Club SLI: Not if You Spent $3,000 on an SLI Notebook

2 12 2009

Who doesn’t like a club? Nvidia has a club for its patrons.

Membership in the club is exclusive, you need to prove your lack of fiscal restraint and download software that authenticates your SLI rig. Sadly, it does not detect my 9400m and pair of 280m GTX GPUs. So I won’t be downloading any exciting wallpapers or beta demos of six month old games.

This was pointed out to the chirpy Blog admins at Nvidia in one of the first posts, but the problem is not fixed yet. I’ve sent an email out and will update when/if there is a response.


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Are Nvidia Chips Really that Bad?

16 10 2009

Charlie seems to think so. Never one to mince words, he has the scoop on some boardroom trysts. His sources are light years better than mine, but they are clearly on one side of the Nvidia vs. AMD frontline.

If you believe his sources, Nvidia and Apple are set for a big time break-up.

What does this mean? Short term, the 9400m stays for the value line which will keep Core 2 CPUs for another year. And Apple will use various Intel/AMD combos for the Pro models. That means probably no more hybrid mode and Mobility RADEONs in MacBook Pros. What will this do to battery life? It will probably bring it back down to 4-5 hours unless their is some hybrid Intel IGP/Mobility RADEON option.

About that RADEON, the 5650 should be about as fast as a 260m while using less power because of better process technology. I think 8,000-10,000 points in 3dmark06 from a 5 lb one inch thick notebook is possible.


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Quick Look: MacBook Pro 13″

13 09 2009

The first MacBook was great, but it had a tendency to turn leg skin into chicharon what with its searing hot plastic shell. After a few revisions each of which successively cooler in temperature, the unibody MacBook came out. It was great too, but its combination of price and features was confusing – it was called MacBook, but looked like a pro and was priced somewhere in between the two.

Now we have the MacBook Pro 13″  - it is priced like a Pro, spec’ed like a Pro and looks very Pro. It also makes the plastic MacBook about as desirable as a nasty case of Climydia (is there such as things as a mild case?). Read the rest of this entry »


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Another Teaser: Review of the Updated Plastic MacBook

7 02 2009

I am about halfway through writing the review. Right now I am installing Vista so that we can test that 9400m IGP again. This time, the question is how much will slow DDR2 667 hamper its gaming performance.

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MehBook – Now With Less Suck

21 01 2009

Apple’s plastic shelled starter notebook is now a heck of a lot sexier thanks to some new internals and a price that remains static.

$999 ($1149 CDN) gets you a starter config with improved CPU and chip set. It’s this last bit that is most exciting. The centre piece of Nvidia’s 9400m chipset is an integrated graphics solution that perfroms on par with basic discrete video chips such as the 9300m or AMD Mobility 3450. Also, this chipset elimintaes its predeccessor’s heat problems.

Apple has finally nixed Intel’s silly 35 watt furnace – the X3100 IGP.


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Review: Apple MacBook (Late 2008)

19 12 2008

Apple computers are very tough to review because so much of what makes them special are features that don’t line up well against the bullet points on other vendor’s products. Things like insane attention to details, design and materials are tough to quantify or monetize.

keyboard Read the rest of this entry »


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