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Can Apple get in trouble for falsely advertising the ATI 4850 chip in the new iMacs?

Eidorian said:
The GT130 in the iMac is either a 9800M GS or a a G94/9600GT spin off.
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so how much different are the 9800m gs, 9600gt from the macbook pro 9600m card?
Also, do you think there will be a big boost from running the card with 256mb to 512mb?. Im planning on using After Effects CS4 which uses GPU quite alot from what i heard and have thought about getting the lower end macboook pro.
 
NT1440 said:
Probably just you.

VERY few people honestly care as it is complete overkill for what they do anyway.
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I agree also. And it's pretty obvious that the 4850 in the iMac must be the mobile version, every other piece of hardware inside the iMac (excluding Hard Disk, and Memory - at least in iMac 2008) is a mobile revision. Basically, AFAIK an iMac is a Mac Pro with a nice huge screen as a desktop solution.
 
this could prove interesting if someone possessed the testicular fortitude to faithfully carry it out.
 
d510r9 said:
I've been told the same thing on the 4850 twice now...once by phone after multiple transfers and once at the Apple store in Sydney:

The chip is the desktop version but it's not like the card you stick in your PC - it sits on it's own board which is fully integrated into the mobo. It can't be compared to the desktop cad but it is the desktop chip.

Anybody else thinks this sounds reasonable...fine by me.
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This sounds like the most likely explanation. Everyone seems to forget that there are two socking great bigarse fans in the imac to keep the bastard cool.

I can accept that apple took the desktop chip (which is small and flat after you remove heatsink/fan remember) then bent it a bit and shoved it in the imac. It makes perfect sense. They were never going to use a standard card were they.
 
sgtbilko28 said:
This sounds like the most likely explanation. Everyone seems to forget that there are two socking great bigarse fans in the imac to keep the bastard cool.

I can accept that apple took the desktop chip (which is small and flat after you remove heatsink/fan remember) then bent it a bit and shoved it in the imac. It makes perfect sense. They were never going to use a standard card were they.
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Too bad it has already been shown to be the Mobility chip.
 
sgtbilko28 said:
This sounds like the most likely explanation. Everyone seems to forget that there are two socking great bigarse fans in the imac to keep the bastard cool.

I can accept that apple took the desktop chip (which is small and flat after you remove heatsink/fan remember) then bent it a bit and shoved it in the imac. It makes perfect sense. They were never going to use a standard card were they.
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It's called MXM and the one in the iMac is not the desktop version. The device ID proves that no matter what Apple calls it on their website. This is why hardware has device IDs so vendors cannot cheat customers.

You cannot underclock a full fledged HD 4850 and call it a mobility version any more than you can take a mobility version and overclock it and call it a HD 4850. They are two different distinct products with similar yet different features.
 
Hasn't Apple always used MXM GPUs in iMacs (since G5) anyway?

If so, then we have our answer.

Good news would have been a downclocked Mobility 4870 but it doesn't appear to be the case. Nevermind.
 
BenManchester said:
Hasn't Apple always used MXM GPUs in iMacs (since G5) anyway?

If so, then we have our answer.

Good news would have been a downclocked Mobility 4870 but it doesn't appear to be the case. Nevermind.
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The 24" 7300/7600GT was the first use of the MXM-like daughterboards in the iMac.
 
Willie Joker said:
It's called MXM and the one in the iMac is not the desktop version. The device ID proves that no matter what Apple calls it on their website. This is why hardware has device IDs so vendors cannot cheat customers.

You cannot underclock a full fledged HD 4850 and call it a mobility version any more than you can take a mobility version and overclock it and call it a HD 4850. They are two different distinct products with similar yet different features.
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is the device id bound to the hardware ie chip itself or the software/firmware?

or am i just clutching at straws :(
 
The advantages of MXM are quicker implimentation (meaning there doesn't have to be a card made just for the iMac versus the Macbook) and possible upgrade paths down the road. The card can sense the power and cooling requirements automatically and thus clock down or clock up depending on what the manufacturer allows. It's quite possible, then, that a mobility Radeon HD 4850 could perform worse in some configuations when compared to others (meaning the iMac's card could perform slower or faster than a laptop containing the same card).

Disadvantages: the maximum power consumption is limited to 35 watts in MXM-III slots (the biggest and most powerful) so you'll never see desktop performance in any iMac when it comes to GPUs. This probably means no SLI configurations ever in the iMac either unless Apple redesigns the motherboards and enclosure to support two slots. The MXM module must support Apple's video BIOS as well, so, no easy upgrades either by purchasing gray market MXM modules (as you can with many PC laptops).
 
BenManchester said:
Would there be room for a full-size PCI desktop GPU then? By looking at the pictures of the inside of the 2008 24" iMac, I really doubt it.
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A full sized card is a monster for an iMac. At best you're looking at a desktop clocked GPU on a MXM-like daughterboard surrounded by 512 MB of GDDR3 and slammed into some sort of mini-PCI-Express x16 slot.

The GPUs in Apple's laptops are soldered onto the logicboards.
 
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