Swap Graphic cards.

u can't. like most discrete graphics solutions it's part of (soldered) to the motherboard.

it's possible an iBook refresh will be coming in the next few months (if not in 2 days per the July 7th special conference that was called), which has been RUMORED to possibly have a Radeon 9600, which would make it compatible w/ Tiger's new eye candy.

AGP simply refers to the bus, not the kind of physical connection. i.e.-some desktop computers come with integrated graphics cores (AGP 4x, 8x, and now PCI-X) and usually have a dedicated AGP or PCI slot(s) for expansion and upgrades. i believe there are also some (very few) which don't and function much in the same way as a notebook mobo does, w/ no GPU upgrade path.

AGP is both an electrical interface and a connector specification. In the case of notebooks, AGP only refers to the interface, sans the connector. Hence, it can be both AGP and soldered.

With the exception of some highend DTR machines, notebooks do not have replaceable video cards...yet. ATI and nvidia were working on a card interface but I really haven't heard anything in about a year.

just hold your fingers crossed for that some day your laptop (maybe your next one, or the one after next) will have a swappable gpu. of course, it will take even more for apple to use it because we all jknow how retarded they can be to laptop GPUs (read: using 9700 as top of the line when everyone else moved on to PCI-e)

yes, simply retarded, lol, bc PCI has yielded what kind of massive performance margins over AGP?

It's not what kind of gains PCI-E has over AGP, but rather what sort of gains PCI-E-enabled *cards* have over their AGP counterparts.

But what if Apple's 'retardedness' about their GPUs is all a bid to make their batteries last as long as possible? If they could get an Nvidia 6600 into a powerbook and still have long battery durations, I'm sure they would.

Just to add to what ellement is saying, this is not about which interface is better than which other interface. But rather this is due to the perculiar nature of notebook graphics. Since all notebooks use proprietary, non-standard motherboards and nearly all graphics chips are soldered onto the motherboard, ATI and nVidia saw no reason to make both AGP and PCIe enabled VPUs for notebooks in their recent iterations of mobile graphics chips. The upshot is, all recent mobile VPUs, meaning all the most powerful ones, are PCIe only. When Apple stuck with AGP, it means they can only use inferior VPUs.

thanks epsilon for clearing it up what i originally meant


edit:
ps..it is possible to have a long enough battery life and good graphics performance. compare my uniwill 258kao with AMD64 3200+ and ATI9700 128mb and my bro's Asus Z71v with 1.86 Sonoma and nVidia 6600go. Although I have a slight CPU edge on hard core tasks, he has a huge GPU edge over me, so although maybe i can compile code, or unzip a huge file faster by a few seconds, he can play games with ALL the eye candy on, not just "most" of it like I can. And his battery life is almost double of what mine is. So yes, great video performance and battery life is possible. Don't forget that just like the CPU, the GPU underclocks itself when you are in battery mode, thus eating less battery and giving you a greater level of efficiency (although sacrificing some performance)


Just to give you an idea of what the 9700 can do under Windows XP SP1a:
Run CS 1.6 in widescreen mode with most eyecandy on while on battery power without lag
Run GTA:SA 1.0 in widescreen mode with most eyecandy on while on battery with some lag unless "PowerPlay" is disabled.

Don't you have anything better to do than troll? If you don't like Apple and macs in general, that's your choice. Try being an adult and excepting that people have preferences other than your own. By the way, it's very hard to to implement pci express when the chip you are using won't support anything above AGP 4x.

my point had more to do w/ the fact that switching to PCI for Apple has little to do w/ power-savings or performance per-se, it's likely a combination of the factors. it likely has more to do w/ switching to a different brand to increase any degree of performance as well as making the PCI switch, along w/ powersavings. if in fact the ATI x700 or the nvidia 6600 could work in the powerbooks you'd have to address the form factor. try slicing/condensing a .4 inch of your bro's notebook abf and see how well it cools. then of course, while trying to put it into that thickness, make sure not to reduce the capacity of the battery.

the z71v is a decent DIY system, but that's what it is. there's a lot that's allowed for in those systems bc of their target market, primarily custom computer shops, and secondarily ppl buying from places like coboc. basically, the more i look at it, the more puffy it looks compared to other thin/light notebooks, IMO. but i digress. engineering such computers has much less work involved than doing something where the vendor says, "we want it w/ these specs. this thin, w/ this kind of battery life, etc" all the sudden, the equation changes. i.e.-there's a reason why the ~1" (or less) machines only come from the brand names, and for a premium.

in other words, swapping out new GPUs and interfaces for DIY geared systems is a relatively easy thing to do when u literally, have room to play with.

keeping it in the ATI family, for Macs the x700 may not be a huge step in performance from the 9700. so inevitably one has to ask whether it is worth the upgrade from a manufacturing/engineering standpoint, or whether it is better to wait for the next "9700" that allows for strong performance, battery life, and thermal limits. perhaps one of the silliest moves i've seen in some time was for the Sony S series, moving from a dated stock 9200 (BTO option of 9700) to an integrated stock w/ BTO option of the nvidia 6200 go w/ turbo crap, um, cache. personally i'd rather have the 9700, but that's me.

epsilon,
what is the native interface for the nvidia mobile chips? the big hullabaloo about ATI and nvidia moving to PCI was that ATI had PCI native chips while nvidia would be using AGP chips w/ a PCI bridge and PCI native cards. so is the Go series just based on AGP chips soldered to a PCI-X card? notably there wasn't any significant differences between the AGP and PCI performances for the nvidia chips. however w/ the mobile GPUs it may be different, tho it would be assinine from the standpoint of manufacturing costs to have portions of a typically unified architecture split off between AGP and PCI, as u'd noted.

in general,
perhaps most notably, while some "swappable" PCI cards have been made for high end (and brick-thick) systems, the rest of the market is still "just soldering" the chips to their mobos. this is particularly true for vendors that want their systems to be as thin and light as possible. ahem, oh shite, the PBs are in that category!

...if you consider doubling the framerate a small step. The fact is, Apple uses the same hardware that most PCs uses, but it is a step behind. The desktops use AGP (not even 8x) while the latest PCs use PCIe. Its the same with the laptops... Apple's products are underpowered hardware wise, but its their software and looks that shine.

The new "Swappable" cards are portable mainly because they've been switched over to the PCIe interface. Since Apple has yet to embrace this, I wouldn't expect to see swappable cards in Apple's books for quite a while. Add to the fact that Apple users are typically not looking for extreme graphics cards, so there's really no need to do this.

EDIT: I would hardly consider Asus a Do-It-Yourself system anymore than I would consider a Dell or an IBM a DIY system. I'm not sure you really understand the hardware or products that Asus, Sager, or the other lesser known companies offer...

i'm quite familiar with their products. if u were familiar w/ the noted z71v there wouldn't be an issue to dispute. asus has their complete and shipped line of products and it has their "built on asus" line of products that go to both larger and smaller system vendors and to DIY sales sites. my issue isn't w/ whether or not the 9700 is dated. it is, relatively speaking. the issue is whether it's "retarded" to have it in a system. if so, asus as a company would be "retarded" by abf's standards as the majority of their discrete GPU notebooks still run w/ the 9600/9700 AGP chips, the z71v (a built on asus product) is one of the exceptions w/ only 2 other models running the x600 from their ready to ship products.

also, my comments re: the x700 pertain to it as a Mac upgrade, since this conversation pertains to Macs, is that the x700 isn't necessarily a "must have" chip for the PBs. (i've edited my previous post to be more specific). perhaps when we move to the x86 platform intense gaming might become more feasible, if not, there's always dual-booting! until that becomes an option, most Mac users who go for PBs for professional reasons, aren't going to be getting them bc of the fps in battlefield 2 or whatnot.

Dell and IBM don't sell DIY systems.

Kindly stop posting in the apple section. We don't want your negative, one-sided, biased comments. Thanks.

Triadone, two points for you to ponder.

First, Asus is one of the manufacturers contracted by Apple to make the PowerBooks. Apple also outsources some of their industrial design. Such is the nature of the computer industry. There are no name brands and not much in-house design. There are a few famous industrial designers and crafters but anyone can contract them.

Second, the desktop graphics segment and notebook graphic segment are quite different. On the desktop there was quite a fuss about ATI's supposedly native PCIe graphics and nVidia's HSI bridge. But on the notebooks all PCIe solutions are native, and there are no plans by either nVidia and ATI to offer AGP or AGP bridges for those chips. The reasoning behind this is simple, notebooks are not meant to be upgraded and notebook mainboards are proprietary, non-standard, and chassis-specific. Thus we have this sort of closed-box system offered by both graphics vendors and notebook builders. With things the way they are, Apple is sort of forced to switch to PCIe on the notebook segment, since the 2 VPU manufacturers are only making PCIe chips for that segment. Or Apple could lobby them to make bridges for notebook PCIe chips. We shall see. One thing is for sure, Apple could not use the 9700 forever. Stagnation is death in this industry.

Oh, and one last thing, and this is sort of trivial. Be sure not to confuse PCI, PCIe, and PCI-X. It is sometimes confusing to read your posts because of the nomenclature.

But looking at it, isn't the highest video card available through Apple a Geforce 5900, which is still AGP? Besides, both companies released pretty nice selections of AGP cards for the desktop... why not the notebook market?

Because desktops have many, many owners of AGP-based motherboards who still want to upgrade their systems. Whereas notebooks require a redesign (to varying degrees) of the motherboard and system for any sort of graphics upgrade anyway. Since a redesign is needed, ATI and nVidia didn't think backward compatibility is needed.

epsilon,
thanks for clearing up the PCI issue w/ nvidia. I had pretty much assumed that, but hadn't seen it written anywhere.

i'm quite aware of industrial design contracting and asus' work on the Apple notebooks. apple does tend to use in-house designers however, and last i heard Jonathan Ive who has done the work (if not the lead designer) on the iPod, iMac, iBook, and Powerbook, and Powermac since 1997, is also vice president (not necessarily since 1997) of their industrial design department. i'm guessing he doesn't do too much stuff for computers outside of apple, but if u know of any non-apple projects he's been on i'd be interested in taking a gander.