Intel's G965 vs. AMD X1600 graphic card

[Sanjin Jukic]

Intel's G965 vs. AMD X1600 graphic card

Read more>>
http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/03/12/gdc2007_intel_rig_demo_against_amd/index.html

Any commentary on the new upcoming graphic cards?

[Jeff Kilgroe]

YAAAWN....

Intels GMA3000 integrated into the G965PM chipset is rather nice... But we also have to figure that it is barely outperforming the X1600 (and that is even questionable). The X1600 is nearly 2 years old now. My big question is why does AMD/ATI have no new mobile offering above the X1600 to show right now??? Weird. nVidia's Go 8400 runs circles around both the G965 and the X1600. And it consumes no more power and generates no more heat than the X1600. So hopefully that bodes well for upcoming Macbook Pro systems and other more compact notebooks where a discrete GPU is desireable, but they don't have the space or power to drive a Go 8900GTX or mobile X1950XT. The G965 is pretty much guaranteed to be in the next Macbook and Mac Mini as I doubt Apple will provide discrete graphics on those platforms.

On the bright side the 965 series chipsets are shipping to integrators next week so that means we could very well see new iMac and Macbook Pro announcements at NAB. I don't really want to upgrade my MBP that I just bought in October, but if I can install 4 to 6 GB of RAM in a new one, then I may go for it. The 32bit memory limit has been killing me for a while and makes working on a notebook hard. It's not the CPU or GPU much of the time, but juggling apps around and trying to work with large data sets or scenes can be challenging with only 2GB installed.

What I'm really wanting to see is an updated Mac Pro and other high-end PC mainboards supporting SLI with 2 to 4 GeForce 8950GTX cards. Oh and a nice new 42" 4.5K monitor to hook up to that... Would it help if I said "please"?

[Sanjin Jukic]

AppliedVisual,

thanks for a very good commentary.

[Joe Carney]

That test between the ati and intel has been refuted by just about everybody.

I thought that ATI was coming out with the x1900...
http://ati.amd.com/products/mobilityradeonx1900/

Jeff, where did you hear about an Nvidia 8950?

Joe C.