The x4500 is benching as good as you could ask for and more. I'm not sure what more you want from an integrated graphics chip.
Well, as someone over at notebookreview put it:
Games on the X3100 are basically unplayable. Even if the X4500 is 3x faster, 3x faster than unplayable is still unplayable.
There should be NO integrated graphics. None.
The iBook didn't have an integrated GPU. The G4 Mac mini didn't have an integrated GPU. The MacBook should NOT have an integrated GPU.
As I've said many times before, most Windows notebooks over the $800 mark have dedicated graphics. There is absolutely no reason something that starts at $1099 should be without dedicated graphics and at least a DVD writer.
Adding price without adding to the cost of a product eats into profit margins.
Considering that Apple accounts for 25% of money made in the computer industry while only selling 6% of the hardware, I don't think anyone except Apple's shareholders will shed a tear if their profit margins shrink.
But even then, the increased volume of systems sold will more than makeup for the small loss in profit margin.
Seriously, whats worse? Selling a million MacBooks with a $200 (just throwing that number out there) profit margin or selling 4 million MacBooks with a $150 profit margin thanks to dedicated graphics?
Let's keep in mind that the $999 iBook (last generation) shipped with a Radeon 9550.
Which is not the solution. The 8400 barely outbenches the x4500, even while having plenty of updated drivers and a finished product. Oh, and it only supports DX9 - the x4500 supports DX10, so you're going to need a 9xxxx series from nVidia to compare in that category.
You're completely and utterly wrong there.
The entire GeForce 8 line is DirectX10. "The GeForce 8 series arrived with NVIDIA's first unified shader Direct3D 10 Shader Model 4.0 / OpenGL 2.1 architecture. " from wikipedia.
And have you looked at the benchmarks? I mean real benchmarks.
When the X4500 is paired with a C2D T9300 and the 8400M GS is paired with a T8300, the GeForce 8400M GS still outperforms it by more than double the frame-rate.
When paired with an equal CPU, the frame-rate is often 3x better on the GeForce 8400M GS or even better.
There's not a $30 GPU that is significantly better than the x4500.
GeForce 8400M GS is. Aside from having double to triple the game performance of the X4500 (and let's not forget that the recent nvidia beta drivers significantly improved the performance of all of their cards), the GeForce 8400M GS supports full bitstream decoding of MPEG, MPEG-2, VC-1, H.264 (and essentially all MPEG-4 standards). Some specific models, like those in HPs, have additional features like deblocking for MPEG-2 and H.264 and VC-1. You get hardware upscaling, de-interlacing, etc. Where the Intel card generally only supports hardware assisting.
Sony sells a 13.3" screen notebook for $1,500 with the following stats: cd/dvd burner, T8300, 120GB HDD, 2GB of RAM, GeForce 8400M GS. If you want a larger screen, the 14.1" version sells for $1,129. There is a premium attached to 13.3" laptops, whereas 14.1" are competitive with 15.4" versions.
As I said before, people aren't buying the MacBook because of the fact that its a 13.3" notebook. They're buying it because its cheaper than the MacBook Pro and its all they can afford.
If Apple had a 15.4" notebook priced at $1,000 and specs in-line with what you get in a $1,000 Windows notebook (generally 2.4GHz Penryn, dedicated graphics equal to that of the GeForce 8600M GT, 3GB of memory, DVD writer, HDMI output, memory card reader, 3 hours of real world battery life) it would literally fly off the shelves.
However, Apple releases the most poorly spec'ed system for the price and rakes in the profits off unsuspecting customers.
Also, Sony is worse at overpricing their products (computers, TVs, PS3, headphones) than Apple.
If Apple put in an 8400 and 2GB of RAM across the line, prices would increase. The reason for many people not buying an Apple computer is because they are too expensive - Apple is combating that with lesser specs for those who want a cheaper notebook.
Theres no reason for Apple to increase the price by bringing the specs up to standard with what you get with a PC.
Apple's profits would be unaffected because they would actually start to sell respectable numbers of computers.
Look at many PC manufacturers. You get more power than the $1,999 MacBook Pro for half the price, 3x more memory than that of the $1099 MacBook, and they're all still profitable.
This is a simple case of Apple ripping off the customer.
There is no reason the MacBook cannot have at least a GeForce 8400M GS 128, 2GB of RAM, DVD writer, 160GB HDD, 2.4GHz C2D in the $1099 MacBook.
