Nvidia powered Macbook rumours circulate
Fresh from the rumour mill
THE MAC BLOGOSPHERE is all a flutter with rumours that a new Macbook could soon be on its way, complete with an Nvidia graphics chipset.
A cryptic promo pic on Nvidia’s site and whispers that certain NV employees have actually seen some is sending fanboys into a frenzy.
The chipset in question seems to be the MCP7A-U, integrated into Mac’s GPU for the MacBook and possibly even the MacBook Air.
Nvidia declined to comment on the matter.
If the rumours are true, however, it could be less about Apple "embracing gaming" and more about not having to use a CPU to decode HD video anymore, being able to transcode on the IGP instead.
Adobe has already announced that its new Creative Suite 4 will support Nvidia graphics acceleration, so if we were Apple, we might be thinking of announcing new Nvidia powered Macs on the same day as the CS4 launch (October 30th). But current rumours believe the fruity themed toymaker could announce the new Macs sooner than that, as early as the middle of next week even.
As for Cuda, there is already a Cuda toolkit for Mac OS X, so it stands to reason that Apple could develop Cuda-based enhancements for its Aperture, Logic and Final Cut products. That is, if they want to. µ
L'Inq
Tuaw
Comments
Yeah nVidia will Mac...
And you are the last (yes last) to know....Chaaaaaarliiiieeeeeee..... where are you? Don't hide.
There goes apple reliability..
Charlie should have stumped upon this story. If apple goes NV, and NV's legendary chipset reliability busts apple, NV may end up buying apple then selling it to MS to make up for its fraudulent losses.expensive paperweight
Well, that really will be an expensive but very pretty paperweight when the Nvidia chip dies in one of these.All sound too familiar...
I think I heard and keep hearing (the "there is a new Macbook" bit) since March 2008."There always a new MacBook (Pro) around the corner..."
Move on, (and a Dell or something), nothing to see here.
Please......
You know how bad Nvidia chips are?! My nvidia gpu in my laptop killed my mother, raped my father, and sold my sister. Honestly it’s interesting how ignorant people are. I have friends who work at ATI in vlsi and asic design. Their cards are not perfect either some of the problems that are know internally at ati where never publicized. This is how it is in industry. I think the most famous example is the xbox 360’s RROD. If you want to put things in perspective my laptop still hasn’t died and I’m on my 5th 360. All companies should be accountable for their defective products, but to think that nvidia is the only one is just ignorant.My personal preference for video cards is based on the fastest video card and best bang for the buck.
Good points Billabong, but...
NVidia handled this very badly.So much so that I'm sure I'm not alone in advising people not to buy laptops, pc's or gfx cards with NVidia chips in them.
It's caused and will continue to cause NVidia a lot of problems.
We as customers have no idea which products are affected when we're making the purchase, so the only safe options is to specifiy "no nvidia inside" when shopping for the next 6-12 months. After this time it's possible that NVidia will have been so burned they will be extra careful, or the same fools will still be charge.
Since NVidia refused to fix the problem, and even spent months denying there was a problem, and still won't print a list of the affected parts, why should I spend my money with NVidia if they behave this way when something goes wrong?
Sony make exploding batteries, but they are replacing them all, so people will still buy Sony. At least they honour the customer-retailer relationship.
NVidia seem to think they can screw customers and it will have no repurcussions for them, lol, fools.