Nvidia 9400M in new Apple notebooks

Z

Zengar

Regular
As some of you may know, Apple announced new notebook models earlier. One of the biggest hardware changes was dropping the Intel chipset and switching to a Nvidia one. They call it "9400M" and it would include a IGP solution with 16 shader units (similar to 9400GT). Apple claims it will be 5 times faster then Intel X3100 and about 55% of 8600M GT performance. I was not able to find any info on this chipset on Nvidia website. Anyone knows more?

It looks like the 9400M should be at least on pair with AMD's 780G graphics and able to play newer games on low/medium settings.

So what are your thoughts?
 
The link you gave states 10 shader units for MCP7A, Apple speaks of 16. Is it a mistake in the article or is the Apple chipset a custom-build Nvidia board?
 
Zengar said:
The link you gave states 10 shader units for MCP7A, Apple speaks of 16. Is it a mistake in the article or is the Apple chipset a custom-build Nvidia board?
Click to expand...

The Macbook Pro models have both a 9400M and a 9600M so you can switch on the fly between performance and battery life..
 
It is definitely a gain for the MacBook and the MacBook Air.

The MacBook Pro, not so much, considering that the Geforce 8600M GT and the Geforce 9600M GT generally offers the same performance.

A shame Apple didn't go for the Geforce 9650M GT which is made on a 55nm process compared to the 65nm of the Geforce 9600M GT.

Guess we will know how it compares to the old MacBook and MacBook Air once BareFeats gets his hands on the new models.
 
AnarchX said:
Review of GeForce 9300/MCP7A:
http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/...rce_9300-chipsatz_mcp7a/#abschnitt_einleitung (english by google)

Seems Hybrid Power is not supported for Desktop.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Not much of a loss, since battery life isn't a concern here, and there are plenty of low-power discrete GPU's available anyway (heck, even the GT200 doesn't need that much juice when it's mostly idling).

However, i agree that it's still annoying that such a thoroughly advertised spec didn't make the cut for the desktop. Perhaps in another revision or two of the chip ?
 
So that's the 9300 - is the 9400 coming for the PC or are they basically the same?

Duh - just read the link, the 9400 is just clocked higher.
 
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Performance is pretty damned impressive actually - the 9300 is already beating the 790gx (and handily in some gaming benchmarks) - the 9400 will be quite a bit faster. Looks like a new IGP king is born for the time being.

Can't wait to see this show up in $700 PC notebooks. A nice short coup for Apple, but better IGP's are exciting for the performance they bring into the $600-$700 sector (the one that Apple still doesn't want to play in, unfortunately).
 
mboeller said:
9400 is only faster:

9300 450 / 1200 MHz (8TMU/16Shader)
9400 580 / 1400 MHz (8TMU/16Shader)
Click to expand...


The Macbook Air-issued Geforce 9400M has lower clocks than either of those due to thermal considerations, according to Apple.
It would be interesting to know where they stand, and how many Watts that process shaves off the chip's TDP.

edit
Apple slides show it as being roughly 4 times faster (under which conditions ? i know, but bear with me) than the Intel X3100, while it's 5 times faster in the Macbook, so..., could we be looking at about 20% lower clockspeeds in the Macbook Air's 9400M IGP ?
 
That's the Air though - Apple has routinely downclocked similar GPU's as compared to their PC counterparts across the entire line without mentioning it before, so I'm curious to see if the mbook/pro have also been clocked lower than the stated specs.
 
Wow, that is not bad! I am rather pleased with the performance of the 9300 in the review, it seems to be sufficient for all games I was ever going to play on the MacBook... given 9400 should be faster, this is good news indeed! So I guess I will sell my few month old MacBook for a new one ;)
 
Zengar said:
Wow, that is not bad! I am rather pleased with the performance of the 9300 in the review, it seems to be sufficient for all games I was ever going to play on the MacBook... given 9400 should be faster, this is good news indeed! So I guess I will sell my few month old MacBook for a new one ;)
Click to expand...
The 9400M is basically a 9300, both are 450MHz, while a 9400 Non-M is 580MHz ;)
 
Davros said:
your saying it has two igp's ?
Click to expand...

One IGP + separate GPU

Apple said:
Starting at $1,999, the MacBook Pro uses the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors available, running up to 2.8 GHz, and a new graphics architecture that allows users to switch between the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics processor for better battery life and the powerful NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT discrete graphics processor for higher performance.
Click to expand...

I like it a lot.
 
I'm just really struggling to see the appeal of a 1440x900 screen at 15". I didn't like it last time, and now we're stuck with it again until the next evolution of the product.

I'd like a Macbook Pro HD or something, with a 1080p screen, at 15".
 
Arun said:
The 9400M is basically a 9300, both are 450MHz, while a 9400 Non-M is 580MHz ;)
Click to expand...

Where do you have that from? Nvidia has both 9300M and 9400M on their website, for 9300M the core clocks are 400 (with 64-bit bus), for 9400M there is no clock info given but it has 128-bit bus.
 
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