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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Calin - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
What about testing power use under XP I meanXP compares more favourably to Mac OS (or anything else) than Vista, and I wanted to know if that excessive power use is Vista-only, or if it does appear on Windows XP too
strikeback03 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
Or some version of Linux?wilkinb - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link
yeh I agree the diff will be how the OS is set to manage each device etc etc...On my Sony laptop i get around 2 hours on high performance and a bit over 5 hours on battery saving...
The results they posted dont really tell us much other then a bootcamp vista install isnt as good as an osx install at managing power on apple laptop... amazing right?
I am sure if i dont use the Sony install and tool/drviers etc I will also get less battery life on my laptop. So the question would be do you think apple put more effort into power management on their OSX install then they did for Vista?
JarredWalton - Wednesday, October 22, 2008 - link
Let me just say that I've tried testing various power saver setting under Vista on several notebooks (see review on Friday) and I just can't get anywhere near 5 hours of battery life. Sure, the CPUs are a bit higher spec on some of the notebooks, but as one example a 12.1" laptop with 55 Whr battery, 320GB 5400RPM HDD, 4GB RAM, LED backlighting, and P8400 pulls an "amazing" 138 minutes of DVD playback and 142 minutes of web surfing... though it does manage 261 minutes when sitting idle at the desktop.As best I can tell, the CPU and HDD just don't seem to be entering sleep modes much if at all, unless the system is 100% idle. Even then, 261 minutes idle battery life doesn't compare favorably to the MacBook pulling 286 minutes of web surfing.
How big is the Sony battery, if I may ask? (Just for reference, take Voltage * mAhr to get Whr.) What sort of CPU, GPU, HDD, RAM does it use? What we need to see to prove it's possible is a Vista laptop with a 20W TDP CPU, 2GB RAM, 5400 RPM HDD, and 13.3" LED backlit LCD that can still get close to five hours of battery life with a 55 Whr battery. If you think you have one, get the manufacturer to send me one for review! :)
Spivonious - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
Are you guys turning off the Vista indexer and SuperFetch? Those two things would run the harddrives pretty constantly on a fresh install, which would definitely drag down battery life.JarredWalton - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
Do normal users disable SuperFetch? I've disabled indexing as much as I know how, since I don't use it, but SuperFetch is part of Vista. Besides, it shouldn't run on battery power (and neither should indexing).Spivonious - Friday, October 24, 2008 - link
If you want to actually test Vista battery life, install the OS and use it for a week before testing the battery life. I agree with the other poster that both the indexer and SuperFetch are great features, but they do spin the harddrive when the computer is idle until the index is built and SuperFetch learns what you use most often.Spinning harddrive = lower battery life
Comparing battery life between Vista and OS X is like comparing the time it takes to eat a pomegranate and an apple.
headbox - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
no, battery tests let people know how long they can use their computer without plugging it in.You're not comprehending the article- the PC laptops are also being tested at idle, just sitting there doing nothing. If Vista is going to spend that entire time "superfetching" nothing, that's a problem.
jonmcc33 - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
No, normal users do not disable SuperFetch. That's just bad tweaking advice, as much as turning Indexing off is as well. Both are amazing features added to Vista.I tested a Latitude D630 (2.6GHz Core 2 Duo Penryn, 2GB RAM) with Vista Business and a 9-cell 85WHr battery. Life was over 5 hours.
JarredWalton - Thursday, October 23, 2008 - link
I wouldn't be surprised if there's just some glitch on many of the laptops that's keeping battery life down, but until some manufacturer can deliver Vista with 55 Whr and 5 hours (give or take) battery life I remain skeptical. Users shouldn't have to hack their laptop in any way to get the increased battery life; it should just work properly out of the box. You know, like the MacBooks with OS X.