Apple's Redesigned MacBook and MacBook Pro: Thoroughly Reviewed
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 22, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
GPU Accelerated H.264 Decode
Both AMD and NVIDIA have fully accelerated H.264 decode on their GPUs and chipsets with integrated graphics, something Intel just recently added with G45. Apple has historically done a terrible job of taking advantage of GPU accelerated video decode features in its OS, which is partly why it took us so long to get somewhat acceptable deinterlacing in Apple's DVD app, despite solid deinterlacing support by the GPU vendors.
Part of the problem is that unlike on the PC platforms, companies like ATI and NVIDIA don't write the entire driver for Mac OS X. The GPU vendors provide the hardware interface portion of the driver but Apple handles much of the rest. It's up to Apple to take advantage of the various features supported by the GPU, and most of them aren't high on Apple's priority list.
With Apple heavily pushing H.264 as the codec of choice and offering high bitrate HD H.264 movie trailers at www.apple.com, the move to NVIDIA's GeForce 9400M appeared to be the perfect time to take advantage of GPU accelerated H.264 decode. For the first time ever, Quicktime will use the GPU for the majority of the decode pipeline when playing back H.264 content.
To test the impact of the GPU offload I measured CPU utilization while playing back the 160MB 1080p trailer of The Spirit from Apple's movie trailers website:
| New MacBook Pro 15" | Old MacBook Pro 15" | |
| CPU Utilization | 10% | 30 - 50% |
The old MacBook Pro saw 30 - 50% of its dual core Core 2 Duo 2.5GHz CPU used up to decode the trailer, while the new MacBook Pro only needed 10% as the rest was done on the GPU. The GPU is also a more efficient place to perform H.264 decoding so you'll actually see an increase in battery life when playing back hardware accelerated content.
As OS X still lacks any official Blu-ray support, the H.264 decode acceleration isn't very useful beyond playing these sorts of files, but it's a definite start. It's also unclear how easy it will be for 3rd party developers to tie into the GPU acceleration hooks or if Quicktime will be your only hope for that.
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joey2264 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
Uhm, Apple charges $150 to upgrade from 2 to 4 GB. A 2 GB 1066 DDR3 notebook dimm is about $60 on Newegg. What are you smoking??strikeback03 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
He didn't mention how many slots are populated in the standard configuration. If standard is a pair of 1GB sticks, then you need a pair of those $60 2GB sticks to get 4GB.joey2264 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
It doesn't matter. 2 GB of memory (2 Dimms) cost about $80, and 4 GB cost about $120, as stated in the article. But Apple is charging $150 to upgrade from one to the other, when it only costs $40 more.Thanks for correcting me, because Apple is raping their customers even more than I thought.
strikeback03 - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
Might be true, but as you can't choose zero RAM as a shipping configuration, from the customer perspective (assuming 2 2GB sticks are needed) you either pay $120 to Newegg and do the work yourself or pay $150 to Apple.Also, I highly doubt Apple is paying Newegg prices for components, so even more profit. But RAM upgrades seem to always be something the manufacturers have raped customers on.
Brucmack - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
It'd be nice to provide a couple of extra data points...- Macbook battery life on XP
- Lenovo battery life on XP & Linux
wolf550e - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
Anand, please perform same test on Ubuntu 8.10 and tell us whether it's closer to OS X or Vista.R3MF - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
but i live in hope of a response:Is this integrated nvidia chipset the same as was rumoured to work with the Via Nano CPU?
Kind regards
boe - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
I'm curious to how XP would compare to Vista/ OS X.snouter - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
No 1680x1050? When will Apple step up and offer this? This is even more egregious than the lack of an SSD option, although, an SSD could be added to the MBP later, and the screen is forever.The MBP should only offer the CPU models with 6MB cache. This would have been one more way to differentiate the MBP from the MB. Put the Pro in Pro dammit.
No matte option on the MBP? Please.
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I upgraded my 2.16GHz Merom to a 2.4GHz Penryn, largely for the LED screen, but, now I've even more glad that I did.
If Apple does not add some flexibility to the 15" MBP build options, I'll be waiting for the 17" MBP. My workplace bought me one, and... 1920x1200 LED is pure love, though I could live happily with a 1680x1050 on my preferred form factor, the 15".
Apple has a knack of diminishing their gains with some weird regresions and non-moves. It's love hate for sure.
iwodo - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link
With much increased battery life, ( not that it uses that much less power, but you accomplish the same task in less time would means less power usage )I hope Intel hurry up with their controller chip.