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Differences between NVidia's GeForce 9400M and 320M ?

post #1 of 5
5/7/10 at 7:02pm
Thread Starter 
I'm interested to learn the differences between these video cards : NVidia's GeForce 9400M and GT 320M used by Apple.

Is the GT 330M supposed to be better/faster than the 9400M ? Any benchmarks and comparison stats ?

Mac mini 2.53 GHz, 4 GB, NVidia's 9400M.
13" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz, 8 GB, NVidia's 320M.
OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8

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Mac mini 2.53 GHz, 4 GB, NVidia's 9400M.
13" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz, 8 GB, NVidia's 320M.
OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8

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post #2 of 5
5/8/10 at 12:20am
No offense brother, but the answer to that question is a single google query away (and has been discussed here many times). 9400<<<<320M<<<330M
Matyoroy!
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Matyoroy!
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post #3 of 5
5/8/10 at 3:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali View Post

I'm interested to learn the differences between these video cards : NVidia's GeForce 9400M and GT 320M used by Apple.

Is the GT 330M supposed to be better/faster than the 9400M ? Any benchmarks and comparison stats ?

The 320M is around the same as the 9600M GT in the old MBP, just a little slower. This makes it around double the speed of the 9400M. The 330M is 50% faster than the 320M.

So if you are getting a Mac Mini, it would certainly be worth waiting for a refresh to get the 320M. However, with the Mini there's no reason to assume any upgrade will come soon.

I personally think they will do the refresh to benefit the back-to-school buyers and it will include the Macbook, Mini and entry iMac. This would be August/September.

The focus for June will be the iPhone, then the Mac Pro into July, then the consumer models in August/September and that covers all the products until 2011.
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post #4 of 5
5/8/10 at 6:36am
Thread Starter 
Is there a way to turn ON FSAA (antialiasing), with the 9400M card ? I'm interested to try 4x oversampling and see the impact on framerate. This is for an astronomy application (Celestia).

With my "old" G5 with its ATI x850 XT, there's a control panel which lets the user to turn ON/OFF various graphics options for an application list, which is extremelly usefull. With NVidia's cards on recent Macs, there isn't such a control panel, and this is a shame. Any idea on this ?

Mac mini 2.53 GHz, 4 GB, NVidia's 9400M.
13" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz, 8 GB, NVidia's 320M.
OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Reply

Mac mini 2.53 GHz, 4 GB, NVidia's 9400M.
13" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz, 8 GB, NVidia's 320M.
OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8

Reply
post #5 of 5
5/8/10 at 7:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali View Post

Is there a way to turn ON FSAA (antialiasing), with the 9400M card ? I'm interested to try 4x oversampling and see the impact on framerate. This is for an astronomy application (Celestia).

With my "old" G5 with its ATI x850 XT, there's a control panel which lets the user to turn ON/OFF various graphics options for an application list, which is extremelly usefull. With NVidia's cards on recent Macs, there isn't such a control panel, and this is a shame. Any idea on this ?

You don't get a control panel but 3D apps usually have a text file you can change. Celestia has one in the application package and AA is set off by default. The 9400M can handle 4x but it does judder a bit when panning planets up close. In games under Windows, 2x is usually the best setting balancing quality and performance.

It must do some smoothing without AA on explicitly though because you don't see any jagged edges on planets or stars unless they are quite far away. At normal distance, the edges are perfectly smooth. If you can take a screenshot (shift-command-4 and drag over the area if you don't know) of your version without AA turned on in the control panel to see what it looks like, I could tell you if the 9400M looks as bad. Upload the image to tinypic.com or similar.
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