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Any word on fast GPU switching in SL?

K

kryptonianjorel

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 3, 2009
373
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When the MBPs came out with the dual graphics cards, people believed that they would be able to fast-switch between then. However, this is not the case; a logout-login is required to switch between the 9400M and 9600M GT on the MBPs. It was thought with the release of Snow Leopard this would be fixed.

So, has it been? will it be? Any word on using both graphics cards at the same time to boost performance?
 
Tallest Skil said:
I don't remember anyone ever thinking that Snow Leopard would let us do that. :confused:
Click to expand...
I've seen a few posts like that. I think the reasoning was long the lines of since you can switch on the fly in Windows, surely the next version of Mac OS would allow that.
 
I can confirm that you still have to logout to switch on SL. I was pretty disappointed. I rarely use the dedicated graphics, but I'd like to be able to switch to it when doing things like encoding a movie without having to close everything out.
 
Just noticed you asked about using both at the same time. It is not in SL. These were actually the 2 features I was hoping for the most to make it in.
 
aristobrat said:
I've seen a few posts like that. I think the reasoning was long the lines of since you can switch on the fly in Windows, surely the next version of Mac OS would allow that.
Click to expand...

Yeah, some Sony laptop can do it, so people thought that it might come to be in SL, since it would be a difficult feature and not something worthy of being a 10.5.X update.

iphone3gss said:
Just noticed you asked about using both at the same time. It is not in SL. These were actually the 2 features I was hoping for the most to make it in.
Click to expand...

Others were thinking with the new OpenCL support, that it may become a reality. I just cant help but think that all MBPs will have the option of dual graphics from now on. The uses are endless! For example, I could use my 9400M to display my desktop and all, while the 9600M GT is busy with Handbrake.
 
As I recall, some apps REALLY hate you switching cards out from under them, and the logout is to protect the user from having to worry about issues resulting from this.

As for OpenCL on both......that wouldn't actually require GeForce Boost (not happening on the MBP, not hardware-supported, not practical), would it? As I recall, someone mentioned once that CUDA doesn't require two cards to be in SLI to accelerate to both of them, and in fact gets slowed down if the cards are paired up. Makes me wonder.....
 
kryptonianjorel said:
When the MBPs came out with the dual graphics cards, people believed that they would be able to fast-switch between then. However, this is not the case; a logout-login is required to switch between the 9400M and 9600M GT on the MBPs. It was thought with the release of Snow Leopard this would be fixed.

So, has it been? will it be? Any word on using both graphics cards at the same time to boost performance?
Click to expand...

As far as I'd seen nVidia has said the ball is in Apple's court.
 
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