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Eidorian

macrumors Penryn
Mar 23, 2005
29,190
386
Indianapolis
I'd go with the Radeon X1600 for 3D performance.

The GMA X3100 is nice for very light gaming but it's not on par with a discrete solution.
 

superspiffy

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 6, 2007
740
0
/sigh of relief

Yes! My MBP hasn't been completely obsoleted by the lowly MBs yet. :cool::cool:
 

lucky3killer

macrumors regular
Oct 24, 2007
216
0
X1600 is still better than X3100 because X1600 offers dedicated ram, not shared ram and GMA does lacks of own memory clock, just rather to let CPU to do memory clock.
 

TheStu

macrumors 65816
Aug 20, 2006
1,243
0
Carlisle, PA
Better battery life for integrated graphics though. :rolleyes:

See here is the problem... We have intel introducing the X3100 (is it really good enough to warrant a 2150 number jump though?) which is confusing against the new ATi number scheme.

Then we have the fact that nVidia's next generation card could very well be called the 9800, and now we have it confused against the old ATi number scheme.
 

lucky3killer

macrumors regular
Oct 24, 2007
216
0
Better battery life for integrated graphics though. :rolleyes:

That's true, when brightness is at minimum to receive nearly full capacity of battery life.

When playing DVD movies, check from notebook review and said both of MacBook and MacBook Pro aren't much different on battery life, don't sounds like right.
 

lucky3killer

macrumors regular
Oct 24, 2007
216
0
See here is the problem... We have intel introducing the X3100 (is it really good enough to warrant a 2150 number jump though?) which is confusing against the new ATi number scheme.

Then we have the fact that nVidia's next generation card could very well be called the 9800, and now we have it confused against the old ATi number scheme.

Just curious, Do you play the sims 2 in mac version on Intel GMA 950?

It does work so well in windows via boot camp.
 

TheStu

macrumors 65816
Aug 20, 2006
1,243
0
Carlisle, PA
Just curious, Do you play the sims 2 in mac version on Intel GMA 950?

It does work so well in windows via boot camp.

I have played it, but not for months, more of a 'can it be done' sort of thing. I am not that fond of Sims 2. I remember it being a little laggy, but when you reduce the graphics settings it is playable.
 

MarsianMan

macrumors member
Oct 19, 2007
43
0
That's true, when brightness is at minimum to receive nearly full capacity of battery life.

When playing DVD movies, check from notebook review and said both of MacBook and MacBook Pro aren't much different on battery life, don't sounds like right.

Actually it makes sense. The Macbook has to work harder to decode and play DVDs because of the lack of dedicated video hardware while the Macbook Pros can use the dedicated graphics card that has hardware decoding for the DVD.

Not sure if my description is accurate or correct.
 

Eidorian

macrumors Penryn
Mar 23, 2005
29,190
386
Indianapolis
Just curious, Do you play the sims 2 in mac version on Intel GMA 950?

It does work so well in windows via boot camp.
I expect it to run much more smoothly since the GMA X3100 does have hardware shader features.

Apple might need a driver update since they have posted a kbase article on it.

I have played it, but not for months, more of a 'can it be done' sort of thing. I am not that fond of Sims 2. I remember it being a little laggy, but when you reduce the graphics settings it is playable.
Lag != low frames per second
 

Lord Blackadder

macrumors P6
May 7, 2004
15,669
5,499
Sod off
This 3DMark03 test , while not conclusive (it is a synthetic benchmark), does bring up some interesting points...

1. The GMA 950 was vastly inferior to the last-gen PowerBook G4 GPU (Mobility Radeon 9700), and the X3100 is a big step up from the previous MacBook's hardware.

2. The new X3100 notches just below the Mobility Radeon X1600 and above the Mobility Radeon X800.

3. Based on these numbers, we can expect it to have quite inferior gaming performance to the MacBook Pro's 8600M GT. No contest.

Note that synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark don't evaluate image quality/rendering errors and that the X3100's use of shared memory is a real handicap - an "older" GPU with dedicated VRAM will often produce better FPS numbers.

I hate to sound like a grumpy elitist, but I'd much rather see a GeForce 8400M GS...at least as an option.

Overall, it's a much better piece of hardware than the GMA 950, but inferior to similar, but discrete, mobile Radeon or GeForce solutions. I've not seen any benchmarks to support it but I would bet that the Radeon Mobility X1600 would outperform the X3100 in pretty much every conceivable task.
 

flopticalcube

macrumors G4
This 3DMark03 test , while not conclusive (it is a synthetic benchmark), does bring up some interesting points...

1. The GMA 950 was vastly inferior to the last-gen PowerBook G4 GPU (Mobility Radeon 9700), and the X3100 is a big step up from the previous MacBook's hardware.

2. The new X3100 notches just below the Mobility Radeon X1600 and above the Mobility Radeon X800.

3. Based on these numbers, we can expect it to have quite inferior gaming performance to the MacBook Pro's 8600M GT. No contest.

Note that synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark don't evaluate image quality/rendering errors and that the X3100's use of shared memory is a real handicap - an "older" GPU with dedicated VRAM will often produce better FPS numbers.

I hate to sound like a grumpy elitist, but I'd much rather see a GeForce 8400M GS...at least as an option.

Overall, it's a much better piece of hardware than the GMA 950, but inferior to similar, but discrete, mobile Radeon or GeForce solutions. I've not seen any benchmarks to support it but I would bet that the Radeon Mobility X1600 would outperform the X3100 in pretty much every conceivable task.

According to notebookcheck the 3dmark06 comes in at more than 3 times greater for the X1600. It is a vastly superior performer when compared to the X3100. The 3dmark03 is VERY old.
 
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