black macbook capable of gaming?

Not correct... the 8800 ultra still averages better than it.

 

As I've said repeatedly you can qualify a part with the disclaimer "for a notebook" or "by notebook standards", however as I've also said repeatedly notebooks run the same software as desktop PCs, and hence their components are compared directly against other PCs for performance.

You have a serious misconception about the sizes of GPUs. In fact, they're all about the same size.

Regardless, the size is irrelevant, as again they run the same software.

Not really. It only just fell into the low end category, and is probably the best part you can possibly get that would still qualify as low end.

I've already specified this several posts back.

It wouldn't matter if Intel graphics could run Crysis at full settings, it would still be an extraordinarily low end part by today's standards.

 

i meant the gpu and the cooling solution and the circuit board that goes with it.

 

The 8800 Ultra isn't offered, and was a rip off when it was, so it's a moot point. The 9800GTX has more processing power but less memory bandwidth. Their performance tends to flip at extremely high resolutions (sooner or later depending on the game), but they're very similar.

 

Wolfpup, I just checked through this whole thread, and I can't find one single quantitative measurement you suggest for evaluating graphics cards. Could you please give us some insight as to your system? I'm really trying to understand your point of view, here, but you aren't giving us much to go on - besides writing off everyone else's arguments as "irrelevant."

 

Wolfpup just because you write off everyone's views as irrelevant and leave only your own opinion does not make it right. Oh and the 9800gtx has indeed been proven to be beaten by the 8800 Ultra so your argument is "irrelevant"

What we're trying to tell you is that you are the one not paying attention to the power the card has. You refuse to compare it to anything else other than say that it is a poor card...compared to what? The 8800gtx which you consider mid range compared to...what? Provide some basis for your viewpoint other than "that's irrelevant".

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/8600_roundup/ - first paragraph, first sentence - "Today we are going to compare some of NVIDIA's latest in their mid-range offerings: the 8600 GT/GTS family of video cards."

http://www.pclabs.gen.tr/2007/10/29/crysis-benchmark-with-8800gt/ - Go down towards the middle and you'll see they lump the 8600gt in with the mid-range cards where it does quite well in its class on crysis. Not zomgwtflolhax performance but not bad for a single mid-range card.

So yes, tech sites do indeed understand that the 8600gt is mid range and they know what to expect from such a card. There are certain levels it should be able to reach and there are things that it just can't do. Mid-ranged.

 

Still not the size of a quarter-not even close. And regardless, still not relevant.

Post #48. There is no exact quantitative measurement obviously, however I can't recall a single instance of a GPU remaining mid range or high end after it's replacement was released (beyond minor revisions).

 

And neither does it make it wrong.

In the first place, that has nothing to do with my argument, in the second, the 9800GTX and 8800 Ultra, are as I said extremely close. The former has more processing power, the latter more memory bandwidth. There are plenty of situations where one or the other is faster. Neither one is absolutely faster.

That's false.

Also false. I made no such claim. For myself and a lot of people the 8600GT/9500GS is a reasonable choice given that it's available in much cheaper notebooks than some better chips and that it runs most of today's games pretty well.

Irrelevant. The 8600GT was a mid range part when it launched. Or are you claiming a Voodoo 1 is a high end part?

Again, irrelevant. It was a mid range part at the time.

Your choices for links are...odd. You do realize cards don't stay in the same performance category forever, right? Do you honestly think those links mean anything, given how much the market has changed?

Which are what exactly? Performance ratings are against other cards, not primarily against a particular game. As I said, Intel video could run Crysis at full settings and it would still be considered an extraordinarily low end card.

 

Then define for me low, medium, and high. Obviously real world examples don't cut it for you. And the 8600gt/gts is still nvidia's primary offering in the middle of their lineup and has only very recently (I think middle of march) been starting to get replaced by the 8800gs and has been absolutely rocked by the HD3850 but it is still in production and is still being bought and used.

 

It strikes me as ironic that there probably is a reasonable argument that could be made for claiming the 8600GT still qualifies as mid-range. I'd have to work at it, but could probably argue that.

Comparing it to trucks, claiming notebooks somehow have a different market for games, claiming or quoting information from when it was mid-range are not valid arguments.

I'm actually trying to think of one...

At any rate, please don't mislead people who are trying to make purchasing decisions. Computer purchases are expensive, and I hate when people make poor decisions because they don't understand what they're buying.

 

I've given real world examples, and already defined it as it's commonly defined.

Again, where a company claims a part fits does not always reflect the reality of where that part fits (see my earlier example). Regardless, Nvidia has since replaced the 8600GT in the mid range.

I'm not sure that it is still in production, but regardless neither that, nor whether it's being bought or used has anything to do with it's relative performance.

 

im pretty sure none of this is relevant. i think that makes it.... IRRELEVANT!

i think its time for us to agree to disagree.

you seem to be very good at disagreeing with everyone regardless of their stance, and writing "irrelevant", so we are off to a good start.

you disagree with the company position, the tech sites, and us.

----

as far as the truck thing, i thought if i simplified the situation a little, you might have an epiphany. no such luck.

you dont have to tell me that this is irrelevant to your argument, ill do it for you

^^^ irrelevant to promoting wolfpup's argument

plus, i stand by my render farm comment. nothing is high end except for a 100 gpu render farm.

also, i know exactly how big a gpu is (the gpu by itself, and also the gpu including the circuit board it rests on along with the cooling solution)

i might not know the exact size of your face. maybe you have an unusual sized face?

edit: i apologize for taking it personally. but seriously just lay out your argument and walk away. don't keep coming back with "irrelevant" written out 30 times and expect people to accept that as a rhetorical argument.

 

Wolfpup, the notebook range has not yet been replaced, so the 8600m GT (or the extremely rare 8700m GT) still holds the position as the leading mid-range mobile GPU, with no real competition.

According to your argument, no notebook graphics card will ever be top range, because they are heavily restricted by their size and power consumption. Even the performance of the top range 8800m GTX is only barely comparable to the 8800GT/512MB 8800GTS, which is, according to you, getting phased out by the Geforce 9 series.

Certainly, if someone asks about how mobile graphics card will compare to PC graphics cards, saying that the top range notebook cards are comparatively mid-range at most is valid. However, stating that currently the 8600m GT is low end for a mobile graphics card is incorrect and misleading.

I fully understand if you do not wish to accept or respect my point of view, but I do believe that this argument has gone on for long enough and all parties have made their opinions known.


If this continuous slander of discrediting other people's opinions continues, I will have no choice but to lock this topic. This last paragraph is aimed at everyone, by the way.

 

also, care to move this to off topic (preferred) or mayyyybe gaming?

 

Full-circle response here: We have concluded that while the viewpoints on the classification of the 8600gt might differ, a macbook of any color is capable of gaming if equipped with an 8600gt. Checking up on the specs of these blackbooks, it appears as though they are burdened with integrated graphics which, we can all agree, are not suitable for modern gaming. However, the macbook pro models with the 8600gt are able to game effectively. However one is limited by the 8600's performance limitations as this is curently the best gpu offered in a macbook.

 

irrelevant.

(just kidding)

but yeah the macbook will only be able to run games from ~2004 and before. the macbook pro can run any game available.

 

I am not a gamer really but i have noticed that just playing a few pretty basic games like Luxor on the MB has the fans really working quite hard and the fan noise is pretty distracting. My previous notebook that was equipped with a 8400GS card was not taxed in such a manner running the same game.

 

All I have to say was this was the most irrelevant discussion I've read in weeks. I want the 15 minutes of my life back from which it took me to read this entire thread.... it's notebookreview.com stop with the comparisons of notebook GPU's vs desktop? *sigh*

 

C'mon guys, let's get this thread back on track. Its gone way off topic.

 

macbook rocks socks, (but its not for gaming)

 

In all honesty, I think the thread is kinda over. It actually should have ended on page one with "Since the black macbooks currently available only have integrated graphics, no they are not for gaming." How on earth someone decided to turn that into an argument over the classification of an 8600gt...well that's for another thread and another day. I'm tired, good night.

 

I disagree with things that are wrong. As I said, I don't like when people give bad advice, or make purchasing decisions from ignorance.

As should you. Surely you don't believe whatever you're told by a corporation?

The tech sites agree with me, not you. Again, surely you understand that data about relative performance of computer parts from a year ago is no longer valid insomuch as it compares to modern hardware?

Unfortunately I'm not sure that some posters here DO realize that-that's why I'm trying to correct you. You're not doing yourself or others favors if you're making purchasing decisions based on outdated info, or misunderstandings of relative performance.

That was a flawed comparison with logic that did not work.

That isn't an argument, it's a dismissal of things which aren't relevant. I expect you to come back with a relevant argument. To me it's rather self-evident why these things are irrelevant, but then I'm used to...other forums.

But again, that's "by notebook standards". When making a purchasing decision you need to look at the market as a whole, as a part gets outdated at the same time regardless of whether it's in a notebook or desktop.

Two things...one, it's pretty much self evident that notebook parts have to lag behind desktop parts. But it's not completely true to say they're never high end. There have been a number of high-end parts in notebooks over the years, but we do go through long periods where the best notebook hardware is firmly mid-range.

The Geforce 5xx0 generation was one such time, as was the time from the launch of the 8800 line through until it's launch in notebooks-over 1 year where notebooks were stuck with firmly mid-range components. On the other hand, there were high-end parts available during the Geforce 4 generation, and the 6x00 and 7xx0 generations-long stretches of time when the high end notebook part really wasn't that far off from the best of the desktop parts. I think we're currently in another period (finally), although that may only last until Nvidia's true next generation part launches (late this year maybe?)

I'm not sure what this means. The Geforce 9xx0 series is basically just a new numbering scheme for revisions of the same hardware, and I didn't make it up, Nvidia did.

I didn't say it was low end for a mobile graphics card. I said it's a low end GPU now, because it is. What I've said is that it's misleading to compare notebook parts only to other notebook parts, because "notebook" isn't a platform, it runs the exact same software as all other Windows computers.

Yeah, from my personal experience and (fairly limited sample) of others with Intel based Apple notebooks, the cooling systems aren't really designed to allow the hardware to be pushed. Now it's *possible* that it's entirely fine that the fans ramp up that much, and they'd run that way for 10 years straight with no issues. But I know one person who's Macbook died after a couple of months running like that (not 24/7, just whenever it was on), and another who's GPU has died several times after the system has run like that for a few months (note it wasn't actually the CPU being pushed, but apparently it got damaged from the heat-though possibly it or it's video RAM was defective to begin with and would have failed sooner or later anyway. But he has had the hardware replaced and repaired multiple times so far with the same result each time).

Comparisons are not just valid, they're vital to really understand the capabilities of a notebook.

 

will a mod lock this thread?

 

I did not lock the thread after Wolfpup's previous long post because I thought it was relatively constructive and he did raise some valid, albeit repeated, points. It was not like those "EVERYTHING YOU SAY IS IRRELEVANT SO I AM RIGHT" arguments posted previously.

However, if more of you who have been taking part in the discussion agree with Masterchef, and strongly believe that this has come to an end, I will lock it.

 

Personally I find this very bizarre. A number of you posit an idea that runs contrary to what virtually any tech person will tell you-provide no evidence to back it up, and then want to have the thread locked when you don't like what I'm saying?

Either ignore it, or preferably, try to research, think about, and learn from what I'm saying.

 

Lock it, please: this thread is woefully off-topic, Wolfpup is the only one defending his point of view, and the argument has basically come down to a simple difference of semantics, rather than a real argument over the power of graphics cards. There's no more value to be had here.

 

C'mon guys, one last reminder to get back on topic. Settle the arguments elsewhere, through PM or something. Thanks!

 

niemassacre has been relatively active in this discussion so I am going to respect his and masterchef's opinion and close this thread.