With Snow Leopard around the corner...do I want the 9600GT??

[Scallywag]

I'm about to buy a new laptop, and I'm wondering if Snow Leopard might show significantly larger performance gains in the MBP (when compared to the Macbook) because of the dedicated graphics card. Will Macbook owners be up the creek when it comes to using open CL??

I'd like to future-proof my machine, and it seems there are some major OSX changes/improvements on the horizon. I smell a paradigm shift...and I'd like to be ready. Thanks

 

[Tallest Skil]

Are you thinking about buying a current 17" or a last model 17" or 15"?

You really don't want the 8600M GT at all. Get one of the newest models.

 

[yoavcs]

The 9400m shares the same basic architecture as the 9600. It just has less cores, a slower clock, and no dedicated video RAM.

OpenCL and CUDA (NVIDIA's solution for GPGPU) will both run just fine on the 9400m in the MacBook. Albeit slower.

It's like asking - should I get the 2.0 GHz processor the 2.4 GHz one. Both will run the same apps, one will do it faster (in the case of the 9600, much faster).

 

[Scallywag]

gotcha, thanks!