NVIDIA Graphics Cards

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I have a NVIDIA 9400 card on my Mac Mini. On my MacBook, I have a NVIDIA 9400M card. What is the difference? What do the different letters at the end mean?

most surely the M is for Mobile

Oh, what about something like in my dad's iMac. It has an NVIDIA Geforce 7200 GT.

In regards to the 9400, the chips are going to be very similar.
With the 7200 GT. this is a high end 7200 series.

There are lower versions, LE is one of them. The 9400 is going to be better or similar anyway.
GTX, GTX+, GTS, GS, GSO are considered high in the list.

Oh, thanks.

9400 M will underperform the regular 9400. The technology had to be scaled down for mobile use and whatnot, so really.

9400 Desktop
9400M Laptop
I have the macbook with the 9400m and they are the a little bit same after doing tests.
I think that the 9400m is 20 % slower then the desktop 9400m 512Mb.

Generally true. The 9400 series should have identical capabilities, but the M is designed to be scalable so power management is possible, but it comes at a cost. If you plug in the laptop and set for full power mode, you get pretty good results.

Thats pretty much how anything "mobile" goes, even for laptop CPUs. Right now wish I had enough money to get all my certifications again. Gotta renew every single one of them this year, so lets see.... A+, Net+, Server 2008, MCSE. All of which I got while I was still in high school other than the server 2008 one. Didnt focus on Mac stuff because of the fact that I ran out of money before I could get it. Not sure if there are Linux/Unix certs out there either, so Im gonna have to work on those too. Too bad I dont remember half the stuff anymore :/

Generally laptop specific graphics chips will throttle their speed significantly to control temperatures, or the noise of fans. You can make changes to the driver settings to make them run at full throttle, but the chances are you're going to cause your computer to crash endlessly if you do that, unless you provide it with extra cooling. With my MacBook Pro, I opened it up and replaced the thermal paste with the best available, as that line has a reputation of having badly applied paste. I also made a cooling stand for it to prop up the back, with 2 small fans blowing directly on the case where the CPU and GPU are located. I also had to get programs to force the internal fans to run at full blast, instead of the ~70% they were limited to by the Apple software, in order to keep the noise down. After all that I could finally play games at a reasonable frame rate, without the laptop constantly crashing, or burning my lap.

Graphics
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Display adapter type NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM v1.1)
Total available graphics memory 2175 MB
Dedicated graphics memory 384 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 1791 MB
Display adapter driver version 8.15.11.8593
Primary monitor resolution 1680x1050
DirectX version DirectX 10

layman's terms is that the 'M' cards...


or literally, ANY video card found in a notebook/laptop/integrated computer (aka the screen IS the computer)

will use the computer's memory (RAM) to process Video.

on regular desktops, a computer can have, say, 4 gigabytes of ram and the video card has its own 1gigabyte of ram to work on video.

on integrated/laptop video cards, the computer's 4 gigs of memory are used for both the video and computer functions. So when you try to play a game on the laptop, it will perform horribly compared to the PC.. because its 'hogging' the computers memory to run the video portion of the game.

CompTIA certs don't require renewal, not yet anyway. Starting next year (if I remember correctly) those that take the tests are suppose to renew them every so many years. You also don't have to renew them all, just the highest level one.

Microsoft's tests you just take the upgrade tests when they are released.

Integrated graphics solutions - Wikipedia.

I think they manage to describe it in a short summary. Clearly the mobile graphics chipset cannot compete with the desktop graphics solution.

Ahh, I just figured you would have to keep up to date on the A+/Net+ when new windows versions come out. As for server and MCSE, already knew bout the upgrades, but in my mind they are still the same thing as renewing them.

I'd download the official drivers from Nvidia rather than Microsoft generic ones