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Intel HD 3000 wow...
- Thread starter hcho3
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Far too many gamers crying in here. The machine is meant for portability and travelling, therefore the HD3000 IS a step forward, as it'll increase battery life, increasing usage time on-the-go, whilst maintaining similar levels of performance as the previous IGP.
I honestly don't know why people are expecting huge leaps forward graphically. For starters, its Apple, they dont cater to gamers. If you want an overpriced machine capable of a decent level of gaming then go Alienware. Secondly, have you seen how thin and small the machines are? I'm fairly certain if they tried to fit in a dedicated chip the heat generated would enable you to cook a sunday roast on the thing. Its not possible to do it at this point.
The only thing gamers can hope for is if Intel decide to buy out NVidia.
I honestly don't know why people are expecting huge leaps forward graphically. For starters, its Apple, they dont cater to gamers. If you want an overpriced machine capable of a decent level of gaming then go Alienware. Secondly, have you seen how thin and small the machines are? I'm fairly certain if they tried to fit in a dedicated chip the heat generated would enable you to cook a sunday roast on the thing. Its not possible to do it at this point.
The only thing gamers can hope for is if Intel decide to buy out NVidia.
Maybe not from Apple, but this is a potential area third parties should get into. This would make the mba a real beast imo.
Frankly, I'm surprised that egpu aren't more popular. It's exactly what laptops need. Not only would this allow a ultra lightweight with the mba become incredibly powerful, but it takes the heatload from the gpu away from the laptop itself.
Imagine having two power supply units. One is just a normal small mac one, but the second is a bit bigger (like current win7 laptop bricks), but includes a high end gpu. That way, you can take which ever one you want on the go, depending on the need.
Really, the potential of thunderbolt and egpu is really making me excited, and if this occurs soon, the issue of a HD 3000 in the mba would be nonexistent.
Right. This post (not mine, and just in case: sarcasm detector 'on') tells you all you need to know about your attitude. (Hint: computers nowadays are powerful enough to do a lot of things, including the occasional 3D game.)
True, and in fact this will be reason enough to make the 11" SB MBA my next main (and only) computer. The problem is that I think many of us are disgruntled because nVidia might have been able to add both more IGP oomph as well as longer battery life. Now they're not even allowed to.
I haven't been able to find any relevant posts demanding a dedicated chip in the MBA, have you? The discussion is mostly circling around the IGP possibilities, which Intel made irrelevant.
Hmmm, that's something I never thought about... a THIRD PARTY external GPU running through thunderbolt... How sweet would that be!!! I would but one in a second!
I do think Sony's idea of the external gpu is brilliant. That way you have your portability and power.
If someone made a nice external gpu for apple using thunderbolt... that would make my day... and you could use it with multiple models of mac laptops!
I do think Sony's idea of the external gpu is brilliant. That way you have your portability and power.
If someone made a nice external gpu for apple using thunderbolt... that would make my day... and you could use it with multiple models of mac laptops!
Hmmm, that's something I never thought about... a THIRD PARTY external GPU running through thunderbolt... How sweet would that be!!! I would but one in a second!
I do think Sony's idea of the external gpu is brilliant. That way you have your portability and power.
If someone made a nice external gpu for apple using thunderbolt... that would make my day... and you could use it with multiple models of mac laptops!
Oh yes my friend, that is the dream. All we need to find out if thunderbolt will allow for redirecting the egpu to the internal display.
An excellent point, and one that is far too often overlooked. If you use programs that are going to run crappy on an i7/HD3000 (Games, 3D design or very high memory requirements), then maybe you should look for a different computer. Put another way, no one buys a Ferarri for it's cargo capacity.
Not to be a jerk, but either buy the Air and deal with the limitations or buy something that doesn't have those limitations (like a 15" MBP with an SSD).
If it's not obvious at this point, let me say it again, you can't have your cake and eat it too. No amount of complaining is going to change the fact that 1) it's 99% guaranteed that we will see an i7/HD3000 in the next Air and 2) the HD3000 isn't a great GPU for games and/or 3D stuff.
FX4568, TB is equivalent to 2 PCIe x4 lanes, so I suppose that it could theoretically drive a mid-range GPU.
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The HD3000 is fine for general computer work. In fact, it does it quite well. I've been using it in a MBP for 3 months and I haven't once missed the IGP from my 15". In fact, I'm convinced enough at the competence of this design that I'm selling and switching to an Air as soon as the new ones are available. I doubt I'll miss the extra CPU power.
If you want to game, get something else.
/random guy on the internet
If you want to game, get something else.
/random guy on the internet
Generally 4x is pretty low and will give a performance drop for a single card... but 2? Idk. that might probably give a mid-low GPU power. Also Thunderbolt is not able to achieve 10Gbps speeds yet from what I know. So idk if its exactly PCIex4 by 2 speeds.
Anyways, for such marginal increase in GPU, I rather not carry it.
Also, regarding your other point, as ive said before, why do you need such powerful processor when you say you dont need such mediocre GPU?
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.
I want to get back to the original point. That now MBA's are good for gaming, MBP 13 is not, and that means next weeks update might mean that MBA's will no longer be good for gaming.
Some programs are more taxing on the CPU than the GPU. Virtualization is one such example. I'm looking forward to the refresh since I run Windows in Parallels. The boost to 4GB in the last generation was a big help. Getting the hyperthreaded Core i5 or i7 will be another boost.
Hyperthreading is a rip off... It degrades server performance, and it sees no jump on small tasks. My ultimate MBA can do virtualization, and it runs smooth.
I have no idea why people keep saying that the SB will bring drastic performance changes. It will change... only on geekbench. No where else.
Perhaps Handbreak? Nothing time cant make up. GPU loss? Something time cant make it up.
How does server performance apply to an end user workload?
Hyperthreading is great on multithreaded tasks. Try running Logic Pro on a machine with hyperthreading and without. Sandybridge is most definitely a step forward... but who in their right mind buy a MacBook Air or any portable 13" and under for anything game related. Half the money will get you an appropriate gaming rig.
lol yeah if you're using the MBA as a server, you've got bigger problems than HD3000 or Hyperthreading.
As far as having an eGPU. If an external GPU can use both x4 lanes on the thunderbolt port to make it an effective 8x port, that's plenty of bandwidth for even the most powerful GPU's. The performance difference between 8x and 16x is typically between 0-5% the more powerful GPU's would however need an external power source.
As far as having an eGPU. If an external GPU can use both x4 lanes on the thunderbolt port to make it an effective 8x port, that's plenty of bandwidth for even the most powerful GPU's. The performance difference between 8x and 16x is typically between 0-5% the more powerful GPU's would however need an external power source.
That's exactly what I believe nando4 from notebookreview.com was saying (he's their resident egpu expect). And having an external power source is totally fine by me and understandable.
Many laptops have power supply blocks that are ridiculously huge, as big as a video card, so it's like having one of those if you need a egpu on the go.
I really hope companies like Sonnect come out with solutions for this soon. It would really put the whole, macs aren't good for games argument out the window. With an egpu, the mba would kill the m11x.
You could also say who in their right mind buys a MacBook Air for anything CPU intensive like Logic Pro or Handbrake?
Gaming is actually less extreme than needing more power than the C2D have. You can do the same things with a slower CPU, they just take longer time. With a worse GPU you cannot even do the same things.
There are a number of in game graphics settings you can change from resolution, shadows, reflections, AA, AF, smoke, textures, shaders, etc etc to cater to the GPU power you have on tap.
Personally, I don't need much more power than a C2D, as I'd only be doing general purpose computing on it: Web, Netflix/Hulu, iTunes/iPhone, Skype, maybe some much older computer games (like the original half-life/counter-strike or unreal tournament from 1999). CAD and 3D renderings stay at work (rockin' a Quadro 4600) or on my Windows Box (which is rocking a dual core P4 and a Radeon X1950 Pro).
Also, Apple is showing themselves pretty aggressive when it comes to dropping old hardware from new OS releases. I'd rather not buy an already outdated CPU in the C2D if I have a choice. That and newer CPUs should be more efficient in terms of power and rush-to-idle, both of which should yield significant battery performance, which is more important to me than raw CPU and GPU power combined (assuming minimum performance standards, of course).
That's exactly what I believe nando4 from notebookreview.com was saying (he's their resident egpu expect). And having an external power source is totally fine by me and understandable.
Many laptops have power supply blocks that are ridiculously huge, as big as a video card, so it's like having one of those if you need a egpu on the go.
I really hope companies like Sonnect come out with solutions for this soon. It would really put the whole, macs aren't good for games argument out the window. With an egpu, the mba would kill the m11x.
Toms hardware has a good assessment of the situation. Going from PCI-e x16 to x4 only shows about a 5% drop in performance across several resolutions (linked to in a forum in TH). The HD5870 is a pretty decent card. But another test I read showed that the texture quality had more of an impact, that using High or Ultra High textures saturated too much of the bandwidth on the x4 connection and caused performance to drop significantly.
Not before Steve Jobs approve it...
...I guess.
Steve wouldn't necessarily have to approve of a 3rd party peripheral based on open standards.
Actually SC2 is CPU bound, so as long as the CPU isn't crap you should be fine, especially at lower resolutions.
Lol no.
SC2 can run with anything that has core2duo... but GPU plays a bigger role.