so i have a mid 2007 (original aluminum imac) 20" and i believe the video card is the ati hd2600 not positive on that ill check when i get home. i read on another thread that open cl will not be supported on this model. what does this mean for me, and aside from that how different will my end user experience change with the upgrade? I mostly web browse, listen to lots of music, and watch lots of hulu.
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will snow leopard really make that much diff. on a mid 2007 iMac?
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ok cool.. still wondering what im going to be missing out on with the whole no open-cl support... will this primarily affect gaming?
TheSpaz
macrumors 604
Nope... won't affect gaming at all.
Open-CL means that the GPU (graphics processor) can be used for more than just graphic rendering... Instead of using the GPU to just display video or make games run faster, it will also be able to process other information as an additional processor.
thank you so much for giving a clear, short explanation of open cl. been waiting for that for months. So then SL is a definate for me and my trusty iMac, thanks guys
Just don't set your expectations too high. It won't instantly be more responsive than the current Leopard in system performance or speed. The majority of the speed comes in applications that'll benefit greatly from GDC/OpenCL, like Mail, iMovie and so on. Finder may not be any faster than Leopard's Finder in typical usage.
NOT true at all, Finder in Snow Leopard has been rewritten from the ground up, see in Leopard it is Carbon and in Snow Leopard it is Cocoa, and it runs way faster, snappier, and better overall. Also much of the main applications are now 64 bit. So, to the thread starter, yes you will see a good speed bump when using SL. I'm testing the WWDC build and it is very good and fast. Shame that the dock/exposé feature isn't here yet 🙁
I'm on the very first and original MacBook Pro (March 2006). I'm running Snow Leopard, and I see quite a bit of a speed increase (not a lot though).
I am running the WWDC build here as well.
It is not noticeably WAY faster than Leopard in daily use and I abused it a lot especially with external and network drives, it's just a tiny bit more stable and responsive but it is definitely not way faster than Leopard's Finder. We're talking less than 10% better performance than what people are assuming with 50% or more.
Now my experience may be different for majority of people with HDs because I have an SSD in my system, so it is possible that Finder is actually much more responsive and faster on hard drives but actually it may not have a big difference on SSDs.
Thus the wording in my previous post was "may not be faster" which is not the same as not "definitely won't be faster".
Also my WWDC build is only running in 32bit, 64bit mode of SL refused to run on my early 08' MBP 17" which is definitely 64bit at 2.5Ghz Penyrn. I bet the majority of people is not running it in 64bit mode either.
BTW rewriting an application from Carbon to Cocoa doesn't necessary means that it'll be faster, more responsive and better overall. A bad code is bad code regardless of what API it uses. In this case, Apple probably didn't just simply just convert it from Carbon to Cocoa, they also refactored and optimize the code to take advantage of GDC in the most efficient ways.
I'm with MikhailT on this one. Rewriting apps in Cocoa doesn't necessarily mean it's much faster. It's better code, sure, and it will be easier to maintain and further develop in the future. Similar situation with 32 bit -> 64 bit, it doesn't warrant any speed improvements by default.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it's just that people too often get pulled into the marketing way of thinking "Ooooh, 64 is twice as much as 32, this must be really good".
Catfish_Man
macrumors 68030
Actually this one really is useful. Between extra registers, the 64-bit only modern objc runtime, and a few other things, I get a 20% speedup for 64 bit AutoHyperlinks.
It's not "twice as fast 'cause 2x as much data" or any of the nonsense that gets spread about it though.
I understand that there is a lot of potential, I'm just trying to say a switch to 64bit doesn't bring anything by itself, it all depends on the software. Some things might get a huge boost, others might not gain anything at all.
I have similar machine- hold down "6" and "4" when booting to start with 64bit kernel etc.
Holding down 64 bricked the system. It won't boot the 64bit at all. I thought 32bit would work but nothing. I had to totally reinstall SL just to get it working again.
What about a 2006 Intel Core Duo MacBook? Should I wait and buy SL or get a new system when SL comes out?
Eraserhead
macrumors G4
