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^ that.

Apple is trying to make SSD's more mainstream by making it the only storage option in MBA's. That way they hope it doesn't have to take long before they can do the same for their MB's and MBP's, so they'll get even more room for bigger batteries and discrete graphics.

The previous Air's hard drive was only a 1.8" type, it's not hard to exceed the performance of that type. Seeing the price of large capacity SSDs, I'm willing to hold off another year before I dive in.
 
I think we've already had a few Page 1 threads on this. Not to mention I've posted that Xbitlabs article a few times here already. Slow news day? :rolleyes:

Keep beating that dead Core 2 horse Apple. I'll take my money elsewhere.
 
It's the battery stupid!

Maintaining the marketing hype behind current battery specs is the directive Apple engineers will follow and is not negotiable. (That and keeping things "thin" of course but that's a given).

Throw *any* new tech you can inside a macbook that adheres to these 2 mandates and even remove things if you must but diminished battery life is not an option.

If the next update is coming even as late as April, Apple has decided on macbook innards a long time ago. There're bound to be changes in tech offerings that come too late to incorporate into the current update process.

No discrete GPU for the 13" and possibly none for the 15" MBP's. I don't know where it's written that "Pro" means any other difference between models other than screen size.
 
Thanks for validating my switch to Windows 7 a few weeks ago, Apple. :)

Why are you still here? Oh, you're not sure you made the right move and really prefer Apple. Or trolling.

It's a pretty serious settlement to have Intel effectively destroy a competitor like that.

Wonder if Apple may buy NVIDIA's IP and build their own chipset? That would certainly differentiate them from the mee too pee cees.
 
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NVIDIA CEO, however, had this to reveal about Apple's business:The MCP89 is the chipset that has been used in older MacBooks as well as the new MacBook Air. Apple's use of this NVIDIA chipset limits its choice of processors to the previous-generation Core 2 Duo. This tradeoff allows Apple to incorporate the faster integrated graphics cards from NVIDIA in these low-end machines. According to NVIDIA's CEO, Apple plans on continuing to use these older chipsets for some time.

Note that high end MacBook Pros are unaffected as those machines have the luxury of incorporating both the latest Intel processors and discrete graphics cards from 3rd party manufacturers. The tradeoff primarily affects Apple's low end machines.

Either that or the MacBook Air, which doesn't get updated anywhere near as often, on average as the other 320M-wielding machines, will be around in its current form for a majority of next calendar year.

Though another thing worth noting that, based solely on the target market audience, the only machine that is in a truly bad need of the upgrade to a Core i series processor is the 13" MacBook Pro. Most Mac mini and white MacBook customers could care less whether they have a Core i3 or a Core 2 inside. Most of them don't even know what that stuff means. Though given all of that, it is possible that Apple could discontinue the 13" MacBook Pro due to the white MacBook and the 13" Air being close enough to it in features and specs. Just a thought.
 
I hope Apple stays away from AMD. Their products have been second rate since mid-2006.

What exactly is wrong with AMD CPUs?

They run very cool and don't require huge amounts of power.. Sure they aren't has fast as intel CPU's in some photoshop thing but I think you can afford 10 seconds.

AMD has been doing great things in terms of power management and are about to release the most signification update to X86 CPU's in a number of years.

Biggest issue I had with AMD CPUs (and doesn't mean new offerings would continue to have this issue) is traditionally, they built them with less overheating protection than Intel has. If a CPU fan dies on an Intel chip, the chip throttles down to a very slow processor speed, so it doesn't burn up. Most AMD CPU's I've seen just get extremely hot, until a temp. sensor on the motherboard sees the problem and powers everything off (or alternately, the processor self-destructs).

They actually fixed that issue some time ago ... about the time the fixed the cold bug as well. (allowing for liquid nitrogen cooling so they could make a world record in clock speed).
 
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Tegra sales must be bad

What he said:

- "The chipset business [has] not grown largely this year because we have not really been expanding the sales of it,"

What he meant:

- Tegra sales are slow, so we hope that killing off the discrete GPU line will force pee cee makers to use Tegra.

And when he said that Apple will continue to use the MCP89 "for some time" he could really mean almost anything. He didn't say either 'for the foreseeable future' or 'for as short a time as possible.' "For some time" could mean either or neither of those.
 
What exactly is wrong with AMD CPUs?

They run very cool and don't require huge amounts of power.. Sure they aren't has fast as intel CPU's in some photoshop thing but I think you can afford 10 seconds.

AMD has been doing great things in terms of power management and are about to release the most signification update to X86 CPU's in a number of years.

Because it'd only make too much sense. Good IGPs for the low-end, good discrete GPUs for the high-end, from Mac mini and white MacBook all the way to the Mac Pro and 17" MacBook Pro. It'd be win all around. The CPUs wouldn't be quite as rad on the high-end as Intel's, but they'd kick-ass on the low-end and ATI (AMD) graphics are always great.

There are probably a ton of contracts with Intel preventing this sort of a switch from happening.
 
Oxymoron on page 1

This tradeoff allows Apple to incorporate the faster integrated graphics cards from NVIDIA in these low-end machines.

Integrated graphics are on chips that are integrated into the motherboards, not replaceable "cards".


...more than likely they'll use a combination of the Sandy Bridge processors with AMD discrete graphics card.

Only the Mac Pro and Imac have graphics cards, the others use integrated GPUs or discrete GPU chips soldered to the motherboard.


Wonder if Apple may buy NVIDIA's IP and build their own chipset?

Nvidia's IP is worthless in this regard, since Intel has patented the interface for the current CPUs. Apple could not do what Nvidia cannot do.
 
oooohhhhhhh, interesting... so the battle with Intel caused Nvidia more damage then thought and it's possibly just decided ******* it and left the market.
So Intel are pretty much the only maker now and what about AMD's CPU's? It's a known fact isn't it that Nvidia's chipsets are much better then AMD's/ATI's?

I really hope that Apple just stick to Intel and never try to make there own CPU's and chipsets cause you can kiss that Windows compatibility goodbye if they do....
 
Nvidia's IP is worthless in this regard, since Intel has patented the interface for the current CPUs. Apple could not do what Nvidia cannot do.

I thought that only applied to the northbridge interface? eh, i stopped paying attention when I left the industry.
 
I thought Apple didn't appreciate other companies forecasting the hardware roadmap... how long before the statement gets recanted, I wonder?
 
I thought Apple didn't appreciate other companies forecasting the hardware roadmap... how long before the statement gets recanted, I wonder?
Very old news. Even older than Xbit's article in November if you go off of the MCP89 and MCP99 rumors that I picked up back in 2009.
 
Well, I guess the next set of updated 15" & 17" MacBook Pros are going to have AMD chips in them after all.

The 15" and 17" MacBook Pros are currently using Intel chipsets, only with nVidia GPUs. nVidia isn't going to stop making GPUs, only chipsets.

Of course, Apple has been known to "retaliate" against companies that leaked their plans; so they might very well dump nVidia's now-old chipsets for i3/i5+AMD GPU in the next update of everything just to spite nVidia's claim.
 
oooohhhhhhh, interesting... so the battle with Intel caused Nvidia more damage then thought and it's possibly just decided ******* it and left the market.

Yup. Pretty much.

So Intel are pretty much the only maker now and what about AMD's CPU's? It's a known fact isn't it that Nvidia's chipsets are much better then AMD's/ATI's?

NVIDIA's higher-end stuff (GTX 580) is technically better (though way more expensive), but we don't see any of that in currently shipping Macs anyway. That and the 320M is (someone please correct me if I'm wrong on this) an Apple exclusive chipset. And sure, for what it is, it's pretty great. Otherwise, the two are very much comparable. ATI's graphics cards provide pretty great bang for the buck, much like AMD's CPUs. The problem is that, most times, when Apple is using an ATI card, they are using the mid-range card and not some of their beefier products. The quad-core 27" iMacs, both of the current revision and of last, have started to leverage the mid-higher range of their offering (Radeon HD 5770 and Radeon HD 4850, respectively), but everything lower than that will seem worse by comparison because it's barely even mid-range.

I really hope that Apple just stick to Intel and never try to make there own CPU's and chipsets cause you can kiss that Windows compatibility goodbye if they do....

Wrong. Boot Camp sells them customers. If they make their own x86 processor, they won't kill Boot Camp support. Even if they were to switch to AMD's processors in any or even all of their product lines, Boot Camp wouldn't go anywhere.
 
Why are you still here? Oh, you're not sure you made the right move and really prefer Apple. Or trolling.

It's a pretty serious settlement to have Intel effectively destroy a competitor like that.

Wonder if Apple may buy NVIDIA's IP and build their own chipset? That would certainly differentiate them from the mee too pee cees.

Apple already have almost all the IP they need to build their own chipset, as demo'd by the A4. What they would need is the DMI license from Intel which I'm not sure nVidia would be allowed to sell even if they wanted.

What I'm still trying to find an answer on, Would you still need a chipset if you had SOC co-processor that handled all the IO on behave of the Main processor?

Like the Chipset that a guest OS would be presented in Virtualisation system.
 
I hope Apple stays away from AMD. Their products have been second rate since mid-2006.

uhh well not really, the 68xx series of cards are pretty good for the money
the six core Phenom cpu is the fastest cpu for the money as well, you can make a killer AMD system for less than $500
 
uhh well not really, the 68xx series of cards are pretty good for the money
the six core Phenom cpu is the fastest cpu for the money as well, you can make a killer AMD system for less than $500

Oh! Was gonna ask you. What's your favorite brand of PC desktop graphics boards (i.e. Asus, Saphire, Zotac, XFX, etc.)?
 
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