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Snow Leopard H.264 Hardware Acceleration and OpenCL Requirements
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Confusingly, the GS is referred to by both of those names (Hardware diagnostics shows a GS as a GT with missing pipelines and the card is referred to elsewhere as an 8800M GTS)
So it's not quite clear if it is supported or not. I would be thoroughly surprised if it isn't, however.
Karma?
As a PowerPC user left out in the cold by Apple on $10k worth of equipment, most of which purchased within 3 years and often being ridiculed on this site for whining about no Snow Leopard PowerPC support & the fact that's its mostly just bug fixes and optimizations, I have to admit I'm enjoying this thread of INTEL users all complaining about their INTEL Mac not being supported for OpenCL.
Karma?
As a PowerPC user left out in the cold by Apple on $10k worth of equipment, most of which purchased within 3 years and often being ridiculed on this site for whining about no Snow Leopard PowerPC support & the fact that's its mostly just bug fixes and optimizations, I have to admit I'm enjoying this thread of INTEL users all complaining about their INTEL Mac not being supported for OpenCL.
Karma?
wow it looks like in addition to requiring no older G5 type machines, apple is upping the ante to require a limited set of intel mac's with only certain graphics processors. frustrating, but i guess technology has limits on the openCL stuff. though it would be nice to make more of the computers available to get the extra processing power on the GPU's
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Mr.damien
Guest
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 ...
Whats this? Apple using new software features to make users upgrade their hardware? Sounds like something Microsoft would do
What you won't see is a big stonkin' label next to keyboard saying "compatible with Snow Leopard".
Wrong team. The x264 dev team is the one you need to be praying for, and I recall their last attempt at using similar technology (CUDA), it didn't go well.
Apple's H.264 acceleration policy doesn't make much sense in limiting it only to the 9400M. So if you switch on the 9600M GT in the MacBook Pro you actually loose acceleration? And the fastest GPUs for Mac, the HD4870 and GTX285 don't support H.264 acceleration?
Perhaps Apple doesn't have time to do a ATI implementation, but the 8600M GT, 8800, 9400M, and 9600M GT all have the same Purevideo 2 video processing engine. Work done adding 9400M H.264 acceleration should be directly applicable to the 8600M GT and other nVidia DX10 GPUs. What's more, ATI's have the same level of H.264 decoding abilities in hardware since the HD2xxx series through the Unified Video Decoder. Even the nVidia 7xxx and ATI X1xxx series had partial H.264 acceleration. So all non-Intel IGP Intel Macs have the hardware for H.264 acceleration, just that Apple has decided to artificially limit it to the 9400M.
It's interesting that the OpenCL support list has a 8800GTS which was never available for Mac. I guess they mean 8800GS. As well, the Apple shipped and supported Quadro FX 5600 is not listed even though it's the same hardware generation as the 8800GT. The GTX 285 and Quadro FX 4800 are also not listed, but that may be because they are after market upgrade cards.
In terms of lack of pre-HD4xxx ATI GPU support for OpenCL, it appears to be hardware related. One major feature in HD4xxx is that there are local data stores at the SIMD core level (groups of 16 SP, each with 5 execution units) just like how it's done in nVidia GPUs in the 8xxx series and up. The HD2xxx and HD3xxx series didn't have these local data stores which really slows down the operation of the execution units when they have to share information and is one of the reasons identified by Folding@home for poor GPGPU performance in the HD2xxx and HD3xxx Folding clients compared to nVidia 8xxx series. OpenCL may well have made local data stores a requirement. ATI is supposed to release OpenCL Windows drivers in H1, ie. this month, and I no longer expect pre-HD4xxx GPUs to be supported in Windows either.
In meantime, I'm hoping for a new Mac & PC Edition to replace the $219 HD3870 which is no longer being sold. I'm thinking a 512MB HD4770 would be a great Mac & PC Edition. It'd be much more worthwhile than the $150 GT120, yet still has enough performance separation with the HD4870 and can use the same drivers. It's 40nm and can be made single-slot without a 6-pin power connector to differentiate it from the PC editions.
Perhaps Apple doesn't have time to do a ATI implementation, but the 8600M GT, 8800, 9400M, and 9600M GT all have the same Purevideo 2 video processing engine. Work done adding 9400M H.264 acceleration should be directly applicable to the 8600M GT and other nVidia DX10 GPUs. What's more, ATI's have the same level of H.264 decoding abilities in hardware since the HD2xxx series through the Unified Video Decoder. Even the nVidia 7xxx and ATI X1xxx series had partial H.264 acceleration. So all non-Intel IGP Intel Macs have the hardware for H.264 acceleration, just that Apple has decided to artificially limit it to the 9400M.
It's interesting that the OpenCL support list has a 8800GTS which was never available for Mac. I guess they mean 8800GS. As well, the Apple shipped and supported Quadro FX 5600 is not listed even though it's the same hardware generation as the 8800GT. The GTX 285 and Quadro FX 4800 are also not listed, but that may be because they are after market upgrade cards.
In terms of lack of pre-HD4xxx ATI GPU support for OpenCL, it appears to be hardware related. One major feature in HD4xxx is that there are local data stores at the SIMD core level (groups of 16 SP, each with 5 execution units) just like how it's done in nVidia GPUs in the 8xxx series and up. The HD2xxx and HD3xxx series didn't have these local data stores which really slows down the operation of the execution units when they have to share information and is one of the reasons identified by Folding@home for poor GPGPU performance in the HD2xxx and HD3xxx Folding clients compared to nVidia 8xxx series. OpenCL may well have made local data stores a requirement. ATI is supposed to release OpenCL Windows drivers in H1, ie. this month, and I no longer expect pre-HD4xxx GPUs to be supported in Windows either.
In meantime, I'm hoping for a new Mac & PC Edition to replace the $219 HD3870 which is no longer being sold. I'm thinking a 512MB HD4770 would be a great Mac & PC Edition. It'd be much more worthwhile than the $150 GT120, yet still has enough performance separation with the HD4870 and can use the same drivers. It's 40nm and can be made single-slot without a 6-pin power connector to differentiate it from the PC editions.
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 ...
I have a first gen Mac Pro with the 8800.
I think it's to be expected that only graphics processors that have the h.264 processing features are the only ones that will support it.
Nvidia have only put this in fairly recent graphics cards and to be honest this is the first implementation of this feature that will greatly speed up working with native h.264 footage, I think apple deserve praise for getting this into Snow Leopard.
It's a bit like the situation when HDV started appearing in cameras, if I remember correctly it was Apple and Final Cut that was first to get the codec issues sorted and provide a quicker workflow. I was using a PC at the time and remember all sorts of headaches with trying to edit and use the MPEG2 based HDV footage, in the end I ended up selling the HDV camera to my friend who was using a Powermac G5 and final cut as he could get better use from it than me on xp and a P4.
Nvidia have only put this in fairly recent graphics cards and to be honest this is the first implementation of this feature that will greatly speed up working with native h.264 footage, I think apple deserve praise for getting this into Snow Leopard.
It's a bit like the situation when HDV started appearing in cameras, if I remember correctly it was Apple and Final Cut that was first to get the codec issues sorted and provide a quicker workflow. I was using a PC at the time and remember all sorts of headaches with trying to edit and use the MPEG2 based HDV footage, in the end I ended up selling the HDV camera to my friend who was using a Powermac G5 and final cut as he could get better use from it than me on xp and a P4.
M
Mr.damien
Guest
http://www.barefeats.com/nehal05.htmlWith what ?
I have a first gen mac pro, no graphic card are available on the apple store for it better than my unsupported X1900XT ...
Despite Apple not wanting to officially support the HD4870 with first-gen Mac Pros it actually does work since ATI always includes both 32-bit and 64-bit EFI ROMs. I believe 32-bit EFI is required for first-gen Mac Pros. Note this is not the same as OS level 64-bit support so shouldn't affect the first-gen Mac Pro's ability to run 64-bit Snow Leopard. nVidia skimps by only including 64-bit EFI probably to use a smaller ROM chip, meaning only later Mac Pros are supported.
Wow.. Took by a surprise here as well! Got my iMac with everything, including graphics card maxed out, just over a year ago, and graphics card (the 8800 GS) _already_ not supported? Hopefully it is just a models naming mistake or something.. Not even 2 years old model. That's bold move by Apple..
Oh yeah.. I don't really care about hardware support to h.264 decoding, but lack of OpenCL support is a big deal to me..
I believe the 8800GS has been rebranded as the GT130. Also, the 8800gs was actually the 8800M GTS. So I think we are safe....(I have the same one). If not, it is VERY frustrating!
http://ati.amd.com/products/radeonx1900/specs.htmlI think it's to be expected that only graphics processors that have the h.264 processing features are the only ones that will support it.
Nvidia have only put this in fairly recent graphics cards and to be honest this is the first implementation of this feature that will greatly speed up working with native h.264 footage, I think apple deserve praise for getting this into Snow Leopard.
Again partial H.264 acceleration was available in the nVidia 7xxx and ATI X1xxx series back in 2005. Full H.264 acceleration has been available since the HD2xxx and nVidia 8xxx series. The 8600M GT has the same video processing engine as the 9400M since they are the same architecture. Apple just chooses not to support it.
Annoying.. I recall being thrilled when I read my MBP with the Radeon x1600 (Back when it was released), had hardware h.264 decoding.. But Apple won't support it.. *Sigh*
meh Windows7 will have way better multimedia support. moreover on windows you can get better h264 decoders, like CoreAVC, which we can't get because you can't enforce drm/licensing on qt componets.
That's what I was just thinking - kinda sucks doesn't it!
Glad SL only costs $29 because this is one of the main things I was looking forwards to...
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
Rich
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
Rich
