The New Air-Like MacBook Pros Could Use Crummy Intel Graphics [Rumor]

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This is pretty hard to believe, but if true, it could have a huge impact on the future audience of the MacBook Pro line: Apple could have dropped NVIDIA as the supplier of the next-gen MacBook Pro’s discrete GPUs, and will instead go with Intel integrated graphics. Huh?

According to SemiAccurate, Apple has ditched NVIDIA’s next-gen Kepler graphic chips from a “large number” of its upcoming laptops. Supposedly, Apple has instead decided to pick up Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs with integrated graphics that offer a higher number of shader counts, which will supposedly help make up for the difference.

That’s a laugh — Intel’s way behind NVIDIA when it comes to graphics performance. Even so, SemiAccurate believes that Apple’s next-gen low- and mid-range MacBook Pro models will not have a discrete GPU, just crummy integrated graphics.

Why? NVIDIA can’t make enough Kepler chips, supposedly.

Nvidia can’t supply, so Apple threw them out on their proverbial magical experience. This doesn’t mean Nvidia is completely out at Apple, the Intel GPUs are too awful to satisfy the higher end laptops, so there will need to be something in those. What that something is, we don’t definitively know yet, but the possibilities are vanishingly small.

I can believe that NVIDIA’s having problems with yields on a new cutting-edge chip, but going with Intel? That’s just not an option. The Pros are aimed at video and visual professionals, which means they need a discrete GPU… especially if Apple’s going to try to roll out Retina-quality displays in the MacBook Pro line anytime soon. No, the more likely answer is that even if Apple couldn’t get Keplers in the next MBPs, they’d go with a lesser NVIDIA chip or something from AMD, at least on the mid- to high-end MBPs. File this report under dubious.

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