The ATI HD 5750 in the iMac is a mobility 5850.

[alent1234]

I dont really understand all this complaining about Apples choice of GPU. Because when we talk about how good the performance is in the windows world with the same GPU everyone is thinking its great, its when we use it under OS X we all get angry.

As long as the GPU is running all the newest game at native resolution at high or ultra settings in windows but not in OS X what we need to be angry about is the drivers and the fundamental graphics handling in OS X.

I would rather apple, ati and nvidia got their brains together making drivers and getting OS X handling 3d as it should than them having to pump out the heaviest graphics card using a nuclear plant each for power just to be somewhere close to their pc-counterparts.

They need to take the problem at the roots not compensate for it.

it's not just drivers

MS has directX where they provide a lot of code and ways of doing things in the OS making the dev's job a lot easier.

trade off is that MS has almost 100,000 employees where Apple only has 30,000 or so. with a lot of them being retail employees.

and apple seems to be refusing to hire more people to code these features. apple's method the last few years seems to be to give some BS excuse as to why something can't be done. usually Steve Jobs rants about how bad the feature is. when the jailbreak community, android or OSS in general write the code then apple adds it to their products. the core dev team concentrates on the features they think matter the most to their users or for revenue.

 

[thehalokid]

1st post! im not gonna pretend im a genius, i would say im semi
knowledgeable! so what do you guys think take a look.

''Steam's Portal at 2560x1440, High Quality, 4X AA''
2009 Core i7 = 19 fps
2010 Core i7 = 59 fps


a quote from this website http://barefeats.com/imac10.html

 

[JordanNZ]

Right.

Think they're maybe spending a bit more time on the drivers now?
Looking forward to more benchmarks.

 

[aiqw9182]

1st post! im not gonna pretend im a genius, i would say im semi
knowledgeable! so what do you guys think take a look.

''Steam's Portal at 2560x1440, High Quality, 4X AA''
2009 Core i7 = 19 fps
2010 Core i7 = 59 fps


a quote from this website http://barefeats.com/imac10.html

Likely because the new drivers for the 2010 iMac's fix the AA issues with ATI GPU's. Currently the drivers in any ATI GPU's under Mac OS X(other than the 5xxx series with the software update Apple provides) make the FPS 20 or lower no matter what the setting in AA. If AA is on, the FPS will be horrible. Wait for 10.6.5 for some real comparison results. Or just head on over to notebookcheck.net and compare the 5850 mobility with the 4850 mobility.

 

[thehalokid]

Here's another, this guy seems covinced


''Wow, is all I can say

While in some very busy multiplayer running FRAPS under Win 7 Pro 64-bit/ Boot Camp, I was seeing a very consistent 65 frames per second, and a 60-s benchmark showed frame rates peaking in the 90’s (MW2 is FPS capped at 90, I think), and never dipping below 40, which is not just playable – its great!''



http://www.stationstops.com/2010/07...refresh-shows-great-gaming-performance-video/

 

[henrikrox]

Fantastic, i think really this card is actually a good upgrade from 4850, the 1gb vram alone is just awesome. cant wait to get mine

 

[ramallite]

New benchmarks

I hate to beat Barefeats to this announcement but these new tests just published look very good for the 2010 i7 versus the 2009 i7 GPU:

http://barefeats.com/imac10g.html

It's clear that, with one exception, the 2010 iMac Core i7 does 3D intensive apps significantly faster than the 2009 iMac Core i7.

 

[byron_hinson]

on my i5 27" 2010 model it still says 5750 in GPU-Z, i assume it is the hardware version that gives it away though.

I installed the mobility 10.7 drivers and that then showed the 5850 up though

 

[DoFoT9]

I hate to beat Barefeats to this announcement but these new tests just published look very good for the 2010 i7 versus the 2009 i7 GPU:

http://barefeats.com/imac10g.html

thanks for that depressing realisation that my 2009 iMac has SIGNIFICANTLY been outdated

 

[Eidorian]

thanks for that depressing realisation that my 2009 iMac has SIGNIFICANTLY been outdated

I'm still going to say it's the drivers.

 

[Will : Hi !]

I hate to beat Barefeats to this announcement but these new tests just published look very good for the 2010 i7 versus the 2009 i7 GPU:

http://barefeats.com/imac10g.html

Interesting indeed. Seems like there may not be that much benefit if you don't have AA enabled (seems like it's not uncommon when playing at 2560x1440, from what I read in the past few days).

I'd be curious to see what the ET:QW, WoW and X-Plane framerates look like with AA disabled.

 

[TMRaven]

Were all of those games ran under windows or osx? If all of them were under osx, it's kinda a biased benchmarking.


On the overclocking note? Would setting fan speeds in smc fan control under osx, then swithcing over to windows and using the catalyst control center work?

 

[Will : Hi !]

Were all of those games ran under windows or osx? If all of them were under osx, it's kinda a biased benchmarking.

It's not mentioned, but I would guess Mac. Otherwise this means the Mobility 4850 and the Mac Pro's 4870 perform (sometimes very) poorly when anti-aliasing is enabled (or that the Windows/Bootcamp drivers are equally hosed).

Edit: it's hinted that they are using Mac versions though. They mention that the Mac version of Bioshock. It could also mean that they are using the Mac version, literally.

 

[ramallite]

thanks for that depressing realisation that my 2009 iMac has SIGNIFICANTLY been outdated

Eidorian is probably right about drivers. A driver update sometime in the future should help speed up the previous model's GPU.

 

[frega]

Those are desktop. Desktop 5870 has 1600 CPUs and 5850 has 1440 so in desktops, it's not just a MHz increase. 5870 has 125MHz higher core clock as well (725MHz vs 850MHz). In mobilites, it's just a MHz difference as both have 800 CPUs.

Speaking of cores, I was looking at ATI/Nvidia GPU list on wikipedia. Nvidia has less "config cores" whatever that means, then, there's like a ratio or something after the number of cores. Anyone care to explain that?

I wonder if Apple will ever put in dual mobility GPUs so we actually have close to real desktop-powered GPUs. 2x5850m = 1600 cores = 5850 desktop version.

 

[DoFoT9]

I'm still going to say it's the drivers.

Eidorian is probably right about drivers. A driver update sometime in the future should help speed up the previous model's GPU.

well, whatever it is - its still outdated (if it is drivers then they should have been updated). good to know that there is still hope for possible further expansion!

 

[Eidorian]

Eidorian is probably right about drivers. A driver update sometime in the future should help speed up the previous model's GPU.

well, whatever it is - its still outdated (if it is drivers then they should have been updated). good to know that there is still hope for possible further expansion!

I hope they do a comparison under Windows using Catalyst 10.7. Then we'll really know.

 

[DoFoT9]

I hope they do a comparison under Windows using Catalyst 10.7. Then we'll really know.

comparison of 4850? or 5850?

 

[Eidorian]

comparison of 4850? or 5850?

A versus against the two. 2009 iMac vs. 2010.

 

[DoFoT9]

A versus against the two. 2009 iMac vs. 2010.

gotchya. i look forward to it. if i still gamed mainstream i could run some benchmarks for the 4850 - but i think i only have 1 benchmark software (3dmark)

 

[brianjcho]

Keep in mind the tests were run at 26xx Rez which should significantly benefit from the 2010's 1gb ddr5 video memory vs 09's 512mb ddr3.

 

[DoFoT9]

Keep in mind the tests were run at 26xx Rez which should significantly benefit from the 2010's 1gb ddr5 video memory vs 09's 512mb ddr3.

Very true given that ddr5 is roughly 2x the speed at the same clocks. Lucky I don't game very much these days otherwise I'd be crying

 

[G-Force]

The Portal benchmark is pretty weird, if you enable AA there is a huge difference in FPS but as soon as you disable it the 2009 i7 iMac is even a little bit faster. I do think the 5850 could perform a bit better with AA turned on because of it's better memory, but not this much. Pretty sure the 4xxx drivers are pretty bad at this moment, I mean look at the Mac Pro's 4870 underperforming.

I hope Barefeats will test Portal with the 4870/4850/5850 in Windows with the latest Catalyst drivers, this should show us if the drivers are the issue here. I could do some Portal Mac AA/AA-off and Windows AA/AA-off benchmarks today to see the difference in drivers, can't compare them to the 5850M though because I don't have a new iMac.

 

[Hellhammer]

I'm still going to say it's the drivers.

Me too. 5850M with GDDR3 is slower than 4850M and GDDR5 doesn't make THAT huge difference. It sucks that drivers play such huge role, Apple isn't taking the full advantage of the chips

Speaking of cores, I was looking at ATI/Nvidia GPU list on wikipedia. Nvidia has less "config cores" whatever that means, then, there's like a ratio or something after the number of cores. Anyone care to explain that?

I wonder if Apple will ever put in dual mobility GPUs so we actually have close to real desktop-powered GPUs. 2x5850m = 1600 cores = 5850 desktop version.

CUDA cores are still better than Stream cores AFAIK so the amount of them doesn't immediately tell the performance. I don't know how much faster, maybe Eidorian does. He seems to know stuff like this

Desktop 5850 has only 1440 Stream cores though. The cores aren't everything, mobility versions are heavily underclocked so the clock speed is fairly important. Unless Apple adds support for CrossFire, it would be useless to have dual GPUs and I doubt it.

 

[G-Force]

I ran this timedemo 3 times on my 4850M i7 iMac (AA and no AA) on OS X and Windows 7 x64 and took the average fps.

I used the same settings as Barefeats for the AA and no AA tests.

My results (both clean Portal installs):

OS X 10.6.4 - no AA: 61,71 FPS
OS X 10.6.4 - 4X AA: 19,6 FPS

Win7 x64 Catalyst 10.7 - no AA: 73,12 FPS
Win7 x64 Catalyst 10.7 - 4X AA: 53,59 FPS

Driver issue with the 4850? Yes, but we already knew that I guess.