OpenCL Benchmarks and Support for Both MacBook Pro GPUs

[Amdahl]

OMFG... WHY do people get so pissed about this?

Seriously - What does your MB NOT do today that you could do with it yesterday?

What it doesn't do today is allow the owner to dream about how wonderful and better the MB is going to be tomorrow when High Priestess Steve dispenses the next received wisdom (via Software Update) that will manifest in their blessed and annointed Macbook.

Yesterday, it did that.

And the poster is right. Go Hackintosh. Apple isn't interested in you, unless you have cash in your wallet, and you're in the store right now. Tomorrow, you're not a customer.

 

[204353]

8600M GT at different clock speeds?

Has anyone else noticed that the 8600M GT runs at two different clock speeds depending on which size MacBook Pro you've got?

At least that's the impression I'm getting. Mine runs at 940MHz, whereas some users have reported 1040MHz. Mine is a 15" 2007 MacBook Pro and I'm guessing the higher clock speed is from the 17"?

...........................................................
.................. OpenCL Bench V 0.25 by mitch ...........
...... C2D 3GHz = 12 sec vs Nvidia 9600GT = 0,93 sec ......
... time results are not comparable to older version! .....
...........................................................

Number of OpenCL devices found: 2
OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce 8600M GT
Device 0 is an: GPU with max. 940 MHz and 32 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 2.980 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7700 @ 2.40GHz
Device 1 is an: CPU with max. 2400 MHz and 2 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 15.600 seconds

Now checking if results are valid - please be patient....
Validate test passed - GPU results=CPU results
logout

[Process completed]

 

[djrod]

This is very cool and interesting. On battery power my late 2008 15" MBP's 9400M beats up on the 9600M. But once plugged in the 9600M trounces the 94, without regard or regret.

Check it:
Battery

OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce 9600M GT
time used: 13.622 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = GeForce 9400M
time used:  9.022 seconds

OpenCL Device # 2 = Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T9600  @ 2.80GHz
Device 2 is an: CPU with max. 2800 MHz and 2 units/cores 
time used: 13.102 seconds

Plugged in

OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce 9600M GT
time used:  2.788 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = GeForce 9400M
time used:  9.028 seconds

OpenCL Device # 2 = Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T9600  @ 2.80GHz
time used: 13.183 seconds

I asume we have the same Macbook PRO, but why are my 9400M results so much betters than yours?

Number of OpenCL devices found: 2
OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce 9400M
Device 0 is an: GPU with max. 1100 MHz and 16 units/cores 
Now computing - please be patient....
time used:  3.493 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T9600  @ 2.80GHz
Device 1 is an: CPU with max. 2800 MHz and 2 units/cores 
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 12.962 seconds

EDIT: If I turn the 9600GT On, the OpenCL results of the 9400M falls down dramatically and it matches yours:

OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce 9600M GT
Device 0 is an: GPU with max. 1250 MHz and 32 units/cores 
Now computing - please be patient....
time used:  2.785 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = GeForce 9400M
Device 1 is an: GPU with max. 1100 MHz and 16 units/cores 
Now computing - please be patient....
time used:  9.022 seconds

OpenCL Device # 2 = Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T9600  @ 2.80GHz
Device 2 is an: CPU with max. 2800 MHz and 2 units/cores 
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 13.376 seconds

 

[J the Ninja]

Agreed. This is pretty much a worthless benchmark. There's nothing complex taking place, no hard memory thrashing, no difficult calculations.

It's just taking 2 arrays with 5000 numbers in them and adding them together into a new array of 5000 numbers. Simple atomic add operations of 2 numbers over and over and over. The more cores you have the more you can split the array up (4 cores = each core processes 1250 items, 32 cores = each core processes 156.25 items.) and the faster clock means that each item gets processed faster.

This is NOT AT ALL indicative of a real OpenCL app that will be doing hundreds of thousands of difficult computations, with dependancies between the dat and working across huge datasets.

I'd say ignore every result we get out of this app. It's not at all indicative of real-world performance in the least.

This "Galaxies" benchmark netkas posted is WAYY more fun. And a little more useful, check it out:

http://netkas.org/?p=164

 

[macfan881]

Waiting for the 9th and ordering my new iMac...

you know the event on the 9th is just a ipod event.

 

[Bubba Satori]

you know the event on the 9th is just a ipod event.

It's a shame the Constitution restricts a trillion dollar company to releasing one product at a time, three times a year.

 

[Aron Peterson]

Number of OpenCL devices found: 2
OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce 8600M GT
Device 0 is an: GPU with max. 940 MHz and 32 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 2.978 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz
Device 1 is an: CPU with max. 2200 MHz and 2 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 17.748 seconds

 

[MRU]

MacPro Rev 1.1 2006 2.66Ghz

Number of OpenCL devices found: 2
OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce 8800 GT
Device 0 is an: GPU with max. 1500 MHz and 112 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 0.688 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU 5150 @ 2.66GHz
Device 1 is an: CPU with max. 2660 MHz and 4 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 6.802 seconds

Now checking if results are valid - please be patient....
Validate test passed - GPU results=CPU results
logout

Wowsers

 

[Krafty]

09 Mac Mini + 9400M

Last login: Sun Aug 30 00:01:17 on console

...........................................................
.................. OpenCL Bench V 0.25 by mitch ...........
...... C2D 3GHz = 12 sec vs Nvidia 9600GT = 0,93 sec ......
... time results are not comparable to older version! .....
...........................................................

Number of OpenCL devices found: 2
OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce 9400
Device 0 is an: GPU with max. 1100 MHz and 16 units/cores 
Now computing - please be patient....
time used:  6.779 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     P7350  @ 2.00GHz
Device 1 is an: CPU with max. 2000 MHz and 2 units/cores 
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 19.269 seconds

Now checking if results are valid - please be patient....
:) Validate test passed - GPU results=CPU results :) 
logout

[Process completed]

 

[macfan881]

It's a shame the Constitution restricts a trillion dollar company to releasing one product at a time, three times a year.

ummm ok....

 

[2002cbr600f4i]

This "Galaxies" benchmark netkas posted is WAYY more fun. And a little more useful, check it out:

http://netkas.org/?p=164

Doesn't seem to support running on ATI video cards for the OpenCL stuff... It'll only use Radeons for rendering, not calculations.

 

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A400 Safari/528.16)

The results look very promising. I look forward to seeing some more real world results.

 

[Master Chief]

The benchmark results will soon change and improve, because Apple is working on improvements for OpenCL, and a first update should be made available in the coming weeks!

 

[andy721]

Mac Pro Bench

C☣mp Specs:
• Mac Pro Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Harpertown processors (8 Cores)
• 12MB of L2 cache per processor (6MB shared per pair of cores)
• 1600MHz dual independent frontside buses
• 6GB memory (800MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
• NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT with 512MB of GDDR3 video memory.
• 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive1
• 16x double-layer SuperDrive
• Apple 20" Cinema Display

VIDEO:
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1828591/Screen Recording 2.mov
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1828591/Screen Recording 3.mov

 

[Howmanoid]

OpenCL will only become interesting when you can actually use it in shipping applications - synthetic benchmarks that show "the potential" of OpenCL are just a tease.

They'll come, but it will take time for vendors to recode their apps to use OpenCL.

Isn't Grand Central supposed to be able to handle the scheduling of current tasks to any compute resource it can manage without the need for recoding? Sure you get greater benefits from writing specifically for OpenCL but I seem to remember Bertrand Serlet showing an animation of how tasks (code segments, not whole processes) were managed across all available compute resources based on priority and systems load. If that's true then it would imply that OpenCL should give benefits to current code as well as code written with OpenCL blocks. I thought this was supposed to be one of its big advantages over CUDA.

Anyone got any more info on this?

 

[unit22]

What it doesn't do today is allow the owner to dream about how wonderful and better the MB is going to be tomorrow when High Priestess Steve dispenses the next received wisdom (via Software Update) that will manifest in their blessed and annointed Macbook.

Yesterday, it did that.

And the poster is right. Go Hackintosh. Apple isn't interested in you, unless you have cash in your wallet, and you're in the store right now. Tomorrow, you're not a customer.

If you're not buying anything you're not a customer. Businesses don't tend to bend on this apart from as a sales tactic.

When you buy a computer you're buying a product, and apart from after sales support and warranty it really isn't an ongoing service.

However, turns out my G4 Mac Mini is still good, borderline great for editing movies. Score.

 

[Brad Larson]

This "Galaxies" benchmark netkas posted is WAYY more fun. And a little more useful, check it out:

http://netkas.org/?p=164

I believe this "Galaxies" demo is the sample code that Apple has posted for an N-body simulation. If you are a developer, you can grab the code and compile it yourself from here:

https://developer.apple.com/mac/library/samplecode/OpenCL_NBody_Simulation_Example/index.html

There's also the OpenCL Procedural Grass and Terrain example:

http://developer.apple.com/mac/libr...ocedural_Grass_and_Terrain_Example/index.html

If you're interested in more about OpenCL, Dr. Gohara is doing a video series on the topic at MacResearch:

http://www.macresearch.org/opencl

The demo near the end of the first video is worth watching.

 

[Brad Larson]

Isn't Grand Central supposed to be able to handle the scheduling of current tasks to any compute resource it can manage without the need for recoding? Sure you get greater benefits from writing specifically for OpenCL but I seem to remember Bertrand Serlet showing an animation of how tasks (code segments, not whole processes) were managed across all available compute resources based on priority and systems load. If that's true then it would imply that OpenCL should give benefits to current code as well as code written with OpenCL blocks. I thought this was supposed to be one of its big advantages over CUDA.

Anyone got any more info on this?

OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) are two different technologies. OpenCL is for taking relatively simple calculations and running them across large data sets over all available computing resources (GPU and / or CPU). GCD allows programmers to break up tasks like sorting arrays or handling multiple downloads, then lets the system load-balance them across CPU cores by creating and managing threads.

GCD is more about simplifying the code for taking advantage of multicore systems. It's behind many of the performance improvements you already see in shipping applications like Mail.app.

CUDA is a more device-specific implementation of GPU computing, and it was the template for the design of OpenCL. However, OpenCL supports far more devices than CUDA, and even lets you perform work on the CPU.

 

[Rubberband Man]

Hrm. Tried it on my MBP & looks fine. Tried it on my 2009 Macmini and its not quite right.

...........................................................
.................. OpenCL Bench V 0.25 by mitch ...........
...... C2D 3GHz = 12 sec vs Nvidia 9600GT = 0,93 sec ......
... time results are not comparable to older version! .....
...........................................................

Number of OpenCL devices found: 2
OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce 9400
Device 0 is an: GPU with max. 1100 MHz and 16 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
Error: clEnqueueReadBuffer for device # 0
ERROR NUMBER = -36



Tried it a bunch more times and finally comes up with a number, but its s-l-o-w.

...........................................................
.................. OpenCL Bench V 0.25 by mitch ...........
...... C2D 3GHz = 12 sec vs Nvidia 9600GT = 0,93 sec ......
... time results are not comparable to older version! .....
...........................................................

Number of OpenCL devices found: 2
OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce 9400
Device 0 is an: GPU with max. 1100 MHz and 16 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 15.325 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P7350 @ 2.00GHz
Device 1 is an: CPU with max. 2000 MHz and 2 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 18.004 seconds

Now checking if results are valid - please be patient....
Validate test passed - GPU results=CPU results

 

[techfreak85]

Booo! More ATI GPUs please. Yes, I'm talking to you, AMD.

If I do recall, you have the same iMac as me no? First gen aluminum iMac? ATi Radon 2600?

Im not that happy.... its not a bad card, and its certainly not obsolete.

 

[netkas]

MacRumors, why didnt you write that radeonhd has very poor support for opencl?

you can run only two (one of them is hello worlds) of many opencl sample from osx sdk on Radeon 4870.

much more interesting benchmark from samples - Galaxies , find it at http://netkas.org/?p=164#comment-35793

right bottom button allows to select opencl device

Doesn't seem to support running on ATI video cards for the OpenCL stuff... It'll only use Radeons for rendering, not calculations.

thats because opencl on radeons is very poor, so it cant run calculations of galaxy app

 

[daveporter]

I was hoping that my trusty old GeForce 7300GT that came with my first generation MacPro would be supported.

Does anyone know which of the supported video cards can be installed in a first generation MacPro? I know that some of the new cards that are made for MacPros are not compatible with the first generation unit.

Thanks,

Dave

 

[2002cbr600f4i]

MacRumors, why didnt you write that radeonhd has very poor support for opencl?

you can run only two (one of them is hello worlds) of many opencl sample from osx sdk on Radeon 4870.

much more interesting benchmark from samples - Galaxies , find it at http://netkas.org/?p=164#comment-35793

right bottom button allows to select opencl device




thats because opencl on radeons is very poor, so it cant run calculations of galaxy app

Yeah, geesh, I just DL'ed every one of the OpenCL examples from Apple's developer site.

1/2 failed to compile, the other 1/2 wouldn't even run on my setup....

I hope they get this stuff fixed soon!

 

[markm49uk]

You will never see OpenCL supported on the HD 2600 or any HD 2xxx series from ATI as they simply do not contain the capability to process this kind of GPGPU data. You need an ATi HD 3xxx, HD 4xxx, NVIDIA 8xxx, 9xxx or 2xx series to be able to process any kind of general code.

So to say it again (as it has been repeated many times) the HD 2600 does not have the capability within it to support any type of OpenCL implementation. It is not Apple artificially limiting which GPUs they allow OpenCL to run on it is that the GPU itself cannot do it.

In ATi's defence. GPGPU was just arriving when they released the HD 2xxx series and its not easy to create hardware to run software that hasn't even been invented yet.

Yes I understand now - obviously I was unaware of this when I made my post.

Looks like I will just have to rely on my MacBook Pro :

Number of OpenCL devices found: 3
OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce 9600M GT
Device 0 is an: GPU with max. 1250 MHz and 32 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 2.793 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = GeForce 9400M
Device 1 is an: GPU with max. 1100 MHz and 16 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 9.030 seconds

OpenCL Device # 2 = Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz
Device 2 is an: CPU with max. 2400 MHz and 2 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 15.142 seconds

Now checking if results are valid - please be patient....
Validate test passed - GPU results=CPU results
logout

[Process completed]

 

[IEatApples]

Here are my results for comparison:

...........................................................
.................. OpenCL Bench V 0.25 by mitch ...........
...... C2D 3GHz = 12 sec vs Nvidia 9600GT = 0,93 sec ......
... time results are not comparable to older version! .....
...........................................................

Number of OpenCL devices found: 2
OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce GTX 285
Device 0 is an: GPU with max. 1476 MHz and 240 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 0.263 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5570 @ 2.93GHz
Device 1 is an: CPU with max. 2925 MHz and 16 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 0.861 seconds

Now checking if results are valid - please be patient....
Validate test passed - GPU results=CPU results

Number of OpenCL devices found: 2
OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce GTX 285
Device 0 is an: GPU with max. 1476 MHz and 240 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 0.269 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU W3520 @ 2.67GHz
Device 1 is an: CPU with max. 2659 MHz and 8 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 1.899 seconds

Now checking if results are valid - please be patient....
Validate test passed - GPU results=CPU results

MacPro 2008 model - 2x2.8GHz (quad core)

Number of OpenCL devices found: 2
OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce 8800 GT
Device 0 is an: GPU with max. 1500 MHz and 112 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 0.684 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5462 @ 2.80GHz
Device 1 is an: CPU with max. 2800 MHz and 8 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 3.278 seconds

I want that GTX 285. Now how do I convince the wife?

...........................................................
.................. OpenCL Bench V 0.25 by mitch ...........
...... C2D 3GHz = 12 sec vs Nvidia 9600GT = 0,93 sec ......
... time results are not comparable to older version! .....
...........................................................

Number of OpenCL devices found: 2
OpenCL Device # 0 = GeForce GTX 285
Device 0 is an: GPU with max. 1476 MHz and 240 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 3.549 seconds

OpenCL Device # 1 = Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5462 @ 2.80GHz
Device 1 is an: CPU with max. 2800 MHz and 4 units/cores
Now computing - please be patient....
time used: 6.426 seconds

Now checking if results are valid - please be patient....
Validate test passed - GPU results=CPU results

………………………………………………………………………………………………

I don't understand why mine is so "slow" compared to the others with GTX 285?