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Apple Shifting to Intel Graphics for Future MacBooks and 13-Inch MacBook Pros?

Yeah... that's not too bad, but ....

honestly? I'd like to see better performance than that from Intel, since they've been trying so hard to push nVidia out of the market lately. IMHO, if you're going to act like nobody should need your competitor's product to pair up with what YOU sell, you better be able to prove you can do a superior job.

Right now, all they're showing is that they can match what nVidia already came up with a year or so before them.

TMRaven said:
The benchmarks for the integrated hd graphics in sandybridge shows their performance to be right around 320m and 9400m. Good move on apple's part.
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Xtremehkr said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

I wonder if it would be unfeasibly expensive to offer MacBooks without the SuperDrive and different components instead. Probably not feasible just yet to have so many different configurations but I hope Apple is the first to dump the optical drive and soon.

There is so much more than could be done with that space and flash drives are relatively inexpensive these days.

Without a SuperDrive you could have more ports, more battery, and more space for internal parts.
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There is probably little doubt that that's exactly what's coming, right? The question is: will it happen as early as the next refresh? I wouldn't be all that surprised.
 
Intel is always going to be known for it's great processors but as far as I can remember they never had the best graphics when I was building my pc's I always went ati or nvidia those 2 were always in a shoot for best graphic chips. It will be hard to see them go.
 
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridge-preview-three-wins-in-a-row/7

Sandy Bridge Graphics perform on par with a 5450(I'm assuming it's mobile but they don't state that it is, so Sandy Bridge might be faster than the percentage below).

http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5450.23819.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-320M.28701.0.html

320M scores 15% higher than the Mobility 5450 on 3D Mark 06. Keep in mind that the Sandy Bridge graphics aren't final hardware and neither are the drivers.
 
I care about real-world performance, not the logo on the chip, but at least Apple (and other PC makers) will have some more options!

And future chips/drivers/OpenCL support are just that—future! Hard to judge accurately now.
 
I don't mind if there's intel graphics in there, as long as it's the fallback GPU for when there is low graphics going on and the primary GPU (NVIDIA/AMD-ATI) isn't needed. And if the Intel GPU is there for computational load balancing to help pick up slack in processing if the primary GPU is getting hammered.
And if the Intel GPU will help for a second external monitor (that way I can have my MBP closed and still have duel screen, or have it open and have a Triple screen (I find on desktops that 3 screens is my sweet-spot for productivity)

anyhow, I guess all I'm trying to get at is that I don't have any issues with there being intel graphics in there as long as it's there for help, and not as the primary graphics in the machine. Us mac users pay a premium, for premium machines inside and out. I don't mind paying it, but at the same time I want my full dollars worth when I pay it.
 
Is Open CL reminiscent of the Power PC 64-bit?

There are many technical discussions related to this rumor that surpass the knowledge of the mere layman who lurk in this forum, but the discussion of possibly sacrificing the highly valued OpenCL in this switch reminds me of the great advances that we saw on the horizon for Power PC chips moving to 64-bit processing, which was delayed by many years when we (Apple) moved to intel processors and started speaking about "power per watt" instead.
 
eme jota ce said:
There are many technical discussions related to this rumor that surpass the knowledge of the mere layman who lurk in this forum, but the discussion of possibly sacrificing the highly valued OpenCL in this switch reminds me of the great advances that we saw on the horizon for Power PC chips moving to 64-bit processing, which was delayed by many years when we (Apple) moved to intel processors and started speaking about "power per watt" instead.
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OpenCL is supported in Sandy Bridge graphics.
 
This would be a massive blow to NVIDIA. Makes one wonder if Intel purposely stonewalled NVIDIA for all that time knowing that Sandy Bridge would eventually offer equal or greater performance once it was ready.
 
shartypants said:
Can Intel really deliver better graphics than NVIDIA, hard to believe but if Apple is happy then I guess its ok.
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Your missing the point Apple is not happy, its just that they have no choice, a first for Apple I must admit. I figure they are looking at alternatives or in time will pressure Intel. Lets hope so, Intel graphic is still sub par. :mad:
 
And there goes the apple games market, but of course this shift well let them thin the macbook air with another 0.7mm .
 
k995 said:
And there goes the apple games market, but of course this shift well let them thin the macbook air with another 0.7mm .
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Considering the fact that the majority of people on Macs that game have a 9400M according to Steam survey and that non-final Sandy Bridge benchmarks have already proven to perform much better than a 9400M, I doubt this is a problem.
 
asdf542 said:
OpenCL is supported in Sandy Bridge graphics.
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True, but the question remains if developers will use openCL in their code...
It's the same story with 64-bit and grand central dispatch, many applications don't use these technologies and thus applications won't benefit from them.
 
As a simple MacBook user, rather than a techie who understands the nuances of the variations being talked about, all I care about is will new machines have significant enough upgrades to be worthwhile.
I've a 2007 MacBook, looking for an update to the MacBook Pros. For me last time it wasn't a big enough step, maybe if this is brought in it will be.
 
HLdan said:
I don't care what the use as long as the video playbacks are smooth.
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Seconded. Honestly, I know there are people who game on the computer, but seeing the 320M can game pretty decently, if the Intel IGP can provide even the same performance as the 320M, I'd take it. I don't game on my MBP, I'd rather have a more powerful, updated CPU.
 
Without commenting on the subject of the article I feel compelled to point out the continuing deterioration of Erick's articles. The material is fine, since this is a rumours site, but there is a great deal of room to improve in the writing of articles.

I hope more careful behaviour is adopted in the future.
 
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20016302-64.html?tag=mncol;txt

Just to be clear, Intel's Director of Graphics Architecture has confirmed that Sandy Bridge supports OpenCL 1.1. Apple currently supports OpenCL 1.0 so Apple can at least tout that as an upgrade, although current AMD and nVidia solutions support OpenCL 1.1 as well, if Apple were to release drivers for it. Sandy Bridge's IGP won't likely beat the 320M in raw performance unless Apple really invests in the drivers, but it's certainly 320M class so it'll be a sidegrade. Architecturally, Sandy Bridge's IGP should be superior for OpenCL to both nVidia's off-chip IGP and AMD's Fusion whose IGP connects to the CPU via a crossbar bus, because Sandy Bridge's IGP is on die and shares an L3 cache with the CPU allow efficient low-latency, high-bandwidth data sharing between the IGP and CPU for OpenCL. No longer will the CPU have to set up the OpenCL data and commands, transfer it to the GPU, wait for the GPU to process it, and then wait for the results to be copied back. Everything will be in a common data location that both the IGP and CPU can read and write to. This efficiency should help make up some of the raw performance deficit of Sandy Bridge's IGP for OpenCL.

http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2010-November/036284.html

Intel is actively hiring OpenCL driver developers specifically for their IGP, so OpenCL support is definitely coming, it's just a matter of when and how good it'll be.

As well, Sandy Bridge's CPU already includes enhancements that target many of the same benefits of OpenCL. For example, Sandy Bridge includes a dedicated hardware video encode accelerator which should be faster and more power efficient than running an implementation on OpenCL on a GPU. AVX also greatly improves the CPU's vector and multimedia performance and should be easier for software developers to modify their existing SSE code to adopt rather than writing a new OpenCL path. AMD's Fusion processors support neither in the 2010-2011 timeframe.

Personally, I think Apple dropping nVidia in favour of AMD GPUs is a more interesting story. nVidia IGP over Intel's previous IGPs was a justifiable choice given they had the decided performance edge. But, Apple sticking with nVidia all this time well AMD had the better performing GPUs didn't make as much sense yet Apple did it anyways. I wonder what made Apple finally have enough and move away from nVidia discrete GPUs?
 
commander.data said:
Personally, I think Apple dropping nVidia in favour of AMD GPUs is a more interesting story. nVidia IGP over Intel's previous IGPs was a justifiable choice given they had the decided performance edge. But, Apple sticking with nVidia all this time well AMD had the better performing GPUs didn't make as much sense yet Apple did it anyways. I wonder what made Apple finally have enough and move away from nVidia discrete GPUs?
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The fiasco that was the 8600M and they probably finally realized that can get better performance for the same TDP from AMD.
 
John.B said:
Depending on what you are using that MacBook for, you might be surprised at the difference the 320M can make with certain applications. I had two BlackBooks (one with the GMA950, one with the X3100) and the comparison with the Nvidia 320M can be pretty noticable.
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For what I do, I was surprised by the minor performance improvements of my 13" MBP over my 4 year old MacBook.
 
asdf542 said:
The fiasco that was the 8600M and they probably finally realized that can get better performance for the same TDP from AMD.
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That's kind of the thing. The 8600M GT recalls were a long time ago. Apple's stuck with them through several refreshes now, 2 8600M GT refreshes, 2 9600M GT refreshes, and now a 330M GT refresh. It's kind of a belated response to be changing their mind over the 8600M GT issue now.
 
I might be interested in a laptop, Mac Mini & iMac without an optical drive if it meant more components. Either better graphics, more ports (bring back Firewire!), etc. Thinner/smaller computers I don't care for.

Since the MacBook Air comes with a USB flash drive to reinstall the OS, we know it's possible. Though I don't know how expensive that is compared to pressing CDs/DVDs.
 
Proof will be in the performance quality from the chips.

Sadly, it has lately been the case that Apple is being limited on hardware tech by the beancounters, who have a manifesto to do as much in software as possible.

Apple has lagged in offering USB 3, Blu-Ray and more.

Can't say i am excited to buy more Apple hardware right now, its pretty limiting.
 
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