E.g. the MacBook Pro 15" (i5) comes with a Nvidia GeForce GT 330M.
Does the i5/i7 and related chipset dependencies take up more space maybe? They seem overall more performant and better battery savers than the Core 2 Duo.
Yeah; Intel locked NVidia out of the chipset market with Nehalem, so in order to use an NVidia GPU you need to have an extra die on the motherboard, you can't fold it into the chipset.
There's no room in the Air chassis for that, so to stay off Intel Integrated graphics, they have to stay on Core 2 Duo.