New MacBook starts from $799

http://www.inquisitr.com/4834/exclusive-apple-to-launch-800-laptop/

That's it, I'm going to dump my VAIO very soon and jump in OSX world!

 

Wow. That would make a LOT of sense for Apple right now.

 

That would be....amazing. I'd buy one, definitely.

 

OMGＡＷＥＳＯＭＥ！！ But what does it look like?

btw, that will not apply to apple australia.

 

Woot! that looks like a second mouse button.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/09/more-pics-of-apples-supposed-new-laptops-surface/

"Some Apple retailers in the United States have been given price lists for a new Apple laptop line, and there’s a big surprise: an $800 laptop.
According to the source, retail outlets usually get the price lists 10 days before products hit the market. "

 

What is the Autodesk picture supposed to show? Those all seems to be older processor bins and they are mislabeled anyways since the 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo for instance was never an Extreme branded processor.

I'm all for a $799 MacBook if they can make it profitable. But I'm not sure of the need to expand from the current 8 configurations (3 MB, 3 MBP, 2 MBA) to 12 configurations. It's more worthwhile to stick with 8 configurations, but make more custom components options available rather than having more stock configs that people will still need to tweak further.

 

im hoping the 15in Pro will be 1in, but the 17in will be 1.2/1.3in so Apple can take advantage of the extra space and add beefier components aka 9700GT

 

My preferred GPU would be a Mobility Radeon 4670 in 256MB and 512MB GDDR3 configurations. Comes with 320 SP and the desktop version performs like a desktop 3850, so a Mobility 4670 performing like a Mobility 3850 should beat a 9700M GT. Plus, the 4670 has support for 64-bit floats which is useful for OpenCL in Snow Leopard while the nVidia 9000 series only supports 32-bit floats.

 

great, but the mobilty 4 series arent due until december or next year. And the 3850 is weaker than the 9700GT AND the 4670 will most definately not be similar to its desktop counterpart. See 9600m GT. Desktop version is a 256 bit high end gaming card. The notebook version is just a slightly higher clocked 8600m GT.

Sorry to ruin your day.

Heres the proof that the 3850 is weaker. (and this is the same with everything other game and 3dmark06)

 

Hmm.. that's just one game... Isn't the 3850 a 17" card and they didn't mix up the 3650 and the 3850?

 

True, in some other games it's different: http://www.notebookjournal.de/tests/674/2

PS. I would not judge the Ati card on that MSI test alone, because other factors could influence the scores. The fact that the MSI in that benchmark is based on a AMD platform does not make it a real good comparison. (Even though CPU isn't all that important.)

 

I bet it will have a Combo Drive.

 

Well the latest rumours are that the Mobility 4 series is to be launched sooner rather than latter which makes sense given that they've already been demoed and that the desktop launch is finally complete. And with Apple taking all this time in releasing the MBP, it would kind of make sense if one of the hold ups was waiting for the Mobility 4 series to finally be launched. I believe Apple was one of the first to release notebooks based on the Mobility X1600 which was launched in December 2005 I believe with Apple releasing it on MBP's in the first week of January so Apple isn't always slow to update their GPUs to the latest tech.

In terms of the 9600M GT being a lot weaker than the desktop 9600 GT. I don't believe that will be the case here. nVidia could do it because ATI wasn't very competitive with the 2k and 3k series so they didn't feel much pressure. ATI though is looking to regain the mobile market share that it lost so they'll no doubt be more aggressive. Besides, the Mobility 4870 seems to be using all it's 800 SPs like it's desktop counterpart, so it'd make sense for the 4670 to also have it's full 320 SP complement. And the 4670 already has a 128-bit memory interface so they wouldn't cut it further. The Mobility 4670 will no doubt be clocked lower than desktop versions, but that has always been the case for mobile versions. And Apple always uses GDDR3 with their GPUs, instead of skimping with DDR2 so that'll help. Even the 2400HD XT in the iMac uses GDDR3 while many 96xxM GPUs use DDR2.

http://www.notebookjournal.de/tests/674_test_notebook_msi_gt735_z8243vhp_ati_hd3850/2

And as others have pointed out it's kind of hard to tell from those benchmarks since the 3850 was on an AMD platform which is a bit slower. Seeing that there's separation between the 2 9700M GT systems, it is a factor. And the 3850 does manage to win one benchmark in Crysis, beating the 9700M GTS so it isn't all bad.

Anyways, the major benefit of the 4 series is still better GPGPU support with double precision floating point. ATI's larger number of SPs may not be reflected that well in gaming where it's very dependent on drivers taking advantage of the 5-way SIMD architecture, but GPGPU should have better utilization since you are programming for it directly.

 

A dream would be a Mobilty 4870 on the MacBook Pro. I wish Apple would just make their systems thicker to get beefier components

 

It's difficult to determine the faster card in that test since the CPUs are not the same. The GT735 has a 2.2GHz Turion, and the rest have Core 2 Duos. I'd like to see more game results as well, not just GRID.

 

You may have missed the link I posted earlier: http://www.notebookjournal.de/tests/674/2

PS. I agree the comparison isn't really fair.

 

Yes I did, thank you for providing the link again.

 

what the heck is core 2 extreme 2.5 from?
ridiculous.

 

^sorry?

 

Excellent point. Yes it will, and that will be a shame, once again.

 

Supposedly Apple is going with NVidia, and Im glad.

 

Do you ever make any sense?

That sounds like a horrible idea after what nVidia has done with their chips...

I'd be telling nVidia where to stuff something...

 

nVidia's defective GPUs isn't a big deal. Rumors exaggerate the situation quite a bit. Most people have no problems, of the ones that do, I hope they have warranty from a named corporation so that they can get a new laptop!

 

Nvidia faulty GPU fiasco has been blown out of proportions. It's true there are faulty GPUs but they are very small in numbers and usually happens on PC laptops that have weak heatsink fans on them.

Apple Macbooks Pros have very good cooling and thats why in the past 2 yrs+ you rarely see reports of dead video on a Macbook Pro.

Not to mention many PC folks knowingly overclocking their Nvidia GPU on their gaming laptops and causing them to fail.

 

You don't visit the macbookpro forums over at apple much do you?

 

Just because 100 people have a similar problem, and all went to the most logical place to ask questions about it, doesn't mean the problem is existing in all of the millions of laptops they sold.

Yes, it's a problem, and it's annoying to have it happen. But it's not a 100% guarantee that every MacBook Pro is doomed.

 

exactly, even if there are tons of post on a forum where only problems are posted, does not mean it is a widespread issue, it is probably about 5% of users that actually post on forums at all, quite honestly.

going with a different chipset from nVidia could be a great move, but Intel's chipsets seem just as capable in other areas, so it really doesn't make a big different either way quite honestly.

hope to see something very innovative on Tuesday.