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MacBook Pro's NVIDIA Chipsets Can Support Dual GPU and 8GB RAM

Eidorian said:
More then that! They share the same heatpipe and exhaust system. Keep in mind the chipset is going to heat up as well under high CPU load anyways.
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Yep, that is exactly my point (not about the chipset though, didn't think of that). Perhaps they will be coming out with a liquid cooled model down the road, play homage to the old Powermac G5 days ?

I am sure Apple thought this through, or lets hope! ;)

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macbook?

So since the macbooks and the pros share the same chipset, can the macbooks hypothetically also support 8 gb of ram? (getting way ahead of myself seeing as its around 1200 bucks through Crucial, but just curious :rolleyes: )
 
dolphin842 said:
Hmm.... well perhaps AMD and nvidia should call a 6-month truce and work on making their GPUs cooler instead of faster :rolleyes:

The don't the iMacs have a bit more space to push air through, though? I can keep mine pretty cool if I crank the fans a bit ;).
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ATI gets the best performance per watt right now in the GPU market.

I'd call Apple and tell them to stop making their computers so thin! :p
 
Eidorian said:
Once again it's the same situation on the iMac as well.

http://www.kodawarisan.com/imac_2007_mid/imac_2007_mid_02.html
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Though arguably, the iMac has a larger case, that is easier to move air through. Also, doesn't the iMac have a Push - Pull fan system? Meaning one fan pulls in fresh air, and the other exhausts hot air?

I actually don't know, but it looks to be that way from the images in the link you provided.

::EDIT::

Nevermind, it looks like one of the fans directs air onto the opposing side of the logic board, and or the Rotating storage (would be odd if #2 was correct).

image.php
 
840quadra said:
Though arguably, the iMac has a larger case, that is easier to move air through. Also, doesn't the iMac have a Push - Pull fan system? Meaning one fan pulls in fresh air, and the other exhausts hot air?

I actually don't know, but it looks to be that way from the images in the link you provided.
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If you go to the next page you can see the CPU, hard drive, and optical drive fans in the iMac. There is a lower intake and exhaust but there are single fans for each cooling zone.

Once again all the major players are tied up on a single heatpipe and heatsink.
 
dolphin842 said:
True enough, though that doesn't prevent my X1600 from getting to 190 F at times :eek:



Hear hear... 12" PowerBook was all the thin I needed :cool:.
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I guess one nice thing about the unibody, is the fact that it's aluminum is really good at transferring heat ;) . Could be an other reason they went for solid Al on these . :confused: ;) .

Eidorian said:
If you go to the next page you can see the CPU, hard drive, and optical drive fans in the iMac. There is a lower intake and exhaust but there are single fans for each cooling zone.

Once again all the major players are tied up on a single heatpipe and heatsink.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I did that after I posted (you can call me a Noob if you like ;) . Interesting stuff. Reminds me of some of the separate zones they had in the old G5 days.


image.php
 
GeForce Boost is pretty useless if the GPUs are as unequal as the 9400 and the 9600.
 
Eidorian said:
If you go to the next page you can see the CPU, hard drive, and optical drive fans in the iMac. There is a lower intake and exhaust but there are single fans for each cooling zone.

Once again all the major players are tied up on a single heatpipe and heatsink.
Click to expand...

Alright, I guess maybe we should start making bets now as to whether or not multi-GPU utilization will be a Mac Pro-only feature :(. I suppose we'll get a better idea of the heat situation if we see the dual-GPU feature enabled in PC laptops?
 
dolphin842 said:
Alright, I guess maybe we should start making bets now as to whether or not multi-GPU utilization will be a Mac Pro-only feature :(. I suppose we'll get a better idea of the heat situation if we see the dual-GPU feature enabled in PC laptops?
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Keep in mind I haven't seen any nVidia dual processor chipsets floating around. Much less a Nehalem one...

Now if you're talking about SLI that is another story.
 
steve86 said:
ok, unless you are a NASA scientist, i really doubt that you'll be using 8 gigs of DDR3 RAM....buy hey you never know
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Even Photoshop makes sense with 8GB. If you simulate Fluids in Maya or if you simulate particles in Houdini 4GB is not enough!
 
Eidorian said:
Keep in mind I haven't seen any nVidia dual processor chipsets floating around. Much less a Nehalem one...
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Sorry... what I intended to say was, if some PC laptops have the same integrated/dedicated GPU config as the MacBook Pro, and if the Windows/Linux drivers allowed them to run simultaneously, we'd have some idea as to how much additional heat would go into the mix.
 
Gaming on macbook pro

I am not a mac user... YET. Still waiting for my new macbook pro to come. Question: How big would be the benefit of having dual GPU on a mac? There aren't many mac games around, are there? Or will it be possible to use the dual GPU on Windows (Bootcamp).?

Can't wait to get my MBP!

Dirk Breeuwer
 
DirkBreeuwer said:
I am not a mac user... YET. Still waiting for my new macbook pro to come. Question: How big would be the benefit of having dual GPU on a mac? There aren't many mac games around, are there? Or will it be possible to use the dual GPU on Windows (Bootcamp).?

Can't wait to get my MBP!

Dirk Breeuwer
Click to expand...

While the chipset allows both GPUs to run at the same time, the big difference between the integrated GPU and the discrete GPU are such that they couldn't provide a benefit if they worked together. The potentially big advantage is that, in the next version of OS X, you might be able to offset computational duties (video encoding, etc) to the GPUs for big speed gains. As the last few posts have pointed out, though, heat concerns may prevent the dual-GPU feature from actually being enabled on Mac laptops. Time will tell.
 
If the dual GPU configuration is implemented, I guess the MBP would have GF9800-like performance! :D

Next MacBook Pro update should exploit that!
 
After three pages and nobody bringing this up I'm sure I'm wrong, but I thought the Intel chips themselves were restricted to 4GB RAM. I don't know how that works, but that's what I had heard somewhere. Can anybody say whether there could be a limitation in any of the other hardware that would restrict the MBP to 4GB?
 
Jurwin said:
Lol, there are sli (two gpu) windows laptops available for a couple of years already. Not to mention discrete + dedicated GPU were also available for some time on windows laptops bro.
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Yes, and had Apple implemented it the way the other folks did, everyone would be screaming "revolt" from the intense heat and non-existent battery life that would occur from it.

You didn't hear much about the other SLI notebooks because they were too expensive and they were huge in size and weight. It was more of a concept design at the time.

Apple on the other hand is preparing theirs for the masses. I for one am quite happy with what they are doing.

And yet certain people will continue to whine about something....
 
juststranded said:
After three pages and nobody bringing this up I'm sure I'm wrong, but I thought the Intel chips themselves were restricted to 4GB RAM. I don't know how that works, but that's what I had heard somewhere. Can anybody say whether there could be a limitation in any of the other hardware that would restrict the MBP to 4GB?
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Core 2 Duo is 64-bit.
 
juststranded said:
After three pages and nobody bringing this up I'm sure I'm wrong, but I thought the Intel chips themselves were restricted to 4GB RAM. I don't know how that works, but that's what I had heard somewhere. Can anybody say whether there could be a limitation in any of the other hardware that would restrict the MBP to 4GB?
Click to expand...

The 64Bit nature of the hardware allows it to see 8Gb of RAM. The only limiting factors are the processor, the OS, and the chipset(front-side bus). All Core 2 Duos are 64bit. Intel's Santa Rosa, Penryn, and now NVIDIA'S 9400M are all 64Bit. OS X has been able to address 8Gb of ram for a while now, since they converted it to 64Bit.
 
Aranince said:
The 64Bit nature of the hardware allows it to see 8Gb of RAM. The only limiting factors are the processor, the OS, and the chipset(front-side bus). All Core 2 Duos are 64bit. Intel's Santa Rosa, Penryn, and now NVIDIA'S 9400M are all 64Bit. OS X has been able to address 8Gb of ram for a while now, since they converted it to 64Bit.
Click to expand...

Ah, thanks for explaining. That makes perfect sense.
 
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