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Markisss88

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 28, 2008
114
2
is there a noticeable difference between that ATI HD graphics card and Nvidia graphics card on the lower end? does that mean i cant get the full resolution
 
Apple wouldn't put the 9400m in their iMac if it wouldn't be able to power the 1920x1080 resolution, it even powers my 17" MBP with 1920x1200 pixel witout problems.

The dedicated ATI graphics card though is better if you wanna game a lot or do heavy graphics work or other image related stuff in applications that take advantage of the graphics adapter.

But the 9400m will be fine for most things too. I do edit 12MP RAW photos with it on my 17" MBP without major hiccups, but a dedicated graphics card like the ATI would allow you to have open more 12MP RAW photos at the same time.


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EDIT:

what about HD videos, such as youtube HD? im not very smart with this stuff haha

The HD YouTube videos rely more on CPU as they are embedded in Flash, one of the more ridiculous software titles on earth as it is poorly designed on the Mac side of life.

Just watch a normal YouTube video on a Mac and see how the CPU usage seems to spike.
 
so basically your really paying for the 1TB ?
If you play games then the ATI card will give you better frame rates (benchmarks suggest around three times better). In most other tasks the two cards are fairly evenly matched. I'd say if you're planning to do any graphics intensive work then the ATI is the better all round card. You also get an extra 500 GB hard drive space when you upgrade but Apple make sure you pay for the privelege.
 
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