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Nvidia launches the 8700M GT

It's a little better than the 8600M GT in most of the specs but one that stands out is the big bump to the shader clock. More and more games are getting heavier on shaders so that's a plus.
 
flopticalcube said:
How much power does it consume? How much heat does it produce? I doubt we will see Apple adding it in the lineup. It took them over a year to go from the X1600 to the 8600M.
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I don't know the details, but the first PC that it'll be used in is a Toshiba 20" enthusiast laptop. It's going to be hotter and suck more juice - requiring a bigger battery and more cooling. You might see this in the 17" MBP, but I don't think it'll be seen until the next revision as it'll probably require a bit more space (for cooling) than is currently available.

It's just an overclocked 8600M GT, there's no significant difference except clock speeds - in fact, I'm betting it comes out of the exact same bins as the 8600M GT, it just tests higher and can thus handle higher clock speeds. It was just released because they finally have a high enough yield of the chips to offer them for mass purchase.
 
It's not something that will make a complete update worthwhile. Don't count on ever seeing it in the Macbook Pro. By the time the video cards does get updated, it will likely be with something out of the new 9000 series from nvidia, maybe even something newer.
 
Personally, I am quite happy with the 8600m. While it is not the most powerful gpu out there, it is no slouch either and to think how much better it is than the previous x1600 is really exciting. DX10 support is a major plus and the image quality is very good IMO. All in all for a laptop GPU with 256mb ram, it is more than acceptable to me. Power, heat and cost have to be considered as well.
 
Oh yeah, and there's even a faster 8800M due out later this year too(it's in one of the article/news stories I linked to with respect to the 8700M, but I expect, unless it's on a smaller nm process die size, it will generate too much heat for the 1in thin Apple notebooks.
 
flopticalcube said:
How much power does it consume? How much heat does it produce? I doubt we will see Apple adding it in the lineup. It took them over a year to go from the X1600 to the 8600M.
Click to expand...
Well it seems to just be the same thing but on a higher clock? So probably quite much more, but what do I know.
 
Butthead said:
Oh yeah, and there's even a faster 8800M due out later this year too(it's in one of the article/news stories I linked to with respect to the 8700M, but I expect, unless it's on a smaller nm process die size, it will generate too much heat for the 1in thin Apple notebooks.
Click to expand...
Yeah, they are probably more suited for 2inches desktop replacements than 1 inches portables. Not that I would care about the size if I got that performance =P
 
Faster GPUs are always a good thing, though this looks like it's "only" clocked up 30%. I sort of have a hard time believing it's really faster than a 7950GTX-but maybe it really is in newer games. I bet it's slower in old games, but then again, I bet it's perfectly fine for older games.

The Geforce 8800 is supposedly launching in Q3, and while it's supposedly paired down in some way it only draws 22 watts, which obviously gives it the best power/performance ratio on the planet (actually the previous winner would be the current 8800s, even though they draw around 100 watts).

At any rate, I wouldn't worry too much about not getting this. Yeah, it's better than the 8600GT, but it's not like the kind of difference there was last year between the pathetic x1600 and the Geforce 7600GT/79x0 cards. I don't think anyone would be stopped from buying a Macbook by having a part that's 30% slower.
 
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