GeForce 9600M GT


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I am currently looking to buy a new MacBook Pro.

The 15" MBP with NVIDIA GeForce 9400 + 9600M GT looks pretty tempting as I'd probably be looking to use it as a replacement desktop when not in lectures / on the move.

Does anyone else think it's worth it? (it's quite a big jump in price).

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The 9400M does a nice job, but the 9600M GT will definitely improve you're experience when you're working with graphics-intensive applications/games.

The 9600M GT will also give a nice boost to applications that begin to adopt OpenCL, the new technology in Snow Leopard that lets a normal, non-graphical application use the latent power of the GPU for computation.

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Personally I leave my MacBook Pro on the 9400M it runs cooler to the touch and I get much better battery life. And unless I'm playing a Game I notice no difference in graphics performance. That is to say window effects do not lag and I don't get low frames per second in Quicktime or other media players even with 1080p content.

But having said that, it is nice having the 9600GT there incase I do want to fire up a game now and again.

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Thanks for the replies.

I think I will probably go the 9600M GT model as it'll be useful for gaming when I go home (won't have to lug my huge pc home every holiday).

And also if I got the cheaper model I'd always be wanting the better one :rolleyes:

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And also if I got the cheaper model I'd always be wanting the better one :rolleyes:

Isn't that how it always goes? Damn tech jealously. :p

Yea, the 9600M GT is a good idea. For gaming, just install Windows in Boot Camp and voil?, you're set.

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just make sure you get the 512 mb 9600M GT rather than 256 mb. I bought the 15" MBP with 256 mb 9600M GT, while it's okay to play some new-released game, it could be better if i had the 512 mb one.

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Personally I leave my MacBook Pro on the 9400M it runs cooler to the touch and I get much better battery life. And unless I'm playing a Game I notice no difference in graphics performance. That is to say window effects do not lag and I don't get low frames per second in Quicktime or other media players even with 1080p content.

But having said that, it is nice having the 9600GT there incase I do want to fire up a game now and again.

Same here. I usually leave my MacBook Pro on the 9400M but when I do graphics stuff on it I change to the 9600M.

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I'd say go with the 9600 simply because when OpenCL hits you'll be super happy you got the higher-end card.

Offsetting CPU cycles to the GPU?? YES PLEASE! :-)

Personally I leave my MacBook Pro on the 9400M it runs cooler to the touch and I get much better battery life. And unless I'm playing a Game I notice no difference in graphics performance. That is to say window effects do not lag and I don't get low frames per second in Quicktime or other media players even with 1080p content.

But having said that, it is nice having the 9600GT there incase I do want to fire up a game now and again.

Keep in mind that rending high def video is a processor-intensive task and doesn't really use the GPU. The graphics card gets a work out when rending stuff (like in games or even photoshop).

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Still haven't got round to buying one yet, but also wondering if there's a chance the MBP range will be updated again this year?

I know there were updated Late 2008 and Mid 2009, will they again this year? If so I'd be tempted to wait it out.

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I'd say go with the 9600 simply because when

Keep in mind that rending high def video is a processor-intensive task and doesn't really use the GPU. The graphics card gets a work out when rending stuff (like in games or even photoshop).

Thats not actually true on newer machines by Apple they use H.264 acceleration built in to the 9400M and 9600GT. You can view the information on Apples website for Snow Leopard or on Mac Rumours where they showed without the acceleration CPU usage was 50-60% when playing back 1080p and a mere 8% when using GPU acceleration.

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