MBP Integrated Video and Apple Cinema display?

[icechunk]

Is there any drawback when powering a Cinema display with a MBP that has the integrated graphics card. Is it better to get the MBP with the dedicated card? Does it matter at all?

Thanks

 

[entatlrg]

shouldn't matter

 

[Azrel]

I power a 23" ACD with my Alu. MB, same graphics chip as your MBP I believe. No problems, powered WoW WoTLK full details at max res for a while when I played... full HD video... good graphics chip, certainly powerful enough for more than the basics.

 

[iSavant]

No drawbacks at all using the integrated 9400M.

The 24 " ACD is a wonderful match for all of the current and just EOL'd aluminum unibody portables. My family has two of the displays.

 

[Nocturnal22]

It should handle it easily.

 

[morrisman1]

the 9400m is a great chip for the majority of users. Only time it may struggle in normal use (excluding latest 3d games) is when you have a fancy screensaver on both the external monitor and and the laptop monitor, it can lag slightly in that case

 

[Azrel]

Never had issues with a screen saver, the 9400m is very capable on a dual screen setup. I use it as my main machine as I see not real benefit of using a discrete graphics chip. All my photography I do using this machine with Aperture in dual screen mode, very fast.

Snow Leopard also supports the 9400m really well, so things like OpenCL will actually improve the performance of the machine.

 

[maflynn]

I don't have the ACD but rather a 24" dell monitor, but I frequently run my MBP on the 9400M GPU and never had a problem. I prefer the integrated GPU because it seems to run a bit cooler then the 9600M and I find that I don't need the power of the 9600M too often.

Off topic, I probably could have gotten away with a MacBook last October because of that but apple never loaded Aperture on the MBs so I couldn't see how well it ran on the 9400. I guess they wanted me to spend 2500 instead of 1500