MBA rev-a and Snow Leopard

[Johnner1999]

I just bought one of the $999 on Apple Store

My question is will Snow Leopard be too much for the 1.6 Core2? and x3100 video?

Can't wait to get both LOL

john

 

[Catfish_Man]

Should be fine.

 

[AIRniloc]

i had the original SL build running on my rev a mbair for quite awhile...

i will say that the latest build (10A222) runs on my rev B MBAir MUCH smoother

 

[andreab35]

i had the original SL build running on my rev a mbair for quite awhile...

i will say that the latest build (10A222) runs on my rev B MBAir MUCH smoother

That is very good to hear for us MBA users. I have a Rev. B and I am looking forward to Snow Leopard to give all of us some improved performance.

Both Revs. of the MBA should be fine running Snow Leopard upon its release.

 

[bearbear]

AIR- so it doesn't run on Rev A smoother? or did you just mean to say Rev B?

 

[nph]

What about running cooler?

 

[nintendude]

AIR- so it doesn't run on Rev A smoother? or did you just mean to say Rev B?

It should run smoothly on both Rev.'s but will run better on Rev. B because Snow Leopard will be able to take advantage of the 9400M graphics card

 

[AIRniloc]

AIR- so it doesn't run on Rev A smoother? or did you just mean to say Rev B?

to clarify, i had the first SL build on my rev a for a little while....but the build was still buggy so i removed it in june...

i recently sold my rev A and upgraded to a rev B MBAir SSD...i installed the latest SL build (10A222) on my rev B air, and it runs very nicely.. 10A222 is quite stable..only bug i've been able to replicate is an iSight issue in iChat..

 

[kastenbrust]

Snow Leopard is less resource instensive than Leopard, thats the whole point of Apple making it, so actually it will run better on your computer.

 

[EnderTW]

Snow Leopard is less resource instensive than Leopard, thats the whole point of Apple making it, so actually it will run better on your computer.

Not entirely true.

They are offloading a lot of the traditional CPU intensive stuff to GPU. The x3100 isn't going to hold. I'd venture to guess that Snow Leopard at best will offer the same performance on the rev a, Apple switched to dedicated graphics chip from Nvidia to prepare for snow leopard.

 

[justit]

...Apple switched to dedicated graphics chip from Nvidia to prepare for snow leopard.

Todays revised whitebook with nvidia is a an indication of this

 

[AIRniloc]

Todays revised whitebook with nvidia is a an indication of this

i don't think today's upgrade is a 'sign' that the x3100 WON'T be able to handle SL....most likely just the last portable getting up to speed with the rest of the line..

it wouldn't be very smart on Apple's part if their new OS offered users who purchased their machines less than 5 months ago absolutely nothing new...

Not entirely true.

They are offloading a lot of the traditional CPU intensive stuff to GPU. The x3100 isn't going to hold. I'd venture to guess that Snow Leopard at best will offer the same performance on the rev a, Apple switched to dedicated graphics chip from Nvidia to prepare for snow leopard.

out of curiosity, what reason would you have to say this? just bc a handful of CPU tasks will be pushed onto the GPU, doesn't mean that the CPU, RAM and frontside bus won't be utilitized in a new manner..

 

[Scottsdale]

Not entirely true.

They are offloading a lot of the traditional CPU intensive stuff to GPU. The x3100 isn't going to hold. I'd venture to guess that Snow Leopard at best will offer the same performance on the rev a, Apple switched to dedicated graphics chip from Nvidia to prepare for snow leopard.

I second that. Snow Leopard is about taking advantage of resources. Whether it be CPU to GPU, cores and etc. Snow Leopard uses the whole system to make everything smoother.

Since MBA revB has an Nvidia GPU, it should run Snow Leopard MUCH BETTER!

MBA version A should run Snow Leopard. At least it has a Core 2 Duo CPU!

I think everyone investing in a MacBook Air should spend the extra money and buy the revision B. The first MBA had several shortcomings, and the second MBA made up for all of those shortcomings. (Intel Graphics to Nvidia graphics is a gigantic boost. PATA to SATA is huge. And Apple enabled the H.264 encoding which is big too). Even though you can get a great deal on the first MBA, it isn't nearly as powerful or fast as the revised model.

I know that the version A model is cheap, but consider the advancements of the revision B before purchasing the cheap model.

 

[EnderTW]

i don't think today's upgrade is a 'sign' that the x3100 WON'T be able to handle SL....most likely just the last portable getting up to speed with the rest of the line..

it wouldn't be very smart on Apple's part if their new OS offered users who purchased their machines less than 5 months ago absolutely nothing new...



out of curiosity, what reason would you have to say this? just bc a handful of CPU tasks will be pushed onto the GPU, doesn't mean that the CPU, RAM and frontside bus won't be utilitized in a new manner..

I say this because in every press release about snow leopard they talked about grand central and the advancements in opengl.

I am saying that when the tasks are pushed to the GPU, the X3100 will be the bottleneck. Trust me, it will hurt more then the CPU being the one to handle traditional operations, because the CPU handled a lot of the GUI front-end. We'll see.

We'll see though, I don't expect Rev A MBA's to benefit from Snow leopard. Even the old macbooks with the x4500 or x3100 will benefit because their CPU is at least a full core 2 duo with sufficient cache and the motherboard connectors are SATA.

We'll see. I wouldn't have questioned it until they squeezed a 9400M into the MBA. Outrageous, no other ultraportable has a graphics chip like this.

I look forward to the synthetic benchmarks to at least give us a baseline of comparable speed.

 

[kastenbrust]

Not entirely true.

They are offloading a lot of the traditional CPU intensive stuff to GPU. The x3100 isn't going to hold. I'd venture to guess that Snow Leopard at best will offer the same performance on the rev a, Apple switched to dedicated graphics chip from Nvidia to prepare for snow leopard.

Actually it is entirely true because im a developer and im using the SL Beta on my MBA to write this now. Snow Leopard was designed to be a revision of Leopard, not a rewrite, and it essentialy is a slimmed down Leopard with all the same features, but less code, so it runs faster, and more utilisation of the Dual Cores for every day OS tasks.

The Open CL and Hybrid SLI functionality dont really apply to the MBA because it doesnt have a dedicated graphics card, only an integrated chip, however when performing advanced Photoshop tasks ive noticed they are notable faster (double) and the same in Final Cut Pro, so the CPU is obviously offloading tasks to the Graphics Chip, but only graphical tasks, which makes sense anyway. This also helps with gaming.

Overall the computer performs with SL as my 2.4Macbook does with Leopard.

 

[Kirkafur]

integrated graphics

Would my white Macbook with its integrated graphics chip not benefit much from Snow Leopard?

 

[Catfish_Man]

I say this because in every press release about snow leopard they talked about grand central and the advancements in opengl.

Grand Central has nothing to do with the GPU, btw. Also press releases only talk about stuff they've come up with marketing names for

 

[justit]

i don't think today's upgrade is a 'sign' that the x3100 WON'T be able to handle SL....most likely just the last portable getting up to speed with the rest of the line..

ofcourse not, no one here is claiming obsolescence of older machines, but the revised whitebook is marketing "all our notebooks are optimized for SL". Can we now conclude that the rev A is not optimized for SL?

 

[HiFiGuy528]

SL should make the Air run better.

 

[gator05]

Actually it is entirely true because im a developer and im using the SL Beta on my MBA to write this now. Snow Leopard was designed to be a revision of Leopard, not a rewrite, and it essentialy is a slimmed down Leopard with all the same features, but less code, so it runs faster, and more utilisation of the Dual Cores for every day OS tasks.

The Open CL and Hybrid SLI functionality dont really apply to the MBA because it doesnt have a dedicated graphics card, only an integrated chip, however when performing advanced Photoshop tasks ive noticed they are notable faster (double) and the same in Final Cut Pro, so the CPU is obviously offloading tasks to the Graphics Chip, but only graphical tasks, which makes sense anyway. This also helps with gaming.

Overall the computer performs with SL as my 2.4Macbook does with Leopard.

Any similar improvements with Aperture?

 

[EnderTW]

Actually it is entirely true because im a developer and im using the SL Beta on my MBA to write this now. Snow Leopard was designed to be a revision of Leopard, not a rewrite, and it essentialy is a slimmed down Leopard with all the same features, but less code, so it runs faster, and more utilisation of the Dual Cores for every day OS tasks.

The Open CL and Hybrid SLI functionality dont really apply to the MBA because it doesnt have a dedicated graphics card, only an integrated chip, however when performing advanced Photoshop tasks ive noticed they are notable faster (double) and the same in Final Cut Pro, so the CPU is obviously offloading tasks to the Graphics Chip, but only graphical tasks, which makes sense anyway. This also helps with gaming.

Overall the computer performs with SL as my 2.4Macbook does with Leopard.

I stand corrected.

Can't wait to see the improvements.