New MacBook Pros Gain Thunderbolt, Goes AMD

No more Nvidia GPUs and IGPs.

Yes, there's been a lot of talk about the Apple notebooks on this page over the last couple of days, but that's because it was widely believed that it would be the first product with a final implementation of Intel's Light Peak technology, as well as a move to AMD instead of Nvidia GPUs. It turns out that it was all true.

Apple today updated MacBook Pro its family with Sandy Bridge processors, high-speed Thunderbolt I/O technology and a new FaceTime HD camera.

"The new MacBook Pro brings next generation dual and quad Core processors, high performance graphics, Thunderbolt technology and FaceTime HD to the great design loved by our pro customers," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Thunderbolt is a revolutionary new I/O technology that delivers an amazing 10 gigabits per second and can support every important I/O standard which is ideal for the new MacBook Pro."

Starting at $1,199 the new 13-inch MacBook Pro finally ditches the Core 2 Duo, and gets Core i5 and Core i7 dual-core processors up to 2.7 GHz. There will be no discrete graphics for the entry model though – Intel HD Graphics 3000 only.

The 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro models, feature quad-core Core i7 processors up to 2.3 GHz and AMD Radeon HD graphics processors with up to 1GB of video memory.

MacBook Pro is the first computer on the market to include what was previously known as Intel Light Peak, which has been renamed Thunderbolt. Featuring two bi-directional channels with transfer speeds up to 10Gbps each, Thunderbolt delivers PCI Express directly to external high performance peripherals such as RAID arrays, and can support FireWire and USB consumer devices and Gigabit Ethernet networks via adapters. Thunderbolt also supports DisplayPort for high resolution displays and works with existing adapters for HDMI, DVI and VGA displays.

The MacBook Pro now includes a higher resolution webcam with triple the resolution of the previous generation. With it, Apple has updated its FaceTime application for the Mac and is now charging 99 cents for it on the Mac App Store, which is a puzzling move for something that's included free of charge with all the iOS devices.

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