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.
9400 and Expose...
- Thread starter sukanas
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Are Quartz Extreme and Core Image showing as enabled in System Profiler? Is a browser running? Any USB drives attached via USB?
With nVidia cards, there is no "general" smoothness. Neither with 9400 nor with 9600. It was a little bit better with the 8600GT, but nothing so exceptional.
It's the drivers. They are bad, incredibly bad. Macs with integrated intel chipset are as bad, but not significanlty worse, as they should be. Macs with ATI cards are much better, even if they have slower processors, memories, less cores...
Drivers. Apple forgot how important they are.
- thistle
It's the drivers. They are bad, incredibly bad. Macs with integrated intel chipset are as bad, but not significanlty worse, as they should be. Macs with ATI cards are much better, even if they have slower processors, memories, less cores...
Drivers. Apple forgot how important they are.
- thistle
Thats totally untrue. Its completely smooth on my macbook weather I'm using the notebook's display or my 24" monitor on either the 9400 or 9600. Much smoother then my ATI card in my iMac ever was.
It is true: with comparable graphics hardware, ATI's drivers are better optimised than nVidia's for Core Image. Fact.
Expose has no lag for me on 9400 or 9600. Expose was just as smooth on my GMA950 MacBook also. Stacks is another story.
Having the same problem. Expose and opening of stacks in Fan or Grid is choppy in both 9400 or 9600. I set the background to change every 5 sec and during the transitions, it would lag badly or not be smooth. Can anybody else test this out and see if it's the same. I'm pretty sure this is something that can be corrected with a firmware or driver update, come on Apple...I'm really starting to regret purchasing Rev. A products from Apple. Also in Photoshop, making the canvas bigger by dragging the bottom right corner, it's also VERY sluggish. Seems like the transitions in Mac OS X or sluggish overall. Should I be considering taking it back for another exchange?
UPDATE: Called in AppleCare this morning explained the problem. End result, they haven't heard or are unaware of this problem. Ultimately it's due to either the video cards used (9400M or 9600M GT) or firmware/drivers.
Like some have stated above, they're not having the issue which could lead to the GPU's being faulty. Could be firmware/drivers, if those who are having the problem boot into safe mode and run Expose, it gets noticeably worse and that's because QE is not enabled in Safe Mode. I have to believe since there are no updates, everyone using the late-2008 MacBook Pro's all have the same firmware/drivers?
Since I'm still within the 14 day return policy, they recommend that I go get a replacement since Expose/animations/transitions aren't suppose to run slow. If you're over the 14 days, it's up to you whether or not you want to tried to get the video card(s) replaced.
(Meant to edit last post but wouldn't allow me, sorry)
Like some have stated above, they're not having the issue which could lead to the GPU's being faulty. Could be firmware/drivers, if those who are having the problem boot into safe mode and run Expose, it gets noticeably worse and that's because QE is not enabled in Safe Mode. I have to believe since there are no updates, everyone using the late-2008 MacBook Pro's all have the same firmware/drivers?
Since I'm still within the 14 day return policy, they recommend that I go get a replacement since Expose/animations/transitions aren't suppose to run slow. If you're over the 14 days, it's up to you whether or not you want to tried to get the video card(s) replaced.
(Meant to edit last post but wouldn't allow me, sorry)
Yea with the 9400m card is a bit jerky sometimes in expose especially if your doing a lot of things at the same time.
Still shouldn't behave that way. We use Mac Mini's at work and always have a crap load of things opened: multiple Safari windows open for iDesk, iLog, other windows for research, iTunes, Mame emulator (shhh...don't tell the boss!), and screen sharing and I get no such lag or choppiness when running Expose or min/max. windows. And the whole desktop vs. portable doesn't apply here, you have to believe the MacBook Pro is still power powerful than a Mac Mini also, if I remember correctly, QE and CI handles the animations/transitions so that's all work for the GPU. Intel GMA can't be better than the 9400M or 9600M GT can it?
The link you posted shows benchmarks for the cards under Vista using Boot Camp. They have no bearing on Apple's drivers or Core Image (other than the small blurb at the bottom, for which they give no supporting information).
Obviously, I'm not talking about Windows
There are a few tests on Bare Feats that have shown ATI drivers to be better optimised than nVidia which supports their statement:
"ATI has optimized their Mac Edition drivers and firmware for the Radeon 2600 XT and 3870 so that they run Core Image effects much faster than comparable nVidia cards including the GeForce 8800 GT and Quadro FX 5600".
e.g. "When we tested the retail Radeon 3870, it was superior to the GeForce 8800 GT when running GPU intensive Pro Apps like Motion and iMaginator".
Even Arn quoted them on this last year, when reporting on the ATI 4870.
Of course, things can always change if nVidia's drivers get better optimised for OS X, and it will be interesting to see if Snow Leopard improves things.
Fact is, if you're running the cards mentioned using Core Image-accelerated apps under Leopard you're better off with the ATI equivalent.