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Official "Waiting for Santa Rosa" thread.

Manic Mouse said:
MBP
2.2/2.4Ghz C2D
2Gb RAM
160Gb HDD
15.4" 1680*1050/17" 1900*1280
Go8600 512Mb

MB
1.8/2.0Ghz C2D
1Gb RAM
100Gb HDD
13.3" 1280*800
X3100/Go8400 256Mb

Come on Apple, please. DO IT!
Click to expand...

I really hope they don't go for the solutions from NVIDIA.

Anyway, the only thing that the Centrino Pro platform seems to excel at is power consumption at idle.

Anandtech tested an Centrino Pro notebook against something that very much resembles the current MacBook Pro.
 
diamond.g said:
Why?
Click to expand...

Currently more features are exposed with the ATI/AMD drivers than the NVIDIA drivers. It was only lately the NVIDIA drivers were updated to support tilting.

Anyway, the real reason is the - soon to be announced - Radeon HD family is much more exciting in terms of features. This could enable Apple to provide a DVI-to-HDMI cable that includes audio as well. Something the Radeon HD family is capable of.

I also suspect the Radeon HD 2600 to be a better performer than the Geforce 8600GT Mobile. Time will tell (soonish) :D
 
kajitox said:
Guys, guys, seriously though...do you need 8GB of RAM? If you think you need that much, then you should be working on a desktop.
Click to expand...

I need a huge amount of RAM in my notebook computer to help ease the pain of being bullied as a child for my superior intellect and lack of athletic ability. I assume that its the same for everyone here. :D

Seriously, it's just about having some headroom for the future. RAM's an easy upgrade for an aging computer.
 
BrianMR said:
I'd rather see more frequent updates, not less frequent. That would make me more comfortable with the updates that will inevitably come after I buy. I think most people know that obsolence comes as you drive out of the parking lot and just want to have the latest technology at the time of purchase. Delaying technologies only exacerbates the issue.
Click to expand...
I don't find a bit smaller obsolence after one month any better than a bit bigger obsolence after half a year.
More frequent updates would mean smaller production series, which would rise the costs, so macs would be even more expensive than now and/or profit percentages might decrease. Shareholders wouldn't like that, so it's hopefully not gonna happen.
 
kingofkolt said:
I'm praying hard for 512MB of graphics... What's the likelihood of that?
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Well according to nVidia both the 8600 flavours have 512Mb of RAM, only the 8400 has 256. If they put the 8600 in the Pro it would leave them room to put the 8400 in the higher-end MacBooks. Hopefully.

Also the new cards have hardware .h264 decoding which would be a big boon for Apple considering how much they push the format.
 
Manic Mouse said:
Well according to nVidia both the 8600 flavours have 512Mb of RAM, only the 8400 has 256. If they put the 8600 in the Pro it would leave them room to put the 8400 in the higher-end MacBooks. Hopefully.

Also the new cards have hardware .h264 decoding which would be a big boon for Apple considering how much they push the format.
Click to expand...

In that case it would be better to go with AMD who integrated a Universal Video Decoder into their Radeon HD family and has the ability to use a DVI-to-HDMI with audio as well.

Very Apple-esque to only require one cable to do it all.

It will handle hardware Blu-ray as well as HD-DVD up to 40Mbps and support for Context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC in short).

To top it off the Universal Video Decoder also has support for dual-stream decoding as well ;)
 
Pressure said:
In that case it would be better to go with AMD who integrated a Universal Video Decoder into their Radeon HD family and has the ability to use a DVI-to-HDMI with audio as well.

Very Apple-esque to only require one cable to do it all.

It will handle hardware Blu-ray as well as HD-DVD up to 40Mbps and support for Context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC in short).

To top it off the Universal Video Decoder also has support for dual-stream decoding as well ;)
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AhHA!! I know your from B3d :D .... How's it goin??

Well we are all expecting X2000 series to have much better DX10 (I guess OGL2.1) performance than the 8X00 series. We will find out in like 4 more days.
 
diamond.g said:
AhHA!! I know your from B3d :D .... How's it goin??

Well we are all expecting X2000 series to have much better DX10 (I guess OGL2.1) performance than the 8X00 series. We will find out in like 4 more days.
Click to expand...

Guess I am not the only Mac user at that forum ;)

A good thing, if I must say heh.

But yeah, I am more interested in the additional features and capabilities the Radeon HD family will bring to the table rather than an extra 10 FPS in some game I don't play :p
 
What are the possibilities of Apple putting the Santa Rosa chips in the base-line MacBook Pro before WWDC?
 
Manic Mouse said:
Well according to nVidia both the 8600 flavours have 512Mb of RAM, only the 8400 has 256. If they put the 8600 in the Pro it would leave them room to put the 8400 in the higher-end MacBooks. Hopefully.

Also the new cards have hardware .h264 decoding which would be a big boon for Apple considering how much they push the format.
Click to expand...

The 8400M GT has 512 MB of ram.
 
Pressure said:
We don't know. Only time can tell ;)

I am hoping they are upgrading more than just the chipset myself.
Click to expand...

No kidding. Did anyone actually read the spec for the X3100? Did anyone else notice how it doesn't have a vertex shader or a geometry shader? How is it supposed to be better than the X1600?
 
Stay strong, boys and girls, the wait is almost at an end!

If all Apple does is replace the chipset and CPU of the MB and MBP, the upgrade will have been hardly worth the many months of waiting many of us have been indulging in.

A new top of the line graphics card; better, brighter, more colourful, more even and more energy efficient screens; a gig of internal flash memory; larger & faster HDD; more RAM standard and optional; Possible case redesign; etc.
THAT is worth waiting for.

Oh, and nobody's saying the X3100 is better than the X1600. It IS better than the GMA950 or whatever it is in the Macbook. The X1600 is far better than either.
The Go8600 or HD2600 will hopefully replace the X1600 in the MBP. The MBP will not be downgraded to the X3100.
 
Manic Mouse said:
MBP
2.2/2.4Ghz C2D
2Gb RAM
160Gb HDD
15.4" 1680*1050/17" 1900*1280
Go8600 512Mb

MB
1.8/2.0Ghz C2D
1Gb RAM
100Gb HDD
13.3" 1280*800
X3100/Go8400 256Mb

Come on Apple, please. DO IT!
Click to expand...
IMO, it will more likely be:

MBP
2.2Ghz
2Gb RAM
1GB flash mem
120Gb HDD
15.4" 1440x900
Radeon X1700M 128MB (basically the updated version of the X1600M, but quite a bit faster).
$1999

2.4Ghz
2Gb RAM
1GB flash mem
160Gb HDD
15.4" 1440x900
Radeon X1700M 256MB
$2499

The only other graphics cards I can see Apple using would be the Geforce 7700 or 7600GT. They aren't going to be using the highend stuff like X1900 because they generate too much heat.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-X1700.2157.0.html
 
hvfsl said:
IMO, it will more likely be:

MBP
2.2Ghz
2Gb RAM
1GB flash mem
120Gb HDD
15.4" 1440x900
Radeon X1700M 128MB (basically the updated version of the X1600M, but quite a bit faster).
$1999

2.4Ghz
2Gb RAM
1GB flash mem
160Gb HDD
15.4" 1440x900
Radeon X1700M 256MB
$2499
Click to expand...

I doubt that, the Radeon X1700 Mobility is about to be outdated by the release of the Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 family on monday.
 
hvfsl said:
Radeon X1700M 128MB (basically the updated version of the X1600M, but quite a bit faster).

The only other graphics cards I can see Apple using would be the Geforce 7700 or 7600GT. They aren't going to be using the highend stuff like X1900 because they generate too much heat.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-X1700.2157.0.html
Click to expand...

Hmm, I could buy that if AMD/ATI wasn't comming out with the x2000 series in like 4 days. But since they are why would Apple not go with the updated line?
 
diamond.g said:
Hmm, I could buy that if AMD/ATI wasn't comming out with the x2000 series in like 4 days. But since they are why would Apple not go with the updated line?
Click to expand...

I would love to be proven wrong, but Apple doesn't normally use the latest graphics tec in their laptops.
 
hvfsl said:
I would love to be proven wrong, but Apple doesn't normally use the latest graphics tec in their laptops.
Click to expand...

There's a difference between not using the latest and greatest graphics technology, and using old and outdated graphics technology.

If Apple uses the X1600, they might as well just go back to putting in PowerPC G4's in. The X1700 would be more like an upgrade from 1.3 to 1.6 GHz G4. A slightly faster slow and old chip is still slow and old. OK, maybe that's a bad analogy. Maybe think upgrading from Core Duo to Core 2 Duo being equivalent to X1600 to X1700.

The DX10 chips have a whole new design. They have far better performance per watt, nvidia seems to be claiming p/w roughly double that of their 7 series, no doubt ATI will be as good or better considering their extra die shrink. In my opinion, not using these new graphics cards would be the equivalent of Apple sticking with the original Core Duo processors once Penryn has been released. Clearly, Apple would not do this.
 
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