I highly doubt that Mac Developers are sitting and crying because Tom's Hardware Guide (another joker) said that the card performs poorly in UT2004.
Who gives a shit how GMA900/ 950 performs in games? It's not designed for that!
Try running UT2004 on Ati 9200 and you will not get that many FPS.
I have the previous Intel GFX chip 855 GME (Intel extreme 2) in my PC notebook and it runs all of the multimedia without a hitch, be it 3D or 2D. And at 3 watts maximum power consumption it's a hell of a good deal!
They're not going to use that chip in any product. It's only in there to simplify porting so that nothing requires a higher card. This thing is a shared-memory chip - the lowest of the low. All communication with higher cards goes through Apple's Quartz APIs anyway, so there is no need for developers to have access to those cards.
Jobs said that the developer machines were "not a product" and would "never be a product".
I've never been impressed with built-in GPUs. Perhaps its fine if all you do is use word, email, and the web, but considering how much Apple leverages the GPU for other purposes, I wouldn't touch built-in graphics with a 10 foot pole.
Notice how Mac parts like Radeon 9200/9600 and GeForce 5200 don't even appear on those charts due to obsolesce.
My personal data point, as I have 915G graphics in my work PC. It's perfect acceptable for 2D work. It plays Quake 3-era games great. It's absolutely horrible for UT2004.
Steve bent over backwards in the keynote, stressing more than once, that the developer machines are not a shipping product. That they are only for testing and that Apple wants them back at the end of the lease.
The current intel/apple developer machines in no way whatsoever resemeble the intel machines that Apple will ship to customers.
The reason the integrated solution is being used for the DevMacs is because 99% of the developers don't need a good GPU to develop their code. Apple is trying to make them as cheap a computer as possible.
I highly doubt this chip will be used in ANY Macs, even the Mac Mini low end. Apple cares about video performance.
That said, either Apple or Intel needed to go to the fairly large trouble of developing an OpenGL-supporting driver for this card, when it probably would have been much easier to lean on ATI/nVidia at an earlier date to port their drivers (which I believe Apple has source code to). While the i915 is unlikely to appear in high-end hardware, I could easily imagine it replacing the low-end Radeons in, say, iBooks and mac minis. It may even have better performance -- the lowest performing ATI card on this list is an X300, which I would imagine performs significantly better than, say, a Radeon 9200 -- in which case an i915 would probably be an excellent choice for low-end machines, which is probably why Apple has bothered providing support for it.
You have no idea what you're talking about. The reason the integrated solution is being used for the DevMacs is because 99% of the developers don't need a good GPU to develop their code. Apple is trying to make them as cheap a computer as possible.
I highly doubt this chip will be used in ANY Macs, even the Mac Mini low end. Apple cares about video performance.
This thread, in my opinion, can be closed.
1.
hey, i started two threads on this. first was, Intel offers GPU solutions. So, i was just asking, like 2 MONTHS AGO, what this might mean for Apple.
2.
the gma900 is one of intel's latest offerings, and recently tomshardware offered some benchmarks, so, i thought it interesting to take that and share for discussion.
3.
i agree that we should not freak out about the GMA 900 because it has been made clear such as yourself, that the developer box will look NOTHING like shipping macintels. i'm just wondering aloud what GPU pipeline intel has... and if this is part of steve's gameplan rather than just being at the mercy of ATI and nVidia
4.
however, the fact that an iBook that has not been updated for 9 months still ships with mobility radeon 9200, shows that GPU is not high on apple's priority list for lower-end macs. additionally, the powerbook has been shipping if i am not mistaken, with a mobility radeon 9700 for 1 year now. (feel free to correct me if i am wrong)
5.
i don't think we are too far off base that business wise for the lower end macs an integrated intel GPU solution will be provided with with the intel CPU and intel chipset. there are tremendous cost and quality control advantages that i'm sure stevie j has his eye on. i think though as mac observers we should be aware of the power of these GPU solutions to be informed as an when it comes out.
6.
i'll leave it to the moderators to decide if this thread should be shut down.
However, posts concerning whether or not the thread should exist, should be locked, or posts about the personal characteristics of other members will, as usual, be unceremoniously deleted.
Posts about the relative merits of the GPU chipsets in Intel Macs are perfectly fine.
\ 
WTF?
Comments
Originally posted by PB
Am I the only one seeing only the generic tom's hardware icon?
They may be blocking direct linking to their images. I use a proxy that strips the referrer header.
UT/UT2004 plays great as well as my current favorite game BF2.
And the reason UT2004 doesn't show a lot of improvement when SLI'd is because it's CPU bound - get a faster proc and you'll see improvement.
It's the way all versions of the Unreal Engine have always been.
But, However you must remeber that is without a video card, It instead runns off of the DDR ram that is aready on the computer
Originally posted by sunilraman
umm... it's crap
??? and the importance to us is?
Originally posted by ZoranS
??? and the importance to us is?
Because it's the video card currently used in the Apple Intel Developer Macs.
Who gives a shit how GMA900/ 950 performs in games? It's not designed for that!
Try running UT2004 on Ati 9200 and you will not get that many FPS.
I have the previous Intel GFX chip 855 GME (Intel extreme 2) in my PC notebook and it runs all of the multimedia without a hitch, be it 3D or 2D. And at 3 watts maximum power consumption it's a hell of a good deal!
Jobs said that the developer machines were "not a product" and would "never be a product".
I've never been impressed with built-in GPUs. Perhaps its fine if all you do is use word, email, and the web, but considering how much Apple leverages the GPU for other purposes, I wouldn't touch built-in graphics with a 10 foot pole.
My personal data point, as I have 915G graphics in my work PC. It's perfect acceptable for 2D work. It plays Quake 3-era games great. It's absolutely horrible for UT2004.
Originally posted by DHagan4755
Because it's the video card currently used in the Apple Intel Developer Macs.
Which can't be compared with the coming Intel based Macs - they won't even use a P4 it seems.
Steve bent over backwards in the keynote, stressing more than once, that the developer machines are not a shipping product. That they are only for testing and that Apple wants them back at the end of the lease.
The current intel/apple developer machines in no way whatsoever resemeble the intel machines that Apple will ship to customers.
The performance are so terrible, that it will prevent even Apple to use this video chipset
Now imagine if the GMA 900 reached the level of performance of the 5200 ultra : we might have one in the next macs.
Here we clearly see that the performances are too much terrible. Apple will not use it for their products
Originally posted by Powerdoc
The performance are so terrible, that it will prevent even Apple to use this video chipset
Apple?
Isn't that the company that uses a Radeon 9200 on a 64bit bus?
I highly doubt this chip will be used in ANY Macs, even the Mac Mini low end. Apple cares about video performance.
Originally posted by Placebo
SUNILRAMAN: Stop Making These Threads
You have no idea what you're talking about. The reason the integrated solution is being used for the DevMacs is because 99% of the developers don't need a good GPU to develop their code. Apple is trying to make them as cheap a computer as possible.
I highly doubt this chip will be used in ANY Macs, even the Mac Mini low end. Apple cares about video performance.
This thread, in my opinion, can be closed.
1.
hey, i started two threads on this. first was, Intel offers GPU solutions. So, i was just asking, like 2 MONTHS AGO, what this might mean for Apple.
2.
the gma900 is one of intel's latest offerings, and recently tomshardware offered some benchmarks, so, i thought it interesting to take that and share for discussion.
3.
i agree that we should not freak out about the GMA 900 because it has been made clear such as yourself, that the developer box will look NOTHING like shipping macintels. i'm just wondering aloud what GPU pipeline intel has... and if this is part of steve's gameplan rather than just being at the mercy of ATI and nVidia
4.
however, the fact that an iBook that has not been updated for 9 months still ships with mobility radeon 9200, shows that GPU is not high on apple's priority list for lower-end macs. additionally, the powerbook has been shipping if i am not mistaken, with a mobility radeon 9700 for 1 year now. (feel free to correct me if i am wrong)
5.
i don't think we are too far off base that business wise for the lower end macs an integrated intel GPU solution will be provided with with the intel CPU and intel chipset. there are tremendous cost and quality control advantages that i'm sure stevie j has his eye on. i think though as mac observers we should be aware of the power of these GPU solutions to be informed as an when it comes out.
6.
i'll leave it to the moderators to decide if this thread should be shut down.
.................
However, posts concerning whether or not the thread should exist, should be locked, or posts about the personal characteristics of other members will, as usual, be unceremoniously deleted.
Posts about the relative merits of the GPU chipsets in Intel Macs are perfectly fine.