Forums | MacLife

The GMA950 will beat the 9550, I would have thought but anything graphics intensive (uhm...like a demanding 2-year old game, for example) will be fairly craptacular compared to modern-ish real graphics card. Does the 9550 even support Core Image? The GMA950 definitely does.

Oh, and I smurfing hate my GeForce 4MX 440 Go.

I did some digging a while ago when shopping for a PC notebook and found that the GMA950 was about on par with a Radeon 9600.  It was a huge step up from the prior generation integrated GPU that I ended up buying with my Asus notebook, D'oh.  MacBook Pro here I come...after a speedbump of course.

I've played WoW on my MB.  You'll need to turn down most settings and it will be a bit choppy, but playable.  I've also played OttoMatic, Enigmo 2 and Wingnuts 2 without any problem.  I downloaded the Quake IV demo just for fun.  It would barely run, even at 640x480.

Zetetic Apparatchik wrote:

Does the 9550 even support Core Image?

Yes.

MuckSavage wrote:

Maybe my real question is, what are integrated chipsets missing that video cards have?

Dedicated VRAM and hardware T&L (for which the CPU is more than capable of picking up the slack).  But the GMA950 makes up for it with flawless 1080p playback and pixel shader support, meaning you'll get those cool "heat haze" effects in Quake4 and CoD2 (if you're daring enough to run them), as well as the ripple effect from dropping dashboard widgets.

The best way to phrase it is that the GMA950 sucks less than the Radeon 9550.

Zetetic Apparatchik wrote:

Oh, and I smurfing hate my GeForce 4MX 440 Go.

I've got a paid copy of Black & White 2 and Battle of the Gods that says I hate the 440 Go, also.

MuckSavage wrote:

Booksley wrote:

To put it bluntly, if you don't plan on playing games, then you'll be fine.

I want a 12" MacBook Pro myself

I play WOW on occasion, but I have an iMac at home for that. If all I had was a lappy, I would probably get a macbook pro.

I guess if the 950 is on par with a 9550 power wise, I would be fine with it. My iBook plays WOW acceptably, if not fantastic.

Maybe my real question is, what are integrated chipsets missing that video cards have?

That would most deffinetly be the dedicated Graphics Processor, integrated graphics takes away some (usually alot) of the power the processor is dishing out.

it's  a great machine muck.

In general, having a 3GHz Quad-Core Xeon will yield an insignificant improvement on framerates if the GPU is the limiting factor, which is certainly the case with the GMA950 and today's games.  What I thought you were talking about is the fact that the GMA950 is special in that it offloads HT&L to the CPU, in which case a good CPU can make a substantial difference.  All RAM does is reduce the amount of pausing or "hitching" that occurs in the game, and using the absolute minimum video card will naturally reduce the required RAM load necessary to maintain a stable framerate.

DudetheCreator wrote:

Mr. T wrote:

In general, having a 3GHz Quad-Core Xeon will yield an insignificant improvement on framerates if the GPU is the limiting factor.

Well... I wouldn't say that.  My brother plays demos of Doom III and Quake 4 on a machine with a GeForce 6600 (<- sucks less that integrated, but still sucks) and pushes all settings to the max, with a resolution to match the 20" display.  The only reason he's able to do this is because it has Dual Quad G5 processors and 4gigs or RAM. (The ram was complimentary of apple, after the local university (authorized retailer) couldn't fix it.  I guessed it was the PSU, so did the guys at the next shop we went to.  But it was already in Cupertino.

The 6600 GT doesn't suck and it shouldn't have any problems turning playable framerates at 1600x1080 in Doom 3.  It's considered "low-end" in the sense that it's the lowest-level card that can still play today's games without turning off fundamental features.  Anandtech frequently does CPU scaling experiments that'll make it much easier to illustrate what I'm talking about.  On the y axis, they have FPS, and on the x axis, they have incrementally faster CPUs, and when the GPU is the limiting factor you can see the curve level off.  That's the point at which CPU speed no longer matters (in that particular game, of course).  If I have time, I'll try to dig up a good example.