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Snow Leopard H.264 Hardware Acceleration and OpenCL Requirements

I can't see Intel GMA GPUs in OpenCL supported GPUs list. But there is "intel" logo on this page in OpenCL section.

Also it is strange that on my new mac pro I'll not get H.264 hardware acceleration. Right now this 8-core beast can't play many videos smooth without stumples. It is shame.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
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.
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I agree that it's not such a huge deal, but I disagree that nothing you do would benefit from OpenCL. There are hundreds of every day activities performed by your CPU that could be handled more efficiently by a GPU. Even if the GPU is no faster than the CPU, having an additional processing unit to spread the load would make your machine faster and thus last longer. But Apple doesn't want to give you that unless you pay an added premium because machines that last longer mean fewer sales for them.
 
Bregalad said:
I agree that it's not such a huge deal, but I disagree that nothing you do would benefit from OpenCL. There are hundreds of every day activities performed by your CPU that could be handled more efficiently by a GPU. Even if the GPU is no faster than the CPU, having an additional processing unit to spread the load would make your machine faster and thus last longer. But Apple doesn't want to give you that unless you pay an added premium because machines that last longer mean fewer sales for them.
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Not to mention writing code for parallel processors as compared to serial processors is pretty "fun":D CUDA on Windows, for example, takes advantage of the GPU for processing, but this really works best when there are a whole bunch of values to compute (highly parallelizable), which generally occurs in graphics and science.

Not everything has the chunks to be broken down into bite-sized pieces that the GPU can handle more efficiently then the processor, or even handle at all.

However, OpenCL is pretty ****ing rad :D
 
[sarcasm]It seems for a lot of people here, once Snow Leopard ships, their Macs will suddenly explode and become unusable, forcing them to buy new Macs. I can't believe Apple put a timebomb on every Macs like that.[/sarcasm]

There are more improvements in SL than OpenCL. It's funny how OpenCL becomes the only dealbreaker feature everybody is concerned about, something that seems to target specific applications. To me, I'm more interested in grand central, where I can expect general improvements across all apps from my dual-core macs. As for people complaining about 64bit support, my core-duo(32bit) mini has only 1GB RAM, and it runs Leopard just fine. I expect SL to run even better. My iMac has only 2GB of RAM, and it runs Leopard lickity split. I'm not worried about 64bit anymore as I don't even see the need to upgrade to more than 4GB of RAM. Heck, even Windows 7 runs fairly smooth on a netbook with 1GB of RAM where most of them are using 32bit only Atom processors. At least with OS X, I don't have to worry about picking 32bit vs 64bit version of the OS like Windows.

It's even more hilarious reading people abandoning Apple for Windows 7 just like that. Sounds like people here are not really Mac users. I have a core-duo mini (32bit only), Blackbook with gma950 and iMac with 2600 (no openCL for either), and I will still upgrade to SL because I know that I still get performance benefit from SL. Besides, can't argue with $50 for the family pack ($10 per license!). And before people call me an Apple fanboy, I have at least 3 PCs running Windows 7 RC and 2 running Vista (yeah, I have more Windows PCs than Macs).

It's ironic that some people that are whining about SL are bragging about their hackintosh netbooks. Guess what, most netbooks are single-core 32bit only, and have intel GMA950, so still no 64bit/openCL/Grand central. :rolleyes:

Flame away.
 
NT1440 said:
Yup, I bet your computer doesnt even turn on know because of this :rolleyes:


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

I'm just ranting. Will still upgrade to 10.6 of course.

Maybe 'useless' isn't the best word to use, but the point is, as many others have pointed out, the HD2xxx series probably can support OpenCL, but Apple chooses not to implement it. There are probably quite a portion of users out there that are using the ATI chip who will not benefit from OpenCL. And with the chip being present as recently as the previous generation of iMac, it seems weird for Apple to make the move.
 
God^Cent said:
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!!!
Click to expand...

Yeah look it's a fair point... but look, we'll still get Grand Central Dispatch and 64-bit support. To be honest I think both of those will give much bigger speed bumps for general usage... finder will generally be... faster and I think that's much more important than movies (which already run at full speed for me) being faster. I'm not working with any raw HD movies or anything...

So summary ofOpenCL... yay, movies will run a bit quicker (oh wait they already run quickly...)

Grand Central Dispatch & 64-bit finder that's EXACTLY the same and a lot faster... great! Finder's going to be faster (I think it's my most frequently used app.)
 
Is apple's openCL artificiality restricted to some GPUs? I don't see any evidence for that. As commander.data said, radeonHD 4XXX series introduced new hardware features that could be required. Apple may just want full openCL support, not a crippled openCL and that's understandable.

Now, H.264 acceleration being restricted to the 9400M seems pretty arbitrary. But I would not be surprised if an update or a software hack enables accelerated decoding on other GPUs, at least the geforce 8 series and higher.

Or is this restriction due to the 9400M being also the chipset?
 
OpenCL Requirements

It would seem that OpenCL requires a 512 MB GPU, right? That means I'd need to replace the GPU on my first-gen. MacPro. So what if any cards on Apple's list of supported cards can I use for a retrofit? Or am I simply s. o. l.?
 
dfs said:
It would seem that OpenCL requires a 512 MB GPU, right? That means I'd need to replace the GPU on my first-gen. MacPro. So what if any cards on Apple's list of supported cards can I use for a retrofit? Or am I simply s. o. l.?
Click to expand...
The 8600M GT is on the OpenCL supported list, but many have just 128MB of GDDR3. The much-publicized 9400M shares 256MB of system memory. 512MB is not an OpenCL requirement although it'll definitely be useful for it. While other manufacturers tend to include large amounts of cheaper, slower DDR2 with their GPUs, Apple stuck with lower amounts of more expensive, faster GDDR3. Even the low-end HD2400XT used GDDR3. Kind of a trade off.
 
HyperZboy said:
USELESS POINT #173

Apple makes all the Macs.

Microsoft doesn't make PCs.

BIG DIFFERENCE, POOR COMPARISON!​
Click to expand...
You must not be aware that even though those systems lacked necessary hardware to take full advantage of Vista's features, Microsoft knowingly and willingly let those devices be sold with nice "Vista Capable" glowing on them. So the point is perfecly valid.

Please next time be more subtle when posting irrelevant comments.
 
commander.data said:
The 8600M GT is on the OpenCL supported list, but many have just 128MB of GDDR3. The much-publicized 9400M shares 256MB of system memory. 512MB is not an OpenCL requirement although it'll definitely be useful for it. While other manufacturers tend to include large amounts of cheaper, slower DDR2 with their GPUs, Apple stuck with lower amounts of more expensive, faster GDDR3. Even the low-end HD2400XT used GDDR3. Kind of a trade off.
Click to expand...

My X1600 has 256MB of dedicated VRAM and is not supported...
Go figure :p
 
djgamble said:
My X1600 has 256MB of dedicated VRAM and is not supported...
Go figure :p
Click to expand...

It's also from the beginning of 2006 and the 9400M is an improvement. Though it was supposedly capable of Avivo h.264 encoding but I don't think that ever materialized for the Mac. I could be wrong though.
 
God^Cent said:
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!!!
Click to expand...

i guess this might be the main reason many feel miffed by Apple's very limited OpenCL support. i don't feel quite as bad as others because when i got my computer, Leopard wasn't even out yet (august of 2007). but Apple has been shipping iMacs with the HD2600 up until the most recent revision so a lot of people have a lot newer comps not being supported. you know OpenCL has been in dev a lot longer than that. imo Apple should have EOL'd the HD2600 as soon as they started OpenCL dev and realized it wouldn't be supported.
 
vt220 said:
Please fill out this form
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Apple even reinduced firewire, so if you complain about the lack of GPU spport it could also be a help.
If apple doesnt know about your disappointment they cant recognize it.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Will do, thanks!

I'm disappointed to see that they ditched many OpenCL capabale hardware out of the list...

HD2xxx and HD3xxx from ATI are perfectly capable GPUs.

http://developer.amd.com/gpu/ATIStreamSDK/pages/ATIStreamSystemRequirements.aspx
 
ktlx said:
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.
Click to expand...

I don't think you should be using things that Microsoft has done to justify Apple's actions. Don't Apple make a big deal about being better than MS, or at least their fans do?

OpenCL may indeed only support a limited number of cards through no fault of Apple, but leaving H264 support off cards that can use it in Windows? Moneygrabbing.
 
AidenShaw said:
Look at an iMac 20" logic board.

eFcGG3VaANuJhLIM.large
(Pictures at http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac-20-Inch/658/3)

Notice the two copper heatpipes at the upper right, going from the Core 2 Duo CPU to the radiator which is cooled by a dedicated fan.

Notice the passive aluminum heatsink on the middle left which is over the graphics and chipset.

Cooling designs for the CPU and GPU are quite different - and to assume that watts can be shifted from one component to a different component can easily lead to killing a system.
Click to expand...


Also look at the teardown photos of the newest 13" MacBook on iFixit:

4U6FOVHCT4JwTMvX.large
XaPYhlwqukefDI4j.large


Notice that the Nvidia chipset is well connected to the heat pipe - unlike the Imac.

...still just speculation ;)
 
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