So according to iMac - Technical Specifications - Apple one of the new 17inch iMac also only comes with a GMA950.
The 17" iMac with intel GPU is one Apple indroduced to replace the eMac. AFAIK
It would have been nice if they would have offered a more balanced system (same cpu, better graphics like a X1300XT) without a artificial bottleneck in the $1000 range. Dunno what they would have to pay for the chip but i suspect it would be way under $50 as you get 256MB cards already for under €100.
Ouch! The GMA50 is a piece of *$^#@. You’ll find it on lots of el cheapo PC notebooks and it’s worthless for games. So the minimum system for games and Unity will become the iMac 20". Any idea what that will cost?
The iMac is probably already balanced for non-gamers, but you can always hope for higher GPUs next time 
Not so: they still have the 17" with real GPU – they’ve just ALSO made available the edu-only GMA950 iMac. Just like they did with the eMac previously: demand from non-edu buyers must be there, so Apple will now sell it to anyone. Not gamers of course, but a LOT of people don’t need much 3D ability, and an all-in-one for under $1000 is a great choice for many. (And dual 64-bit cores is pretty nice for general non-game computing and future-proofing.)
(Also, my Unity game runs fine on Intel GMA950.)
I notice you can order your choice of nVidia 7300 or 7600 in the 24" model, and your choice of VRAM in the 20" model. (128 vs. 256 in both cases.)
Also: Mac Minis just got higher Ghz for the same price–and all dual-core. Apple no longer sells a single-processing system
(Actually I wish they would if it could let the Mac Mini start at US$499.)
Well… at least Intel GMA950 is far better than S3 UniChrome that you can find in a lot of laptops/PCs today… You just have to find a positive side of things! :roll:
Thanks Morgan and Aras for clearing that up. A couple months ago I tested a couple prototype games on about 20 PC’s, half of which were notebooks. Of the systems I tested, those with the 950 chip (no matter how much video ram they had) didn’t work, about half with ATI based chipsets worked and almost 100% of those with nVidia chipsets work. If you follow the PC gaming forums, you’ll find that what I found is pretty much the norm and the 950 chip has a pretty bad rep in the gaming industry.
Heck, I didn’t even know S3 was still in business! I haven’t seen a PC with an S3 chipset in over a decade, maybe they’re only marketed on your side of the ocean?
We managed even to buy a machine with such a card here (S3 UniChrome). We use it as a build server now After 20+ attempts at installing drivers I even succeeded!
… well I’ll be darned… I did a search and found that S3 chips are used in Avertec, Sharp and even a few Gateway notebooks. What do you know, I learn something every day! :lol:
@Morgan
Who thinks that graphics are only used for games?
I’ve lot’s of stuff around here which needs a little bit more than just two sprites moving around and has nothing to do with games.
And Apple’s configs are still a joke from a users point of view. Why can’t i choose a 1.83Ghz Cpu with the X1600? :O)
@Aras
How big is the percentage of S3 these days?
I doubt that this is a) a large and b) the target market for unity.
We agree–nobody thinks graphics are used only for games
We disagree, perhaps, that everyone needs more 3D power than an Intel 950. I think many people do not. You and I, of course, do.
Taumel: quite recent data says that VIA/S3G have 9% of today’s shipments. Would we love to not ignore those cards? Sure! Can we? Hm…
Is it the target market? Depends. At least in casual games it is I guess. And no casual game player would think “hey, I have an S3 card, things just should crash”. 99% of them have no idea what video card they have, majority of them don’t know what is a video card.
lol Apple will never (never say never taumel!) change…
If you look at the cpu power and the gfx power then it’s a joke as this system is balanced so badly. Obviously they wanted it to hurt somewhere (=> artificial bottleneck) as otherwise a large percentage would just buy the smaller model instead of the bigger one. Almost no one would notice the speed difference in the system if it would be clocked at 1.83 or 2.0 Ghz…
If i remember correctly there was a build to order option for the mac pro where you also could downgrade your cpu from the standard config if you wanted to, so why not here?
;O)
Anyway the interesting part about this is if they will dare to improve the gfx chip of a next mini beyond an iMacs gfx power. And this might be the bad news…
Puhhh my experiences with S3 sucked from the very beginning so maybe i’m biased. To answer this question meaningful i would try to get out the numbers how large they are spread and where this chips are actually used (90% of these 9% in office or server components?). Personally i’ve never heard of someone who bought a notebook with S3 onboard the last years. But this is only my personal experience and also only related to the german market.
Secondly i would look into how much effort has to be put into getting it run on these chips. Does the work suck but is it doeable in a meaningful timeframe then i would go for it as it’s always nice to support as much as you can but if it would mean really a lot of pain i wouldn’t go for it till someone complains. And then i would reconsider the situation and judge if it’s really worth the effort.
Like i once suggested you should also define a minimum platform for unity. Otherwise you might end up doing lowend stuff completely instead of adding other important features and will drive nuts when adding new stuff.
If you wouldn’t support the GMA950 this would be a bad mistake in my opinion but with S3 i really would consider the points i’ve written above…
By the way: When will we see 1.5.1?! :O)
We try to do a balance between the two things - as our user group (and their user groups) are so diverse, it’s hard for us not to support something (within reason, of course)…
What we typically do is use our shader fallback system. It only gets us 90% of the way. On some GFX card/driver combos we have to disable render-to-texture…
But yeah - it’s a valid point…
As i said before i can’t judge this as i’m not into the details like you (you first would have to explain it to me and how your ressources look like).
If it’s more or less a non brainer then go for it. If it’s really a problem and will also be in your way in the future i would solve this by a) defining a minimum platform and b) looking at the stats Aras link showed. You have limited ressources and in my opinion it might be better if you concentrate on 90% of the market (ATI+nVIDIA+Intel) at the moment and get other things done first…
Well… I got quite a few bug reports on SIS/S3 hardware. In fact, more bug reports from those than all other 90% hardware (nvidia+ati+intel) combined. So this says two things: 1) that some people who want to see/play Unity content (even if there’s not that much of it out yet) actually have the old hardware, 2) that the drivers for that hardware are notoriously bad, or the opposite, the drivers for the regular hardware are quite ok in comparison
All those issues are already fixed for 1.5.1, but that did take quite some time.
taumel, I think you miss the point of the low end iMac. It is to have an iMac below $1000 within the margin parameters that Apple maintains. The machine is probably targeted at education and as a business AIO. It seems fine for those markets.
The reason you don’t get the 1.83 Ghz option with the x1600 is because Apple does not want that. There are more reasons that just to create a force upsell, though that is a “good” outcome for Apple. There are operations and logistics costs in supporting multiple options. Yes, Dell does it, but Dell is specifically structured from a corporate standpoint to do so. There is a lot of internal process at Dell to support this. Also, price negotiations often include guaranteed purchase quantities. This may also play a role.
@Aras
My experiences with such clients/systems say that mostly the drivers cause the problems and/or the users of such systems don’t install the newest drivers.
@lfrog
Education without graphics…