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Libertine Lush

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 23, 2009
682
2
I only have a rudimentary understanding of OpenCL, so hopefully the premise of this question makes sense: Comparing the 2 possible graphics cards configurations for the new 15" MBP, would having the 512MB Nvidia 330M instead of the 256MB one mean that OpenCL in OSX will be able to extract more power to facilitate the overall speed of the system?

Would this also have an effect on Windows 7 run in BootCamp or virtualized?

Thanks.
 
Almost certainly there wont be a difference. While it would be possible to build a OpenCL app that used more than 256mb of ram it isnt practical in any way. Most OpenCL apps use single digits of mb.

The biggest performance separator for OpenCL is pure shading power (as shading cores do all of the math) and the two models offered by Apple are equivalent in that sense.
 
Almost certainly there wont be a difference. While it would be possible to build a OpenCL app that used more than 256mb of ram it isnt practical in any way. Most OpenCL apps use single digits of mb.

Oh! That's surprising to hear that OpenCL uses so little of the video ram. I thought maybe in the most demanding circumstance there would be instances where the entirety of the graphics card could be exploited.

Thanks.
 
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