Snow Leopard H.264 Hardware Acceleration and OpenCL Requirements

[milo]

Do it! Its fun and if you stick to the most compatible hardware you will be just fine! Add an Apple LED display if you want the "Apple feel" I also use an Apple keyboard on mine as well

Intel i7 3.20GHz FTW

So any reports online of SL working on hackintoshes (or failing)? Particularly the new dev build from this week?

 

[robogobo]

My big issue here is with applications like Aperture, which I use pretty heavily. It already slows down a bit, and if the next release is even more GPU dependant, and takes advantage of Open CL, I'm screwed.

Same here with the 3870 in a 1,1 MacPro. F.

 

[THX1139]

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.

You get what you pay for. And with Apple, sometimes you get less than what you should get for your money. You have to pay extra to have that shiny apple logo.

 

[HyperZboy]

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.

USELESS POINT #173

Apple makes all the Macs.

Microsoft doesn't make PCs.

BIG DIFFERENCE, POOR COMPARISON!​

 

[THX1139]

so are white imacs completely screwed?

If your primary machine is a white imac, then you don't need OpenCL.

 

[thedoor1]

Absolutely. Its just a teaser and probably of little value to most (except for the H.264 decoding) but it is rather irritating. Did Apple ever incorporate older hardware at a later date? Is there a precedent for this? Anyone know?

At one point the shipped airport cards that were 802.11n capable but were only supported at 802.11g. Later they charged $2 to update to n. I think at the time n wasn't officially released and legally they had to wait a few weeks to enable it. Does that count? kinda? a little?

And to the guy who ordered the wrong iMac... send it back or don't sleep at night - sounds like you are obsessing over it.

 

[Eidorian]

If your primary machine is a white imac, then you don't need OpenCL.

Please do tell.

 

[djgamble]

Apple's Mac OS X Snow Leopard specs page also reveals a number of other details about hardware support for both H.264 acceleration and OpenCL.

MacRumors had previously reported that the latest MacBook Pros offered hardware acceleration for H.264 video playback. While Apple has previously included graphics cards that have contained hardware support for H.264 decoding, the company has only recently taken advantage of this hardware acceleration. Mac OS X Snow Leopard's specs officially acknowledge this support but it appears to be limted to the NVIDIA 9400M graphics processors found in recent Apple laptops and desktops. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this support will extend to older video cards. Hardware decoding of H.264 video improves the performance of video playback while leaving your computer's CPU free for other tasks.

Meanwhile, Apple also details which GPUs will be supported for their upcoming OpenCL API. OpenCL will allow developers to easily offload additional processing tasks to the computer's GPU. Some tasks may find greater benefit from this than others, but could potentially offer substantial performance boosts. The list of supported GPUs include:

- 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

In one specific example, one company found a 5-fold increase in video encoding when using OpenCL-like technology on the PC.

Article Link: Snow Leopard H.264 Hardware Acceleration and OpenCL Requirements

Yep typical of Apple... I can list off pretty well all my Macs, and the lack of a supported graphics card has been the reason I've been forced to upgrade in most cases...

1) Performa 5200... no graphics card (okay so nobody had them around that time.)
2) Bondi iMac... 6MB Rage Pro... cheap card, much better ones existed but they insisted on the Rage Pro... meant the thing never supported OS X properly (no 3d acceleration in OS X.)
3) G4 Cube... Rage 128... hack upgraded it to a GeForce 3 to get Quartz Extreme... later on I just didn't get new graphics features because Apple deemed my card too cr@p.
4) G5 iMac... X1600 I think...
5) Intel iMac... X1600...
6) MacBook Pro... X1600... are we seeing a pattern here? Oh wait... My PRO machine is not supported by OpenCL... takes you back 'ay? All because Apple didn't upgrade the X1600 faster (I had the option of buying into integrated graphics or an X1600... I thought the X1600 would future-proof me a little more. In fact its done NOTHING...)

Not complaining really... OpenCL seems great, and takes advantage of newer cards. That said... as with all the other times... I bet $1000 000 that Apple could have just supported older cards and they'd pull off better results than simply not using a graphics card as all. Things are always going to be slower simply using software...

 

[Chemeddy]

=(

Stupid Apple. My HD2600Pro is now useless.

 

[nuckinfutz]

=(

Stupid Apple. My HD2600Pro is now useless.

It plays games and accelerates Quartz Extreme just fine.

 

[NT1440]

=(

Stupid Apple. My HD2600Pro is now useless.

Yup, I bet your computer doesnt even turn on know because of this


Did you even think about your post or are you bitching just to bitch?

 

[skellener]

I was about to post this. I'll be outraged if the GS isn't supported.

I have an iMac with the 8800 GS as well. I learned a long time ago never to buy early and expect Apple to add new features for old hardware. That is foolish. Buy what you need. If it happens great. If not, don't sweat it. If this mattered to you that much you should have waited until Snow Leopard shipped. Waiting for the OS to ship and getting a machine with it pre-loaded is really the only guarantee you have when it comes to Apple hardware supporting the latest, greatest features.

It would be nice if they wind up supporting the 8800 GS in the 24" iMac. If not, I'm not about to blow a gasket over it. It's still the best Mac I have ever owned.

 

[Inconsequential]

4870 and gt 120 not supporting h264?

HA don't believe it for a second.

It will come, give it time.

 

[cg0def]

Ok so I was bitching about hardware decoding and stuff but here are the facts.
The dev preview that Apple gave out to developers at WWDC works great on my last gen MBP with 8600. I can't really tell if there is hardware acceleration with QT but for one CPU usage is down with divx files so who know maybe the specs page is not quite correct. There are some much needed improvements that Apple did not talk about though. Updates work better and stuff like updating iTunes does not need you to reboot/logout. The update interface has changed a little but it is for the better and the general feel of the system is somewhat faster and more responsive ( especially when you used expose ). I personally like the old QT UI better though. And yes in general you can't really tell that this is a major update. On the surface it's the same old Leopard but that was expected. The installer works quite well I I must admit it cleared up A LOT of space. In my case about 10gb. Oh yeah and Safari is version 4 but a different build, hence it gets the plugin isolation feature.
Sadly some Leopard apps don't work. For now Afloat is gone and that's kinda sad ...

 

[Andrew Henry]

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

So then according to you, it's okay for me to be pissed that my Mac Pro bought in January doesn't have a supported graphics card?

BUT on the bright side, gave me an excuse to buy a 4870

 

[HyperZboy]

50%+ Macrumors Members unhappy w/ Snow Leopard...

Apple deliberately chose NOT to support many graphics cards that could be OpenCL compatible by CHOICE!, not because they could not be compatible, just as Apple has chosen to deliberately not support PowerPC in Snow Leopard, even though many of its features also could be PowerPC compatible as many of them are bug fixes and optimizations of the the current Leopard.

Why else would it still be called "Leopard"?​

To many people who paid $129 for Leopard, obviously this is going to tick them off, hence all the negative posts you're seeing in these 2 Macrumors threads.

By the way, if you add up the Ratings on the PowerPC thread + this OpenCL thread, you'll see they are running more than 50% NEGATIVE.

Not a good sign for Snow Leopard on a site that is mostly fanboys.

 

[flopticalcube]

Apple deliberately chose NOT to support many graphics cards that could be OpenCL compatible by CHOICE!, not because they could not be compatible, just as Apple has chosen to deliberately not support PowerPC in Snow Leopard, even though many of its features also could be PowerPC compatible as many of them are bug fixes and optimizations of the the current Leopard.

Why else would it still be called "Leopard"?​

To many people who paid $129 for Leopard, obviously this is going to tick them off, hence all the negative posts you're seeing in these 2 Macrumors threads.

By the way, if you add up the Ratings on the PowerPC thread + this OpenCL thread, you'll see they are running more than 50% NEGATIVE.

Not a good sign for Snow Leopard on a site that is mostly fanboys.

Its an irritation but I would hardly say I'm unhappy. OpenCL is of extremely limited use ATM. I highly doubt your statistics.

 

[HyperZboy]

Its an irritation but I would hardly say I'm unhappy. I highly doubt your statistics.

Add the Macrumors.com ratings numbers up, geez. It ain't hard to do.

Seriously, look at both threads and their POSITIVE/NEGATIVE ratings.

It's not like I'm making it up, it's staring you right in the face!

Do the math. It doesn't even involve algebra! LOL

 

[commander.data]

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.

The difference is that those GPUs that don't support OpenCL can already achieve similar functionality as OpenCL through existing proprietary APIs. Specifically, the HD2xxx and HD3xxx series can already do GPGPU operations in Windows and Linux through the Stream SDK and the Brook+ language. The disappointment is that the functionality is already accessible through other means but not in OpenCL or Snow Leopard. Similar to how H.264 acceleration has long been available in Windows for GPUs starting with the ATI X1xxx and nVidia 7xxx series.

What's more, when talking GPGPU operation, Windows and backwards compatibility, OpenCL's competition from Microsoft is DirectX 11 Compute Shaders of which there are 3 profiles: CS4.0 (based on the DX10 spec), CS4.1 (based on DX10.1 spec), and CS5.0 (for the DX11 standard). This means that all nVidia and ATI DirectX 10 and 10.1 GPUs will support some level Compute Shader in Windows 7, even though it's officially a feature of DX11.

In ATI's and OpenCL's defense, it's probably better to avoid fragmenting the market with multiple profiles as in Compute Shaders and look forward to the future with a fairly aggressive standard rather than bend over backwards to accommodate old designs or define a computing spec in terms of a graphics spec (ie DX10) rather than on it's own merits and purpose. For ATI, I've been told that lack of pre-HD4xxx support is a hardware limitation of their older architecture, which isn't exactly their fault since the HD2xxx series was designed well before OpenCL was finalized. From comments by developers, it appears OpenCL is fairly close to CUDA, probably from Apple's closer relationship with nVidia, so it isn't surprising that nVidia is able to support their older GPUs.

 

[flopticalcube]

Add the Macrumors.com ratings numbers up, geez. It ain't hard to do.

Seriously, look at both threads and their POSITIVE/NEGATIVE ratings.

It's not like I'm making it up, it's staring you right in the face!

Do the math. It doesn't even involve algebra! LOL

Right. What I should have said is I highly doubt the source of your statistics. I have never thought that the thread ratings were worth very much. With a third of a million members, a few hundred votes either way is pointless.

 

[djgamble]

It plays games and accelerates Quartz Extreme just fine.

Yeah I guess that's the thing...
It will still do EVERYTHING that Apple promised it would do when you bought it. You will probably even get a speed bump with Snow Leopard due to all the optimisation...etc.

What you won't get is faster video encoding which... well speaking personally, I don't encode a lot of video's really, so it doesn't matter that much.

The big thing is... I think my card COULD speed up video encoding and is physically capable of being able to use OpenCL... the cards that can do OpenCL didn't even exist when they were drafting out OpenCL... so my guess is it was initially designed on a card similar to mine!

---

That aside... I don't really care because I'm personally not going to see much benefit from OpenCL... to me Snow Leopard's great for so many other reasons! (the extra 6GB of h/d space will really help out with my oooold 120GB h/d... whereas guys with new 500GB ones probably don't give a stuff...)

So you win some, you lose some... but by upgrading to Snow Leopard I'm not losing anything... unlike in the past, when I upgraded my Bondi iMac (which look G3 was what Apple promised OS X would require) I lost OpenGL because they didn't make drivers for my card... quicktime movies ran sluggish in OS X and games didn't run at all.

In my view Apple has a long tradition of screwing people with video cards by not supporting them in OS updates (and you can only upgrade the card if you have Apple's top machine... a Mac Pro... so you need a new computer for new VIDEO CARD features...) I knew that when I bought a Mac though...

 

[djgamble]

Right. What I should have said is I highly doubt the source of your statistics. I have never thought that the thread ratings were worth very much. With a third of a million members, a few hundred votes either way is pointless.

Yeah thread ratings... don't mean much in my view. What's "positive" and "negative"? Pretty subjective in my view...

 

[Sehnsucht]

With all the weirdness surrounding Apple's bizarre MacBook "Pro" updates...it's starting to look like there's only one "worth it" Mac left...the Mac Pro.

Eight cores, 32 GB of RAM, user-replaceable everything. If I had a Mac Pro, I could force myself to go without a laptop. Yeah, don't flame me with "ZOMG137%APPLETAXLOL"...who cares. Mac Pro all the way.

I really wanted to see graphics updates the most. Still the 9600M GT at best. WTF...

Although, OpenCL support = good...

 

[ihabime]

So then according to you, it's okay for me to be pissed that my Mac Pro bought in January doesn't have a supported graphics card?

BUT on the bright side, gave me an excuse to buy a 4870

Being pissed is one of the cornerstones of internet life, I would never deprive someone of that. My reaction was to the large number of people going off the hook about something they clearly don't understand.

The amount of people screaming, yelling, crying betrayal and threatening to never ever buy another Apple product again over what is, for all intents and purposes, a meaningless buzzword to them is downright silly.

My Mac has no hope of running OpenCL, but hell the Cocoa finder is worth $29 bucks alone.

Of course I won't be able to impress the other hipsters at the coffee bar by running folding@home in OpenCL on uber-speed.
I'm truly saddened that my GPU will never cure any diseases or discover intelligent life in the universe, but as mommy says, que sera sera.

 

[God^Cent]

For a company that is highly known for choosing its hardware for its software; This is extremely disappointing that software would take full priority over a MAJOR FEATURE of Snow Leopard. Isolating the thousands of new/old users over the past two years of their greatest increase in sales!!!