.. along with some interesting anomalies..
I'm traveling at the moment with my MBP 17". Arrived at my friends place who has a base iMac 21.5". Since I prefer to use the slightly larger screen to work off (even though my 17 MBP has more pixel density). So startup the iMac via TDM on my 17 MBP and to my surprise it works! - as my MBP only has leopard 10.5.8. I would have thought these iMacs would not run unless you have SL 10.6 loaded. It worked the 1st time, but crashed (grey vertical shade of death) twice after. On the 4th time it worked again. So that was weird (the inconsistency). Maybe 10.5.8 is NOT meant to be compatible with the new iMac's?
There are a few things that don't work with this set up: the brightness control is set at one setting only (medium). I compared the geekbench and xbench scores of the iMac in 10.6.2 vs this TDM setup and the only thing lacking in scores was Processor integer performance 3565 vs 3401, Processor floating point performance 6381 vs 6093. And in XBench the CPU and Thread tests were marginally slower in the TDM setup (to be expected) but the interesting anomaly is that the OPenGL Graphics test is lower on the iMac stand alone test (140.88 frames/sec vs 258.80 frames/sec on the MBP TDM!) - very weird. Well apart from this one anomaly, it would seem SL is as to be expected optimised for the new iMacs.
Once I get SL updater disks and update my MBP 17, then I expect the TDM route to be pretty seamless, unless there are some SL system & prefs inconsistencies b/w machine installs? ie MBP vs MP vs iMac
One last anomaly I noticed is that with this set-up I am now seeing that I have full 4GB RAM in Activity monitor (instead of the 3.75 when I start up the iMac on its own and w/o TDM - as the 250MB apparently is used by the Graphics card). So, I am assuming that SL must be accessing the 250MB to work with the Nividia 9400, but 10.5.8 isn't? But still doesn't explain why the OpenGL test scores are actually slower (as above)
Anyways, some geekery for those interested. Just good to know that the 21.5" can be used as a larger screen with its CPU power via TDM.
Guess the expert's can help answer some of the Q's and anomalies
But for now I'll enjoy the flexibility of this set-up. Going to work on some intensive photoshop and graphics files and see if it stands up after some CPU and GPU bashing
I'm traveling at the moment with my MBP 17". Arrived at my friends place who has a base iMac 21.5". Since I prefer to use the slightly larger screen to work off (even though my 17 MBP has more pixel density). So startup the iMac via TDM on my 17 MBP and to my surprise it works! - as my MBP only has leopard 10.5.8. I would have thought these iMacs would not run unless you have SL 10.6 loaded. It worked the 1st time, but crashed (grey vertical shade of death) twice after. On the 4th time it worked again. So that was weird (the inconsistency). Maybe 10.5.8 is NOT meant to be compatible with the new iMac's?
There are a few things that don't work with this set up: the brightness control is set at one setting only (medium). I compared the geekbench and xbench scores of the iMac in 10.6.2 vs this TDM setup and the only thing lacking in scores was Processor integer performance 3565 vs 3401, Processor floating point performance 6381 vs 6093. And in XBench the CPU and Thread tests were marginally slower in the TDM setup (to be expected) but the interesting anomaly is that the OPenGL Graphics test is lower on the iMac stand alone test (140.88 frames/sec vs 258.80 frames/sec on the MBP TDM!) - very weird. Well apart from this one anomaly, it would seem SL is as to be expected optimised for the new iMacs.
Once I get SL updater disks and update my MBP 17, then I expect the TDM route to be pretty seamless, unless there are some SL system & prefs inconsistencies b/w machine installs? ie MBP vs MP vs iMac
One last anomaly I noticed is that with this set-up I am now seeing that I have full 4GB RAM in Activity monitor (instead of the 3.75 when I start up the iMac on its own and w/o TDM - as the 250MB apparently is used by the Graphics card). So, I am assuming that SL must be accessing the 250MB to work with the Nividia 9400, but 10.5.8 isn't? But still doesn't explain why the OpenGL test scores are actually slower (as above)
Anyways, some geekery for those interested. Just good to know that the 21.5" can be used as a larger screen with its CPU power via TDM.
Guess the expert's can help answer some of the Q's and anomalies
But for now I'll enjoy the flexibility of this set-up. Going to work on some intensive photoshop and graphics files and see if it stands up after some CPU and GPU bashing
