Apple's revised 13, 15 and 17 inch MacBook Pros deliver Intel'sblazing fast new Sandy Bridge Core i5 and i7 CPUs, new AMD RadeonHD (formerly ATI) dedicated graphics performance on the high endand a new high speed Thunderbolt port, resulting in the fastestnotebooks currently available while inheriting the long batterylife, the strong, minimalist unibody construction, and theenvironmentally friendly design of previous year's models. Position in the MacBook family The MacBook Pros gain a stronger edge in both processing andgraphics performance over the entry level white MacBook and compactMacBook Air, with the entire Pro lineup now supporting new SandyBridge versions of the Core i5 and i7 chips, leaving the olderCore2 Duo reserved for the budget minded $999 MacBook and light,thin MacBook Airs. Additionally, while the MacBook and Air models continue to use theNVIDIA GeForce 320M as their graphics chip and system controller,the Pros have moved to a roughly comparable Intel HD Graphics 3000graphics processor within the Intel platform system controller(which shares 384MB of SDRAM from system memory). The 15 and 17inch models add a secondary AMD Radeon HD graphics chip that kicksin automatically when needed.
The 15 inch MacBook Pro supplies a base option of the AMD Radeon HD6490M with 256MB GDDR5 RAM, or offers a higher end option of theAMD Radeon HD 6750M with 1GB GDDR5 RAM. That second option is thebase standard for the 17 inch model. The new chips make this generation of MacBook Pros not just fasterthan Apple's previous notebooks, but also faster than Apple'scurrent desktop iMacs, with scores that bump up towards the Mac Proworkstation and its multicore Xeon engine. PC reviewers have notedthat Apple's notebook lineup is currently the fastest availablefrom any vendor, thanks to the company's early adoption of Intel'slatest generation of CPUs. The shift to AMD graphics Over the past few years, Apple began a migration away from Intel'sown chipsets that support the CPU (and which have included Intel'srather anemic integrated graphics chips), building a strategy thatpaired Intel's Core2 Duo CPU with an NVIDIA chipset with far fasterintegrated graphics.
However, Intel killed this plan by integratingfunctions once provided by the supporting chipset, including thememory controller and graphics, into the CPU package itself. The Intel Core i5 and i7, first introduced last year in theArrandale platform, continue to integrate CPU cores with memory andgraphics under the Sandy Bridge generation, and similarly requirean Intel chipset for other I/O and related functions. While theformer 13 inch MacBook Pro skipped the Arrandale generation andcontinued to use the Core2 Duo/NVIDIA chipset combination, the new2011 Pro models all take the same leap to Sandy Bridge. While Intel isn't as good at graphics as NVIDIA, Intel's SATA diskcontroller performance is significantly better than that ofNVIDIA's; the new models also now support 6Gbps SATA 3.0 for thefirst time, so the fact that the new MacBook Pros use Intel'schipsets again means that disk performance is improved,particularly when using a Solid State Drive. Note that only thehard drive supports SATA 3; the optical drive is still connected toa 3GBps SATA 2.0 interface.
Apple has hopped back and forth between NVIDIA and ATI for itsdedicated graphics chips for many years now. After acquiring ATI,AMD has now changed its branding to AMD across the board, makingthis the first Mac to sport AMD-branded processors, albeit just forgraphics and not CPUs in competition with Intel. The new MacBook Pros with dual graphics chips (apart from the 13inch model that only has Intel graphics) continue to use automaticswitching technology that enables them to coast along using theintegrated Intel HD Graphics GPU, and then switch to using thededicated new AMD Radeon HD whenever advanced graphics are needed.This is triggered whenever an external display is plugged in, andwhenever software calls OpenGL, OpenCL, Quartz Composer, CoreAnimation or Core Graphics functions. On page 2 of 3: FaceTime HD, Thunderbolt, Graphics & Batteries, and Uniquefeatures among the three MacBook Pro model sizes. I am Fashion Accessories writer, reports some information about lucky brand handbags , breast cancer wristband.
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