New MacBooks Dump Intel Chipsets in Favour of Nvidia

[HaZ]

When Apple went vocal about the Nvidia GPU failures in its MacBook Pro line nobody was overly surprised.

New MacBooks Dump Intel Chipsets in Favour of Nvidia : Read more

 

[chaohsiangchen]

If true, then Apple Inc. should sell new MacBook at much cheaper price around $1499 with 4GB RAM and 320GB hard drive, while low end (2GB/250GB) MacBook should be at $799. MCP79 is cheap. This is one-chip solution for both north- and southbridge, and requires no additional graphics chip to do basic to low-end 3D function. This might be the reason why we still don't see GeForce 9400 motherboards around. If Apple Inc sell new MacBook $100 higher then the price I just posted, then I'll keep saying screw Apple Inc.

BTW, hardware-wise, new MacBook with GeForce 9400 might be a great machine for mobile Linux running Compiz-Fusion window manager.

 

[chaohsiangchen]

Correction: $1499 price tag is for MacBook Pro.

 

[Mromson]

It's been suspected that Nvidia will try to compete with Intel. Lets just hope that Intel can keep up with the Graphics Card giant. I am slightly worried about AMD though, ATI is going fine - but AMD is falling hard.

 

[liemfukliang]

Let's hope 9400 doesn't defect.

 

[fulle]

^From my understanding the GPUs themselves weren't bad, but rather the boards they were put in... since they crack under temperature changes (room temp - 80c, back down to idle temps). Which explains why the laptop GPUs are failing at a higher rate (laptop GPUs would be exposed to more extreme temperature changes more often.)

Moving forward, I would highly doubt Nvida would make the same mistake anytime soon... so, this can only be a good thing for Apple. The Intel GMA X3100 that's in a lot of the base Macbooks is a pretty weak GPU, so it'll be interesting to see what kind of performance boost we see with the switch to Nvidia 9400 GPUs. Hopefully, we'll see the Macbook Pros take advantage of the Hybrid GPU technology as well, for a nice boost to battery life when discrete graphics aren't needed.

I'm still a bit disappointed we won't see high end ATI GPUs in Apple computers (which I anticipate won't happen due to a partnership with Nvidia). But, ATI hasn't had a competitive high end laptop part for years anyway...

 

[chaohsiangchen]

http://images.macrumors.com/article/2008/10/13/231653-2008-10-13mbpleak-4_400.jpg

http://images.macrumors.com/article/2008/10/13/231653-2008-10-13mbpleak-5_400.jpg

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/10/13/macbook-pro-photo-no-mouse-buttons/

 

[neiroatopelcc]

Since I don't, and probably never will, use any apple hardware, I can't much care about the actual news part of this piece. But I am delighted to see Apple ditching Intel to some extend. Not because I dislike Intel, I certainly don't. But because it might help Amd if Intel gets slightly fewer sales, even if these do go to their other competator. It's not like amd has anything to offer for notebooks anyway, so they won't get the job.

 

[frozenlead]

AMD's mobile chipsets are more widely used than nVidia's.
The only thing I read in there that apple cares about is: cheaper, smaller.
Funny thing is, the price of the notebook itself probably won't come down too far.
I don't understand why people buy these. Look at those pictures. The new one looks exactly like the old one, except it's shiny.
I will never get one.

 

[neiroatopelcc]

[citation][nom]frozenlead[/nom]AMD's mobile chipsets are more widely used than nVidia's. The only thing I read in there that apple cares about is: cheaper, smaller.Funny thing is, the price of the notebook itself probably won't come down too far.I don't understand why people buy these. Look at those pictures. The new one looks exactly like the old one, except it's shiny. I will never get one.[/citation]

The new one looks like the old one, because the design of the old one looks as the buyers want it I assume.
I'm no fan of laptops in general, and wouldn't even buy an apple product if it would turn out to be worth its cost, but I can imagine a lot of people who'd like to have one of those nice looking ones, instead of a normal 'black acer plastic thing' or 'gray hp plastic thing' etc.