iChat Video chat using more CPU in Snow Leopard

[foshizzle]

Using a mid-2009 15" MBP, 3.06 GHz. iChat has been using significantly more CPU during a video chat than before the upgrade. Anyone else seeing this? I'm currently using the 9400M and not the 9600GT, but I don't think it would have any effect on this. Specifically, it uses about 100% (out of 200). Screen shot of the activity monitor is attached.

I do notice, however, that during the video chat, it is not using the iChat process AND the vcencoder process that is also used in leopard. It just uses the iChat process. I still don't think it should be using so much CPU to video chat.

 

[amarcus]

Check out the snow leopard enhancements page:

iChat can now display iChat Theater content at higher resolution — up to 640 by 480 pixels, or four times the maximum resolution in Mac OS X Leopard.

All that extra resolution doesn't come free at least not with regards to processing power. No need to worry, nothings broke

Adam

 

[foshizzle]

Thanks.

Is there any chance they'll ever offload video processing to the GPU using openCL? I think it would make sense and they'd probably be able to get better quality out of it even with the 9400M.

 

[Cabbit]

Thanks.

Is there any chance they'll ever offload video processing to the GPU using openCL? I think it would make sense and they'd probably be able to get better quality out of it even with the 9400M.

Seems to be the new desire these days to have 100 CPU's all idle while the GPU does everything.

 

[foshizzle]

seems to kind of make sense though for a video chat to use the video card. Quicktime h.264 is GPU accelerated now, you'd think iChat would be.

 

[impulse462]

seems to kind of make sense though for a video chat to use the video card. Quicktime h.264 is GPU accelerated now, you'd think iChat would be.

I agree with you here, maybe apple might include openCL support of ichat in the future. It would certainly be nice I guess.