[steve333]

What the Macbook needs is a model with a larger screen. The 13 inch screen is just too small to use as an everyday computer.
The Macbook Pro has a 15 and 17 inch screen, there should be a Macbook option for a 14 or 15 inch screen.
Apple is the only company out there without a consumer priced larger screened laptop.

[Steve_S]

jimwick said:

Re: will the next MacBooks be better gaming systems?

Who cares? The money and time spent creating gaming code could be much better spent on more serious problems. Gaming is an utter waste of time and intellect.

That's a rather ignorant point of view. While stories are generally more popular for suggesting video games are responsible for all of the worlds problems, in reality, studies have shown that video games enhance hand/eye coordination in addition to helping improve problem solving skills.

[montgomery_burns]

medienhexer said:

I think for serious gaming, you'll still hav to bootcamp windows and run it natively.

You would still be limited by the hardware. Even when booted into Windows, the Intel GMA chip remains the same.

[leicaman]

That would be sweet.
BTW, Peter, did I miss your review of Call of Duty 4?
Awesome game!

[Jarmo]

I certainly hope there'll be a different graphics system this time. While integrated nVidia or Ati wouldn't exactly make a macbook a games dream machine, it'd double the framerates in most games anyway. Moving a whole lot of games from unplayable to playable.

With macs being such a small target audience for developers, it's tremendously important for the low end to be as high up as possible. Makes a huge difference for a developer whether the title is playable with iMacs and up ? or macbooks and up.

[jackdawsson]

If anything, Mac gaming is on the up again & anything that helps Mac-game developers increase their market, like better graphics in consumer Macs, has to be a good thing.


Since buying a HD 2600 iMac a few months back, I've gamed on my Mac over 90% more than on my PS2. Whilst I can appreciate that consoles have a few decent games, the fact is that for many Mac/PC gamers the genre of games on consoles just doesn't cut the mustard. Sorry to state the obvious, but whilst consoles are fine for some gamers, for those who love large-scale strategy games, Macs & PCs remain the ONLY viable option.

[Peter Cohen]

montgomery_burns said:

You would still be limited by the hardware. Even when booted into Windows, the Intel GMA chip remains the same.

You're going to be limited by the hardware regardless of what the hardware is. The difference is that you're not trying to run DirectX through a translation layer, you're doing it natively, so it does run quicker.

Obviously, if the game specifically excludes integrated graphics, you're S.O.L. regardless.

[Peter Cohen]

leicaman said:

BTW, Peter, did I miss your review of Call of Duty 4?

Our new associate editor, Chris Holt, is reviewing CoD 4 for Macworld. I expect his review to go online in the next few days.

[Peter Cohen]

snapdragon69 said:

I hope not. Gaming is a frightfully low brow affair.

Well, it gives me something to do, you know, when I'm not watching wrestling, eating pork rinds or going to monster truck rallies.

[Peter Cohen]

jimwick said:

Gaming is an utter waste of time and intellect.

I'd love to understand the psychology of people who feel that posting comments like this are worthwhile. Other than being yet another example of John Gabriel's Greater Internet F*wad Theory.

Jimwick, what do you get out of being so mercilessly negative about other people's pastimes? Did a gamer touch you in an inappropriate place when you were a kid? Did a gamer run over your puppy?

Seriously, pal, lighten up.

[spacest]

forget games, they need good video, period. i was shocked how poorly hd played on the latest macbook, compared to my first-gen macbook pro

[jackdawsson]

jimwick said:

Who cares? The money and time spent creating gaming code could be much better spent on more serious problems. Gaming is an utter waste of time and intellect.

Obviously many people care. Coders & publishers who make a living from it, those like me choosing to spend leisure time gaming as opposed to, for eg., going out & habitually getting drunk.

About 50% of my personal leisure time is spent writing & reading (for eg. Kafka, Murakami, Dostoyevsky, etc.). A good chunk of the other 50% might go on gaming, certainly on some weekends & evenings. Try seeing past the stereotypes. - I just hope Apple improve the graphics on ALL their consumer Macs.

[montgomery_burns]

If you think the MacBook needs better graphics hardware, then what does that say about the Mac Mini?

[WilfredLaurier]

Besides staying with Intel and using the GM45 and GMA X4500 and going with nVidia there is also a middle of the road option of going with the GM47. The GM47 has yet to be released, but has was on Intel's roadmaps and is basically a GM45 but with the IGP clocked higher from 533MHz to 640MHz. Intel was claiming the IGP in the GM47 would be twice faster than the GMA X3100.

Peter, I don't suppose you could ask Intel what their official position on OpenCL is? Could the GMA X3100 and GMA X4500 support OpenCL or GPGPU operation in general? And will Larrabee support OpenCL?

People always say Apple would need to go to nVidia or ATI GPUs to take advantage of OpenCL which seems to assume that Intel IGPs couldn't do it. It'd be nice to know whether it is a actual hardware limitation in the GMA X3100 and GMA X4500 or is it simply because Intel hasn't bothered to release a direct GPGPU interface to the IGP like nVidia has with CUDA and ATI with CTM. Personally I think it may be the latter, seeing that the GMA X3100 and GMA X4500 support DX10 just like ATI and nVidia GPUs and in some ways Intel's unified shaders are more flexible than ATI's or nVidia's since Intel uses the shaders for video processing with a scheduler that manages between swapping the video pipeline and graphics pipeline in and out, while ATI and nVidia have dedicated video hardware and don't rely on their shaders as much. I would think Intel could add swapping a GPGPU pipeline to the scheduler's tasks to enable OpenCL functionality.

In the case of Larrabee, I think they are hoping that the x86 nature of it will allow it to be directly programmable without an OpenCL middleman. However, supporting OpenCL could be helpful if all lot of software end up being written for it.