Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) said yesterday that it is very concerned about the graphics problems of the latest 17-inch MacBooks Pro, saying the damage could affect not only NVIDIA, but the entire industry of graphics chip makers.
The company, which owns the ATI brand (NVIDIA's archival), said CNET who fears that the visual artifacts that appeared on laptop screens may not only have to do with overheating the machine, but perhaps due to a poor choice of chipset GeForce 9600M by Apple or problems with heat generation by the parts used by NVIDIA.
"In the case of an Apple product, I don't know what happened to NVIDIA's GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), but we want to prevent the negative aspects from reaching the entire industry," said the director of mobile graphics marketing at AMD, Stan Ossias. “I don't think Apple does a bad job of that, in general. They are usually extremely careful, (but) a product decision is made (where) there may be more emphasis placed on performance characteristics than on another feature. Again, this is a choice that can be made. ”
Ossias gave the example of a type of graphics chip that could not be used in an MBP, which today is about an inch thick. At the top of its line of portable chipsets, ATI has the Mobility Radeon 4870, which can use up to 45 watts of power, a very high number for a mobile chip. Because of this feature, it would not be suitable for a notebook like the MBP, he explained.
The same 9600M chipset used in the 15 ″ MBP and does not present the visual problems of the 17 ″ MBP. However, it is known that NVIDIA has used a mixture of contact materials in its graphics chips that, theoretically, produces a greater general heating than in other models. We will see how the case unfolds.
