Filed under: Hardware, iMac, Mods
iMac 24-inch surprise: graphics card is upgradeable?
MacsimumNews broke down a MacGeneration post (a French publication) revealing that the new 24-inch iMac Apple introduced this week could quite possibly be the first iMac with a truly upgradeable graphics card. Thanks to a new Mobile PCI Express Module (MXM - originally designed for high-end notebooks) standard in the biggest iMac of 'em all, owners might be able to upgrade their own graphics card and (finally) ditch that old just throw it out when you want to upgrade stigma - if this is true, of course. You can also thank NVIDIA and their partnership with some of the industry leading notebook manufacturers (we would imagine Alienware and even Dell, believe it or not) for this standard that was quite a long time coming.
Why this much-requested feature isn't getting any spotlight time on the new iMac's graphics page, or why the 24-inch is the only model to receive the coveted upgrade-ability treatment, definitely doesn't help our skeptical side. We'll be investigating this further, as it could easily be that Apple adopted the standard for one reason or another (like cheaper manufacturing costs), but still soldered the card (which will most surely cause an uproar, if true).
We'd also like to echo MacsimumNews' observation that it would be stellar if Apple could work this standard into the next MacBook Pro revision, as the company kinda dropped the ball with their current lineup.
Thanks Michael!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Billy K said 7:16PM on 9-08-2006
"Missed the ball?"
Is that like missing the boat and dropping the ball...AT THE SAME TIME!?
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Michael said 7:25PM on 9-08-2006
I think regardless of the case, the sad issue is that the iMac uses the mini-dvi thus no dual-link... even though the 24" has a graphic card that supports it.
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Kenny Myers said 7:36PM on 9-08-2006
As a note, Alienware is owned by Dell now...
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joe said 2:27AM on 9-09-2006
Yes, the video cards are removeable, but when is the last time you could go buy a MXM card as a consumer? At best you'll have to buy "upgrade" cards as replacement parts when they become standard on a later upgraded iMac. This is probably to reduce support costs (when the video goes bad, they don't have to replace the entire logic board anymore) and provide a easier path to upgrades (they don't have to redesign the logic board to upgrade the video) and also gives them a cheaper alternative when offering different cards (same logic board can be used in a 24" that is ordered with a 256mb video card instead of a 128mb)
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Nick said 8:32PM on 9-08-2006
Even if the graphics daughter board is upgradable, and this was / is an industry standard, how many boards will actually work ?
Just look at the pathetic options that have existed in every Mac with upgradable graphics for the last 10 years. How many 3rd party cards are there out there that work ?
Standard PC cards don't work in the new MacPros because Apple does not use standard PC BIOS chips and until the industry catches up, AND OS X drivers are written for those cards that upgradability is purely academic.
Apples use of the MMX connector standard will only benefit Apple by lowering their manufacturing costs. This is not meant as a user upgradable option, so unfortunatly the cards will never be available in retail channels.
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GadgetGav said 8:27PM on 9-08-2006
I think the spec of the 24" iMac is a very good pointer to the next MacBook Pro revision... Hopefully this card interface will become popular enough that there is a choice of upgrades.
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Bruce said 8:42PM on 9-08-2006
If im not mistaken the airport card in the intel macminis uses a MMX slot, if so could you pop one of theses babys into a mac mini and get an actual video card? with it's one video ram? if possible I would be very, very excited.
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Hey that's me said 9:03PM on 9-08-2006
You can learn more about MXM here: http://www.mxm-upgrade.com/
"What's in it for you? Right now? Plain and simple: nothing. Or very little. Some laptops can be fitted with a GPU of your choice, but that's about it."
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st8ic said 12:48AM on 9-09-2006
The only reason of upgradeable graphics card option is that ATi is now sold to Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and there are some motives for Apple not to work with AMD, so they had to use motherboard that is bsed of another chipset for their new iMac.
That appearance of MXM does mean, that you are able to upgrade the card... But there are few details, that you should keep in mind:
1) There should be a drivers for this card;
2) Apple should not block the upgadeability.
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st8ic said 12:48AM on 9-09-2006
he-he... by the way, in theory, Apple could now start to produce even SLI-powered Macs :)
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mac-lender said 11:23PM on 9-08-2006
I think the possibilities are great! If apple sell enughf of the machines someone will make a after-market card...
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SubGenius said 11:55PM on 9-08-2006
Or maybe Apple is planning to put something in the slot in the future...like a tv tuner?
I hope they don't drop the boat on this one.
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Jacques Lema said 5:11PM on 9-12-2006
"runnning Visa in BootCamp"
Please don't spread the confusion Apple is trying to create about this. BootCamp as the name implies is nothing else but a plain boot sector program. You don't run Linux and Windows "IN grub" or "IN lilo"...
So just say they are running windows natively, not in some kind of emulator. So in the end, a newer more powerful PC hardware runs Vista better than some older one. Great.
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cybernanga said 11:17AM on 9-09-2006
I thought one of the big advantages of Mac's was that stuff just works.
The moment you start dropping in 3rd part cards, you'll start to have support issues. Who will you call? Apple will say its an unsupported card, and the cards manufacturers will say they don't support Mac's and then you are stuffed.
Granted, only "Power Users" would be doing this to start with, but once word gets around, every muppet will want to try it, and when they encounter a problem, they's start to whine "Crapple stuff just doesn't work right, I'm goung back to my Dell with XP/Vista"
One of the main problems with Windows is the amount of support they have to provide for all the differnt Hardware combinations out there, and the resulting conflicts that can happen in such situations.
Just my 2 cents
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Haliburton said 10:11AM on 9-15-2006
We'd also like to echo MacsimumNews' observation that it would be stellar if Apple could work this standard into the next MacBook Pro revision, as the company kinda dropped the ball with their current lineup.
Do I understand correctly that the ExpressCard 34 in the MacBook Pro machines is (more than theoretically?) capable of supporting graphics upgrade circuitry?
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yakov chodosh said 2:39PM on 9-09-2006
funny that... someone started singing the muppet show theme song in the next room three seconds before i read #14.
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Twist said 11:34PM on 9-09-2006
The 20 inch iMac also has a BTO graphic upgrade option so I wonder if that means it also contains one of these MXM slots?
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michael arrington said 8:26PM on 9-09-2006
any idea if it will support the apple 30 inch display as a second monitor? Doesn't look like it, but not sure. http://www.apple.com/displays/specs.html
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Jason said 5:50PM on 9-13-2006
Most mac users aren't gamers, and upgrade-ability should be across the board in every mac. A video card upgrade is going to be the least of your worries, when you already know that you'll never upgrade your processor. MacBook(Pro) PowerPc users. (Note: I think you can upgrade the new MacIntels, but I personally would never dare open up my MacBook Pro)
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Martin said 9:48AM on 9-11-2006
The 20" and the 24" iMac have different upgrade cards and different upgrade procedure. On the 24" you have a f... huge heatsink with pipes glued to the video card for cool air to go in and hot air to go out toward the heatsink. Which you don't have on the 20". I don't have enough info about how difficult it is to disconnect the heatsink from the video card, but at first sight it seems pretty difficult if not impossible. This combination of card and heatsink seems to be specifically tailored to the 24" iMac. A third party who would want to provide a video upgrade card for this machine would probably have to provide a kit specifically for this machine and wouldn't work on the 20" iMac. So, I don't think we will see anything cheap from third party to go into these iMacs.
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