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I have a late 2008 13 inch uni-body Apple Macbook 2G core two duo, 4GB of ram, with an Nvidia Geforce 9400M graphics card. I recently bough a 27 inch Apple Cinema display and when I plug in my Mac it isn't preforming well. Its laggy.

Will upgrading my hard drive to a Solid State Drive improve the performance? Is there any other ways to fix this issue?

Thanks.

Edit: updated the type of graphics card

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upgrade the video card to handle the higher resolution... – Arctor Apr 3 '11 at 0:56

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No, your graphics card is struggling with the large resolution not your hard disk. Your graphics cards is an integrated chipset (built into the motherboard chipset and it shares system ram) and back then the Intel integrated chipset's were not very good. It cannot be upgraded in you laptop.

What resolution are you using? I didn't think the integrated graphics supported 2560x1440. Also how are you connecting the display since it uses a Display Port and I don't think you MacBook has a Display Port?

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My resolution in the Macbook is 1280x800px and my res on the display is indeed 2560x1440px. I'm connected through the mini display port. So you think the only way to improve that is... to change my mac :-) ? Thanks – seanieb Apr 3 '11 at 1:45
Sorry I just spotted that my graphics card is actually a Nvidia Geforce 9400M. – seanieb Apr 3 '11 at 18:18
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You stated your MacBook has the Intel GMA 950. This was in the Original MacBook (13-Inch), MacBook (13-Inch Late 2006) and MacBook (13-Inch Mid 2007). These MacBooks only had 1 Mini-DVI for external video.

How do you have it connected to the new Mini-Display Port 27" Cinema Display?

To quote Apple's website and page for the 27" Cinema Display:

"System Requirements: Mac computer with Mini DisplayPort, including MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, Mac mini, and iMac Mac OS X v10.6.4 or later"

To be blunt, your MacBook is not going to have the power to drive the larger monitor. I'd look at an older model display from Apple or look into a non-Apple display. Or upgrade your MacBook to one of the machines compatible with the 27" Display.

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Thanks John, actually I have a Nvidia Geforce 9400M. Sorry for the mistake. However, I'm 100% positive on me having the minidisplay port on my Macbook. I'm definitely going to replace my optical drive with a SSD Drive to gain on speed. And keep my original standard drive for storage. Do you think the Geforce can be sort of "software upgraded" ? Like "overclocked" ? – seanieb Apr 3 '11 at 18:16
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i have a late 2010 13" mbp with an integrated geforce 320M (i think, might be wrong). external 1900x1200 connected via displayport (thunderbird?) with hdmi adapter had major flickering issues and severe lag especially when rotating spaces with a transparent full screen iterm. also have annoying keyboard/mouse lag in all applications, eclipse is especially bad. none of this happens with the builtin display. i also suspect that the integrated graphics chipset just can't drive my display. I hooked up my 1900x1080 and it actually helped a lot, the flickering is gone, the lag is better, but still exists. i fear the solution is to buy a faster mbp :(

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