Open CL question (and the 9600m vs 9400m)

[yetanotherdave]

Basically, will the 15" MBP with the dual graphics cards have a distinct performance advantage over the one with the 9400M only when using open CL?

At the moment £200 seems like a lot for the graphics card, but if I can then get a massive performance increase with openCL it seems a lot more worth it.

 

[J the Ninja]

It has about double the resources to work with a 9600M as opposed to the 9400M, plus what it has is clocked higher and it has faster memory. Judging by benchmarks in graphics apps - this is assuming the OpenCL app can make use of all of the extra cores - you should see about 2x performance, give or take.

 

[ChrisN]

Basically, will the 15" MBP with the dual graphics cards have a distinct performance advantage over the one with the 9400M only when using open CL?

At the moment £200 seems like a lot for the graphics card, but if I can then get a massive performance increase with openCL it seems a lot more worth it.

I was thinking the same thing; I did not know whether to get the 1699 or 1999 one. I was going to get the 1699 one but once I thought about SL and Open Cl my choice is not as clear.
ChrisN

 

[Shiner]

I was thinking the same thing; I did not know whether to get the 1699 or 1999 one. I was going to get the 1699 one but once I thought about SL and Open Cl my choice is not as clear.
ChrisN

Well considering the $1699 one is a scam by apple to try and reach more people under the belief you are buying a pro computer I would still buy the $1999 one. You will want the dedicated graphics card. The 9400M is a joke for any pro application.

 

[yetanotherdave]

I was thinking the same thing; I did not know whether to get the 1699 or 1999 one. I was going to get the 1699 one but once I thought about SL and Open Cl my choice is not as clear.
ChrisN

It's just apple's way of jacking up the price while telling us the price has gone down isn't it?

I'm not really complaining. I was going to buy the old 2.4, but really wanted to be able to go to 8gb ram further down the line, I also wanted the better battery. It came with 2gb ram and I would have upgraded that myself to 4gb, and I probably would have stuck a 500gb drive in there but the 320 will keep me going for a bit, so all in all, it's a price rise that I would have spent in upgrades, plus the features I was waiting for can't really complain!

I was even asking an apple store guy about sd reader express cards, never thought I'd get that!

I'm pretty sure I'll get the 9600 version, I think it will add a year or two to the lifespam of the laptop, with snow leopard's help.

 

[jedijoe]

OpenCL is just a standardization of NVIDIA's CUDA technology ... at least that is what NVIDIA people stated at this year's Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPOPP) conference: http://ppopp09.rice.edu/. And according to NVIDIA's CUDA supported GPU list ...

9400m has 16 parallel processing cores
9600m GT has 32 parallel processing cores

9600m GT also has faster core GPU speed 500Mhz, compared to 450Mhz on the 9400m.

(note: 9400m shares an *minimum* of 256MB of main memory)

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9400M-G.11949.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-9600M-GT.9449.0.html

I just ordered a MBP 17", have the unibody MB. The 9400m while nice compared to the integrated Intel graphic chips used previously, its pretty crappy trying to run a 30" ACD display (hogs memory) and stuff like photoshop and lightroom.

The 9600m GT IMHO is well worth it, and if Grand Central and OpenCL turn out to be half as good as Apple claims, the 9600m GT will be worth even more.

 

[bezerk3r86]

If anything, they should have some sort of HybridSLI system so that people can easily use both GPUs if they have it and seamlessly switch between them.

 

[Techhie]

If you are looking to have the most oomph, I suggest getting the last gen 2.53 Ghz MBP with the 512 MB 9600M GT in it for around $1,450 while it lasts in the refurb store.