
In our
coverage on the Apple press event earlier this week, where Steve Jobs introduced a revamp of all the company's notebooks (as well as a new Cinema Display), an error leaked into our story. We said that the new dual-GPU MacBook Pros used
Hybrid SLI so you could use both graphics chips at the same time for better performance, but as it turns out, this isn't the case. This was my fault since Jobs didn't actually claim any Hybrid SLI being used. To detail the matter further, Apple has released a
support document explaining the features of the dual GPU architecture.
Member since:
2005-11-21
The support note from nVidia makes it clear that Apple's motherboard does not support SLI. It clearly states that it's one GPU or the other, and that under Windows you're locked into "performance" mode, i.e. 9600M only.
My take on the information given both from the Apple support note and the nVidia one is that Snow Leopard will make no difference whatsoever. The current MacBook Pro will never be able to use both GPUs at once. Ever. This is a hardware limitation.
This is a poor design decision IMHO... Maybe by the time I can afford to upgrade my PowerBook they will have put in sensible hardware.
Apple's board won't support SLI, until Intel has SLI on their motherboard designs recently licensed from Nvidia, in exchange for Nehalem licensing back to Nvidia.