Home » Hardware » Apple refreshes MacBook Pros, Drops NVidia for AMD/Intel

Apple refreshes MacBook Pros, Drops NVidia for AMD/Intel

February 24th, 2011 Randall Hand

Apple has just refreshed the MacBook Pro line of hardware with some impressive new offerings, dumping the previously used NVidia chips for Intel Sandy Bridge and AMD Radeon chips. Just check out what you get for $1800:

15-inch MacBook Pro – No more Core i5 options for the middle child — these two strictly get the Core i7 and AMD Radeon HD 6000M goods. The $1,799 model packs a 2.0GHz quad-core Core i7 processor, AMD Radeon HD6490M graphics with 1GB of VRAM, and a 500GB hard drive. On the higher end, there’s a $2,199 model which buys you a faster 2.2GHz Core i7 chip, AMD Radeon 6750M graphics, and 750GB hard drive. There are also 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB SSD options. Also, as far as we understand, the graphics switching will work exactly like the previous models — it automatically switches between the GPU and IGP depending on what you’re doing.

Quad Core CPU, Radeon 6490 video card, and the new Intel Light Peak technology now called Thunderbolt. I sell a few more ads (or Amazon affiliate commisions!) here on VizWorld, and I might finally upgrade my old Black MacBook.

via Apple refreshes MacBook Pros with Sandy Bridge processors, AMD graphics, Thunderbolt I/O tech, and HD cameras — Engadget.

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a computer graphics programmer and news junky that's been working in the field for the last 15 years. He's responsible for visualizations generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, ytnef, mullion support in ParaView, and VizWorld.com.

Hardware amd, apple, intel, laptop, sandy bridge

http://www.anatomicaltravel.com/research/ Chad
Yuck. It’s priced like an Elitebook or Thinkpad, but spec’d like an XPS, only worse?
So I can get a 15″ MBP for $2,548 or an XPS 15 for $1,949. The XPS has a higher resolution screen, a larger HDD, twice the video RAM, Blu-ray, WiDi, facial recognition, a larger and removable battery, and a much better warranty.
If I configure an XPS to be the a similar price, $2,653, I can get a TV tuner, Blu-ray burner, a 2.3 GHz processor, WiMax, GPS, 3G, MS Office, and a 750GB HDD.
http://www.anatomicaltravel.com/research/ Chad
There’s no USB 3.0, either, and there’s no dedicated video out. Wha?
Randall Hand
But the XPS doesn’t come with Thunderbolt (Light Peak), and for $1800 you get a 15-inch MAcbook with a Quad-Core CPU.
http://www.anatomicaltravel.com/research/ Chad
The MBP doesn’t come with USB 3.0.
Given a choice, I’d take USB 3.0 for now, based on wanting to attach external displays without a heap of adapters and the lack of Light Peak devices.
Paying <$1800 for a laptop with a quadcore cpu isn't anything special. The XPS with the same CPU is only $1080. That's ~40% less.
http://www.anatomicaltravel.com/research/ Chad
And that 40% cheaper laptop still has a faster HDD and 4x more video RAM. Crazy. From a viz application standpoint, I can’t see much “pro” in the low end configuration. Not even the 17 inch lets you have more than 1GB of VRAM.
http://www.dominantapproach.com search engine optimization dc
Apple products are much more than just a hardware spec sheet. They come fully baked with a wonderful headache-free “ultimate version” OS and an excellent array of useful well-featured well-integrated applications tailored to run very well with it’s surrounding hardware.
http://www.anatomicaltravel.com/research/ Chad
Where “ultimate version” equals “capable of handling the limited HW variation that exists”? A hardware ecosystem that doesn’t support the technology of course won’t need the flexibility of operating systems capable of utilizing those. Nothing against OSX, but these laptops are overpriced and underpowered and basically exist only because there is no market for 3rd party hardware capable of running OSX (without violating the OSX license).