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Snow Leopard H.264 Hardware Acceleration and OpenCL Requirements

Mr.damien said:
With what ?

I have a first gen mac pro, no graphic card are available on the apple store for it better than my unsupported X1900XT ...:mad:
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In a previous post Peter Cohen answered with the following information for people in our boat. He said, "In fact, ATI has installed 32-bit EFI drivers in the ROM, so it will work. See Bare Feats (http://www.barefeats.com/nehal05.html) for details." He was talking about the Apple supplied ATI 4870 being able to be used on our Intel Mac Pros. But will it support Open CL if it is operating in 32 bit mode?

I've already replaced my ATI X1900XT with 2 ATI 3870s. Now that means I'll have to change one of these 3870s to a 4870. That may be an over the summer upgrade for me.

Now we see more reasons for the $29 price tag. This is a true OS for the future. It seems as if much of the advanced tech will not work even with most of the Intel Mac products. And to think that it took a couple of years to do this sidegrade. This is just like when MS upgraded MS Office for the Mac to Office X. It didn't really add any new features, it just made it PPC compatable. So who is copying who in this case.

Apple claims that OS 10.6 can run on any Intel Mac. It appears that RUN is the word they said. They didn't say how many of the new ideas would work on any of our Intel Macs. Typical Steve Jobs. The new makes the old old with no upgrades. It seems as if my not even 3 year old 3 GHz Intel Mac Pro to be about as upgradable as my son's dual G5 PowerMac. No wonder they took Power out of the name of the Intel Mac Pros.
 
I understand the frustration but lets at least wait for some real world performance numbers before we go screaming and yelling at Apple.

We don't even know if this is the final supported list of GPUs.

Snow Leopard offers a lot more than just OpenCL, it's a $29.00 upgrade that is going to be faster and leaner on your current hardware, not make it suddenly slower and obsolete.

My 2006 Mac Pro with a tiny Nvidia 7300 is going to get an SSD, a 1 GB XFX Radeon 4870 and Snow Leopard come September. For the fraction of the price of a new machine, it will feel brand new.
 
superted666 said:
Hmm does this mean my recent purchase of a iMac 2.8ghz core 2 extreme does not support the new CL API?

Bit gutted :(
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Does this seriously mean that my 24" 2.8GHz imac running ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro will not work? Can it still run Snow Leopard though?

This is a real put off, this was released summer 2007 and its already becoming outdated...
 
vt220 said:
What hardware limitations? on Windows XP and Vista at leat h264 ist working very well with this card!
You can play an h264 mkv with mediaplayer classic and powerdvd plugins at around 10% cpu load! The same thing with bluerays of course!

On MacOS hardware acceleration for 3rd party players such as VLC, mplayer, plex would only be possible through OpenCL as the software interface to the graphics card.
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I call BS on this one. VLC even now has some degree of hardware acceleration and so does mplayer. You don't need OpenCL in order to have hardware accelerated decoding and if you have watcher the keynote close enough you'd know that. OpenCL only makes it easier to use the GPU instead of having to use OpenGL like you do now.

As far as Windows goes I'm sorry but the whole hardware decoding/encoding problem sucks just as much there only on a different level. At least Apple is trying to unify the way developers use GPUs for computing but it totally bites that some hardware gets left out. Leaving out hardware features has been done many times before but this time it's on a whole new scale. Hopefully these are preliminary specifications and by the time 10.6 is released the support will be back in.
 
Is my rev.A MBA supported? I have Intel GMA X3100. I really hope it is! I bought this a week before the rev.B's were released, bad luck eh? And now this could potentially mean to get the full advantage of snow leopard I'd need to buy a new macbook? :(
 
flopticalcube said:
Did Apple ever do this in the past? If there is a precedent, then there is hope. Otherwise, life goes on...
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I don't know but it's clear Nvidia was closer to OpenCL code with CUDA than ATI was with "Close to Metal"

I'm thinking that it's just going to take ATI a bit of time before they get some of their OpenCL capable cards ready.

Much like Apple doesn't always claim accurate RAM capabilities due to deman I'm sure the OpenCL list will grow to cover recent computers.
 
bpd115 said:
My 2006 Mac Pro with a tiny Nvidia 7300 is going to get an SSD, a 1 GB XFX Radeon 4870 and Snow Leopard come September. For the fraction of the price of a new machine, it will feel brand new.
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Most of us can't simply "pop in" a new GPU to make it feel brand new. I wish I could, but tomorrow my freshly ordered now incompatible iMac is being delivered to my house. Must be nice to have PCIe slots.
 
I know absolutely nothing about graphics cards. I am looking to buy an iMac. If I get the ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB a fairly 'updated' graphics card? or obsolete in the rest of the computer world. Kind of makes me want to get a mac pro to make sure I can keep up with Apple
 
RichardI said:
Wow. Lots of peeved peoples.:(

My vid card in my 2007 iMac is not listed, but what will that mean in real life terms? I don't do any video encoding - so that 264 thing doesn't affect me, right?
What will I be missing by not having Open CL? Anybody know what this will really mean :confused:

Rich
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This means that the $29 update price is really probably higher than many people will be getting changes. Open CL sounded good until we find out that all the Intel Macs sold for the first 3 years will not be supported. That means that our equipment is just like the PPC Users that at least can be smart enough not to give Apple any updating money.

How is this lack of income to Apple from the usual $129 update fees to $29 to only a small part of their installed base. They probably will make more money from the $9.95 update fee for iPod Touches to go to version OS 3.0. Does that menan that system 10 will just become an OS for phones & iPod Touchs? The 44 million iPhones & iPod Touchs have already eclipsed the 30-31 million Mac OS X Users'. No wonder over half of the keynote went to iPhone OS 3.0.
 
heisetax said:
This means that the $29 update price is really probably higher than many people will be getting changes. Open CL sounded good until we find out that all the Intel Macs sold for the first 3 years will not be supported. That means that our equipment is just like the PPC Users that at least can be smart enough not to give Apple any updating money.

How is this lack of income to Apple from the usual $129 update fees to $29 to only a small part of their installed base. They probably will make more money from the $9.95 update fee for iPod Touches to go to version OS 3.0. Does that menan that system 10 will just become an OS for phones & iPod Touchs? The 44 million iPhones & iPod Touchs have already eclipsed the 30-31 million Mac OS X Users'. No wonder over half of the keynote went to iPhone OS 3.0.
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Please don't post drunk anymore
 
OpenCL
NVIDIA Geforce 8600M GT, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GTS, Geforce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130.
ATI Radeon 4850, Radeon 4870


this is the list from Apples site of supported OpenCL gpus.

I assume therefore the iMac with the 8800GS is not supported. I understand that it might be a rebadged GTS or whatever, but if Apple included it, why didnt they list it? They would surely use the name (GS) that they used on the iMac specs.
 
chrisPA said:
Not to mention that you can still buy the 2.8Ghz iMac w/ the ATI Radeon HD2600 Pro today in the Apple refurb store! So it's possible you'll still be able to buy an iMac from Apple when Snow Leopard comes out that won't support OpenCL. Doh! :eek:
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That is the EXACT machine i purchased just this past April!
I'm really hoping that my ATI Radeon HD2600 Pro will be supported.
I bought that machine because I didn't think that I would have to upgrade an Apple product within 6 months!!!
 
It's not like this is new folks. There was similar outrage over both Quartz Extreme and Core Image's introduction in past Mac OS X releases.

In 10.2 Jaguar, Apple released Quartz Extreme which only supported a handful of shipping GPUs at the time. For the most part, this affected no one at the time. The only visible difference in Jaguar was better visual shadows and smoother transitions on Quartz Extreme-capable GPUs.

In 10.4 Tiger, Apple released Core Image which also only supported a handful of shipping GPUs. Again, for the most part this affected no one at the time. The only visible difference in Tiger was you would get a "ripple effect" in Dashboard with Core Image-capable GPUs.

Would it be a big deal if Apple shipped a GPU that didn't support Quartz Extreme or Core Image now? Absolutely, because many applications rely on both technologies.

It's going to take developers time to make OpenCL relevant. I highly doubt OpenCL will become mission critical until 10.7 or 10.8. By then, you'll have a new graphics card or Mac anyway.

Until an application is released that YOU need, why be up and arms about a developer API?
 
adammelancon said:
That is the EXACT machine i purchased just this past April!
I'm really hoping that my ATI Radeon HD2600 Pro will be supported.
I bought that machine because I didn't think that I would have to upgrade an Apple product within 6 months!!!
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What do you mean with "have to upgrade"? I too have an 2600 iMac, will our machines suddenly stop working the day 10.6 is released? :rolleyes:

Seriously, I fail to see the big deal...

We don't even know yet if this list is complete, maybe more cards will be added. Snow Leopard isn't even out yet... and everybody is freaking out because we probably will be missing 1 feature. Our macs won't get slower than they are now, and mine is plenty fast - from Adobe CS4 to handbrake.
 
I'm assuming that the Apple believes that the majority of their user base won't need OpenCL. There are a lot of people posting on here whining that their consumer level iMac, or Macbook won't be supported. Well, why do you need it? If you were a serious power-user who had a need to take advantage of OpenCL then you would probably have bought a Macpro instead of the consumer models. For the Macpro users who are not supported, there is always the option to upgrade your video card to something that is supported. And that goes all the way back to the first 2006 version if you are resourceful!

I'm kind of amazed at how bitchy people are now about entitlements. There is a huge thread about people complaining they can't get subsidy on a new iPhone upgrade when their original contract has not been fulfilled, and now there is this thread where people with cheap consumer laptops (and iMacs) are complaining that they won't be able to get OpenCL support. My guess is that most of you don't know what OpenCl is or if it will even make a difference in your daily computer lives. You just read that it will make your computer go faster and you decided Apple owed it to you even though that wasn't part of the original agreement when you bought your machine. Maybe it will make Safari go faster?
 
THX1139 said:
I'm assuming that the Apple believes that the majority of their user base won't need OpenCL. There are a lot of people posting on here whining that their consumer level iMac, or Macbook won't be supported. Well, why do you need it? If you were a serious power-user who had a need to take advantage of OpenCL then you would probably have bought a Macpro instead of the consumer models. For the Macpro users who are not supported, there is always the option to upgrade your video card to something that is supported. And that goes all the way back to the first 2006 version if you are resourceful!

I'm kind of amazed at how bitchy people are now about entitlements. There is a huge thread about people complaining they can't get subsidy on a new iPhone upgrade when their original contract has not been fulfilled, and now there is this thread where people with cheap consumer laptops (and iMacs) are complaining that they won't be able to get OpenCL support. My guess is that most of you don't know what OpenCl is or if it will even make a difference in your daily computer lives. You just read that it will make your computer go faster and you decided Apple owed it to you even though that wasn't part of the original agreement when you bought your machine. Maybe it will make Safari go faster?
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You know what? You're totally right. I'm not as miffed about it as some of the others are, but I'm a little disappointed, sure. That said... it's not going to make a huge difference in my workflow, as nothing I do regularly would benefit from OpenCL anyway.
 
Its shocking how many people are flipping out that their GPU isn't supported when it seems like most don't even know what OpenCL does.

OpenCL will not make your desktop run faster, or safari or Mail, iTunes, Office, IWork, or 90% of what most people do with their computer.

OpenCL is not about graphics acceleration, it's about heavy duty big bad number crunching, stream calculations, vector calculations, matrix calculations.
In short, black rim glasses, pocket protector, clipboard and short sleeve button shirt math.*

Even Photoshop will only see a benefit in math heavy filter operations.
Hardcore 3D rendering, Video encoding, Mathematica, fluid dynamics, these are the things that OpenCL excels at.

And each of those programs will have to be re-written before they can use OpenCL, It's an API not a magic go fast wand.

I'd bet that most people won't even notice whether OpenCL is working on their GPU or not, since most programs won't use it.


*Apologies to any Math gurus that I may have offended with my stereotypical description
 
ihabime said:
Its shocking how many people are flipping out that their GPU isn't supported when it seems like most don't even know what OpenCL does.

OpenCL will not make your desktop run faster, or safari or Mail, iTunes, Office, IWork, or 90% of what most people do with their computer.

OpenCL is not about graphics acceleration, it's about heavy duty big bad number crunching, stream calculations, vector calculations, matrix calculations.
In short, black rim glasses, pocket protector, clipboard and short sleeve button shirt math.*

Even Photoshop will only see a benefit in math heavy filter operations.
Hardcore 3D rendering, Video encoding, Mathematica, fluid dynamics, these are the things that OpenCL excels at.

And each of those programs will have to be re-written before they can use OpenCL, It's an API not a magic go fast wand.

I'd bet that most people won't even notice whether OpenCL is working on their GPU or not, since most programs won't use it.


*Apologies to any Math gurus that I may have offended with my stereotypical description
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ihabime. You said that so eloquently, you practically made my point for me. (It's meant as a compliment.) :)
 
OMG, does that mean that the very very first and original MBP is not supported??? WTF!!!!! I'm pissed off!!!!!
 
My CD iMac and CD MBP are officially obsolete. However, I won't be whining about it like most of the users here. It is likely that Snow Leopard will be the best OS my old CD macs have ever run. They are not even 64bit (although i can upgrade the iMac).

It is disappointing that Apple doesn't support relatively newer video chipsets, but that was probably a decision based on chipset capabilities, NOT the effort it took to support it (people have talked about shaders and pipelines and stuff but it means nothing to me).

What's the chance more GPUs are added in 10.6.1? Zero?

$30 is nice. Beats $129.
 
Techhie said:
Hold on, I thought that buying a computer less than a year before a new OS was released (in some cases, only months) meant full compatibility in any other market, including the MS world.
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This is an excellent point and the actual truth is that Apple isn't doing anything Microsoft hasn't already done (as well as just about any other OS maker). There are no assurances from any computer manufacturer that you'll be able to exploit all features in some OS release many months in the future.

There were lots of PC sold in the weeks prior to Vista's release that could not run it's Aero interface. How is that any different than what Apple's doing with OpenCL?

There were lots and lots of graphics cards being sold after Microsoft released it's DirectX 10 that couldn't support any of it's added features over DirectX 9.

Good graphics card does not automatically ensure OpenCL support. Look at the API on the published link. There are a lot of features that can't be supported in some pretty decent cards because those cards were not programmable.
 
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