MacBook models with screen sizes of 13 inches and below are expected to switch to Sandy Bridge-only graphics, while higher-end MacBook Pros are expected to use graphics from Advanced Micro Devices, according to sources. Whether Nvidia will still be present in higher-end models is unclear.
Sandy Bridge is a watershed processor for Intel because, for the first time in a mainstream product, the graphics chip is grafted directly onto the main processor, boosting performance, while essentially providing the graphics function for free. And the step up in performance may be enough for Apple to rely on Intel’s graphics in some lower-end MacBooks.
Seems very unlikely to me. Intel has not got a good past history of delivering on GPU performance promises.
Anyone remember how unpopular the GMA 950 IGPs from Intel were? I am not sure Apple want to go through that pain again. Their customers certainly don’t. Nor are they particularly happy with the current GPU restrictions imposed by Intel on much of Apple’s product line.
AMD is a likely shoe in for more components in future. And not necessarily just GPUs.
Apple’s plan for the future is most definitely to be as silicon agnostic as possible. It should be any manufacturers aim at this point in our industry’s history. For that reason I think Apple is likely to keep more manufacturers on tap, rather than less. Dropping NVIDIA means that they are less likely to be there in the future for Apple’s future needs.
Right now Intel are still being coy about how far they plan to go with OpenCL support. Without that any deal arrived at out of choice is simply not going to happen with Apple.
Jonny Evans mashes up some Mac and iPhone rumours. Some of it is worth a read, just as food for thought. In it he touches on rumours of iPhone OS integration into Mac OS X, and multi-touch iMacs.
Look to the now long-in-the-tooth MacBook Air. The thinnest Mac ever, imagine if it had a 13-inch MultiTouch screen. Imagine if it was an iPad form factor, with a virtual keyboard and an invisible trackpad.
Didn’t he just describe the iPad there?
Imagine it ran a full version of Mac OS X, while also enabling use of iPhone apps in that mooted Dashboard-like emulation layer. This truly would be the thinnest, lightest and most sophisticated Mac around.
Ultimately OS X will run on many more flavours of silicon. This is clear to most people watching Apple evolve its device, OS and development tool ecosystem. Even if it’s not obvious to you from that, you should be able to look at what the iPhone does today, and what computers did yesterday and make a connection.
You should also be able to see that ‘Touch’ is going to become more ubiquitous with our day to day computing experience in the future. (If only our fingers were not so greasy and dirty.)
Interestingly though, Jonny almost touches on something that I have heard – as a rumour :
In an inspired bit of entrail reading this morning, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu says Apple (AAPL) may have a libretto of big WWDC announcements. “Other announcements we are picking up that could potentially be made are iTunes.com, a web-based version of its iTunes client, and new Mac refreshes with faster processors and graphics, namely the Mac Pro and MacBook Air, which were last refreshed in March and June 2009, respectively,” he wrote in a note to clients this morning.
Wu is simply doing what most Apple watchers might do. He’s looking at refresh periods on hardware. Sure the Air is due for an update. So are a lot of things going by that metric.
So no Air update. Even if it is “updated”, it’s not really an update. It’s a “bump”.
I am actually hearing whispers that Apple is at least experimenting with some custom silicon for the next MacBook Air. But I don’t see it being available as soon as WWDC, if at all.
Going out on a limb : I don’t think we’ll see any major Macintosh updates at all at WWDC this year – apart from perhaps Mac Pros.
I also tend to agree with Peter Kafka (now) that it probably is a bit early for a cloud based version of iTunes.
“Sources tell me that in the past few weeks, Apple has started signaling to the labels that it’s interested in a Web-based version of iTunes, its dominant music retail platform,” Kafka wrote on April 30. “But those conversations are preliminary at best. So if you’re expecting to hear about an ‘iTunes.com’ offering in the near future–like during Apple’s June 7 developer conference–you’re likely to be disappointed.”
I am no fan of Intel’s new IGPs in their Core i3,i5 and i7 processors.
This article from ars technica just gives me another reason to be even more disappointed in Intel’s new strategy to squeeze NVIDIA out of the graphics market and foist its own shoddy GPUs on us.
As I, and Chris Foresman in his piece I referenced, pointed out a while back :
The general consensus seemed to be then that Apple would have to wait until Intel brought out some new ultra portable silicon for the Air…
Well now that Intel has taken the wraps off its latest ULV mobile processors, it seems Apple still has a problem.
Like the rest of Intel’s Arrandale-class mobile processors, these newest ULV models are still saddled with the fair-to-middling Intel HD integrated graphics processor stuck right on the processor package. This updated IGP is certainly an improvement over previous Intel offerings, but it won’t cut it as far as Apple is concerned—the IGP is roughly comparable to Apple’s last-generation NVIDIA 9400M integrated graphics, and isn’t compatible with OpenCL.
Not even offering OpenCL support is something that had not occurred to me about Intel’s IGPs. Not only does that mean that on Apple’s entire Pro lineup you have to go to the second GPU (provided by NVIDIA) to make use of OpenCL. But it also means that on anything that does not have a second GPU provided by someone other than Intel, you are not even going to have the option of OpenCL at the moment. Period.
There simply is not enough room in the MacBook Air’s design to slap a second graphics processor in. Nor will it make for good power consumption. Especially as squeezing all that extra silicon in will probably mean making the battery smaller still.
Sticking with Intel’s older Core 2 Duo processors, which Apple can use NVIDIA GPUs with, is simply going to mean that any MacBook Air update is going to give a negligible performance improvement compared to the current model. (Intel are not releasing any new Core 2 Duos as they push their new range of silicon.)
In short, it seems that until Intel produce better IGPs, or resolve their stupid legal battle with NVIDIA over whether it has the necessary license to make chipsets for Intel’s latest processors, Apple can’t pair these new Core i5 processors with the new NVIDIA 320M currently used in the 13″ MacBook Pro and white MacBook.
So the MacBook Air may well go the way of the PowerBook G4 12″. A slide into obscurity, with no updates for the foreseeable future.
Perhaps it’s time to bring back the PB G4 12″?
I preferred it to the Air anyway. In fact I still use one when I travel.
Boxy is good. The Air looks like a large silver tray by comparison anyway. And the form factor of the old PowerBook G4 12″ fits better with Apple’s new industrial design for the iPhone 4G!
So is Vietnam the new centre for Apple leaks? I am guessing it’s a good location as Apple’s lawyers probably don’t hold much sway there! In my experience, nothing holds much sway in Vietnam.
If not a fake, it looks like the $999 MacBooks are going to recieve a silent update in the coming days/weeks/months that will bring them largely inline (still only 2GB of RAM) with the current base model 13″ MacBook Pros. The processor on the model they show is bumped to 2.4GHz, the screen is LED and the video card is updated to the NVIDIA GeForce 320M. It also appears in the video that it has the fancy new AC power adapter from the Pro/Air line.
This one is running OSX 10.6.3 and it is the same Model 7,1 A1342 so we think these will drop sooner rather than later, without much fanfare.
Some users of MacBook Pros which herald from the previous generation are reporting that it works with those machines also. That is machines with the NVIDIA 9400/9600 GPU pairing.
Switching on-the-fly is something that I’ve argued Apple could have implemented in its own OS for these earlier machines, as the underlying hardware from NVIDIA always supported it. Apple, unsurprisingly, never bothered to. Nor are they likely to in the future.
If you want to give it a try, here’s the low down…
Many users have reported that gfxCardStatus works even on the 2009 MacBook Pros! I don’t have one to test with, but I can only assume that this is indeed the case. It wil continually show the “n,” as the detection for which GPU is in use isn’t built in yet, but switching works, without logging out. I’ll build the detection into a future version, hopefully sooner rather than later! I envision an icon change: “d” for discrete, and “i” for integrated. This will provide greater consistency across all platforms.
UPDATE : I can confirm this works on my Unibody 17″ MacBook Pro, even with a multiple monitor setup. The only downside is it will, in my case, mess up the position of some of my apps on the second screen. But it is still more convenient than logging in and out, and messing up app layouts is something that OS X can be guilty of itself from time to time when altering screen settings.
It also seems to confuse System Preferences, in that its Graphics Performance setting doesn’t keep track accurately of what exactly is going on. But a quick check with OpenGL Extensions Viewer actually shows the GPU switching occurring “on-the-fly”.
Do bear in mind that the “on-the-fly” bit involves some screen flickering, and a redraw.
There are some roadblocks to Apple offering an update with Arrandale-series processors, though. The current low-power Core i5 and Core i7 processors have a maximum TDP of 18W, only 1W more than the low-power Core 2 Duos used in the current MacBook Air models. However, those processors top out at 1.06GHz or 1.20GHz—even with the architectural improvements, performance wouldn’t likely compare to the 1.86 or 2.13GHz Core 2 Duos currently used, except possibly in certain multithreaded workloads.
…
If a MacBook Air update does come soon, Apple would most likely pair the small-outline Core 2 Duo with the new NVIDIA GeForce 320M controller with integrated graphics. That chip is a significant upgrade to the 9400M used in current MacBook Air models, and would offer increased performance with a decreased drain on the battery.
Graphics performance would have taken a significant step backwards if Apple opted to rely solely on the Intel HD IGP that comes with Core i3 or i5, so Apple would have also had to include a discrete GPU like that used on the 15″ and 17″ models.
With Clarkdale Intel has finally dropped the Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) prefix. Intel integrated graphics is now just called Intel HD Graphics.
Smart move from Intel. I associate GMA with pain.
The move to 45nm gave Intel the ability to beef up its graphics core a bit, but ultimately it’s the same architecture as the G45 – just faster. We won’t see Larrabee on a CPU for some years to come.
AnandTech produces an interesting head to head comparison of the IGPs built into the CPUs in the latest MacBook Pros from Apple, against silicon which is roughly similar to the Nvidia IGPs in their last generation.
All integrated GPUs regardless of vendor, pretty much suck. Intel gets a bum rap because while other IGPs may offer 30+ fps in games at the lowest quality settings, Intel can often only manage single digit frame rates. It doesn’t take too much searching to prove that one.
No shit.
The only absent member [in the comparison] is NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400. We found in our 790GX review that AMD delivered roughly the same graphics performance (if not better) as the 9400 so any advantage/disadvantage here would apply to NVIDIA as well.
This is worth noting. The 9400 is the Nvidia IGP in the old MacBook Pros. So we should look at the comparative results of Intel’s current IGP against the 790GX to get an idea of just how this latest piece of silicon fairs against the last gen. IGP silicon in the outgoing MacBook Pro range.
It should also be noted that in the current MacBook Pro range, at least for the 13″ MacBook Pro, Nvidia have provided for Apple an IGP that outperforms the 9400 by up to 2 times. To utilise this Apple could not go with an i3 as the CPU in the 13″, but had to stick with a Core 2 Duo. I touched on why that is here.
Picking this from the middle of AnandTech’s comparison we get an idea of where we really are with Intel’s new IGPs :
Performance is respectable from the new Intel HD graphics. At 41.5 fps it’s actually faster than AMD’s 790GX chipset. Definitely more than twice the speed of the old G45.
[The 790GX got 35.6 fps in the same test.]
So Intel’s new IGP is about 10% faster than an equivalent to the 9400 in the old MacBook Pros.
In Summary then : Overall Intel’s IGP matches the 790GX for performance throughout most of AnandTech’s comparison. In some tests later on it falls behind. In some earlier benchmarks it just barely beats it. But overall it is in the same ballpark in terms of performance.
Keep in mind that we’re looking at the highest end IGP from Intel. The Core i3s will be appreciably slower, most likely at or below the performance of the 790GX.
Here we see why Apple did not want the i3 in the 13″ MacBook Pro. If they had gone with them the IGP in the current 13″ MBP would have been slower than the 9400 in the previous model – one fairly late platform iteration further on. Not so good then really.
In effect, with the NVIDIA GeForce 320M in the 13″ MBP we have an integrated solution that is twice the speed of what Intel could have offered.
However, Intel’s offering is what Apple is forced to use as the low power IGP, as part of the i5 and i7, in the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pros.
And Intel’s new IGPs are basically where everyone else was in the last iteration of MacBooks.
So overall you’ll be able to run your 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pros in a low power configuration if you want graphics performance on a par with the last generation MacBooks using the Nvidia 9400 IGP.. i.e. Graphics performance has stood still in the IGPs of 15″ and 17″ MacBooks. Making it much more likely that you will be using the NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M for anything requiring contemporary performance.
A potential issue with this is that power saving is not going to be as great in real world use as people are hoping. Simply because you are likely to use the more power hungry dedicated GPU in those machines moving forward. The base line of graphics we expect now, compared to a year or more ago has moved on. But Intel’s IGPs have not matched pace yet.
I’ll be waiting for the next version of MacBook Pros before I update. Hopefully we might get a Quad Core option in the 17″ MacBook Pro then, and I might be able to swallow the bitter pill that is Intel IGPs if they continue to improve them.
I do not want to sound negative about the new mobile offerings from Apple. Unfortunately I know that I do. The new MacBook Pros are excellent machines overall. Certainly worth picking up if you did not update at the last major revision. And although this update is late, for those of us with the last generation models it’s quite easy to call this update a late mid-term revision and wait for the next iteration.
What I am frustrated about is that Intel have chosen a protectionist route as they upgrade their CPU architecture design. It seems to me that they have purposefully blocked Nvidia (or any other manufacturer) from having access to their architecture in order to give themselves some breathing room as they play catch up and try to build their own GPU market.
That is not good for Apple. Not good for any computer manufacturer. And it’s certainly not good for consumers. Unless you take the view that having Intel on the stage in the GPU market in the future is something worth sacrificing for now…
