Yeah, Apple has always played down the GPU, which is odd considering they use it so much now. I agree with this:
"for the price, we'd argue it should definitely come with a GeForce Go 7800 or Mobility Radeon X1800 XT graphics chip"
I have a Mini with the GMA and I discovered that it actually runs quite well. I then installed Bootcamp to widen the range of games and to play Half-Life 2 better. I then discover a serious flaw with the GMA. It doesn't support hardware transform and lighting.
This causes a number of glitches in a lot of games. Hardware T&L apparently has been an accepted standard for over 6 years and Intel are only using it in the upcoming x3000 integrated chips. But what good is that to me? Apple should have used a dedicated ATI or nVidia chipset from the outset. Even the old Radeon 9200 supports hardware T&L.
I'm not happy about that decision at all. I now have to limit myself to games that don't rquire hardware T&L even though the overall performance of the machine might handle the game.
They go on about upgrading the CPUs all the time but Apple should know that a machine is only as good as the sum of its parts. Everything needs to stay on top: hard drives, GPUs, CPUs, motherboards, fsbs, Ram and so on.
We need better Ram in the Mac Pro, better GPUs in all the Macs (8800GTX BTO), Core 2 Duos in the Mini, perpendicular hard drives, esata.
Comments
"for the price, we'd argue it should definitely come with a GeForce Go 7800 or Mobility Radeon X1800 XT graphics chip"
I have a Mini with the GMA and I discovered that it actually runs quite well. I then installed Bootcamp to widen the range of games and to play Half-Life 2 better. I then discover a serious flaw with the GMA. It doesn't support hardware transform and lighting.
This causes a number of glitches in a lot of games. Hardware T&L apparently has been an accepted standard for over 6 years and Intel are only using it in the upcoming x3000 integrated chips. But what good is that to me? Apple should have used a dedicated ATI or nVidia chipset from the outset. Even the old Radeon 9200 supports hardware T&L.
I'm not happy about that decision at all. I now have to limit myself to games that don't rquire hardware T&L even though the overall performance of the machine might handle the game.
They go on about upgrading the CPUs all the time but Apple should know that a machine is only as good as the sum of its parts. Everything needs to stay on top: hard drives, GPUs, CPUs, motherboards, fsbs, Ram and so on.
We need better Ram in the Mac Pro, better GPUs in all the Macs (8800GTX BTO), Core 2 Duos in the Mini, perpendicular hard drives, esata.