Macbook Pro GPU refresh overdue

[rmbrown09]

Apple has little incentive to cater to markets that require heavy 3D processing power, which are pretty much gamers and people who do 3D models. Gaming is not a good market since there are fewer PC games released each year. OSX has very few games available so people have to use Bootcamp with Windows.

I don't know about you, but the hassle of booting into a different OS just to play games is not something I like doing. I'd rather have a great desktop system or a console for gaming (got both actually) because both will be far more powerful than what you can cram into a laptop.

For most things, the Macbooks are more than powerful enough. The next update will most likely bring a slightly more powerful GPU but don't expect to see any of the top end ones they put into machines that have 1 hour of battery life and **** like that.

Next year I will be attending my first year of university. Therefore I am going to need a laptop, no question. However, currently i have the choice of my 12 pound 17 inch beast with dual 280m GTX's, a Extreme Quad 3.53 Ghz, and 8 GB DDR3. Awesome for absolutely anything, except battery life or mobility. (the one thing college wants)

I love to game, CSS, Gears of war pc, good stuff. I also use After Effects quite often because of my job. I dont need a gaming beast, but at least a gaming kitten?? a 240m GS perhaps? not all that much. Otherwise I can't bring myself to switch.

 

[seanconn]

The have a console and a laptop argument would be solid if I had bought an Xbox 360... but I don't like paying 60 dollars for live annually.

There are tons and tons of people out there who play games on laptops.
If taking out the optical drive would give better performance then I would be all for that. the $99 mb air superdrive is more than what I need. and the ability to use any computers opitical drive (yes, even a windows PC) basically removes the need for an optical drive today.


but regardless, I think Apple will keep the opitical drive in the pro. making the MBP 1080p would be needless imo for the 15"... completely unnecessary.

If your concerened about playing games in 1080p you are going to be hooking up your MBP to an external source anyways! which is larger than 32"... as otherwise you basically need super robotic eyes to benefit from the higher screen resolution.

I'll state my previous opinion again. the current set up with the 9400m+9600 could be supplemented to be a 9400m+9800GTM or something. and you could set up your power preferences for the 9800GTM to only run when hooked up to a power source... if you chose to do so. (this is what I would do, as the only game I would really be playing on my laptop would be Age of Empires 3, of Fallout 1 or 2... all of which run on OSX and don't require more GPU power than the 9400m... plus you could still play even newer fps games if you really wanted just using the 9400m, but it would require a low res. and low settings.... but seriously, who REALLLY needs to play Halo or Call of Duty on their MBP while on battery life.... and if you are, i hope you are using a gamepad!

The only time I would use my old mbp to play newer games, was when it basically took place of my non existent xbox to play microsoft exlusive games, on my HDTV. (I'd love to see hdmi added.. but know im only dreaming)

I assume im not the only person who uses a mbp play Microsoft exclusive games. If I'm buying a brand new $2200 laptop why shouldn't it be able (for at least an optional price) to run Mass Effect 2 or other new games on higher settings. I'm not asking for some retarded 280m GTX's SLI set up. but something that is an actual upfdrade from the 256-512 128 bit ddr3 cards they have had in the things since 2005, yes 2005! christ, even dual 9600GTM's would be a happy compromise. but a 9800GTM (which i don't even think is a card.. but a card with 512 256bit DDR3 memory) + the 9400 or something comparable from ATI if they happen to readopt ATI cards. my late 2006 mbp had a x1600 with 256 DDR3 memory.. not too much different from the 8600 or 9600 GT with 256 DDR3.


It's 2010, and all im asking for is a meaningful GPU upgrade, not something unrealistic.... ooorrrrr ?

 

[seanconn]

the best thing would be if Apple started to use AMD CPU's that have a gpu built into them, than have an ATI card coupled with that, that run in cross fire. eliminates the need of the on board card altogether...


AMD won't happen, but who's to say Intel won't have something in the i7 or something that does this CPU+gpu thing.

 

[rmbrown09]

9800m GTS is not bad, had that in my old 7805u.

the higher resolution would be useless on the laptop itself, but great for plugging into your tv, projector, etc.

i have a feeling well be seeing either ATI 5 series (5830) or a Nvidia 2xx series.

A lot of gamers are starting to consider mac because of applications such as crossover games. I can play Css, Tf2, Garys mod, and more while still in OSX. Soon im sure many more popular and upcoming games will be supported too.

Just hope the new hardware can run them. Otherwise there is no point in porting Crysis, Dirt 2, Splinter Cell Conviction (be it a full port or crossover)

 

[old-wiz]

Comments on the web about Intel's integrated GPU in Arrandale point to it being more for video playback than games. This would make sense if Apple wants to emphasize video playback so they can sell more iTunes movies.

 

[aznguyen316]

with i5 and a 58xx ATI card, I'll come back to Mac. Other than that, I'm looking at the M11x.. =)

 

[Hydroxs]

If your concerened about playing games in 1080p you are going to be hooking up your MBP to an external source anyways! which is larger than 32"... as otherwise you basically need super robotic eyes to benefit from the higher screen resolution.

You can play at 1080p with a 23in screen.

I assume im not the only person who uses a mbp play Microsoft exclusive games. If I'm buying a brand new $2200 laptop why shouldn't it be able (for at least an optional price) to run Mass Effect 2 or other new games on higher settings. I'm not asking for some retarded 280m GTX's SLI set up. but something that is an actual upfdrade from the 256-512 128 bit ddr3 cards they have had in the things since 2005, yes 2005! christ, even dual 9600GTM's would be a happy compromise. but a 9800GTM (which i don't even think is a card.. but a card with 512 256bit DDR3 memory) + the 9400 or something comparable from ATI if they happen to readopt ATI cards. my late 2006 mbp had a x1600 with 256 DDR3 memory.. not too much different from the 8600 or 9600 GT with 256 DDR3.

If you know that you are buying a notebook that can't runs games that you want to play, why would you pay $2200 for it? Macs are not made for gaming. You can't have a laptop that is 1in thick equip with a 9800m GT that runs cool and have good battery life. The current mbp already runs at 80+ C and adding a power hungry, heat producing gpu won't help. I don't see "gamers" anytime soon switching to buy a mbp because a few games that have been out for months are being ported to osx. It is best to buy a cheap mb or mbp and spend the rest for your gaming machine.

 

[rmbrown09]

Hydro your a little off bro.

Hp Envy 15
Same Form Factor.
ATI 5830 1 GB
i7 Processor
and the 7 1/2 hour battery.
OsX is much more power conservative than 7. so if an HP can do it, so can a macbook.

And yes the envy doesn't have an optical drive but i think 90% of users would trade and optical drive for some real horsepower.

 

[Hydroxs]

Hydro your a little off bro.

Hp Envy 15
Same Form Factor.
ATI 5830 1 GB
i7 Processor
and the 7 1/2 hour battery.
OsX is much more power conservative than 7. so if an HP can do it, so can a macbook.

And yes the envy doesn't have an optical drive but i think 90% of users would trade and optical drive for some real horsepower.

I said a 9800m GT and not the ATi 5830. Can apple use an ATi gpu when the mbp uses a nvidia chipset?

 

[rmbrown09]

I said a 9800m GT and not the ATi 5830. Can apple use an ATi gpu when the mbp uses a nvidia chipset?

I was merely pointing out that a half inch 15 inch laptop can handle a hot GPU, (and processor) if designed correctly. the 5830 should be hotter than a 9800m gt, so even more of a hats off to HP.

Chipset? all they need to do is change the motherboard (if that, it may already support ATI, most motherboards today support both, and im sure they will engineer a new one anyways because of the i5 that it will most likely have)

 

[cathyy]

I said a 9800m GT and not the ATi 5830. Can apple use an ATi gpu when the mbp uses a nvidia chipset?

Why the heck would you want to use a 9800M GT? It's based on the G92 core which is over 2 years old by now. The ATI 5830 is is pretty much the same speed as the 9800M GT, yet it's 40nm, supports DX11, uses slightly more than a third of the power the 9800M GT requires. (24w vs 65w)

Even if the ION platform doesn't support ATI cards, why would it make a difference? Just dump the platform. Nvidia isn't allowed to make chipsets for Arrandale anyway, so there is really no point to keep using the ION platform.

The HP Envy 15 is only 1cm thicker than the MBP, yet it's able to fit both a Quad Core i7 mobile processor and an ATI 5830. (it's also 150 grams lighter) I'd be very disappointed in Apple if they didn't manage to fit either a Quad i7 or a high end ATI card into their new lineups.

 

[seanconn]

You can play at 1080p with a 23in screen.



If you know that you are buying a notebook that can't runs games that you want to play, why would you pay $2200 for it? "Macs are not made for gaming." You can't have a laptop that is 1in thick equip with a 9800m GT that runs cool and have good battery life. The current mbp already runs at 80+ C and adding a power hungry, heat producing gpu won't help. I don't see "gamers" anytime soon switching to buy a mbp because a few games that have been out for months are being ported to osx. It is best to buy a cheap mb or mbp and spend the rest for your gaming machine.

I don't want to sink $600-900 dollars into a machine that will lose 1/2 of its value in 6 months. I want to buy the same 15" mbp I had last time, or the 17" this time around. sell it in 2 years, and buy the next new one.
"Macs are not made for gaming."

well that's certainly what Apple is promoting, at all.

Gaming at 1080p on a 23" screen, instead of say 1680X1050, is retarded (on a MBP) as you are loosing a drastic amount of FPS, in almost every single game you throw at it. When I hooked up my mbp to my 720p tv, and ran games at its native resolution, (like BioShock, Halo 2) it looked just as good as my PS3.

Say you have a 1080P TV, I'd still play it at 1680x1050, as again the benefit is just simply not there for 95% of current games on windows. I don't see this fact really changing much, even if they did do a major gpu upgrade.

Have you not been keeping up on apple news??? .... Apple just scooped up the head of strategy from the Xbox team. They want to play too!

http://www.destructoid.com/apple-hires-xbox-senior-director-of-strategy-130864.phtml

Apple is going at ALL corners of the gaming market right now. harder in some areas than others.. like iPhone&iPod touch... Apple is definitely making a dent in the handheld market.. taking away casual customers, and capitalizing on people who would never buy a handheld, but will definitely spend 10-20 dollars here and there for games on the iPhone. let alone the online gaming capabilities we will see with the iPhone in the future.

same with the mac, look at the iMac. virtually every model with a decent gpu can run any current game beautifully. let alone something like the mac mini, something you can have hooked up to your TV with a controller for around 500 if your crafty enough! It truly does do EVERYTHING.. unlike the PS3 or 360 for the more casual gamer... while still being leaps and bounds ahead of use value compared to the wii! (well other then playing the very few kickass nintendo games) lol. you can even run Cod 4 (mac osx natively)
and MW2 (bootcamp and bit lower fps) on the mac mini, on medium settings, pretty decent if you ask me!

maybe take a look at this page on the apple site.

mbp description:


http://www.apple.com/games/hardware/
"Road Warriors
Take the awesome power of a desktop and transform it into a sleek one inch dream. Mega-wide screen, super fast, intense graphics — enter the MacBook Pro. Whether you are a professional on the road, die-hard gamer or just looking for the best notebook available, this is the mobile solution for you (and it includes Front Row theater software)."

I guess an ATI chip isn't really all that unlikely... they are in every other mac model... just not the macbooks, lol.


but comparing the 9800GTM to the ATI 5830 they would be fools not to adopt the 5830, (im reeeallllly hoping for this... i'd order as soon as the store is back up lol )

and I rreeeeallly don't see apple adopting to the nvidia200m series. power consumption (even though I think that is a moot issue with the monster batteries on the mbp's now, AND more importantly the discrete graphics option to conserve more battery life!!!) but it would also be a lot more expensive to produce. especially if they do switch over to ATI cards lol.

 

[asears08]

As a person who likes to play games but is leaning towards an MacBook Pro for my next computer, I will definitely say that gaming is not on my list of reasons why I want to buy a Mac.

The one thing I will agree with though is that for 3k it should have the specs to match the price. But that has always been a thing with apple. Release a product and sell it for the same price until they upgrade. Buy the old model on a Tuesday for 2.5k, and on Wednesday they announce the beefier new model for the same price.

My main concerns are that it has enough power for photo and video editing. Gaming on my computer is no longer a big concern, especially since I own a PS3 and 360.

 

[kasakka]

Next year I will be attending my first year of university. Therefore I am going to need a laptop, no question. However, currently i have the choice of my 12 pound 17 inch beast with dual 280m GTX's, a Extreme Quad 3.53 Ghz, and 8 GB DDR3. Awesome for absolutely anything, except battery life or mobility. (the one thing college wants)

I love to game, CSS, Gears of war pc, good stuff. I also use After Effects quite often because of my job. I dont need a gaming beast, but at least a gaming kitten?? a 240m GS perhaps? not all that much. Otherwise I can't bring myself to switch.

Been in the same situation. I got myself the MBP 13" because I wanted portability and OSX but didn't want to pay for things I don't need - namely bigger size and faster graphics card when I have a great desktop PC for that. I use Adobe software at work and it handles that just fine.

 

[cluthz]

The HP Envy 15 is only 1cm thicker than the MBP, yet it's able to fit both a Quad Core i7 mobile processor and an ATI 5830. (it's also 150 grams lighter) I'd be very disappointed in Apple if they didn't manage to fit either a Quad i7 or a high end ATI card into their new lineups.

Only 1 cm thicker??? That's a lot thicker. Going from 2.4 cm to 3.4 cm is almost 50% thicker..
I don't think that the envy is that thick.

 

[MythicFrost]

Is it too much to ask for a 4850M 512MB in the low/med end MBPs and 5850 in the high end MBP?
Which processors are the Arrandale? is it the Core i3M? Dual Core w/ HT?

 

[mgacam2]

The Envy is actually 1 inch thick just like the macbook pro and gains 1 cm when adding the extended 9 cell battery which apparently will give it 18.75 hours of battery life. Pretty cool if you ask me. I actually almost caved and bought an envy. I'm hoping apple pulls through for me though because after OSX i'll never go back to windows

 

[cluthz]

Is it too much to ask for a 4850M 512MB in the low/med end MBPs and 5850 in the high end MBP?
Which processors are the Arrandale? is it the Core i3M? Dual Core w/ HT?

4850M is ~50w, which is horrible when it comes to performance vs power consumption. It's not a good notebook card. It's also based on old 55nm technology versus 40 nm on the 58xx series.

5850M is 39watt, which is still too much for a MBP, unless apple have secret trick

5830M is 24w, probably as fast as the 4850M, but uses half the power.
I really hope this will be the next card in the MBP, since it is a prefect combination of power and performance.

If Apple decides to play cheap ass, they'll put in the 5770M which is slower than the 5830M and uses more power too. The 5770M is a crap card with high power consumption and mediocre performance.

 

[rmbrown09]

a 5 series ati is a must

or a 2 series nvidia.

otherwise it will be a waste of refresh.

that and a i5 minimum.

 

[Hydroxs]

Why the heck would you want to use a 9800M GT? It's based on the G92 core which is over 2 years old by now. The ATI 5830 is is pretty much the same speed as the 9800M GT, yet it's 40nm, supports DX11, uses slightly more than a third of the power the 9800M GT requires. (24w vs 65w)

Even if the ION platform doesn't support ATI cards, why would it make a difference? Just dump the platform. Nvidia isn't allowed to make chipsets for Arrandale anyway, so there is really no point to keep using the ION platform.

The HP Envy 15 is only 1cm thicker than the MBP, yet it's able to fit both a Quad Core i7 mobile processor and an ATI 5830. (it's also 150 grams lighter) I'd be very disappointed in Apple if they didn't manage to fit either a Quad i7 or a high end ATI card into their new lineups.

I only used the 9800m GT as an example because sean used it in his post. The 5830 would be a more logical choice since every mbp gpu update has been middle class (x1600 --> 8600m GT --> 9600m GT). Yes you can play most of the games out there today on the mbp. The only draw back is that you will have to lower the settings in order to achieve a desire frame rate. I game with an external monitor and I have to lower the resolution and settings down to 1440x900 to keep a playable frame rate. Apple's description of the mbp as a "road warrior" for die-hard gamers is stretching the truth a bit lol.

 

[rmbrown09]

I only used the 9800m GT as an example because sean used it in his post. The 5830 would be a more logical choice since every mbp gpu update has been middle class (x1600 --> 8600m GT --> 9600m GT). Yes you can play most of the games out there today on the mbp. The only draw back is that you will have to lower the settings in order to achieve a desire frame rate. I game with an external monitor and I have to lower the resolution and settings down to 1440x900 to keep a playable frame rate. Apple's description of the mbp as a "road warrior" for die-hard gamers is stretching the truth a bit lol.

Especially when the most "Die Hard" Game you can run completely native is COD 4.

Although with crossover you can get away with near native on many popular games. If I were apple I would invest some serious money on making a pro caliber program of their own that runs pc gamery on the Os X side. Parallels doesn't cut it and neither does VM. Crossover only supports slightly older games and valve games. I assume by the time we hit Parallels 8 or 9 we have near native speed with everything, but that could take years and years.

Dear Apple, please steal crossover games idea and make it a complete program. Thanks, the gaming world.

Guarantee that would be the best selling mac program inside of 6 months haha.

Mac = You guys have viruses

Pc = you guys can't game

At least the mac problem is fixable, though the pc problem is bound to come to mac sooner or later.

 

[Bosman]

Especially when the most "Die Hard" Game you can run completely native is COD 4.

Although with crossover you can get away with near native on many popular games. If I were apple I would invest some serious money on making a pro caliber program of their own that runs pc gamery on the Os X side. Parallels doesn't cut it and neither does VM. Crossover only supports slightly older games and valve games. I assume by the time we hit Parallels 8 or 9 we have near native speed with everything, but that could take years and years.

Dear Apple, please steal crossover games idea and make it a complete program. Thanks, the gaming world.

Guarantee that would be the best selling mac program inside of 6 months haha.

Mac = You guys have viruses

Pc = you guys can't game

At least the mac problem is fixable, though the pc problem is bound to come to mac sooner or later.

What parallels version do you have? I have desktop 5 and it is fast as h!

 

[rmbrown09]

What parallels version do you have? I have desktop 5 and it is fast as h!

5 As well. It does fine for some older games, mainly 2d and the early 3d stuff. But if you try Gears of War, Css, Half Life or anything intensive made in the last 5 years, it gets choppy. Choppy because Parallels is trying to emulate a whole computer, crossover games just emulates Dx whatever and hardware, not an OS or background programs.

 

[ryannazaretian]

Everyone saying that the current MacBook Pro's are too thin to hold the Core i7 or beefier GPU, please think about this...

Why can't Apple make a new line of notebooks that focus more on powerful computing? Why can't Apple make a 2 or 3" thick notebook or one that weights 12lbs for those looking for something powerful? I'm not saying destroy the current 1" design, but just add a different model. Take the old PowerBook name and apply it again. I don't see anything wrong with this. Apple is becoming big, and has a chance to become bigger if it really offers something astounding.

 

[cathyy]

Only 1 cm thicker??? That's a lot thicker. Going from 2.4 cm to 3.4 cm is almost 50% thicker..
I don't think that the envy is that thick.

My bad, 1 mm thicker.