[Elektrix]

Originally Posted by rach 

Apple have to upgrade the MBP graphic cards soon. They have had the same graphics cards for nearly one year. It is getting quite old now. I sold my C2D MBP for a couple of reasons last week and i may buy again when they update the graphics card and also introduce Leopard.
Apple haven't even upgraded the Mac Mini's to C2D so really i should not get my hopes up too much about them upgrading the graphics card soon but i hope that they do.

Please see my posts above though; what exactly do you think Apple can upgrade the video cards too? They can certainly stick a newer card like a GeForce 7700 or ATI X1700 in there, but if you think there's going to be a major performance boost over the X1600, you are going to be in for a disappointment. THey are moderately better, but not significantly so.

The mobile DirectX 10 GPU's might be better, but nothing is known about them yet.

[mduell]

The X1600 Mobility (nominally 475Mhz/470Mhz core/RAM) in the MBP started at 310Mhz/278Mhz (Core Duo) and is now up to 419Mhz/450Mhz (Core 2 Duo), which is about a 50% performance improvement.

But that's not to say that there aren't a lot of faster cards out there. X1800 Mobility is about three times faster, through a combination of more shader units and faster/wider memory. X1900 and the high-end GeForces (7950 GTX, 7900 GTX, and 7800 GTX) are even faster still.

[rach]

You do make some really good points. Coming from more of a PC background maybe i am more used to seeing graphic cards updated quite often. Still though i do think that i will wait until they refresh the MBP's before i buy again.

Originally Posted by Elektrix 

Please see my posts above though; what exactly do you think Apple can upgrade the video cards too? They can certainly stick a newer card like a GeForce 7700 or ATI X1700 in there, but if you think there's going to be a major performance boost over the X1600, you are going to be in for a disappointment. THey are moderately better, but not significantly so.

The mobile DirectX 10 GPU's might be better, but nothing is known about them yet.

[Elektrix]

Originally Posted by mduell 

The X1600 Mobility (nominally 475Mhz/470Mhz core/RAM) in the MBP started at 310Mhz/278Mhz (Core Duo) and is now up to 419Mhz/450Mhz (Core 2 Duo), which is about a 50% performance improvement.

But that's not to say that there aren't a lot of faster cards out there. X1800 Mobility is about three times faster, through a combination of more shader units and faster/wider memory. X1900 and the high-end GeForces (7950 GTX, 7900 GTX, and 7800 GTX) are even faster still.

Yeah.... I wasn't saying there aren't faster cards out there; just not considerably faster cards that could fit into the current MBP form factor. We'll have to wait until NVidia and ATI make some significant improvements to the mid-range cards before there is something that would be a significant increase in performance. But yeah, unless Apple does decide to make some 10 pound 2" thick behomoth, I don't think we'll be seeing something like the 7950GTX in them any time soon.

[Elektrix]

Originally Posted by rach 

You do make some really good points. Coming from more of a PC background maybe i am more used to seeing graphic cards updated quite often. Still though i do think that i will wait until they refresh the MBP's before i buy again.

Yeah. Generally this issue of sort of stagnant mobile GPU's has been a problem on the PC laptop side too. The most powerful 15" notebooks you can buy now come with, at best, a GeForce 7700 or ATI X1700. These are both nice cards, but they only offer moderate performance boosts over the GeForce 7600 and ATI X1600 (which themselves are still found in current notebooks).

I think on both the Apple and PC side, we're not going to be seeing anything significant until the DirectX 10 mobile cards start appearing (i.e. GeForce Go 8600 or 8800, ATI X2600, etc.).

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Elektrix 

Yeah.... I wasn't saying there aren't faster cards out there; just not considerably faster cards that could fit into the current MBP form factor. We'll have to wait until NVidia and ATI make some significant improvements to the mid-range cards before there is something that would be a significant increase in performance. But yeah, unless Apple does decide to make some 10 pound 2" thick behomoth, I don't think we'll be seeing something like the 7950GTX in them any time soon.

They could take one of the higher end chips and underclock it (which they've shown they're more than willing to do) to fit within the thermal envelope.

Originally Posted by Elektrix 

Yeah. Generally this issue of sort of stagnant mobile GPU's has been a problem on the PC laptop side too. The most powerful 15" notebooks you can buy now come with, at best, a GeForce 7700 or ATI X1700. These are both nice cards, but they only offer moderate performance boosts over the GeForce 7600 and ATI X1600 (which themselves are still found in current notebooks).

There are plenty of 15" and 17" models with much more powerful cards (mentioned in my previous post) than the X1700 or 7600.

[Elektrix]

Originally Posted by mduell 

They could take one of the higher end chips and underclock it (which they've shown they're more than willing to do) to fit within the thermal envelope.



There are plenty of 15" and 17" models with much more powerful cards (mentioned in my previous post) than the X1700 or 7600.

Even if Apple were to do what you suggested, what would be the point? I mean, what would be the point of taking a GPU like the 7900GS (most notably available in Toshiba's P105 series and Dell's E1705) and dramatically underclocking it. You'd end up with performance that wouldn't be that much better anyway, and you'd raise prices (since these are more expensive parts) for no particularly good reason.

On to your second point; please name me a few of these 'plenty' of 15" notebooks with much more powerful cards than the X1700 or GeForce Go 7600 or GeForce Go 7700.

I already acknowledged there are 17" models with higher end GPU's (and these are also much heavier and thicker), but my point was about 15" notebooks. I would be glad frankly to hear of ONE of these 15" notebooks with a much more powerful GPU.

As it is, the most powerful 15" notebook I'm aware of currently is the new Asus G1 laptop, which features a 512MB GeForce Go 7700 (which is fairly powerful, but not tremendously moreso than the X1600 or GeForce Go 7600).

-Elektrix

[Simon]

deleted, Elektrix already made the point