Macbook pre-launch gets a deFUDding

WITH THE RUMOUR mill on overdrive, one bit of info rings true in the misty FUD-o'-war: Apple adding Nvidia chipsets to its feature list.

The reason for this is simple: Apple has been making the case for Open CL since it announced its Snow Leopard back in June. Simply put, it needs Nvidia’s CUDA to enable Open CL. This makes it a reasonable assumption that Apple chooses to stick with Nvidia chipsets and GPUs, not just in the mobile but desktop market.

Should you not have noticed the Open CL footnote on the Snow Leopard announcement, Open CL is the CUDA/GPGPU end of business inside the OS. The general idea is to use Open CL to dump CPU overhead to the GPU or simply aid in processing stuff like audio and video transcoding, essentially making GPUs a pro-active bit of your operating system’s resources. You can feel the Mac movie makers quiver at the thought.

So, really, the big deal about the Macbook refresh isn’t the notebook adoption of the green goblin’s GPUs. We frankly don’t understand why everyone’s going on about it when the GPUs are present in Macbook Pros already. It isn’t like it’s something new.

If we talk chipsets, that’s another matter altogether: Nvidia’s chipsets do bring some features to the table – Hybrid Power and Hybrid SLI / GeForce Boost - but, again, the info that’s available doesn’t point to anything revolutionary… just the vivid imagination of fanbois all over the world that colour the Macbook an instant hit…

Let’s try and wipe the FUD from our spectacles, here.

Apple is looking at Snow Leopard and OpenCL (they’re also looking at dropping PowerPC entirely but that's a statement of fact). We were questioning Apple about where their pro Video and Audio tools would get the deserved CUDA boost... from the OS of course. Sure this a big design win for Nvidia, considering Apple holds 20 per cent of the laptop market in the USofA, but this Macbook refresh sounds like it’s bringing very little right now. What *does* it bring, you ask, apart from the vaunted aluminium brick and lower pricing?

First of all: a 9400M discrete GPU? Come again? What’s that? There isn’t, in fact, a 9400M GPU in Nvidia’s stable. You’ll notice this page, this page and finally this page (click on Specifications), that literally add up to a 9400M GPU-a-like hybrid SLI combo. The system uses a pretty restrictive 64-bit memory interface, but it’ll get the job done and you won’t be left in the cold when it comes to WoW.

Second: “MacBook Pros with 9600M GT”? Sure, why not, it's a minor upgrade from the current 8600M GT... “SLI!” You blurt out? Possible, but not likely. 9600M GT won’t do GeForce Boost with the 9100M G chipset. It’ll do Hybrid Power, though, meaning you get to switch between discrete and integrated to save on battery life. Just don’t expect SLI to kick in come performance time.

Third: 16.4-inch screens. Is there room for that in the MacBook line-up? MacBooks this size are usually reserved for the Pro line, and the 17-inch models already sport Full HD resolutions. Is there a point to this? Do you want to go blind on a 16.4-inch panel?

From where we stand, and reading everything we’ve read on today’s launch, the hardware upgrades on the MacBooks don’t do justice to the Snow Leopard’s potential. They are, however, upgrades and a step in the necessary direction (except maybe for that slower CPU in case no-one noticed), and you’ll be chewing your fingernails if not for it being an Apple launch.

We’ll know soon enough. µ

See Also
New Macbooks will sport Nvidia GPUs
Apple Knowledgebase says G92s are defective