Ivy Bridge to Bring Triple Display Support to MacBook Air

[Menneisyys2]

Newer GPU, older GPU... really guys, my 1996 bought Matrox Millennium II with 4 MB of WRAM could power a 1600x1200 monitor with ease.

...in 2D and definitely not 3D... for some actual FPS values (pretty pathetic ones...) in 3D games, an excerpt from http://active-hardware.com/english/reviews/video/mill2.htm :

So, in order to get a good idea about how was performing the Mill II under the DOS mode when used to play games I used the good old Quake 1.06 to measure it frame rate per second because FPS is one of the most important rating for a graphic card when playing games.

I must admit immediately that I have been very deceived ! As a fact the Mill II doesn't perform any better than the old Mill 1 ! However, we must take into account that none of these cards is really supporting 3D other than for CAD applications ! So, it is not a great surprise to lear that the Mill II couldn't make any better than the Mill 1 and the results were about 35fps for the 320 X 200 mode, and 13.4fps for the 640 X 480 mode. The only place where the Mill II did a better job than the Mill I was under the 800 X 600 resolution mode because the Mill 1 has only 4mb of memory installed while then Mill II that I was using was equipped with 8mb of memory so this is why this mode could only be supported by the Mill II.

 

[KnightWRX]

...in 2D and definitely not 3D... for some actual FPS values (pretty pathetic ones...) in 3D games..

Yeah, in 2D. Really, nice of you Menneisyys2 to research how a pre-3Dfx era GPU performed in 3D gaming (obviously, poorly as 3D acceleration was not on the map yet, we were still talking about 3D decelerators back then), but it was quite useless and not at all related to what we were talking about. No one was talking about powering a TB for 3D gaming from an Air. The initial comment that spawned all of this was about a single TB display :

Honestly the air barely manages to drive a TB display, I don't even want to imagine two of them... What a torture.

If you're going to reply to try to prove something, stick to the actual topic next time. Fact is, my Matrox Millennium II with 4 MB WRAM could push out 1600x1200 pixels at 60hz. I really doubt that 15 years later, a GPU only barely manages to drive a 2560x1440 display or 2 with ease...

 

[Akack]

Can't wait until to see what Ivy Bridge brings to the MBA.

 

[LarryC]

Really? Just for the Air, eh? Huh, I wonder why this is just for/about the MacBook Air .

 

[Titanium81]

Damnit! I was hoping for support for this...Image

Those should all be Apple 30" Cinema Displays!

 

[pcd109]

end of intel mba

Anyone bothered to read the news? At the end of the article it clearly states that Intel will no longer produce ultra low voltage cpu's after this release..... So it will be the final Intel mba. The next one will be AMD fusion or A6/7. So, after all, Apple will start using AMD.

 

[KnightWRX]

Really? Just for the Air, eh? Huh, I wonder why this is just for/about the MacBook Air .

Because just the MacBook Air currently uses the lesser Thunderbolt chip that only supports 1 DP signal instead of 2. The MBPs, iMac and Mac Mini all use a TB processor with 2 ports that can provide 2 individual DP signals.

This is why this article about Ivy Bridge bringing the same level of Thunderbolt to every Mac is only about the MacBook Air, since it's the only one getting an upgrade.

 

[aggri1]

Hmm, I've not had good experience with the Intel integrated HD3000 graphics.

My gf's MacBook Pro (2011) freezes when the automatic switching is on. If I open GFXstatus (is that how it's spellt? Not at that computer now), and set it to Discrete graphics only, no freezes and everything works. Set to Intel and within a few seconds, BAM, the system _almost_ locks up. Music keeps playing and so forth, but it's totally unresponsive. Can't even bring up the Restart dialog. I also got a weird error upon startup in Verbose mode, something about SNB framebuffer not doing something, unload. I saw that on the 'net in relation to ... Intel HD graphics. It's started doing this recently, but ever since she's had it, it has occasionally crashed, sometimes with lots of crazy lines and colours on the screen.

Stupid intel graphics.

[I also get a bad sad-Mac chime (and black screen) upon restart every time I try to install some firmware update (can't remember which). Then the next time it restarts (SWUpdate says the firmware update is not installed).]

Sorry for the off-topic post. I guess I hope that the daft integrated graphics get better...

 

[Sackvillenb]

Well this is super cool, and extremely useful. Nuff said.

 

[macintoshi]

Question

What the main difference in improvement between Sandy-Bridge-Mobile and Ivy-Bridge-Mobile and Hashwell-Bridge-Mobile...

Or a better question is: Were is the difference very huge, and were is it less...

Thz

 

[Naranek]

More powerful machines such as the larger MacBook Pro models can currently drive two external displays in addition to the internal one due to their inclusion of discrete graphics chips paired with the Sandy Bridge platform.

This suggests I can connect two displays to a current MBP, but with only one TB/DP, does anyone know how?

 

[mac26]

Anyone bothered to read the news? At the end of the article it clearly states that Intel will no longer produce ultra low voltage cpu's after this release..... So it will be the final Intel mba. The next one will be AMD fusion or A6/7. So, after all, Apple will start using AMD.

It isn't stated in this article at all, and why would Intel stop making ULV processors when they heavily promoted ultra books at CES, and after all the MBA is "the future of the notebook"