Because the scenarios in which applications would use that much are few and far between. Moreover, if you're using an application that manages to use 512 mb of vram or 4 gb of ram, you probably could stand to upgrade the cpu and gpu anyway
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
512MB VRAM- What is the definitive answer?
- Thread starter JWest
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Because the scenarios in which applications would use that much are few and far between. Moreover, if you're using an application that manages to use 512 mb of vram or 4 gb of ram, you probably could stand to upgrade the cpu and gpu anyway
Because the scenarios in which applications would use that much are few and far between. Moreover, if you're using an application that manages to use 512 mb of vram or 4 gb of ram, you probably could stand to upgrade the cpu and gpu anyway
Well I have a first hand experience with the benefits of 512mb vram as to the 256mb. Driving an 23" acd is a MUCH better experience without it being in clamshell (closed mode). Even the 512mb mbp running an external monitor with the laptop open runs the 23" acd so much better than the 256mb in its clamshell mode.
I tested both mbp a 15" 2.4ghz sr mbp 256mb and a 17" 2.5ghz penryn mbp 512mb with the exact same hdd, amount of RAM, same amount of programs that I use and the same amount of everyday multitask that I threw at it, the 512mb vram handled it without any color wheels popping up or hiccups while the 256mb had some stuttering expose with some lags, color wheel popping out before an application could be used or some serious color wheels just churning for a good 30 seconds at a time off and on.
Yes the 512mb is THAT much faster.
Plus check out what I found:
http://www.macworld.com/article/132330/2008/03/macbookpro_bench.html
"The new 15-inch 2.5GHz MacBook Pro was quite a bit faster across the board than that build-to-order 2.6GHz system—more than 8 percent faster, in fact, in Speedmark, and 23 percent faster in Photoshop. Doubling the video memory also helped the new 2.5GHz MacBook Pro best the older build-to-order machine in our Unreal Tournament test by a whopping 34 percent."
Not a HUGE devastating one but still a fairly noticable gain I'd say.
Well I'm sorry to say this but an older game like Unreal Tournament 2004 tested at 1024x768 is not making use of 512MB of VRAM lol. At a low resolution like that the difference in fps would likely be almost completely attributed to the T9300 vs T8300. If they didn't run the tests a number of times to get an average also the higher score could simply be a fluke since they've got the 17" 2.5Ghz Penryn scoring around 8 fps lower than the 15.4" model. If tested at the same resolution with the same hardware and graphics card obviously there is something else in play besides the 512MB on the video card. And how do you know whatever difference you were seeing driving that 23" ACD isn't simply a Penryn vs Merom performance difference instead of 256MB vs 512MB. The only way to show a difference between the 512MB and 256MB 8600M GT's is to run tests with two Penryn MBP's in GPU limited benchmarks. Anything where the CPU is going to have any big play like testing an older game at a low resolution is going to be influenced by even small CPU differences.
Those are older games though...they should work decently at those resoultions. You also didn't ad if you used AA or not, that does make a difference in performance and video memory usage. You will not be able to play crysis on a MacBook Pro at that resolution at reasonable FPS.
I believe that test score even if it is an older game like unreal tournament. I mean BOTH system IS still running the same old game and each showing how much better it ran it. So the differences are best shown of what the gpu ram differences can do.
Plus that 2.5 vs. 2.4 could have had something to do with driving the 23" ACD much better but I doubt it since vram is more important in driving a display, especially a demanding and sophisticated/professional 23" cinema display at that. I mean splitting 256/2 for each display for the mbp and the cinema display from the 15" as to the 17" 512/2 with 256mb for each display is clearly the advantage.
And also it probably has to do with the 17" having a more powerful motherboard/logic board. This is known since the powerbook days that the 17" had a superior and clocked higher overall system. I remember alot of people dodged the 15" powerbook and got the 17" just for this reason. And even when Apple switched to intel the 17" motherboard is similar to the 15" but clocked at a much higher rate (imo thats what I'm mostly seeing in the performance wise, it feels like its spanking the 15" 2.4ghz mbp in real world usage).
All I can say is that the 17" overall usage feels like a mimic of my Mac Pro, Most of the time in heavy multitasking I dont feel the difference between the 17" mbp and the Mac Pro (only when its extracting huge files and transporting huge files and opening/encoding a huge hd file was it noticable in speed while heavy multitasking as of course felt 100x better on the mac pro). But the 15" 2.4ghz was a different story, felt like a toy compared to the 17" and mac pro in performance wise.
That's true but you have to understand what effect the resolution tested at has on the fps. There is a HUGE difference in what you should gather from the results between a resolution like 1024x768 and something higher like 1920x1200. At low resolutions the CPU has to try and keep up with the video card because the video card is wanting to push high frames. At higher resolutions the graphics card is pushing out far fewer frames per second and so the CPU has no trouble keeping up. Also, like I said, UT2004 isn't a game that uses that kind of large amounts of VRAM. It's like putting 8 gigs of RAM in your laptop and thinking Photoshop is going to be way faster now when you've never used more than 2 gigs even once. And once again, the 8600M GT only has a 128-bit memory bus so efficiently it can't even use that kind of memory. The only time the 512MB VRAM may actually be making a difference some is in the respect of what you stated about running dual displays. It's very likely there is a noticeable difference if you're gaming on an external LCD since the VRAM is being split up between the laptop and external displays.
I'm playing WoW on MBP 2.4GHz Penryn with 256MB VRAM. Everything is max, with multisampling on 4 (max) with 40-50fps.. Fans are running a little more but MacBook Pro is an awesome machine if you plan to play WoW..