Apple TV - Part 1: Unboxed and Dissected
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 22, 2007 6:12 PM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Apple TV: Powered by NVIDIA?
Now we get to the interesting stuff, beneath one of the globs of thermal grease is an NVIDIA GPU:
The chip itself is a GeForce Go 7300:
The Go 7300 has 4 pixel pipes and 3 vertex pipes and a 64-bit memory interface. On the bottom of the motherboard you'll see the two 32MB Samsung 700MHz GDDR3 devices for a total of 64MB of dedicated graphics memory. The Go 7300 does support Turbo Cache so it can get speedy access to main memory, but given that the Apple TV will be required to deal with fancy graphics and transitions at resolutions as great as 720p or 1080i it makes sense to have a good amount of local memory. As thoughtfully pointed out by AnandTech reader Eug, the Go 7300 may also be used to help accelerate H.264 video decode.
We were actually surprised by Apple's decision to go with a dedicated GPU in the Apple TV, especially considering that the Intel chipset included has its own graphics core.
Next to the NVIDIA GPU is a Silicon Image TMDS transmitter that handles the HDMI output:
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noxipoo - Friday, March 23, 2007 - link
turn up the DoF on those pictures. I noticed it first on CPU review and continued to this, why make everything so blurred except the center. no artistic touch needed on a tech review, make everything come in focus please.dm - Friday, March 23, 2007 - link
can't wait to see how it performsAppleIIe - Friday, March 23, 2007 - link
http://www.miglia.com/products/video/tvmaxplus/ind...">Miglia TV Max+Being that the Apple TV won't support DVR qualities, i'm wondering how long it will be before Miglia and others makes add-ons for the Apple TV.
Miglia TVMax+ with an Apple TV and a Miglia MiniBank would be a very clean setup.
blckgrffn - Friday, March 23, 2007 - link
Is that this is more powerful than the Wii! I bet before long this has a U2500 (I think that is number, the ulv core duo 1.2 ghz) and that would be a sure bet as more code moves to multithreaded goodness.Seriously, why couldn't Nintendo provide even this level of hardware? I mean it has to last for four to five years! What is ridiculous is that if Apple had been willing to make it an inch thicker they probably could have put a full mobile 7600 in it for much more serious 3D performance... imagine if the wii had that... a core duo and a 256 meg 7600...
*hugs wii to ease hurt feelings*
randomlinh - Friday, March 23, 2007 - link
and then the wii would be more expensive? They stuck w/ IBM to keep easy backwards compatibility. And their money went to the remote development I'm sure.Sure, I wish the Wii had some more umph to it.. HD Wii would be great. But for now, it works for me. And who's to say it's a 5-6 year cycle? Nintendo profits on hardware still. So I wouldn't put a 3yr cycle out of it's range... an upgraded HD Wii with more power in the future when HDTV's are far more widespread.
blckgrffn - Friday, March 23, 2007 - link
I wasn't trying to say that it would have been necessary, but I think it would have been a better platform overall with a little more grunt - I mean, navigating the menu can be painful enough at times. Even a dual core IBM would have been great, and probably wouldn't have raised costs very much. I would have easily paid $20-30 more for a wii with twice the ram and CPU, and I doubt I would have been the only one.Still, it's the only console outside of the Gamecube that I own, so that says something...
Nat
anandtech02148 - Friday, March 23, 2007 - link
basically appletv is a 2yr old ultra mobile laptop.what's the next greatest innovation for Apple? I_console video game system? surely they got the knowledge to dumb down a pc product and sell it to the mass with horrendous price.
Falloutboy - Friday, March 23, 2007 - link
if someone hacks this I might have a replacement for my ageing hacked xbox and XBMC, shouldn't be to hard I imagin it runs a striped down version of OSxplinden - Friday, March 23, 2007 - link
There's an ongoing discussion here - http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=...">http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s=...bobsmith1492 - Friday, March 23, 2007 - link
How is this a TV? I don't see any screen...It looks like a super-small, weak computer.
I don't get it. :(