WTF Nvidia!
polycounter lvl 11
I was having problems getting games to use my graphics card instead of my i5's, so I did some searching, and found this.
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=201764&st=20
WTF? What does that all that ranting even mean? What does Optimus do? Force the use of the processors if they have Sandy Bridge? I'm very confused. I have the card that many are having problems with (2GB Geforce GT 555M). Are Nvidia doing anything about it? I'm an Nvidia fanboy usually, but this is shaking my faith. Anyone clued in on this?
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=201764&st=20
WTF? What does that all that ranting even mean? What does Optimus do? Force the use of the processors if they have Sandy Bridge? I'm very confused. I have the card that many are having problems with (2GB Geforce GT 555M). Are Nvidia doing anything about it? I'm an Nvidia fanboy usually, but this is shaking my faith. Anyone clued in on this?
Replies
I can't remember nVidia ever screwing the pooch so hard.
So what are my options now? I would be very hesitant about moving off from an Intel/nVidia combo. Also, I hear dodgy things about ATI cards and viewports in Maya and Max. But all portably nVidia card 'feature' this optimus technology, unless, I think, the higher end notebook GTX cards don't feature it? I'm kinda stuck right now. If its a notebook I need, what is the best thing to do?
Other than that, your only real choice is getting an ati/amd laptop, I'm not sure its really that big of a problem to go amd, or find an intel laptop that you can disable that feature on.
Although I did have very bad experiences with Asus BIOS too.
Yeah I move around a lot so a notebook is a must I think. Never thought I would go ATI/AMD... I feel dirty haha. Anyone know of issues with 3d packages like zbrush or Maya and Max with ATI? Or any shortcomings AMD will have? I don't care much about CUDA or PhysX, not enough to justify having an intentionally crippled nVidia card anyway...Or, does anyone who follows hardware news know if nVidia are releasing a new cheapish notebook card like that isnt deliberately fucked in order to push their portable GTX cards?
Isn't there some always-on switch for one of the chips or is it the auto-setting messing up when deciding what chip to turn on?
how asus solves it:
the only problem i've got with it is that i can't play the good old Command & Conquer: Tiberian sun because there is some bug in the menu animations, google says forcing the nvidia card fixes it but no change
I've been thinking about what EQ was saying about a netbook,and I've been looking at a macbook air actually. Its got the size of the netbook, but you can develop apps so win win right? Thing is, I'm looking at a second hand one. Seeing as Apple are gits I'm afraid they are going to come out and say 'oh Xcode 5 requires at least i5's sorry' in an effort to screw people out of another grand and a half. Is this likely to happen, or would I be pretty safe buying a core 2 duo one? I'd also imagine Lion aint superfast on a core 2 duo... any macheads got advice for me on this?
Proper workstation pc with 2 nice big monitors. I do 3d art here, edit photos, play games.
Then I've got a very small laptop, Lenovo X220 with I5 and e-IPS screen with just the onboard video. Its perfect for web browsing on the couch, light photoshop work, taking it on vacation etc. It could handle 3d work and games too, but working on a laptop is terrible, if I wanted to do any real "work" on a laptop I would end up plugging in a mouse, keyboard, and probably a monitor, so at that point, there just is no point.
I would skip a high-end 3d powerhouse laptop unless I mean, are you really often doing high end 3d work or playing the latest games... on the bus, or however you're traveling? So yeah, I would just skip it.
High end laptops have always been an oxymoron to me, they're big, heavy and they have poor battery life. So get a laptop that is good for what it is, a laptop, and don't try to pretend its a PC. Thats my advice.
I actually do fairly high end photo editing on my laptop(processing 14mp RAW files in photoshop/lightroom) otherwise I would have gotten something cheaper/slower. I5 is pretty excessive unless you really need it for some specific purpose.
Yeah I would just be concerned that Apple would turn around and fuck everyone trying to make apps or games on a core 2 duo. Apparently they did that a few versions ago with Leopard or Snow Leopard; technically devs could have exported their apps from their existing hardware, but Apple felt it was time they spent another grand and a half to get Snow Leopard which was mandatory for the new mandatory xcode version.
upgrading to snow leopard cost less than $100 and ran fine on leopard machines, xcode comes free with mac os. I think your details are a bit skewed
dont ever buy pc´s from dell
first and foremost cause theyr price/value-rating sucks.
local retailers usually deliver much more for a lower price, and you can get your money back if you recognize your pc doesnt work properly.
atleast where i am from.
and since i already mentioned price/value i gues i dont have to adress apple here.
and also dont buy a laptop if you dont realy need it.
Possibly, I'm just trying to make the best possible long term decision. In the last place I worked I spoke with an apple programmer about buying a mac for app development and did tell me that what I posted did occur and that if people wanted to continue developing apps they had to upgrade their OS and Xcode which required more advanced hardware that some had. It might have been something that happened pre-Leopard, not sure. But I think it was even later than the switch from the G processors to Intel...
I would also be concerned that if Epic ever released UDK for mac it would require an i5...hmm... tis a tricky one.
The proof is that we created a cutting-edge physics/graphics system off of a white macbook from 2008 on our last project.
We run our company off of both macs and pcs, our pcs are self-built though whereas the macs are obviously straight from apple.
Also, you can always run windows natively on the mac hardware.
this is not quite true tbh, I own a mb pro for less than for a year and already have painful urges to shelve another couple thousand to apple (happens every time I visit store.apple.com)
I would be genuinely flabbergasted if I could do that off an air lol
Buying a second hand 13" for 550 in a few minutes, flash storage I reckon cause its old but it is 128GB and has 2GB of RAM and a 256 Nvidia chipset so can't really complain right? Its purely for netbook purposes, plus the whole app development side. And then maybe buy or build a tower later, cause retailers in Ireland are as much of a rip-off as Dell to be honest. And I'm really really not that smart so building one could be a bad idea :P
Firstly I'm having a Steam issue... when I go to log in to my existing account using the application, I get this
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/804/screenshot20120208at155.png/
Googled, but didn't come across a solution...
You can run Windows on the MBA, is that what you meant? It works the same way as any other Mac. Except you'll need an ISO of Windows on a USB drive, or an external optical drive obviously.
Also, I hope you haven't been mislead but that 13" won't have a 256MB GPU. It may have an integrated graphics chip which allocates 256MB but there has never been a 13" MB/A with a dedicated GPU... I know that because I've been buying MacBooks since the first one came out and 5 MacBooks later I'm still desperate for them to squeeze a discrete GPU in the 13" form factor (using a 15" atm, simply because it's the smallest with a dedicated GPU).
As for the Steam issue, could just be a Steam connectivity issue. Are all your other connected apps working (Mail/Browser etc).
Also be aware that you may have to run some command-line stuff to get Steam to load some games because of the integrated graphics. Although it's been a long while since I had to do that so it might've changed.
Shiiiiiiiite really? But theres even an nVidia logo on the box! It says Advanced NVIDIA integrated graphics. Hmm. Really gonna have to get Steam going to see what exactly I've ended up with. It's a 'late 2008' model anyway so its pretty much first gen I think :P
Plus I really should only be using it for the purpose I bought it for, creating mobile games :P
EDIT: Almost had a heart attack there, thinking I had to pay $100 for Xcode... phew. But to get it your apps running on an iOS device, even if they're free, does actually cost that much right? That's a bit shitty of them innit. So unlike Apple.
Could the issue I'm having with Steam be because the servers are getting battered over the Skyrim sale?
XCode is totally free, you can code and build your apps for free, but to 'sign' apps for on-device testing or deployment, as well as submission to the App Store, you have to pay the $99 ADC membership. It's not all that bad considering it's a one off, non-scaling fee and after that you take a straight 70% of sales. I suppose it just covers the admin costs of approving your app and getting it onto the store. Obviously if you were to develop a single free app then it's a bit of an outlay but if you had 10 apps that cost 99 Cents each, then it's not a bad deal.
I'd give the Steam thing a try later, if it keeps failing to connect, try reinstalling it (apologies if I'm being patronising but to 'uninstall' apps on a Mac, just drag them to the trash from your Applications folder. Also check ~/Library/Preferences and trash anything with 'Steam' in it.
Teejay, when I go into 'About this mac's 'more info', it says I have a Geforce 9400M 256 MB. Whats that about? Is that not dedicated?
I actually downgraded back to Snow Leopard. Lion is a nice OS but its a pain to set up if you need to do a new installation.
I think you'll need to install Snow Leopard using the discs included with the Mac, and then if you do want to upgrade, then buy Lion from the Mac App Store and it'll install it. I think its like £25.
As for the 9400M, yeah that's an integrated chip that's soldered to the Logic Board (mobo), it uses allocated memory so you won't have 256MB of discreet memory, just 256MB allocated to it. It's still superior to the Intel HD chip in the current MBA lineup though in my opinion.
What does that mean for me? Could that be causing the steam issue? Can I downgrade for free? I'm guessing I can just buy my own licence of Lion, but he did wipe it kinda so I guess its not too bad? I just noticed some things like VLC and OpenOffice were installed when I got it so . I just wanted a completely fresh install, no biggie I guess.
Not sure there are any discs included, I'll have a look. It's an MBA anyways, and I aint splashing out for that external drive!
You mean they went backwards graphics processing wise? Surely an i5 would be able to process a games graphics considerably better than a 4 year old integrated chip partition, no?
I'm not sure whether the OS would be causing the Steam issue, but a fresh install may sort it.
You should have some kind of 'recovery' drive included with the MBA. All Macs (prior to Lion) came with recovery discs or drives which will contain the original OS and iLife. If you don't have that, I'd get in touch with the seller because I'm really not sure what your options would be. The seller should really have removed Lion and reinstalled Snow Leopard since Lion would be registered to their user account.
This article explains it:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4399#1
Technically speaking yes, the i5/Intel combo would be faster, and for general processor intensive tasks it is a fair bit faster. However, anything which relies on graphics processing is handled much better by that NVidia chip.
EDIT: After some research, I'm getting confused. The older chip I was talking about is the GT320M, not the 9400. The 9400 is slightly lower in performance than the current Intel HD/i5 combo.
You may be able to do a fresh install of Lion with what you've got. May be worth a try.
Restart your Mac and hold down the Option key (alt) as it switches on, and you should get a couple of icons appear, one of which should be called 'Recovery Disk' or something. Select that and you should be presented with a setup system for installing a fresh copy of Lion.
Now, last time I did that, I had to connect to the Internet and it downloaded Lion through the setup utility, for which I had to enter my Apple ID, so if that happens I'm not sure if it'll work since the copy of Lion was bought by the previous user. However, if the install data is on the hard drive already, it may not need to download anything. You'll have to give it a shot.