However, there are other advantages as well-namely, access to even more industry-standard technologies. Was justified on a “power per watt” analysis of Intel versus IBM chips. These changes have helped lower the price of the Mac, though they’re still more costly (in general) than a typical PC. In other cases, Apple has helped its technologies become standards (FireWire), which helps insure multiple manufacturers and lower costs. Hence, NuBus became PCI and PCI Express ADB became USB monitors are now connected via DVI or VGA standard plugs and hard drives connect via ATA or SATA. To reduce costs and improve parts availability, Apple has been slowly moving away from Apple-created technologies towards industry-standards.
(Granted, costs have dropped greatly on other components since then, so the IIfx wouldn’t cost anywhere near that much today.) Even in its time, it was a very expensive machine-comparable DOS/Windows machines were substantially cheaper. Adjusting for inflation, that’s about $15,000 in today’s dollars. ? Introduced in 1990, it cost around $10,000 at the time.
Intel gma 950 gaming Pc#
Most companies that sell Windows PCs (excluding the motherboard firms that have gotten into the PC manufacturing business) don’t do anything with motherboards or chips beyond purchasing and assembling them.įor the consumer, all this technical wizardry meant really expensive systems. (Only Sony made the auto-eject floppy, for instance.) Even the motherboards were an Apple-specific part, including quite a few Apple-designed integrated circuits. These technologies were more costly than industry-standard alternatives, and in many cases, tied Apple to a sole supplier. Many of these were even developed in house, through Apple’s own R&D department. The auto-eject floppy (remember those?), the NuBus interface bus, the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB), Apple’s seemingly-never-ending string of unique monitor interfaces, and even SCSI disk interfaces were all technologies primarily used by Apple. For years, Apple had a serious case of using technologies that differed from the rest of the computer business. And Dell does this very well it makes some nice systems that perform admirably-I had a Dell at my last job, and it was one of the fastest and quietest machines I’ve ever used. That bundle of parts is then nicely wrapped up and delivered in a case stamped with the Dell logo, all powered by Windows. Instead, the company is the world’s most efficient assembler of parts, some of which it specifies the design for, and others of which are industry-standard. Of Windows computers per year, and yet as far as I know, doesn’t manufacture a single thing. Dell then uses the most efficient assembly methods possible to put those parts together inside the only thing that really makes a Dell a Dell-the case. Generalizing a bit (as I’m not privy to the inner workings at Dell), Dell purchases motherboards, keyboards, RAM, mice, hard drives, the operating system and BIOS, CD and DVD drives, cables, monitors, speakers, video cards, networking chips, and various other PC components as cheaply as possible from any number of suppliers (well, there’s only Beyond that, if it happens to run some of the 3-D games in a reasonable fashion, it’s a bonus.
As such, it’s important that it do well in typical non-gaming tasks, and support OS X’s graphics needs well.
Intel gma 950 gaming for mac#
It’s Apple’s lowest-price Mac, the starting point for Mac performance. Personally, I’m not worried about gaming, but I’m curious as to how well it will work with six or seven large applications running when it’s then asked to do something that’s CoreGraphics-intensive-like opening 10 widgets in rapid-fire fashion.Ī gamer’s Mac. The reality is that we won’t know exactly how good (or bad) this solution is until a mini makes it into Macworld Lab for real-world testing. As of February 28, it’s suddenly capable of supporting the latest 3-D games and is an incredible value proposition? Ah, marketing! So, on Monday, February 27, an integrated graphics chip was something that stole power from the CPU and siphoned off system memory. It shares fast 667MHz memory with the Intel Core processor, for an incredible value proposition. The Intel GMA950 graphics supports Tiger Core Graphics and the latest 3D games. Mac mini features a graphics processor integrated into the system, and one that’s no slouch, to boot.