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

[KnightWRX]

I thought we had already established that the intel GPU will likely be at least almost as good as the 320M.

I thought I adressed that in my comment. Oh wait, yes I did.

A graphics downgrade in a spec upgrade. Seriously, there's nothing great about "at least almost as good as 2 year old tech".

Quit wasting my time, kid. The CNET article I linked to was clearly talking about OpenCL in the IGP.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20016302-64.html
When you are talking about DirectX

Which part of DirectX ? DirectInput ? DirectSound ? DirectPlay ? DirectWrite ?

Oh wait, none of those have to do with graphics at all. When you're talking about DirectX, you're talking about a vast family of APIs, of which 2 are graphics API.

 

[commander.data]

Which part of DirectX ? DirectInput ? DirectSound ? DirectPlay ? DirectWrite ?

Oh wait, none of those have to do with graphics at all. When you're talking about DirectX, you're talking about a vast family of APIs, of which 2 are graphics API.

At this point I think we are parsing words way too much. DirectX 10.1 is a standard. I don't believe Microsoft will allow you to advertise a GPU/IGP as DirectX 10.1 compliant unless it supports Shader Model 4.1, a graphics specification. Otherwise, why wouldn't Intel just claim they supported DirectX 11 if they support DirectInput which hasn't changed since DirectX 8 or DirectPlay which is now actually deprecated?

 

[asdf542]

Which part of DirectX ? DirectInput ? DirectSound ? DirectPlay ? DirectWrite ?

Oh wait, none of those have to do with graphics at all. When you're talking about DirectX, you're talking about a vast family of APIs, of which 2 are graphics API.

"Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms." Also did you miss the part where I said they were talking to the graphics director or did you just want to try and make a smart ass comment because of your hatred over an inanimate object? You complain about Intel's graphics so you can justify your purchase of a MacBook Air. I'd love to know what you even do on that MacBook Air your complaint against Intel's graphics that are more than capable than the 9400M that came before it. Whether it matches the performance of the 320M or not is irrelevant because the Core 2 Duo's that Apple was using matches the performance of the previous gen. So now all you care about the graphics but you didn't care about the fact that the processor was the same 2 year old performance? Get over it, dude. You purchased a MacBook Air that had 2-year old technology but here you are complaining about the fact that the new Sandy Bridge graphics will only match that of a one year old 320m.

 

[Gemütlichkeit]

There are two things keeping me away from buying a macbook pro:

1. I do not support intel's business practices, and will only buy an intel product when its absolutely needed. I've been very happy with AMD/ATI chips.

2. I am not a big gamer, but as a consumer I will never accept a graphics card that performs worse than at least a Radeon HD 4670.

I hope one day Apple migrates to AMD.

Wow, how rational and well thought out. "I like product X because it's good, so I won't try product Y."

 

[alent1234]

Historicaly, intel and AMD makes processors and NVIDIA,ATI makes video cards . Why are they mixing the things up? Basicaly, industrial comercial policy in my "poor" opinion.
My black (late 2006) macbook with intel video card GMA is far away form many newers "ching-ling" net notebook.
It dont´play hd videos
it don´t handle 3d simple games.
it don´t work very well with keynote sparkle transintions
I can enumerate several applications that doesn´t work well, and not because the core 2 duo 2,1 GHZ and 3GB Ram...but because the poor intel GMA video CARD!
Is this acceptable for a HI-END, Piece of art, revolutionary,apple product?
A macbook is supposed to be usable for many years before upgrade. In my case 4.
Recently the autodesk announced the autocad native for mac...But just those who have nvidia mac´s are able to run it.
Will these video cards able to play FULL HD videos, handle 3d applications from almost every software house even native apple software (open CL, open this , opne that, it doesn´t matter)??????

I have my doubts...

blame apple

over the summer i bought a $299 laptop as a gift with an old Intel GMA graphics chip in there. before i bought it i made sure that it was certified for flash 10.1 and it plays HD videos on youtube with no problem on Windows 7

 

[KnightWRX]

"Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms."

Game programming requires Input, Sound, Network, AI... The list goes on. DirectX is much more vast than just graphics. The fact your CNET article talks about "DirectX" does not prove your point that OpenCL is supported outside of the CPU core of Sandy Bridges like others are claiming.

At this point I think we are parsing words way too much. DirectX 10.1 is a standard. I don't believe Microsoft will allow you to advertise a GPU/IGP as DirectX 10.1 compliant unless it supports Shader Model 4.1, a graphics specification. Otherwise, why wouldn't Intel just claim they supported DirectX 11 if they support DirectInput which hasn't changed since DirectX 8 or DirectPlay which is now actually deprecated?

That's not what asdf542 is arguing nor is it what I was. I don't doubt the Intel IGP is compliant with a years old 3D graphics API, it's about time. He's saying that the IGP in Sandy Bridges supports OpenCL because the CNET article talked about DirectX. Yes, it's that convulted a claim.

 

[asdf542]

Game programming requires Input, Sound, Network, AI... The list goes on. DirectX is much more vast than just graphics. The fact your CNET article talks about "DirectX" does not prove your point that OpenCL is supported outside of the CPU core of Sandy Bridges like others are claiming.

That's not what asdf542 is arguing nor is it what I was. I don't doubt the Intel IGP is compliant with a years old 3D graphics API, it's about time. He's saying that the IGP in Sandy Bridges supports OpenCL because the CNET article talked about DirectX. Yes, it's that convulted a claim.

The article is talking about a graphics director.
The article is talking about the IGP in general.
The article is talking about DirectX which is related the the IGP.

Stop wasting my time. You think they were talking about sound effects and network when talking about the IGP?

It just wasn't explicitly stated.

 

[PlipPlop]

How is the driver treating you? Crashes? OpenCL support? etc.

Yea its supports OpenCL. Driver updates are good and mostly improve framerates in games and have more xfire profiles. Not the kind of card you would use in a laptop though

 

[Eidorian]

<A whole lot of complicated technical stuff that makes my head hurt>

So, in summary, we won't get X58, we'll get P67, with one x16 PCIe slot taken up with the graphics card, and the 2 GB/s DMI thing used for everything else. Now, I'm not sure, but 10 Git/s bi-directional should be sufficient for proper use of USB 3, ie. 5 Gbit/s transferred from SATA SSD to USB device would use half the bandwidth.

Although if Apple does put LP in there as well, which could eat through the entire DMI bandwidth, that could cause problems. Although considering devices that can use the full 10 Gbit/s bi-directional of LP won't be around for a while, it's a bit irrelevant.

It's only my hobby.

P67 (PM/HM65) is going to be connected over 4 GB/s (32 Gb/s) DMI. Minus some overhead that's a big improvement in addition to another 4x PCI 2.0 lanes available off of the CPU depending on the chipset. (16 + 4)

 

[chugg]

Don't worry guys, Apple stands to make a lot more money by dropping nvidia and switching to an Intel IGP. I mean, that's what we all want right? Apple to make more money.

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

I figured this would happen

So, when Apple kept using the C2D to use the Nvidia GPU on the 13", everybody was crying about it and thought Apple should have used an Arrandale CPU. Now that Apple seems to be moving to Sandybridge, everybody is complaining about the Intel integrated GPU and saying the C2D wasn't so bad after all-- which, it wasn't. Apple is very persistent in its direction to maximize battery life in the small systems, and, compromises on either CPU or GPU to do it. Apparently, Apple thinks a lot of people prefer long battery life to max performance, especially in the small systems. (I have to agree with Apple about this myself.)

I don't see why those folks who must have both faster CPU and GPU don't just buy the 15" instead. (?)

 

[pinchez]

This is sad news for me, I'm on my 3rd MacBook (2010 13" MacBook Pro) and look forward to upgrading every 2 years to the latest version. I like gaming on mine when i'm away from home and ever since I can remember Intel GPU's have always been poor and i can't see this changing so it looks like I may have to go with a Windows laptop next time round

 

[KnightWRX]

I don't see why those folks who must have both faster CPU and GPU don't just buy the 15" instead. (?)

I don't see why the size of a laptop has to be related to its CPU/GPU performance. One of the many mysteries of Apple. Any other vendors will sell you a top of the line 13" notebook with decent GPU and fast CPU and an entry level 17" notebook.

 

[leetlamer]

I like everyone who says "Intel IGPs have always been terrible, so Sandy Bridge graphics must be terrible".

Early, pre-release Sandy Bridge graphics have been benchmarked, proving that they are far from terrible.

Smaller, low-end will use the Sandy Bridge graphics, where battery life is important. 15" and above will use an AMD GPU, which are much better than nVidia currently.

What is there to complain about? You're getting a much better CPU, and equivalent graphics, all in a much lower-power, cheaper package.

 

[435713]

People said the same thing about floppy drives and look where those ended up. If you and others want an optical drive then you can buy an external one for the transition period while everyone else enjoys the added benefits of it being removed.

You'll see in a few years optical will still be here in the same volume. WAY different than floppy.

Also why do other makers of laptops not need to remove drives and have everything loaded in the laptop and apple can't? I guess those laptops wont be magical though

 

[asdf542]

You'll see in a few years optical will still be here in the same volume. WAY different than floppy.

Also why do other makers of laptops not need to remove drives and have everything loaded in the laptop and apple can't? I guess those laptops wont be magical though

Circa 1998:
You'll see in a few years floppy drives will still be here in the same volume.

Tell me where you got your crystal ball from. I'd like to have one. A lot of laptops like the HP Envy don't come with optical drives built in but you don't see people up their ass complaining to them.

 

[pr5owner]

Intel video is pure crap. I don't care how well it "performs".

I wouldn't even consider a Mac unless it had AMD or NVidia graphics.

how is it crap? it was designed for power efficiency and it does a good job in being low power. its still more than powerful enough to play any 1080p content,

i would say the nvidia chip in the macbooks are crap, it pretends to be dedicated but in reality its shared memory and on the northbridge.

this is what a real video card looks like

 

[John.B]

The article is talking about a graphics director.
The article is talking about the IGP in general.
The article is talking about DirectX which is related the the IGP.

Stop wasting my time. You think they were talking about sound effects and network when talking about the IGP?

It just wasn't explicitly stated.

We're all really sorry to be cluttering up your thread on your forums, nitpicking something that is clearly not being clearly stated. I'm sure your assumptions are the the only ones valid on this topic.

 

[asdf542]

We're all really sorry to be cluttering up your thread on your forums, nitpicking something that is clearly not being clearly stated. I'm sure your assumptions are the the only ones valid on this topic.

Cluttering up a thread? Someone could post a bunch of spam links and I wouldn't give a ****. What I do give a **** about is when jabroni's like you waste my time. Tell me when you learn how to search or understand an article without me having to give you the play by play. It's not that complicated.

 

[Erasmus]

I thought I adressed that in my comment. Oh wait, yes I did.

A graphics downgrade in a spec upgrade. Seriously, there's nothing great about "at least almost as good as 2 year old tech".

It's unfortunate that you can't see the benefits of ditching really poor NVIDIA graphics for really poor Intel graphics.

If you want faster 13" graphics, wait for Ivy Bridge.

It all boils down to Apple doesn't care what you, or anyone else, want. They very rarely do. They only care about what they think most people need. And most 13" buyers need a faster CPU and some SSD storage more than they need a faster GPU.

And saying SB is almost as good as 2 year old tech is stupid, and completely irrelevant. Quad core CPUs are almost 5 years old. So if the MBP gets a quad core CPU, will you be complaining that it's 5 year old tech?

 

[PlipPlop]

how is it crap? it was designed for power efficiency and it does a good job in being low power. its still more than powerful enough to play any 1080p content,

i would say the nvidia chip in the macbooks are crap, it pretends to be dedicated but in reality its shared memory and on the northbridge.

this is what a real video card looks like

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y28/pr5owner/G53JWWEI.jpg

Midrange *

 

[tigress666]

It all boils down to Apple doesn't care what you, or anyone else, want. They very rarely do. They only care about what they think most people need. And most 13" buyers need a faster CPU and some SSD storage more than they need a faster GPU.

And yet this year they felt people wanted a better GPU but not much of an improvement in CPU.

I think some poster seemed to pinpoint it out earlier in this thread, it seems apple either improves the CPU or the GPU but you don't seem to get both in the same update. I think I'm glad that I didn't wait cause what I wanted improved most spec wise in my old Macbook was the GPU really (Though I certainly wouldn't complain about a much faster CPU).

 

[Erasmus]

And yet this year they felt people wanted a better GPU but not much of an improvement in CPU.

I think some poster seemed to pinpoint it out earlier in this thread, it seems apple either improves the CPU or the GPU but you don't seem to get both in the same update. I think I'm glad that I didn't wait cause what I wanted improved most spec wise in my old Macbook was the GPU really (Though I certainly wouldn't complain about a much faster CPU).

I think they introduced the 320M because they couldn't improve the CPU, more or less following your logic. This update, as I don't think Intel are making C2D's anymore, Apple have to move to the new CPU generation, which might mean a small decrease in GPU performance, for a small segment of their notebook line-up. Especially as the Ivy Bridge CPUs coming at the end of the year will double graphics performance.

I don't think it's really about Apple only updating the CPU or GPU at once, it's more just how things tend to work out in NVIDIA/AMD/Intel release schedules. I mean, Apple try and improve the CPU in every update, it's just that they hit a wall with the NVIDIA/Intel dispute, and couldn't improve the GPU. The 15" and 17" didn't have that problem, and I believe have always had improved CPUs in their updates. Although the GPU updates may usually coincide with the smallest CPU updates.

What I mean by "Apple doesn't care what you want" is that Apple can't cater for everyone. If they take out the optical drive and put in better hardware, people will complain. If they keep with dual core CPUs and improve the GPU, people will complain. If they put in dual SSD/HDD, better CPU, and GPU but make it 2 pounds heavier and 1cm thicker, people will complain. If they put in a quad core CPU, better GPU and go for all SSD storage, people will complain about the price. It's better to assume that you won't get what you want, as chances are you won't.

Personally, what I'm hoping for is discrete AMD GPUs of various performance levels for everything except the MacBook, quad core options on the 15" and 17", and multiple blade SSD slots. I don't care if Apple gets rid of either the HDD or ODD, as I'm happy to use externals for either. What I'm expecting is significantly less than that, so when the new range are released, I'll only be a little disappointed, instead of a lot.

EDIT: Oh, and I want it mid January in time to get the back-to-school ipod/printer special for when I start my PhD! Although I expect it will come out in late April.

 

[AidenShaw]

Apple could cater to a lot more....

What I mean by "Apple doesn't care what you want" is that Apple can't cater for everyone. ... It's better to assume that you won't get what you want, as chances are you won't.

Actually, Apple could cater to "most everyone" - their obscene profit margins and cash-on-hand figures prove that. rolleyes: at the fans who defend the margins without understanding that they simply mean that Apple toys are more expensive than they need to be.)

Apple could make a mini-tower, but it's more profitable to make an all-in-one that you have to send to the toxic waste dump if the monitor fails or if you want to upgrade CPU, disks or graphics.

Apple could make a quad core, dual spindle portable workstation, but the overlord values "thin" over "useful".

Apple could put eSATA, USB 3.0 and BD drives in their systems, but they don't.

As you say - "It's better to assume that you won't get what you want, as chances are you won't". Unless you realize that Windows 7 is pretty much at parity with Mac OSX - then you could get what you want.

 

[Bubba Satori]

Actually, Apple could cater to "most everyone" - their obscene profit margins and cash-on-hand figures prove that. rolleyes: at the fans who defend the margins without understanding that they simply mean that Apple toys are more expensive than they need to be.)

Apple could make a mini-tower, but it's more profitable to make an all-in-one that you have to send to the toxic waste dump if the monitor fails or if you want to upgrade CPU, disks or graphics.

Apple could make a quad core, dual spindle portable workstation, but the overlord values "thin" over "useful".

Apple could put eSATA, USB 3.0 and BD drives in their systems, but they don't.

As you say - "It's better to assume that you won't get what you want, as chances are you won't". Unless you realize that Windows 7 is pretty much at parity with Mac OSX - then you could get what you want.

Bingo, we have a winnah.
It's that simple folks and it's a damn shame iApple won't let
it's loyal customers configure their computers the way they want them.

I wish iApple iGizmo Inc. would spin off the after thought computer biz
and Woz would take over. He would damn sure let customers have the Macs they want.

I'd hate to be trying to sell Macs now.
"No, you can't have that.
No, you can't have that.
No, you can't have that....

Why?

Steve and and his legion of kool aid drooling zombies say you don't need it."