PowerBook query - ATI vid card

[Oki]

I really, really, REALLY want a 15" PowerBook, and I have the cash for it. But the video card is dissapointing, and since a lot of other laptops are coming out with the new ATI Mobility 9700, I was wondering if there were any plans from Apple to release a PowerBook with ATI Mobility 9700 graphics.

Oki

 

[jxyama]

i'm sure it will come...

when? who knows...?

 

[Oki]

Arrrrrrgh! I want one tout suite...I need to warchalk my friends' WLAN AND play UT2K4...dammit!

Oki

 

[loubapache]

It comes when the PC folks are using the ATI Mobility 20000 model.

After the 9700, it is 9800, 9900, 10000, 10100, etc.

Get a life, Apple, use some good hardware in your expensive equipment.

 

[Oki]

Nooooooooooooooo...
I can't wait that long...

Oki

 

[James_C]

The graphics card in the present AL 15" is pretty good, I am not a hard core gamer by any means, by Halo is very smooth on my 1.25 GHz Powerbook. I have no complaints at all. Something faster will always come out 6 months later.

 

[Capt Underpants]

The bottleneck is probably more the processor than the video card.

 

[Oki]

Ahhh...ty Underpants. I'm a Windows user at the moment, and I haven't really kept up with Apple stuff, but I wanna get into it all. Any idea when the next gen PowerBooks are gonna come out?

 

[James_C]

Ahhh...ty Underpants. I'm a Windows user at the moment, and I haven't really kept up with Apple stuff, but I wanna get into it all. Any idea when the next gen PowerBooks are gonna come out?

One never quite knows with Apple, But the sensible money is on a final G4 speedbump in the next month, Powerbooks are unlikely to go G5 until towards the end of the year, perhaps not until early 2005.

 

[Capt Underpants]

One never quite knows with Apple, But the sensible money is on a final G4 speedbump in the next month, Powerbooks are unlikely to go G5 until towards the end of the year, perhaps not until early 2005.

You never know, though. Apple has had tendencies to surprise us!

 

[ExoticFish]

when the AlBooks were released the 9600 was the best mobile graphics card there was, so now something new is available so the next powerbook revision will have it... settle down here people.

 

[crazzyeddie]

It comes when the PC folks are using the ATI Mobility 20000 model.

After the 9700, it is 9800, 9900, 10000, 10100, etc.

Get a life, Apple, use some good hardware in your expensive equipment.

Dude, what on earth are you talking about? Apple has always used the latest and greatest graphics cards in their laptops. When the Powerbook 1.25ghz was released, the 9600 WAS the top of the line card. Even now, most manufactures only use the 9600. When Apple updates the Powerbooks, they will probably use the 9700 if they can. The only thing that Apple does not currently include in their laptop offerings is a video card with 128MB of RAM, but its a laptop and in most cases that extra RAM doesn't help for a mobile user. Please get a life and stop trolling.

 

[loubapache]

Dude, what on earth are you talking about? Apple has always used the latest and greatest graphics cards in their laptops. When the Powerbook 1.25ghz was released, the 9600 WAS the top of the line card. Even now, most manufactures only use the 9600. When Apple updates the Powerbooks, they will probably use the 9700 if they can. The only thing that Apple does not currently include in their laptop offerings is a video card with 128MB of RAM, but its a laptop and in most cases that extra RAM doesn't help for a mobile user. Please get a life and stop trolling.

That is great. So all these PC laptop gamers should switch to Apple.

 

[oingoboingo]

I really, really, REALLY want a 15" PowerBook, and I have the cash for it. But the video card is dissapointing, and since a lot of other laptops are coming out with the new ATI Mobility 9700, I was wondering if there were any plans from Apple to release a PowerBook with ATI Mobility 9700 graphics.

Oki

I have to agree with a comment made earlier by Captain Underpants...you are probably going to run out of CPU steam with a G4-based PowerBook system long before you see a Radeon 9600 starting to be the bottleneck. Given that the Radeon 9600 was top of the line in mobile GPUs when the 15" PB was released last year, you really can't go too far wrong with it. It's not like you're getting lumped with a GeForce 4 420 Go or something like that.

If you want killer 3D frame rates for portable gaming, it's simple: don't buy a PowerBook. Don't get me wrong...you will get decent, playable frame rates on the 15" PB with many games, but the heavier x86 notebooks from places like AlienWare will absolutely thrash the PowerBooks for serious 3D gaming performance (as well as game availability). Of course they'll weigh twice as much, be twice as thick and have half the battery life, but life is full of trade offs, isn't it?

 

[loubapache]

oingoboingo: absolutely a valid point.

There are a lot of things that have to work well for a laptop to handle the most resource hungary application, games. One can never say a laptop is excellent because it has an excellent graphics card.

Check out the bus speed of the current powerbooks. Oh, LOL. PC laptops have 800 MHz bus speed now.

Yesterday, TechTV's Screensaver featured the top laptops for gaming. The Alienware's Area-51m Extreme won among a few books weigning 8 - 9 pounds with battery life as high as approaching 2.5 hours.

http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/products/story/0,24330,3629407,00.html

 

[Bigheadache]

I am not sure what the big song and dance about the 9700 is for. Note that the MOBILITY 9700 (4pipelines/128bit memory) bears no relation to the desktop 9700 which has 8 pipelines/256bit memory bus. Really its just an optimised Mobility 9600 with a higher clock rate and is slightly quicker than a 9600. Now if they got the real desktop 9700 onto a laptop, that would be impressive.

 

[ExoticFish]

i'm not exactly why people are getting so upset around here. it's common knowledge the if you are a hardcore gamer and NEEEEED those frame rates that're not going to use a PowerBook. Don't get me wrong, i use my PB every chance i get for gaming but most newer games i have a PC for. granted that gaming is all that the PC is used for. the G4 is the problem with the PB line at the moment and once the G5 gets in there it will be a much more viable solution for mobile gaming.

Games i play on my 12" PB:

Warcraft 3
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament 2003
Quake 3
Starcraft
Halo

Games i play on my PC:

Unreal 2
Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament 2003/2004
Army Operations
Half Life 2 & Doom 3 when they come out
Max Payne 2

 

[Oki]

It's irritating, because on one hand, I am a hardcore gamer, but I need to appeal to the side of me that wants to expand my horizons...I want a PowerBook so I can learn Mac... stuff. But I also want to marry the two, and a 9700 Mobile PowerBook would do that with ease. Simply put: I want a PowerBook because I want to learn another OS, a new way of doing things...also, I am going to college in a few months...but I also want to continue owning with games when not at my PC.

Oki