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returning new 2.2 MBP for 2.4 MBP?

teflon said:
The difference is not more than 10%. Barefeat ran tests using Quake 4, Doom 3, WoW, Halo, Prey among others with 1920 x 1200 and found 9% difference at the most.
http://www.barefeats.com/rosa03.html
Click to expand...
Can you read?

<Hagge> Doom 3 at 1440x900 High Quality , FSAA = 4X
<Hagge> 128M = 21 fps
<Hagge> 256M = 26 fps (or 24% advantage)
<Hagge> Doom 3 at 1440x900 Ultra Quality, no FSAA
<Hagge> 128M = 16 fps
<Hagge> 256M = 46 fps (or 188% advantage)

Ok, notice how Ultra quality (large textures) makes the 128MB slower than 4x AA, the 256MB versions gets faster with large textures but no AA instead. Why? Because AA uses gpu power but textures vram.

16 fps vs 46 fps at 1440x900 ultra quality is 188% faster, not 10%

<Hagge> Quake 4 at 1440x900 High Quality, FSAA = 4X
<Hagge> 128M = 23 fps
<Hagge> 256M = 38 fps (or 65% advantage)
<Hagge> Quake 4 at 1440x900 Ultra Quality, no FSAA
<Hagge> 128M = 4 fps
<Hagge> 256M = 37 fps (or 825% advantage)

Even worse in Quake 4 (newer game than Doom 3, same engine.)

128 MB have no chance in hell to handle ultra quality textures here, 256MB is just as happy with larger textures as 4x AA. 825% faster!
Not that 825% faster means much, since 128MB is unplayable on these settings, just play it in 1024x768 high instead. Without AA and AF. And difference will be much smaller.

<Hagge> galet

source:

<Hagge> http://www.insidemacgames.com/forum...334&st=160#
<Hagge> Under Windows XP Pro, I ran 3DMark06 at 1440x900, 4X FSAA, 4X Anisotropic Filtering:
<Hagge> SM2.0 Gaming
<Hagge> 128M = 641 rating
<Hagge> 256M = 1279 rating (or 100% faster)
<Hagge> HDR/SM3.0 Gaming
<Hagge> 128M = 554 rating
<Hagge> 256M = 1063 rating (or 92% faster)

Notice how 3dmark06s gaming benchmarks for SM2 and SM3+HDR are 92-100% faster with 256MB vram. But here the settings when benchmarked where 1440x900 with 4x AA and 4x AF. Those needs more vram aswell and therefor it gets faster. Without AA and AF and eventually at lower res differences would be much smaller.

<Hagge> Under Windows XP Pro, I ran Prey 1.3 at 1440x900, 4X FSAA, 4X Anisotropic Filtering:
<Hagge> 128M = 31 fps
<Hagge> 256M = 46 fps (or 48% faster)

Not that I need AA, and to less extent AF (but AF is nice), but both cards seems to handle Prey at 1440x900 in XP nice, but the 256MB version runs it 48% faster.

<Hagge> tror inte 3dmarkvärdena verkligen är överförbara till fps dock
<Hagge> och man kan ju skita i att köra med aa o af
<Hagge> http://www.insidemacgames.com/forum...334&st=160#
<Hagge> http://www.insidemacgames.com/forum...mp;#entry315638
<Hagge> fast spel som kräver 256MB vram kommer ju vara för långsamma på en sådan gpu hur som helst
<Hagge> http://www.insidemacgames.com/forum...334&st=180#
<Hagge> I ran Prey on both the 15" MacBook Pro 2.2GHz (128M VRAM) and 15" MaBook Pro 2.4GHz (256M VRAM). The settings were High Quality, 1440x900, 4X Anti Aliasing, and 4X Anisotropic Filter.
<Hagge> Under Mac OS X, the unit with 256M of VRAM was 3% faster (21.5 fps vs 20.9 fps).
<Hagge> Under Windows XP Pro, the unit with 256M of VRAM was 54% faster (46.2 fps vs 29.9 fps).

Notice here how much faster this game is in XP than OS X, with 128MB vram it's 20.9 fps in OS X vs 29.9 FPS in XP. With 256MB vram it's 21.5 fps in OS X (barely noticable) vs 46.2 fps in XP. That means that prey run 54% faster on 256MB vram version in XP! (But only 3% faster in OS X.)

I would guess this is because XPs OpenGL are better and uses more of the graphics card, and that it therefor makes a bigger difference how good it is.


Anyway if you play at a setting which uses not as good looking textures and skip AA and AF (demanding games won't run at decent rates in 1440x900 anyway so it's better to try to use high res than use such functions anyway) it will probably not matter so much. But if you want to have the best experience, run full res and raise the settings the 256MB version is definitly better.

I hate how apple spares tens of bucks to force people to get the much more expensive version. I guess it's because they are in bed with Intel and Intel wants them to sell more high end CPUs.

(I'm Hagge btw, I pasted this for a friend on IRC.)



Edit:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=968115

Argues that people can't even see the difference of high and ultra quality textures.

But I guess some other games might use large textures aswell, the question is if they will use scenes which are to heavy to render for the 8600m GT anyway.

I still don't know what to choose, and I think I can change my mind on monday.
But still I hate Apple so much for doing this. Forcing me to pick a crappy modell just because they want to sell their überexpensive CPU. We shouldn't have to choose, 256MB should be the default in all modells.
 
Here is a comparision of Quake 4 high and ultra:
http://www.tweakguides.com/images/Quake4_7.jpg

"Medium Quality: This mode is designed for a graphics card with 128MB of Video RAM. There is still compression used for textures, and light and render maps. Texture sizes are not automatically reduced however, so all textures will appear at their full resolution. There will still be compression artifacts however, but once again this must be done to keep Video RAM demand low. This mode is the one recommended for most people as it is a good balance of image quality and performance.

High Quality: This mode is designed for a graphics card with 256MB of Video RAM. In this mode there is no texture compression (which greatly increases Video RAM usage), however light maps are compressed still. It is important to note that in this mode, Anisotropic Filtering is automatically enabled and set to 8x, which is quite high. This helps noticeably sharpen textures as they fade into the distance, however it has a pronounced impact on performance. Essentially in High Quality mode texture quality is improved over Medium Quality due to removal of compression and through use of high level Anisotropic Filtering, but at the cost of a significant performance hit on cards with lower Video RAM and processing power.

Ultra Quality: This mode is the highest possible for Quake 4 and was originally designed for a graphics card with 512MB of Video RAM. No compression is used for anything, hence while graphics quality is at the best it can possibly be (not including Antialiasing, which you can also enable separately), there is a major performance hit for many current systems. Due to the lack of compression loadup times are theoretically reduced, however in exchange for this most systems will notice a lot more freezes and small loading pauses as video information is constantly being swapped into and out of your Video RAM. For the most part the difference between High and Ultra Quality modes is difficult to tell, and thus Ultra mode is not recommended for all but the highest level machines."

Pretty useless. But it shows how much difference the vram makes with very large textures.

I guess the reason both machines can run it at all is because of the turbocache.
 
teflon said:
Congrats on the choice! And yea, don't get ram from Apple. You can get the same thing for 1/3 of the price.



The difference is not more than 10%. Barefeat ran tests using Quake 4, Doom 3, WoW, Halo, Prey among others with 1920 x 1200 and found 9% difference at the most.
http://www.barefeats.com/rosa03.html
Click to expand...

And notice those are all older games, and Mac ports at that.

The difference in VRAM isn't going to be that noticeable.

You need to look at benchmarks done under Windows (with better graphics drivers), and with Windows-native games.

And you need to look at the performance difference in newer games - BioShock is coming out on Tuesday, for example. That game is based on the Unreal Engine 3 tech (as will UT3). I bet you that if you did head to head benchmark comparisons, the VRAM differences would make much more of a difference.

-Zadillo
 
This thread had nothing whatsoever to do with gaming or VRAM improvement.

So why full page arguments on it?

Read the question the OP asked and answer it, isn't that usually how forums work?
 
aliquis- said:
If anything at all what cybergypsy notice is a faster harddrive. I doubt anything else matters during non-gaming.
Thought then I don't know if the 160GB one is faster but it's likely.


Links and some quotes from when I pasted it on IRC here:
http://www.sweclockers.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=703836&8600m+256mb+prey
Click to expand...


The hard drive is not faster. The 2.4 has very little advantage over the 2.2 and it's really just the video card. Nobody is going to notice a .2 difference with most applications.
 
Ok, I apologize, I didn't take in new games/ ultra quality into account. However, I still think for most people, the performance boost is not enough to justify the premium :p. Let's listen to Jamiephofe and stop now.

Edit: the 2.4's hard drive is a bit faster due to the fact that 1) 160gb uses the perpendicular technology while 120gb don't and 2) the higher density would make it faster. But you can always upgrade the hard drives.
 
Jamiephofe said:
This thread had nothing whatsoever to do with gaming or VRAM improvement.

So why full page arguments on it?

Read the question the OP asked and answer it, isn't that usually how forums work?
Click to expand...
Says who? He asked if he should switch or not, the CPU will probably not make much difference at all (even if that is more or less all you pay for, thank you Apple!) so it's mostly up to how much difference the 256MB vram would do anyway.

He asked if it would be worth it, wasn't he? Or if he should switch or something like that, and I try to point out what the difference is.
looking4anotebo said:
The hard drive is not faster. The 2.4 has very little advantage over the 2.2 and it's really just the video card. Nobody is going to notice a .2 difference with most applications.
Click to expand...
It's probably slightly faster, same RPM but more bytes/round I would assume.

I doubt anyone does it aswell, and I just think cybergypsy just belives it's faster, but if anything is noticable it's probably the HDD.
teflon said:
Ok, I apologize, I didn't take in new games/ ultra quality into account. However, I still think for most people, the performance boost is not enough to justify the premium :p. Let's listen to Jamiephofe and stop now.

Edit: the 2.4's hard drive is a bit faster due to the fact that 1) 160gb uses the perpendicular technology while 120gb don't and 2) the higher density would make it faster. But you can always upgrade the hard drives.
Click to expand...
Nah, probably not worth it, and it was a better upgrade during the last revision because then you got more cpu, vram and memory aswell. But I still wonder what one should had choosen.

I think all harddrives where supposed to be perpendicular in this revision so point 1 is probably not true longer.
 
Thanks for you replies.
I agree with you Aliquis that the 256 GPU should be default.
I really thought the graphic cards were better when I first saw
that apple had put nvidia cards in the MBP's and 128 mb is not much.

I would like to choose the 256 mb model but it's so much more expensive.

Will I even be able to run games like GTA San Andreas and the new GTA 4 (when it's available) with relatively fine graphics on a 128mb GPU MBP?
Or does the Mac also utilize the GPU better? Lol!

Or maybe it would be better to buy a dedicated gaming PC later if I can't live without gaming... My music making is the main thing.
 
aliquis- said:
Says who? He asked if he should switch or not, the CPU will probably not make much difference at all (even if that is more or less all you pay for, thank you Apple!) so it's mostly up to how much difference the 256MB vram would do anyway.

He asked if it would be worth it, wasn't he? Or if he should switch or something like that, and I try to point out what the difference is.It's probably slightly faster, same RPM but more bytes/round I would assume.
Click to expand...

No...he didn't ask that. Kinda proving you didn't even read his post before going on a rant.

What he actually said was:

"Do you think its possible to return my MBP to Apple and ask to get a 2.4 sent instead?"

"Obviously I'd have to pay a bit more but I'd be happy to do that. Just wondering if Apple do a 30 day no quibble money back kinda thing or am I just outta luck?
cheers!"

I can't find any mention of VRAM, or any questions about whether he should return it or not.
 
Soarer said:
Thanks for you replies.
I agree with you Aliquis that the 256 GPU should be default.
I really thought the graphic cards were better when I first saw
that apple had put nvidia cards in the MBP's and 128 mb is not much.

I would like to choose the 256 mb model but it's so much more expensive.

Will I even be able to run games like GTA San Andreas and the new GTA 4 (when it's available) with relatively fine graphics on a 128mb GPU MBP?
Or does the Mac also utilize the GPU better? Lol!

Or maybe it would be better to buy a dedicated gaming PC later if I can't live without gaming... My music making is the main thing.
Click to expand...
Macs utilities the GPU like **** it seems, if you look at FPS.. But maybe that's not how you should look at it? ;D.

I can't take all this "oh os x utilities the cpu and ram better!" either, such ********, just because some mac people don't care and thing their 500mhz g3 machines are totally usable, a 500mhz p2 with win98 would probably be for them aswell. "You definitly need 2GB", "4GB will make a lot of difference!", oh, effectivly my ass =P

People should just understand that with all the bells and whistles, lots of options and large programs any OS will use a lot of resources. Macs don't do magic, neither does Windows or LinuxPCs. If you are happy with old simple apps then sure an Amiga do survive on less resoures, but it doesn't run supreme commander.

Anyway I doubt the amount of vram is the thing which will decide if a game runs or not, if you lower the texture sizes and don't use AA and AF it will probably not make a lot of a difference. But once the GPU got to many object to calculate stuff on it will stop handling it, no matter what amount of vram it has.

And a gaming PC is probably a better and more worth it addon, but then you have to have that piece of junk sitting at your desk, with windows probably (thought to make use of your 256MB vram you will probably have to install windows on the macbook pro instead :() and finally you can't walk over to your friend and play with him as easily.

Jamiephofe said:
No...he didn't ask that. Kinda proving you didn't even read his post before going on a rant.

What he actually said was:

"Do you think its possible to return my MBP to Apple and ask to get a 2.4 sent instead?"

"Obviously I'd have to pay a bit more but I'd be happy to do that. Just wondering if Apple do a 30 day no quibble money back kinda thing or am I just outta luck?
cheers!"

I can't find any mention of VRAM, or any questions about whether he should return it or not.
Click to expand...
Ok, true, but people started to argue if there where any reason to switch or not.
 
I concur with Teflon. Bare Feats testing shows neglible speed difference
even playing intensive games. $500 for nothing imo-use the extra cash
getting more ram.
 
like I said, differences between the two models are at a very minimal, and you really would not see that much of a difference unless youre outputting at higher resolutions AKA bigger monitors, etc.

rather than argue which model is faster at gaming and whos right and whos wrong regarding how much faster the 2.4Ghz is, lets settle that later when more results and comparisons come in. for the moment, all the OP needs to know is that the $500 difference is not really worth it, unless he has a hole burning in his pocket and needs to relieve himself of 5 extra Benjamins. IMO theres much better things to do with half a grand, like memory and HD uprade, where he'll see a much better improvement in performance over the stock 2.2Ghz.
 
Jamiephofe said:
No...he didn't ask that. Kinda proving you didn't even read his post before going on a rant.

What he actually said was:

"Do you think its possible to return my MBP to Apple and ask to get a 2.4 sent instead?"

"Obviously I'd have to pay a bit more but I'd be happy to do that. Just wondering if Apple do a 30 day no quibble money back kinda thing or am I just outta luck?
cheers!"

I can't find any mention of VRAM, or any questions about whether he should return it or not.
Click to expand...

I think there's sort of an implied question though, even if it wasn't directly stated.

The implied question that I think most people got from the original post was whether there would be a point in getting the 2.4 GHz MBP? That is, he was thinking maybe he should have gotten the 2.4GHz MBP instead, and that is why he was now asking if it would be possible/wise to return the 2.2 model and get the 2.4 model.

If this wasn't the implied nature of his question, I would have to ask what the purpose is. If he didn't care about performance differences, etc. why would there be any reason to worry about getting the 2.4GHz model instead?
 
skye12 said:
I concur with Teflon. Bare Feats testing shows neglible speed difference
even playing intensive games. $500 for nothing imo-use the extra cash
getting more ram.
Click to expand...
And get a slightly disabled computer ;/
Bad Apple! Bad! :D

One can get ram aswell ;D, if one can afford it all.
franky4fingers said:
sorry for bursting your bubbles but I Got with same settings 14 fps with MBP 2,16 & 128mb VRAM :p
Click to expand...
Yeah, mac worlds testing show the X1600 beating 8600m GT in one test aswell.

For whatever reason the graphics card or the drivers where better in that case.
 
Interesting thread. I've had a 2.2GHz on order since the 14th and if it doesn't ship early this week as Apple claims, I might break down and get the 2.4GHz at one of the Apple stores. This 2.4GHz model is readily available.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is Leopard. Does anyone know how graphics intensive it will be in comparison to Tiger?
 
Garissimo said:
Interesting thread. I've had a 2.2GHz on order since the 14th and if it doesn't ship early this week as Apple claims, I might break down and get the 2.4GHz at one of the Apple stores. This 2.4GHz model is readily available.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is Leopard. Does anyone know how graphics intensive it will be in comparison to Tiger?
Click to expand...

You won't notice the difference between the two in Leopard.
 
As iBook says, there don't seem to be any "cool effects" / bloat in Leopard so it will probably not be noticed. I have no idea how much newer graphics codecs and whatever might load the gfx card thought.

128MB are probably enough for everyone who only uses one screen and who don't need to play the games with highest quality textures, aa and af anyway.
 
aliquis- said:
128MB are probably enough for everyone who only uses one screen...
Click to expand...

I will be using en external 19" CRT monitor in dual view mode but that should still be possible with the 128 mb GPU right? I still have a hard time deciding between the 2! All the technical stuff you post is a bit too technical for me. I do not demand incredible graphics in a game but I don't like when the graphic lines are not so smooth, you know.

I do have the money for the 2.4 GHz MBP, it's just that there's a few other useful things I could buy for the money.

I don't worry the least about the 0.2 Ghz xtra cpu anymore. Only the GPU.
Asuming that I want to use this laptop for 3 years at least I do feel I should go for the 2.4 GHz but maybe even the 256 GPU will be outdated then :confused:
I plan to make my purchase in a few days.
 
^^^^

Even the macbook can support the 23'' ACD, so 19'' shouldn't be a problem. All the mbps are suppose to be able to drive 30'' monitors. The 128mb GPU would be fine for games if you don't use ultra high settings with all the bells and whistles. I'd say the extra money is better spent on other upgrades such as ram and a night out ;). Anyways, even the best GPU today WILL be outdated in 3 years.
 
teflon said:
^^^^

Even the macbook can support the 23'' ACD, so 19'' shouldn't be a problem. All the mbps are suppose to be able to drive 30'' monitors. The 128mb GPU would be fine for games if you don't use ultra high settings with all the bells and whistles. I'd say the extra money is better spent on other upgrades such as ram and a night out ;). Anyways, even the best GPU today WILL be outdated in 3 years.
Click to expand...
LOL who keeps them for 3 years I update them every 8-12 months :)
 
Soarer said:
I will be using en external 19" CRT monitor in dual view mode but that should still be possible with the 128 mb GPU right? I still have a hard time deciding between the 2! All the technical stuff you post is a bit too technical for me. I do not demand incredible graphics in a game but I don't like when the graphic lines are not so smooth, you know.

I do have the money for the 2.4 GHz MBP, it's just that there's a few other useful things I could buy for the money.

I don't worry the least about the 0.2 Ghz xtra cpu anymore. Only the GPU.
Asuming that I want to use this laptop for 3 years at least I do feel I should go for the 2.4 GHz but maybe even the 256 GPU will be outdated then :confused:
I plan to make my purchase in a few days.
Click to expand...
I doubt it will matter, but it's still what I'm thinking. A 19" 1280x1024 display will probably use 5MB vram, 10 if it's double buffered, but it seems that OS X might split your vram between screens so in that case that gives you 64MB vram / screen, this one will lose 5-10MB for the screen in itself so down to 54-59MB, each window which cover the whole screen will take atleast another 5MB, so that leaves you with 10-11 windows before you are out of vram if it's not used for something else. Probably not a problem but I think it's stupid that they did it since it wouldn't cost them much to not letting me have this kind of worries =P

The GPU in speed will definitly be outdated, remember the 8600m GT seems to be like 50% faster than the X1600 which where in the last revision, so say you took 256MB vram modell last time the 128MB 8600m GT this time might be faster for many game which doesn't use large textures, so it's still outdated compared to the new one. (Which is one of my argument with staying with the cheapest one because if I manage to buy two machines on ADC discount I might be able to sell the first one for a smaller loss than what an update for the middle one would be.)

Anyway 128MB will probably work, especially for such a small screen, I where thinking about a 1680x1050 and it would use even more vram for 1920x1200, if you don't plan on installing windows and play any games in that 128MB are probably safe.

Dell and everyone else seems to put the 256MB version in theirs, Zepto even use the 512MB one. Many 8600m GS, 8400m GT, 8400m GS and so on comes with 256MB aswell. They are much slower than the 8600m GT but those companies still think 256MB vram is worth putting there. This is only Apples trick to make people pay more, not that it would make a major price difference.

Btw, regarding desktop usage turbocache lets the card use a lot of the system ram as vram if needed, so even if you opened 20 windows on your external screen it would still work, they just wouldn't all fit within vram.
teflon said:
^^^^

Even the macbook can support the 23'' ACD, so 19'' shouldn't be a problem. All the mbps are suppose to be able to drive 30'' monitors. The 128mb GPU would be fine for games if you don't use ultra high settings with all the bells and whistles. I'd say the extra money is better spent on other upgrades such as ram and a night out ;). Anyways, even the best GPU today WILL be outdated in 3 years.
Click to expand...
True, 8600m GT are supposed to be a mid-end card but it's much slower than a 8800, and 9800 will probably be released soon and is expected to be twice as fast for the same price.

For a desktop PC the 8600 GT cost around 1200 SEK, the X1950 PRO cost a similair amount, it can only handle DX9 but it's gaming performance for that is much better. In 3 years we are atleast two graphics generations ahead =P

(But a 256MB 8600m GT will definitly run OS X very well in 3 years time aswell, 128MB will probably do aswell unless someone adds a lot of useless 3d effects for everything.)
 
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