CoreImage, CoreVideo and more RAM on the new iBooks (UPDATE)

A reader with skills in computer hardware provided interesting comments on the new iBooks released this week. He claims that the new iBooks should be technically capable for CoreImage and CoreVideo technologies and that the maximum RAM capacity of the new laptops has been increased.

According to the reader, the ATI Mobility Radeon 9550 is a down-clocked version of the ATI Mobility 9600 but is enabled with all the 9600's features. The question remains on the compatibility of the "Mobility" editions with CoreImage and CoreVideo. MacBidouille and XLR8YourMac tend to agree with that, claiming that the Radeon 9550 is simply a 9600 with its graphic chip down-clocked to 250Mhz.

As for the RAM capacity, this is something that some of you may have already noticed. We know that Apple has upgraded it to 512MB across the line and we can see that current BTO options for RAM are 768MB, 1GB and 1.5GB. So it's not just the BTO option that became standard, Apple changed the non-replacable RAM module of 256MB with a 512MB one. What means the new iBook comes with 512MB and one free RAM slot. Last generation iBooks had a maximum RAM capacity of 1.25GB.

UPDATE: Apple's web site now lists Radeon 9550 as CoreImage and CoreVideo compatible GPU. However, we can notice that the Mobility Radeon 9550 edition is not explicitly listed, unlike the Mobility Radeon 9700 which is listed.