that DDR3 will be used across the whole range?
I imagine that the default RAM configs will stay at 2GB or is this not normally the case (to stay at current, reasonable configurations) on an update such as this?

 

[nick9191]

Perhaps this might stop the OMG Santa Rosa, OMG Montevina threads.

With Nvidias track record I'm just hoping these things don't blow up.

 

[winterspan]

Isn't the issue with nVidia/Intel Dispute over QuickPath Licensing and and a trade for SLI. None of the Mobile Nehalem uses QuickPath, they use DMI which nVidia chipset already support.
Apple would only need to go to Intel for Mac Pro's and Xserve. Apple are free to go where they get the best for the price they are building for.
This is why Intel wanted a deal with Apple in the first place, Apple have the ability and resources to show case and move to the best tech on offer. They still get the Processor sales

You are absolutely right. I completely forgot that the notebooks will not be using quickpath, although I wasn't sure if nVidia had the proper licensing/hardware to support the CPU interface whatever it was (DMA). So it seems they can develop a longer term relationship with nVidia then.... Perhaps this is just intended to put pressure on Intel to improve their GMA and/or move up Larabee derivatives..

This really sucks. While the fanboiz and uneducated Joe Public may be raiving about the shift, the fact is that nVidia's chipsets have had terrible track record as far as reliability is concerned, in particular in the peripherials/IO department. I'm not talking about the recently exposed GPU problems due to manufacturing process. There have been countless hardware bugs and glitches in practically every revision of their south bridge (SATA, USB et al).

I don't have enough knowledge off-hand to comment about that, other than the fact that I have known a few people with nVidia motherboards that don't seem to have many problems... but I'll take your word.

It is also very naive to believe that nVidia is somehow magically can outperform Intel's modern solutions in terms of performance vs. power consumption. While integration of both bridges onto one piece of silicon is likely to make power consumprion more efficient, the more powerful GPU would negate that. Furthermore we are talking about integrated graphics here, and whatever is inegrated into the chipsed will never deliver enough processing power compared to discrete slutions because of thermal limitations (unless nVidia somehow found a way to bend the contemporary laws of physics).

While I agree that utilization of GPGPU computing today would be a major step forward and a real blow to the competition (requiring tight integration of software and hardware) it would be a huge mistake in the long run to choose nVidia. I was hoping to get a MacBook Air next week, but it looks like it's going one of the Vaios

I don't think it's "magic", I think they have better technology.. Also, some of your statements don't "match up". First you said you don't believe nVidia can outperform them on "performance vs. power consumption" (efficiency) and then you say that even if the single-chip solution is more efficient than Intel's northbridge+soutbridge, the extra performance of the IGP would "negate" it. Well, it may negate the overall power savings, but the performance/power consumption can still be higher than Intel's GM45.

And I don't understand what you mean by "[Integrated graphics] will never deliver enough processing power compared to discrete". what is enough? It doesn't have to rival a high-end discrete card, it just has to be better than Intel's GMA.

 

[winterspan]

Perhaps this might stop the OMG Santa Rosa, OMG Montevina threads.
With Nvidias track record I'm just hoping these things don't blow up.

Well, considering nVidia's made good graphics chips for over a decade, and only recently had a major manufacturing issue, I think they'll be fine.

 

[vendettabass]

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one word: hurray!

 

[quatar]

Kinda like what i said a week ago after the last article

Following NVidia's own nomenclature, and the way they differentiate their product ranges places the MCP7A-U as an nForce 750i.

Its was hard to say for sure what the intergrated GPU would be, but i guessed it was an 9300M-G or underclocked 9500M-G. May be 8 stream processors rather than 16 to consume fewer power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForc...FUNIQ2bad502715e762c3-nowiki-000000B4-QINU.7F

And here is a link to the 9400 which is what they are saying it is. I prefer to believe that's not going to be the full spec we see however.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_9_Series#GeForce_9200.2F9400_Series

This is all assuming that its a 9000-series Geforce. But as others have said - doesnt make much sense to use 8000 series chip. Too old and performance of 8000 is comprable to the new intel GMA-4500.

FSB clock speed. Previously the expected intel would have been 1033Mhz, the new NForce7xxi series is poorly documented, but says "1333 MHz FSB". Its unclear whether a mobile solution would need to be underclocked to 1033Mhz also like the intel, (but that would be a sensible choice again to reduce power consumption).

I hope to see Anandtech articles or reviews of this GPU in the MacBook when it comes out.

 

[marbles]

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one word: hurray!

Great news about speedier graphics but , slightly off topic , why is it that when someone posts from a telephone does it appear in the post they make ? , thanks

 

[altair7]

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.

No please do not make me keep using this monstrous 15" laptop. Some of us want a smaller laptop that can still run some games. I personally hope for a 12" but being able to get the 13.3" would at least be a step in the right direction. I'll be able to finally get rid of this thing (15" MBP)!

 

[dennisje182]

hey there,
I'm working a lot with 3d CAD programs like Solidworks. I'm not really known with this whole grapics card talking (don't know a lot about it). Now I was just wondering if these NVIDIA chipsets in Macbooks will help working with Solidworks (modelling and rendering). Because i always thought rendering was almost completely counting on CPU. Anybody knows??

tnx

 

[mpb2000]

This will not happen. Apple is switching to nVidia not just because of intel's crappy graphics but because of intel's poor power management. Yes intel's new chipset offers DDR3 too, but nVidia's chipset sucks up less power in general.

So are you saying just because the chipset supports DDR3, all Apple is going to just put DDR3 in everything? Doesn't seem like the benefits justify that kind of price increase. Maybe on the higher end machines, but on all of them?