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nVidia 320m VS nVidia 9400m

seong

seong

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 11, 2010
1,031
28
So, I bought myself new Macbook Pro exactly 21 days ago, and was disappointed to find out that they refreshed it today.
However, I am heading to Apple Store Friday afternoon to find out what I can do to get that refreshed one. (I waited 7 month, until the last day of the presentation)
So, to people with 320m graphics, are there any big difference? Does the battery lasts longer?
 
Assuming you're talking about the base 13" compared to the 2009 base 13", the battery lasts 3 hours longer than before, the processor got a slight bump, it got 2 more GB's of RAM, 160 GB more hard drive space, and a better GPU.

There aren't any benchmarks out yet for the 320m, but it is better than the 9400m: http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/performance.html

Scroll down to the "13-inch MacBook Pro Graphics Performance" chart.
 
I know this isn't exactly a benchmark but I thought it'd be worth sharing.

I took my pre-unibody 2.5ghz MBP in to an apple store today, put it in target mode, plugged it in to a 2.66 13" MacBook "Pro" display machine then started up Warcraft. I wasn't expecting much so I set all the video settings to about the middle but found that as I flew in to a major city the frame rate was 65+ fps. So I turned everything all the way up, switched on all the options, restarted the game and ran around the busiest area I could find. At worst it got as low as 12fps but typically was around 16-18 fps in the busiest parts of the city and 30-65 in less populated areas.

The i5 and i7 machines will beat it for sure but it's far far better than I expected, at least at this.
 
So in game terms, is that busiest area (I play Warcraft as well) Dalaran?
And the less populated areas, is it in Northrend (Icecrown, ...) or Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor?

Since the difference between Northrend and the old kingdoms are huge at my laptop.


If you want to compare to an older laptop (my MacBook: 2.1 GHz, Intel x3100, 2 GB); just to know that difference:
- Busiest area in the game (Dalaran): between 1 and 8 fps (say 1-3 fps if all objects and players are "loading", then 5-8 fps)
- Less busy area, still many objects (Icecrown, Zul'Drak): between 10 and 17 fps
- Plain landscape, little objects (Westfall): between 25 and 35 fps

I have all settings at minimum, except for View Distance (3rd tick from left) and Enviroment Detail (to see the objects from further away) (middle).
 
Ah yes, I actually meant more and less busy parts of the city (the city indeed being Dalaran). All those numbers were just in Dalaran. I didn't want to hang around too long for more testing since it looked pretty shady having a firewire cable hooked up to my computer from theirs.

Jumping around in front of the inn where a lot of players congregate was where frame rate was in that 16-18 range. But in the tunnels leading to the underbelly, where it didn't have to draw a lot of other characters, it would get up around 65.
 
If the 320m was custom made for Apple, does that mean there are no windows drivers for it yet? I boot my 2009 13" MBP into Win7 to play San Andreas. Graphics are pretty good but it could use a little boost in frame rate. I probably won't get a new machine until fall though.
 
l008com said:
If the 320m was custom made for Apple, does that mean there are no windows drivers for it yet? I boot my 2009 13" MBP into Win7 to play San Andreas. Graphics are pretty good but it could use a little boost in frame rate. I probably won't get a new machine until fall though.
Click to expand...

Apple probably was so kind to make drivers for Windows, otherwise how could you use Boot Camp?
 
NVidia's driver releases generally cover a range of products, not specific models. Wouldn't the usual Laptopvideo2go stuff work with the 320m as well?
 
apdg said:
I know this isn't exactly a benchmark but I thought it'd be worth sharing.

I took my pre-unibody 2.5ghz MBP in to an apple store today, put it in target mode, plugged it in to a 2.66 13" MacBook "Pro" display machine then started up Warcraft. I wasn't expecting much so I set all the video settings to about the middle but found that as I flew in to a major city the frame rate was 65+ fps. So I turned everything all the way up, switched on all the options, restarted the game and ran around the busiest area I could find. At worst it got as low as 12fps but typically was around 16-18 fps in the busiest parts of the city and 30-65 in less populated areas.

The i5 and i7 machines will beat it for sure but it's far far better than I expected, at least at this.
Click to expand...

Did you boot the 2.66 MBP from your target disk? Or did you just run Warcraft off it?
 
Here are my 3D Mark 06 scores for both the mid-2009 2.53 GHz MBP 13" and 2010 2.66 GHz models in Windows 7 x64 Boot Camp, both overclocked:
 

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wilycoder said:
His 9400m machine did the test with CPU at 2850Mhz and the 320m machine was running the CPU at 2655Mhz...
Click to expand...

Right on. With NVidia System Tools V6.06 I could raise the CPU FSB to 300 MHz on the mid-2009 model, but haven't found a way to do so on the MCP 89 chipset. If anyone has a clue I'd be grateful...
 
Oh, didn't notice that. Nice oc :) It's a shame there is no utilities to do that on OSX.
 
seong said:
So, I bought myself new Macbook Pro exactly 21 days ago, and was disappointed to find out that they refreshed it today.
However, I am heading to Apple Store Friday afternoon to find out what I can do to get that refreshed one. (I waited 7 month, until the last day of the presentation)
So, to people with 320m graphics, are there any big difference? Does the battery lasts longer?
Click to expand...

Simple.

The 9400M has 16 shaders
The 320M has 32 shaders... twice as much

The 320M will win, by far.
 
Hi,

Has someone play Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 in the new MBP13 2010?

How does it works? Can it run it in maximum settings?
 
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