Nvidia Confirms Hybrid SLI, 8gb RAM Posible!

http://gizmodo.com/5067433/confirme...l-gpu-and-on+the+fly-switching-in-macbook-pro

I really hope Apple will do this. It would be pointless not to.

 

I didn't think 8GB of ram was possible yet, but I could be wrong.

 

So the 9400M can work together with the 9600M after all... Then I hope this will be enabled in drivers in Windows ( I don't think Apple will do it).

Unless Apple prevent's this all together in their firmware, which I think they do.

 

I doubt apple will do it either. I think they are afraid of what that would do regarding heat issues.

 

Well there going to do something, there's no way they put two GPU's just to save a little power.

 

I hope they do allow you to use both together, battery life isn't an issue to me. But maybe heat is the issue.

 

apple are very picky about battery life i could see them putting it in just for the power saving, some reason i could see them not allowing this, although they definitely should, and heat could be a major issue.

 

I agree, I can't see Apple using this functionality due to heat concerns. I'm hoping that the next round of custom Nvidia drivers will enabled this in Windows. I did have a thought, though: If Apple is entertaining the notion of enabling dual GPUs later on, doesn't that give them sort of a psuedo refresh without an actual hardware update? So let's say a year or two from now when people are *****ing that the 9600GT is too slow, Apple can roll out an ad to the effect of "New MBP, now with dual GPUs!"

 

Actually there are several higher end PCs you can now configure and buy with 8g RAM (desktop and laptop). It takes 64bit Vista to read it and I've yet to read of any application(s) that actually take advantage of it.

 

I do hope Apple enables it! But I'm not holding my hopes real high. I don't mind if it's possible in XP, since that's where I'll be playing the games anyways
Will heat be real bad of an issue?

 

I am more excited about the 8GB confirmation, i can t wait for the 4GB DDR3 dimms to become ore widely available.

 

I'm sure Apple tried/tested it and it's possible the reason they didn't implement it was because of excessive heat.

 

That would be a shame. I do believe they should enable on the fly switch between integrated and discrete that Hybrid SLI enables, I don't think that should create much of a problem.

 

Has anyone actually had heat issues with the new MBP's?
Or are people just using heat as an excuse into why they didn't do it?

I'm just wondering cause I havn't come across anyone having any issues, but I havn't looked too much into it.

 

Just because the nvidia chipset supports 8GB RAM, does not mean that macbooks/pros support it. Whether it's due to a BIOS limitation or some other (hardware?) limitation, I'm skeptical until apple officially supports it.
People seem to think that just because the chipset supports xxx amount of RAM that their computer will, that's simply not true.

 

4GB DDR3 sticks aren't even out yet.

 

Yes they are. Here's one example.

 

i would be very interested to hear if anyone has sucessfully fitted 8GB in to their new MBP and if it ran with no problems...

 

I doubt after spending $1999+ on a new computer, that many would have the $1180 for 8GB RAM. I know I'd be poor after such a purchase.

 

People really need to differentiate between what they are saying. Hybrid SLI is 2 separate technologies: HybridPower and GeForce Boost. HybridPower is the switching functionality between the IGP and a discrete GPU. Based on the latest reports, it appears that it will be possible to implement seamless dynamic switching instead of the log-off method currently. The delay is probably related to nVidia driver issues and how Quartz Extreme handles the frame buffer where they can't currently directly swap it between the GPUs. It may require Snow Leopard though.

In terms of GeForce Boost, I doubt Apple will support it. Frankly it's an inefficient use of effort. The only real benefactor of GeForce Boost is games and even then you're only gaining maybe 10%. GeForce Boost is of course another name for SLI and is supposed to make 2 GPUs appear as 1.

Now the point of putting in a decent IGP was not particularly to improve the Mac gaming experience, but to pave the way for GPGPU and OpenCL. In Snow Leopard, Grand Central is designed to distribute tasks between CPU cores and GPUs. In such a case, it's no different whether you have 2 separate GPUs or try to make 1 hybrid GPU. In fact, 1 hybrid GPU would be slower because of all the overhead. The only reason you would need to combine 2 GPUs in SLI is because games need to see a single graphics pipeline. Granted Core Image and Core Video currently derives it's hardware acceleration by placing images and videos onto an OpenGL surface for graphics processing, but I'm sure programs like Aperture and Motion will be converted to more flexible OpenCL implementations once Snow Leopard is around.

As such, in support of OpenCL, I don't doubt that Apple will figure out a way to have both the IGP and discrete GPU processing simultaneously, but separately. I don't see GeForce Boost/SLI hybridization being implemented.

Not supporting SLI does have benefits to gaming though. Without both GPUs being tied up with rendering the game, the discrete GPU could be doing the visuals while the IGP processes things like physics. In fact, nVidia's PhysX engine supports using 1 GPU for rendering and a 2nd GPU for physics processing. While games may not necessarily run faster or be more pretty, they'll be more physically realistic.

 

Also, the gains would be marginal. Hybrid SLI sounds great but it's not like real SLI with two separate GPUs.

I think it's a given that you will be able to switch modes on the fly in the not too distant future. Windows can do it, and having to log out to switch gfx modes is very un-Apple.

8GB RAM would be nice. I have 4GB and sometimes, horror of horrors, have to close applications to free up RAM and prevent the system from starting to swap.

 

I know but surely someone has access to the memory without having to actually buy it, and could just borrow it for a few hours...

 

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/10/24/new-macbook-pro-does-not-support-8gb-ram-for-now/

So it seems 8GB really doesn't work on the 9400M chipset. The OS recognizes the presence of 8GB of RAM, but won't actually allocate to more than 4GB of RAM.

The problem is likely either an EFI limitation where Apple simply hasn't had the time to validate 4GB DDR3 SODIMMs which are rather uncommon anyways or perhaps since Apple got first dibs on the 9400M chipset, launching products before nVidia officially announced it to other OEMs, Apple may be using early revisions that have compatibility issues with greater than 4GB of RAM which is why it's disabled. If it's merely an EFI limitation it may well be fixed later as 4GB DDR3 SODIMMs become popular.

 

that's a shame i do hope it is an issue that gets resolved. If the chipset is capable (according to nVIDIA) and the OS is then it would be a shame not to!

Would snow leopard possibly solve this?