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Photos of Claimed New 15-Inch MacBook Pro Logic Board Show NVIDIA GT 650M, Retained Layout
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This is why Apple gets so much free press. The rumors are just so confusing and fun to decipher.
you sound like that samsung commercial
Haha, I'm not sure I've seen it. Which one is that?
Wikipedia lists the 650M's TDP as 45W. In comparison, the last nVidia GPU Apple used was the 330M GT which had a 23W TDP. Given this is supposed to be a "Pro" laptop, I'm happy that Apple's devoting more thermal room to put in a higher-end GPU. I don't consider a ~1" notebook to be too thick and would happily take higher performance components than be forced to scale things back in order to achieve a thinner case.
And just because Apple is keeping the same logic board design and presumably the same case design doesn't mean Retina Display isn't included. When Apple introduced LED backlighting to the MacBook Pro they didn't make the screen portion of the housing thinner or otherwise do a redesign even though that's one of the benefits of LED backlighting. Devoting space to a more powerful GPU makes good sense to match the Retina Display anyways.
And just because Apple is keeping the same logic board design and presumably the same case design doesn't mean Retina Display isn't included. When Apple introduced LED backlighting to the MacBook Pro they didn't make the screen portion of the housing thinner or otherwise do a redesign even though that's one of the benefits of LED backlighting. Devoting space to a more powerful GPU makes good sense to match the Retina Display anyways.
HP has the 650m in their 700 dollar notebooks.
While it's not a bad chip, I really wish Apple would step it up or at least give you an option to do so. Games are so very GPU dependent these days, and i'm sure a step up in GPU would help everything "pro"s do since most programs can utilize the GPU.
Put a 680 in as an option with extremely smart switching so if you're plugged into power you can have a beast, if you're on battery you can have something that lasts all day. Apple is great at making battery efficient software.
While it's not a bad chip, I really wish Apple would step it up or at least give you an option to do so. Games are so very GPU dependent these days, and i'm sure a step up in GPU would help everything "pro"s do since most programs can utilize the GPU.
Put a 680 in as an option with extremely smart switching so if you're plugged into power you can have a beast, if you're on battery you can have something that lasts all day. Apple is great at making battery efficient software.
I'm hoping it's just a transition. They don't always stop all current designs at once, during a transition.
Who knows, why can't the new MacBook Pro have a Retina Display with the same unibody?
They really may not need to alter the logic board to make it thinner. If they want to taper it like the Air, sure, but that wasn't what was indicated. What was rumored was a new MacBook Pro that is thinner, but specifically not tapered like the Air. The horizontal dimensions would remain the same, simply allowing for some vertical reduction with the removal of the ODD, ethernet & firewire ports.
I wouldn't say this rules out a redesign.
We could also be seeing a logic board for a 15" Pro that matches the existing design that will be launched in addition to the newer model. Remember that Apple is pursuing emerging markets, particularly China, more aggressively as of late. These markets are more dependent on optical media than the US, so it may be too soon to kill the ODD completely, but still offer a new design for those who are ready.
I wouldn't say this rules out a redesign.
We could also be seeing a logic board for a 15" Pro that matches the existing design that will be launched in addition to the newer model. Remember that Apple is pursuing emerging markets, particularly China, more aggressively as of late. These markets are more dependent on optical media than the US, so it may be too soon to kill the ODD completely, but still offer a new design for those who are ready.
The 6 Series Nvidia M Class is powerful but I wonder how they will perform if Apple decides to go with the retina resolution for their Mac Lineup. Retina takes up a lot of juice and battery life, so the GPU has to work even when you do normal applications like iPhoto or Safari. Let's see how Apple counteracts that.
Perhaps they'll leave the 15 MBP in it's current form and introduce a 15" MacBook Air. (with no third line of laptops being introduced).
That makes more sense to me.
That makes more sense to me.
Yeah, you'll also have a machine that sets itself on fire while under heavy load.
I know I am going to get disliked for this, but this is probably it, if you look at the different sizes and layouts of the air vs the pro, you will find that to keep the thin profile of the air, the logic board had to be really small. To keep the power of the MBP, you need a much bigger logic board, now think, the 13 inch air and the 15 inch pro only are about 2 inches bigger then each other, so you don't have that much more space to work with, but you have to cram in a Quad Core i7 and 2 graphics cards and you still have to have a massive, super slim battery to keep the 7+ hours on a charge. The second thing is heat dispersion, the Sandy Bridge MBP's always were very hot (my friend has one), if you make the design thinner, you also have to think about making sure the heat can get out properly, make the design thinner, and you have to worry about more heat, and with an MacBook Air profile, i don't know if you can even have 2 big fans. The last thing is, a lot of Pro's still need a DVD drive also ethernet and FireWire (me included), sure I can live without them, but it is much easier to have them. I don't think this design will be ready for a while longer, the MBP's have a very solid and thin design while having a lot of power under them. Remember the PowerBook G4 deign (which was carried on to the first MBP) was almost 5 1/2 years old when it was replaced by the unibody MBP, and the design was only changed because it was better to manufacture them this way, and made them stronger, but it only lost .05 inches during the change of design. The 2012 MBP will run much cooler, and be faster then the 2011 models, but THEY STILL MIGHT HAVE A RETINA DISPLAY!
There's another theory going around that the Pro's won't get a redesign but there might be an expansion of the Air series which could also lose the 'Air' in the name. The Pro series would be the top of the line for the 15 inch, perhaps the 13 as well and also the available 17 inch model(s).
These chips could be, if anything, for the Pros and thus the lack of shape changes
Does HP use GDDR5 with their 650M though or just DDR3? Apple always couples the GPUs with high-speed VRAM, in the past GDDR3 when it was the latest and now GDDR5, rather than using large amounts of low-speed DDR2/DDR3 and using MB/GB as the marketing focus as is more common with Windows OEMs. A 650M with GDDR5 will be noticeably faster than a 650M with DDR3.
And the 680M has a 100W TDP. The top-end 6970M in the iMac only has a 75W TDP, so you can figure out the probability of fitting a 680M in a ~1" MacBook Pro.
These "day before" leaks tend to be true, so I'm pretty upset right now. I wanted a redesign! Maybe I should consider an iMac and an air instead of a new MBP.
I gave up the MacBook Pro and have been using the MacBook Air and iMac duo for a few years now and really think they compliment each other very well. The MacBook Air is such a great laptop for those who need true mobility in a computer platform, I rarely use my iPad. I do use my iMac a lot still, when I need/want more computing power or a really big screen to work on multiple projects. Plus, this way, you get to spend two to three times more money!
There is nothing solid about this either
This is actually pretty sad as NVidias new chip sucks. Sucks watts that is. So I really hope this is a joke being played by somebody.
This is actually pretty sad as NVidias new chip sucks. Sucks watts that is. So I really hope this is a joke being played by somebody.
The nvidia 650m is a beast of a card, couple that with Ivy Bridge, and that makes it just a beast of a machine.
Good question because basically the new NVidia chip sucks.
At least in Linux it sucks and on Linux AMDs drivers suck. So if AMDs old chip significantly out performs NVidias junk then I suspect somebody at Apple fell off their rocker. That is if this is true which I strongly question.
At least in Linux it sucks and on Linux AMDs drivers suck. So if AMDs old chip significantly out performs NVidias junk then I suspect somebody at Apple fell off their rocker. That is if this is true which I strongly question.
Change for the sake of change is not progress. The current design is an industrial masterpiece. Until they switch to circular screens or something bizarre, it is hard to rationalize more than keeping the innards up to date. I don't find any competitive design more elegant than the machined billet of aluminum that is the MBP. And I want an optical drive.
Now here is something interesting, what are the I/O? I don't see anything at all. I wonder why it's not in any of the shots. Can anyone decipher a USB 3.0 chip in there?
