Intel HD 3000 wow...

[2IS]

lol'd. Performance of HD 3000 is crap regardless of one games or not. It IS a step backward.

Is that right? Lets go ahead and take gaming out of the equation then, since everyone agrees it's crap for that.

I would LOOOOVE to know what else you personally are going to use your MBA for that you're going to sit in front of the screen and say to yourself "man, this would have been so much better with the 320" Enlighten me, what "killer app" that isn't a game do you have on your MBA that's going to run so much better on the 320?

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Is that right? Lets go ahead and take gaming out of the equation then, since everyone agrees it's crap for that.

I would LOOOOVE to know what else you personally are going to use your MBA for that you're going to sit in front of the screen and say to yourself "man, this would have been so much better with the 320" Enlighten me, what "killer app" that isn't a game do you have on your MBA that's going to run so much better on the 320?

Well, when you put it like that we might as well as just keep using the Intel 950GMA.

 

[2IS]

Well, when you put it like that we might as well as just keep using the Intel 950GMA.

I didn't put it like anything. He said "games or not" it's crap, so I'm asking what he's running that isn't a game where its going to perform so much worse at vs the 320. I'm doing nothing more than asking for clarification.

I'm also pretty sure all HD decoding would be offloaded to the CPU on a GMA950 so no, it's not the same thing at all as that would adversely affect tasks that the MBA is intended for.

 

[Davidkoh]

By your logic, if everything about the computer is better, and one thing that you won't notice if you're not a gamer is worse, the entire thing is a downgrade. If you're not going to take advantage of the slightly added performance of the 320, the performance difference as far as the individual is concerned most certainly does not exist. I can tell you right now that for what I personally use the MBA for, the "refresh" would do everything better and I'm willing to bet that the majority of MBA consumers fall into this category. The MBA is crap for games either way you look at it.

If I didn't already own an MBA and had to make a choice on which to buy I'd easily give up video performance that I'm never going to use to have a more powerful CPU and HOPEFULLY longer battery life. It's not even a question.

No thats not by my logic. I am saying the GPU is a downgrade, not the entire computer. If im going to buy a new Mac every year I expect the performance to stay the same or become better in all fields. Technology should not move backwards.

A majority of the MBA consumers won't notice a difference between the C2D CPU and the SB CPU either way, should that mean we shouldn't get a CPU upgrade? No. Technology moves forward and thus performance increases.

 

[Acronyc]

If it can't maintain 30fps in a modern game it's not a gaming machine. 30 fps is hardly extreme.

Perhaps you should clarify that this is your opinion, because your statement looks like you are stating it as a fact, when it is something that cannot be proven as a fact. If I love to play games at 5 FPS and I don't need anything more, then for my purposes just about any notebook computer released in the past five years could be a gaming computer. What a product is useful and good for depends on the user and their perceptions, and these are not facts that can be proven for all users.

Out of curiosity, have you tried installing games on your MBA? I have installed many games through Steam in BootCamp and in OS X and have been more than pleasantly surprised. The newest, most demanding games like the Witcher 2 will of course not run, but many modern games will run very well. Gaming is secondary on my MBA, but it's great to get in an hour or two of Mass Effect 2 in my free time while I'm traveling.

 

[ri0ku]

Is that right? Lets go ahead and take gaming out of the equation then, since everyone agrees it's crap for that.

I would LOOOOVE to know what else you personally are going to use your MBA for that you're going to sit in front of the screen and say to yourself "man, this would have been so much better with the 320" Enlighten me, what "killer app" that isn't a game do you have on your MBA that's going to run so much better on the 320?

3DS Max,
Mudbox,
Photoshop,
Illustrator,
Maya,

Before you say wtf thats stupid on a small screen. Nope. I used to use a netbook for their extremely light and portability. I used to model handheld stuff on the bus to uni. It came in VERY handy. But I would like to be able to do some stuff a bit over the 10k triangle count. On a premium level notebook I should be able to do that. The 3000HD probably could but the 320 is better supported in all of the above programs.

Edit: Just to clarify btw, I normally would use my desktop or macbook pro to do some extreme level art work. But having a small 11" notebook with great battery life is a huge help to me for modelling on the go... or being able to quickly fix an issue or something like that. I wouldnt use such a thing to do heavy highpoly work. I wouldnt even use my macbook pro for that.

However sandybridge processors would very much improve the performance in the above programs even with the intel 3000 so... its pretty much a close call. But its been proven that the 320 out performs the 3000 in most games, so if I had the chance to be able to use the above programs AND be able to game a little then thats a bonus.

 

[Oppressed]

Hardly an extremist, lets take a look at a few posts below yours. Says he's a gamer, and praising the MBA's gaming abilities and provides an example where by his own admisison he was hovering around 1fps. Yeah ok. Not only did his example prove my point in my previous post but it also goes to show how poor the MBA is for gaming.

If it can't maintain 30fps in a modern game it's not a gaming machine. 30 fps is hardly extreme. If anything, claiming the MBA is a good gaming platform is far more extreme then claiming that it isn't.

Just like my gaming desktop isn't good at being lightweight and portable, my MBA isn't good at playing modern games well, and neither is anyone elses.

You are still assuming that people are thinking of the MBA as a gaming machine. Its a machine that can play games, but that does not make it a gaming machine. I don't think anyone will dispute that fact.

The example that the person gave about the SC2 achievement is a rare instance and he won't be putting the machine under that stress load on a regular basis. You missed the point to where he is very comfortable with the capabilities of the MBA otherwise.

The point is playing games around 30 fps at low to medium settings is just fine for a group of people. None of those same people would classify the MBA as a gaming machine. If these people wanted a gaming machine they would have bought an Alienware.

 

[2IS]

Perhaps you should clarify that this is your opinion, because your statement looks like you are stating it as a fact, when it is something that cannot be proven as a fact. If I love to play games at 5 FPS and I don't need anything more, then for my purposes just about any notebook computer released in the past five years could be a gaming computer. What a product is useful and good for depends on the user and their perceptions, and these are not facts that can be proven for all users.

Correct, that's my opinion. It is however based on the fact that 25-30fps is what most humans would preceive as smooth motion video. So I'll say it again, my position on this is hardly extreme and your example of "i love playing games at 5fps" is far more extereme not to mention ridiculous then me saying 30fps.

3DS Max,
Mudbox,
Photoshop,
Illustrator,
Maya,

Before you say wtf thats stupid on a small screen. Nope. I used to use a netbook for their extremely light and portability. I used to model handheld stuff on the bus to uni. It came in VERY handy. But I would like to be able to do some stuff a bit over the 10k triangle count. On a premium level notebook I should be able to do that. The 3000HD probably could but the 320 is better supported in all of the above programs.

Edit: Just to clarify btw, I normally would use my desktop or macbook pro to do some extreme level art work. But having a small 11" notebook with great battery life is a huge help to me for modelling on the go... or being able to quickly fix an issue or something like that. I wouldnt use such a thing to do heavy highpoly work. I wouldnt even use my macbook pro for that.

However sandybridge processors would very much improve the performance in the above programs even with the intel 3000 so... its pretty much a close call. But its been proven that the 320 out performs the 3000 in most games, so if I had the chance to be able to use the above programs AND be able to game a little then thats a bonus.

Sure, if you had the chance to have a better GPU & CPU you'd take it, so would most anyone else, including myself. That's not an option though. You said so yourself, the CPU upgrade alone would do a lot for those programs. So yeah, the MBA could have been even better but so far, other than games, SB > C2D+320M. I doubt that any of those apps you mentioned would run better on the current MBA.

 

[ri0ku]

Correct, that's my opinion. It is however based on the fact that 25-30fps is what most humans would preceive as smooth motion video. So I'll say it again, my position on this is hardly extreme and your example of "i love playing games at 5fps" is far more extereme not to mention ridiculous then me saying 30fps.



Sure, if you had the chance to have a better GPU & CPU you'd take it, so would most anyone else, including myself. That's not an option though. You said so yourself, the CPU upgrade alone would do a lot for those programs. So yeah, the MBA could have been even better but so far, other than games, SB > C2D+320M. I doubt that any of those apps you mentioned would run better on the current MBA.

The 320 would help with loading direct x capable rendering settings in max for loading multiple texture channels for models. The HD 3000 has terrible drivers apparently so this probably would be thrown out the water. As for maya since it can be run in OSX and the 3000 seems to have better performance in osx I cant really say much.

Its very close... in some the 320 would be the better option... but also in other areas the sb CPU's would make up that loss. However I wouldnt intend on rendering much on such a machine anyway. It took me 32 hours to render a 15 second particle animation on my i7 -_-

 

[Acronyc]

Correct, that's my opinion. It is however based on the fact that 25-30fps is what most humans would preceive as smooth motion video. So I'll say it again, my position on this is hardly extreme and your example of "i love playing games at 5fps" is far more extereme not to mention ridiculous then me saying 30fps.

I don't your position is extreme, but I just wanted to clarify that it was your opinion and not indicative of the opinion of all users. Personally I agree that 25-30FPS is ideal for gaming, and when it gets below 25, it tends to lose its enjoyability for me. That being said, I disagree that the MBA is useless as a casual gaming machine. I would say about 90% of the games I have tried on my MBA have run between 25-30FPS on low to medium settings (older games on high settings), including Mass Effect 2, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, Starcraft 2, FEAR 2, Fallout 3, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, Bioshock, Left 2 Dead 2, Prey, Portal, and Amnesia, among others. Have you tried to play some games on your MBA? If not, depending on your configuration I think you may find it to be a rather capable little computer, even for a bit of gaming. At least, that's what I found out with my MBA.

 

[jmpnop]

Is that right? Lets go ahead and take gaming out of the equation then, since everyone agrees it's crap for that.

I would LOOOOVE to know what else you personally are going to use your MBA for that you're going to sit in front of the screen and say to yourself "man, this would have been so much better with the 320" Enlighten me, what "killer app" that isn't a game do you have on your MBA that's going to run so much better on the 320?

I do light editing on MBA which take advantage of better graphics. GPU in the next MBA will be a step backward, don't understand why you're defending that.

 

[2IS]

I do light editing on MBA which take advantage of better graphics. GPU in the next MBA will be a step backward, don't understand why you're defending that.

Beucase I doubt that "light" editing will perform worse on the refresh. It's not like editing (of any sort) is fully dependant on the GPU and the 320 is really just marginally better where SB is quite a bit more powerful than C2D. Do you actually have an example where the current MBA will outperform the refresh outside of games? Doesn't seem like it. I'm not denying the GPU will be a step backwards, I'm saying overall the system will be a step forward to most people, which includes you if light editing is the only thing you can come up with.

 

[FX4568]

Is that right? Lets go ahead and take gaming out of the equation then, since everyone agrees it's crap for that.

I would LOOOOVE to know what else you personally are going to use your MBA for that you're going to sit in front of the screen and say to yourself "man, this would have been so much better with the 320" Enlighten me, what "killer app" that isn't a game do you have on your MBA that's going to run so much better on the 320?

I would LOOOOVE to know what else you personally are going to use your MBA for that you're going to sit in front of the screen and say to yourself "man, this SB processor is really much better than the C2D" Enlighten me, what "coding" do you have to do on your MBA that's going to run so much better on the SB?

 

[Cosmo Kramer]

Seems to me that some people that have the current air are trying to bash and downplay the refresh and they have yet to even see what it's going to offer

 

[ri0ku]

Seems to me that some people that have the current air are trying to bash and downplay the refresh and they have yet to even see what it's going to offer

We pretty much have a very good idea what it will have to offer, especially since the nvidia chipset can no longer be applied unless they pay intel a big pot of moneys.

I dont own an air btw and im not putting down the coming update just thought I should say. The only reason I jumped into this thread was because someone was posting misleading information about the 3000 saying it would give smooth gaming performance with fps below 24.... I only came in to say that is not true.

 

[2IS]

I would LOOOOVE to know what else you personally are going to use your MBA for that you're going to sit in front of the screen and say to yourself "man, this SB processor is really much better than the C2D" Enlighten me, what "coding" do you have to do on your MBA that's going to run so much better on the SB?

I have a Windows desktop for my heavy lifting, which is why i'm not upgrading my MBA. I do use iMovie quite a bit which would see a substantial improvement with SB. Not only would the transcoding be a lot faster but the rest of the computer would be far more responsive during the transcode. That one app alone is not reason enough for me to upgrade.

The difference between me saying it and you saying it is my comment was directed to someone who essentially said HD3000 was crap for everything (gaming and otherwise) and I was asking what else it would handle like crap besides games. Your rebuttal on the other hand is completely pointless. Whether or not I take advantage of SB has absolutely nothing to do with what I was responding to.

If you'd like though, I can provide you with more examples where I could take advantage of SB and make your post even more useless than it already is.

 

[FX4568]

I have a Windows desktop for my heavy lifting, which is why i'm not upgrading my MBA. I do use iMovie quite a bit which would see a substantial improvement with SB. Not only would the transcoding be a lot faster but the rest of the computer would be far more responsive during the transcode. That one app alone is not reason enough for me to upgrade.

The difference between me saying it and you saying it is my comment was directed to someone who essentially said HD3000 was crap for everything (gaming and otherwise) and I was asking what else it would handle like crap besides games. Your rebuttal on the other hand is completely pointless.

If you'd like though, I can provide you with more examples where I could take advantage of SB and make your post even more useless than it already is.

I dont think you get it. Of course, I can say the same thing on the opposite side of the spectrum.
I use SC2 cranking 40 fps on my 320m, on the other hand i would get 15 fps on a ULV 3000HD.

See our needs are different? What I am trying to tell you is that we need an equilibrium. a perfect combination. Enough GPU while not sacrificing too much CPU. And that is what the C2D 320m combo gloriously achieves.

we are trying to find a 50/50 not a 80/20. For people like you a CPU boost would be good, for me a GPU boost would be good. But for the normal user, would a CPU boost be an upgrade considering the GPU sacrifice? My answer, definitely not. And that is what I am trying to prove.

 

[jmpnop]

Beucase I doubt that "light" editing will perform worse on the refresh. It's not like editing (of any sort) is fully dependant on the GPU and the 320 is really just marginally better where SB is quite a bit more powerful than C2D. Do you actually have an example where the current MBA will outperform the refresh outside of games? Doesn't seem like it. I'm not denying the GPU will be a step backwards, I'm saying overall the system will be a step forward to most people, which includes you if light editing is the only thing you can come up with.

Overall the new MBA will definitely be faster but this thread was on graphics processor of the upcoming MBA. I do agree with your point that editing will be better on the new MBA since the gain in performance (CPU) is much more than the sacrifice in graphics (apart from gaming).

 

[2IS]

I dont think you get it. Of course, I can say the same thing on the opposite side of the spectrum.
I use SC2 cranking 40 fps on my 320m, on the other hand i would get 15 fps on a ULV 3000HD.

See our needs are different? What I am trying to tell you is that we need an equilibrium. a perfect combination. Enough GPU while not sacrificing too much CPU. And that is what the C2D 320m combo gloriously achieves.

we are trying to find a 50/50 not a 80/20. For people like you a CPU boost would be good, for me a GPU boost would be good. But for the normal user, would a CPU boost be an upgrade considering the GPU sacrifice? My answer, definitely not. And that is what I am trying to prove.

I fully agree peoples needs are different, but when someone claims that HD3000 is going to be crap for everything, then I become very curious as to what that person is going to do where everything he/she does is going to run crappy.

Most if not all the examples given so far where the GPU would be used are also largely dependent on the CPU and would likely see an improvement, though perhaps not as big as one may have hoped for.

The only point I'm making in this whole thing isn't that the MBA is for everyone, it's merely that if you're not gaming and the 2010 MBA is good enough for you, the 2011 (or whenever the refresh comes) will more than likely be just as good if not better.

I also understand some people simply don't like the idea of having any part of their new computer being inferior to the previous generation, even if it may be more due to psychological then practical reasons. Maybe Ivy Bridge will be the answer for those folks.

 

[seepel]

Just for another data point. I have a 2009 Macbook pro, and although I don't game however I do a lot of development and write iPhone games. For my needs I have never felt the need to switch from the 9400m which to my understanding will still give lower performance compared to the HD3000 (correct me if I'm wrong). So to say so starkly that the HD3000 will be not worth it or just fine is really a judgement call that I think most people will be able to make if they think about their current needs and equipment.

 

[Davidkoh]

I also understand some people simply don't like the idea of having any part of their new computer being inferior to the previous generation, even if it may be more due to psychological then practical reasons. Maybe Ivy Bridge will be the answer for those folks.

This is it for me. Technological progress should make ever component better. And if Apple wants me to keep buying a new Mac every 6-11 months they should do that too, otherwise I'll lose interest .

 

[brentsg]

Out of curiosity, have you tried installing games on your MBA? I have installed many games through Steam in BootCamp and in OS X and have been more than pleasantly surprised. The newest, most demanding games like the Witcher 2 will of course not run, but many modern games will run very well. Gaming is secondary on my MBA, but it's great to get in an hour or two of Mass Effect 2 in my free time while I'm traveling.

I agree. I've been using a base 13 since the current MBPs launched and it's absolutely a non-issue for me. Ive done a few hours of gaming while traveling this weekend and it's fine.

 

[MartiNZ]

I dont think you get it. Of course, I can say the same thing on the opposite side of the spectrum.
I use SC2 cranking 40 fps on my 320m, on the other hand i would get 15 fps on a ULV 3000HD.

320m gives me 19FPS max. on medium settings SC2. The loss from low settings is much worse than any up in FPS, but 40? That's a surprising figure!

 

[FX4568]

320m gives me 19FPS max. on medium settings SC2. The loss from low settings is much worse than any up in FPS, but 40? That's a surprising figure!

go to custom settings I am cranking 100s in 1v1 beginning and never drop below 40 on huge 2v2 battles.
Idk why you are getting 19 FPS...

 

[pompidom]

Apple may offer an external graphics solution like Sony.

One can dream...

People could also use it for the new mini and the MBP 13, sounds quite promising to me.

I will keep on dreaming, it's Apple we are talking about.