NVIDIA Introduces Desktop Chipset for Intel Processors

[sbarton]

Not sure i understand the purpose of the Nvidia thing. Yeah so they get better graphics for the Macbook that now makes playing many games bearible. But seems like they could have just included any number of 3D chips for the same amount of money they jacked up the price by.

Secondly, home systems need to be able to handle 3d games, period. Don't let Apple fool you that proper 3D chipsets are now somehow "optional" or mostly unecessary. Even though these Nvida chips are 5x faster than the GMA3xxx, these chips are still going to be a dissapointment for desktop systems playing 3D games, even more so than the lackluster options on the current iMac line (save towards the top end with the 8600 chips).

Now, there will be a dozen posts after this one that cry "Your're a gamer!" "go buy a PC if you want to play games". Ok, fair enough. I just think a Home computer should cover all the bases, and in my book that includes playing most of the 3D games that are availible for the platform at the time of release, at mid - high settings.

Graphics subsystems is one of the murky areas that Apple milks it customers to pay for investments they make in other areas of the system. And you know what? Thats perfectly O.K in my book if they offer reasonable alternatives for those of us not satisfied with the current low-end / high-end, take it or leave it scenario.

 

[Shanpdx]

what 65W desktop CPUs intel offers now?

but nVidia announced this chipset before apple announcing iMac (that itself speaks for itself, it may not be adopted)

it will be cool, iMac comes with QUAD CORE desktop CPUs, they are cheaper compared to mobile CPUs not the high ends though ($999 and up)

but it is not happening, this topic beaten to death many times ...

 

[Raptura]

I would love to see GeForce 200s in the high end iMacs and the Mac Pros.

 

[plokoonpma]

who knows

More likely the Mac Mini will get the same chip as the MacBook, given that Apple don't use Desktop chips in any of their machines.

Not sure about that one, since this chip is very small compared to the size of card Apple has been using. Nvidia is offering something that is pretty small compared to the cards Apple was avoiding to use on the 20" iMacs and now could prove to be more easy to use them and provide an entire line powered by Nvidia.

We still could see an entry model with a 9400, the mid 20" with 9400 + 9600 and on the 24 a 9400 + 9800.
Looking it at this way it make sense, but who knows what Apple will deliver at the end. Will be fun to wait and see.

 

[budidi]

If the 9400 is half the speed of the 8600 GT in the old Macbook Pro then I'm pretty sure its about the same as the iMacs 2400XT.

Put this in the low end iMac and drop the price to $999 yes please.

remember that all you are saying is for mobile graphics:
9400m = half 8600m GT , BUT 2400XT is not mobile, so I think it's faster than 9400m. But I'm not sure the new iMac's will have this system of 2 graphic cards and a 9400m integrated. why do you want so save battery in your desktop?? Discrete graphic cards are way faster than integrated ones.

 

[dr_lha]

Not sure about that one, since this chip is very small compared to the size of card Apple has been using. Nvidia is offering something that is pretty small compared to the cards Apple was avoiding to use on the 20" iMacs and now could prove to be more easy to use them and provide an entire line powered by Nvidia.

We still could see an entry model with a 9400, the mid 20" with 9400 + 9600 and on the 24 a 9400 + 9800.
Looking it at this way it make sense, but who knows what Apple will deliver at the end. Will be fun to wait and see.

The reason why Apple has been using mobile chips in iMacs and Mac minis is due to the heat/power requirements of the Desktop Intel CPUs. If they moved to a Desktop chipset, they would have to move to a Desktop CPU also, which would mean that the heat sink requirements would go up, and the Mac mini would have to get larger. For this reason I don't see Apple using this chipset, and expect them to continue the trend of having a basically identical set of chips in the Mac mini and the MacBook.

That is of course if the Mac mini actually gets updated, Apple never seem to be in a rush to do that!

 

[Saladinos]

Any integrated graphics chip from NVIDIA is still quantum leaps ahead of Intel's offerings over the past 2 years.

I wouldn't mind horribly if the low end iMacs had these and we saw the return to a $999 entry price point.

A quantum leap is actually really, really "small" (it's an event, not a unit of distance). It's where an electron moves to a different orbital.

The term is used to describe a sudden change, because electron energies are quantised (fixed values, not continuous - i.e. digital rather than analogue).

Sorry, this is just me being picky. The iMacs use ATi GPUs anyway.

 

[chrmjenkins]

Here's hoping integrated only graphics options appears to lower the entry price of an iMac. (999 sounds nice).

 

[dr_lha]

Sorry, this is just me being picky. The iMacs use ATi GPUs anyway.

MacBook Pros used to also (mine does).

 

[gnasher729]

They could license mainstream desktop offerings to Psystar. That would give them a larger sale base and probably take soem sort of profit share from psystar.

What makes you think that Apple would do any business with Psystar, ever? If Apple wanted to sell to the market that Psystar is targetting, they could do that very easily. Building a cheap, crappy computer isn't difficult. Send Jony Ives on a holiday for a week (you couldn't possibly do this while he is in the office), and the rest of his crew will hack something together that is better and cheaper than anything Psystar can build within a week.

If Apple didn't want to do it themselves, Dell would sign up in about one millisecond when given a chance to sell computers with MacOS X. Psystar, on the other hand, has zero background, zero proven reliability, and has been badmouthing Apple for months. So why would you think they would have any chance of getting any business deal with Apple?

 

[Kebabselector]

This chipset in a mini sounds good, but remember the NewApple seems not to give with losing something.

Bye-bye FW and DVI port

 

[diamond.g]

Apple doesn't use desktop chipsets so I am not sure why everyone is getting excited Am I missing something?

 

[gnasher729]

Yeah, because Apple doesn't offer a "normal" desktop. They have the Mac mini and the iMac, which are such a small form factor that they need to use mobile GPUs. On the other hand, the Mac Pro is basically a server so it uses better-than-desktop quality parts.

Apple sells the MacPro with a cheap ATI card, a more expensive NVidia card, and a super expensive NVidia card. There are a good number of users who need the power of 8 CPUs, but couldn't care less about graphics performance. NVidia's integrated graphics would be good enough for many users. The four slots for "real" graphics cards would still be there for those needing more power.

 

[SirOmega]

Apple doesn't use desktop chipsets so I am not sure why everyone is getting excited Am I missing something?

Nope.

What everyone is forgetting is that these desktop chipsets are designed for 65W Intel desktop CPUs. And there is no way one of those will fit into the thermal envelope of an iMac or mac mini. Unless Apple goes mini tower macs, this release doesn't have any effect on the Mac lineup.

 

[diamond.g]

Apple sells the MacPro with a cheap ATI card, a more expensive NVidia card, and a super expensive NVidia card. There are a good number of users who need the power of 8 CPUs, but couldn't care less about graphics performance. NVidia's integrated graphics would be good enough for many users. The four slots for "real" graphics cards would still be there for those needing more power.

Odd I thought I read that Nvidia was doing desktop chipsets. Are they doing DP/MP workstation/server boards as well? Interesting.

 

[chrmjenkins]

Nope.

What everyone is forgetting is that these desktop chipsets are designed for 65W Intel desktop CPUs. And there is no way one of those will fit into the thermal envelope of an iMac or mac mini. Unless Apple goes mini tower macs, this release doesn't have any effect on the Mac lineup.

Does anyone actually know the thermal envelope for the CPUs that the iMac uses though? Last update, it got a 3.06 Ghz CPU option. That's clearly higher than the envelope that traditional notebooks can handle. Given that they use desktop GPUs (which can have very high thermal envelopes), I'd say there is some wiggle room to use different components in the iMac.

 

[mike...]

Apple sells the MacPro with a cheap ATI card, a more expensive NVidia card, and a super expensive NVidia card. There are a good number of users who need the power of 8 CPUs, but couldn't care less about graphics performance. NVidia's integrated graphics would be good enough for many users. The four slots for "real" graphics cards would still be there for those needing more power.

erm... hello? There are probably more users that don't need the power of eight Xeon cores, but do want more graphics musicle (nVidia GTX200s, for example).

I wish Apple would release a midi tower Mac with a quad desktop chip, expandable HDDs, RAM, and upgradable graphics.

 

[rhpenguin]

I wish Apple would release a midi tower Mac with a quad desktop chip, expandable HDDs, RAM, and upgradable graphics.

Don't hold your breath, just build your own. I have and it rocks. More reliable than any Apple machine I've purchased in the last five years.

 

[KindredMAC]

A quantum leap is actually really, really "small" (it's an event, not a unit of distance). It's where an electron moves to a different orbital.

The term is used to describe a sudden change, because electron energies are quantised (fixed values, not continuous - i.e. digital rather than analogue).

Sorry, this is just me being picky. The iMacs use ATi GPUs anyway.

Thank you Mr.Wizard.

And yes, the ATIs are in the current iMacs but they did offer Intel integrated at one point in the $999.

 

[BigD58]

Yes it only makes since to put the Nvidia chips in the iMac. Hopefully we will see this take place before christmas. I wonder what the fate of the Mac Pro will be?

 

[Eidorian]

Odd I thought I read that Nvidia was doing desktop chipsets. Are they doing DP/MP workstation/server boards as well? Interesting.

nVidia only seems to be doing spin offs of its 9300/9400 single chipset and IGP solution right now. The desktop version offers higher clocks but not much else.

Then it was rumored that nVidia was leaving the chipset/motherboard business all together.

 

[BenRoethig]

This is very cool - at least a slight improvement over integrated graphics as we know it.

Based on the Macbook benchmarks, this is more than a slight improvement. These are the first integrated graphic chips able to compete on the level of a entry level dedicated chip.

Could an integrated NVIDIA graphics chip like this be even fathomably comparative to the low-end card in the iMac right now - the 2400XT?

Depends on the game, but the 2ghz MacBook had very similar results to the 2.4ghz 2400xt iMac. Faster in some games, slower in others. In an iMac with the faster 3.5" hard drive I would expect the results to be even better.

 

[editor08]

can someone clarify?

How does this affect Mac Pros, if at all? Sounds ambiguous... I just bought a new Mac Pro with a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 ....

:/

 

[BenRoethig]

can someone clarify?

How does this affect Mac Pros, if at all? Sounds ambiguous... I just bought a new Mac Pro with a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 ....

:/

It doesn't. The Mac Pro is on Intel's 5400 server/workstation chipset. This is for desktops. The next MacPro and Xserve will most likely use the x58 chipset. I don't believe Nvidia has licenses for the upcoming socket 1366 or quick path.

 

[sbarton]

Depends on the game, but the 2ghz MacBook had very similar results to the 2.4ghz 2400xt iMac. Faster in some games, slower in others. In an iMac with the faster 3.5" hard drive I would expect the results to be even better.

The 9400 is not comparible in 3D performance to the 2400xt. It only offers about 50% of the real world 3D performance and slightly higher 2D. Some games still do some composite effects which would make the comparison more equal, but I think the original poster was refering mosly to native 3D games. Also, remember the iMac pushes a higher resolution LCD than the macbook, so again something to factor in when making a comparison.