MacBook Air :: 10.6.3 - Huge Graphics Performance Update To OpenGL?
Mar 30, 2010
I have been reading that several people are seeing much cooler temperatures on their Mac notebooks and they think it's due to better graphics drivers with the update to 10.6.3. I however thought about the huge performance hit in OpenGL going from Leopard to Snow Leopard (probably same thing). So I decided to check my OpenGL results after installing 10.6.3. However, I didn't check my xBench results before upgrading to 10.6.3. I went and found an old result which shows 67 points for "OpenGL Graphics Test." My new result for "OpenGL Graphics Test" is 111 points. When I check the xBench archives, people with rev "C" MBA's with 10.6.2 all show OpenGL Graphics Test scores in the 60s.
If this is correct, we could all have some big improvements that really show huge effects on the MBA. It should help everyone running Snow Leopard. It should lead to graphics performance gains and lower heat due to graphics demands. Could someone else running 10.6.2 on a 2.13 GHz CPU MBA run an xBench test before the 10.6.3 upgrade? Then upgrade to 10.6.3 and run another xBench test. Then please report back here with your results for OpenGL Graphics Test and hope this result is great for all of us. I believe this would be a big improvement for the original MBA too?
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Dec 16, 2008
I just noticed that Xbench gave me a better OpenGL score on my new late 2008 MacBook compared to 10.5.5, so I was wondering if anybody knows how much better the graphics performance actually is in 10.5.6? Although I just traded in my old white MacBook with a crappy intel graphics card for the new MacBook with a rockin' graphics card, I am curious how much the 10.5.6 update improves performance on the intel graphics cards. Can anybody compare the OpenGL results from 10.5.5 and 10.5.6 to see if I'm the only one who is seeing an improvement. Did Apple update the graphics card drivers or is there some other reason I'm seeing better performance?
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May 5, 2010
This seemed like the most logical place to ask this, since the Mac Pro forum seems to be where all the higher level hardware/software modification discussion is. Currently the Starcraft 2 beta is suffering from horrible performance problems. Many of the threads I've read on their support forums point to graphics drivers as the main culprit, with DirectX->OpenGL porting being close behind. The main problem with both seems to be shaders.
One thread I found, however, is in reference to performance on Hackintosh machines. Apparently Hackintosh users, who all use custom graphics drivers for specific graphics cards (ones not ever supported by OS X, like the GeForce 9800) are getting performance on par with boot camp users, at similar settings. So my question is this: is it possible to write custom graphics card drivers for normal mac users (I myself use a flashed 4870) that optimize the use of extensions for shader intensive games like SC2? If so, where should I start looking to figure out how?
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Aug 18, 2010
Has anyone ran some tests with the new Snow Leopard Graphics Update Apple just released. I am primarily interested in the performance increases it offers SC2. I am at work and will not be able to install it until late tonight, after which I will post before and after FPS and settings for SC2.
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Jul 14, 2010
So I just installed the Apple ATI Radeon HD 4870 in my 2.66 quad Mac Pro1 1. Everything seems to be great but when I ran Cinebench I noticed that it is running OpenGL Engine, 2.0 ATI-1.5.48. In the results I see another 4870 with higher scores running OpenGL Engine, 2.1 ATI-1.6.6. My question is this. Is there something I should update for better performance? Is this a difference in cards, OS, drivers, firmware?
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Sep 3, 2009
After upgrading to Snow Leopard on my brand new MBP, I have taken notice of a definitive perf drop in OpenGL, particularly when I make use of switching windows via Spaces. The transition between windows skips and is not a smooth animation.
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Apr 4, 2009
I've noticed something rather subtle at first. My new mac mini just did not give me any faster feel comparing to old one, as matter of fact my old mini seamed faster and smoother. After comparing minimize/maximize animations while holding shift on old and new system system by side, I have noticed that new one gives off as having 2 times slower frame rate or slight flickering when doing minimize, maximize and magnify effects on dock. Also gave some shabby feel comparing to old one.
After I have run XBench of both systems and 2 restarts, it came as consistent result that new system scored 125+/-4 vs old one 280 on OpenGL test, more than 2 times slower! I expected upgrade to be upgrade, not downgrade! What could be issue, it is supposed to be 5 times faster. Is it not tuned up or quite not ready drivers. Will this issue be fixed by apple anytime soon? I love apple but I feel disappointed that my old system gives smother user experience than my new one.
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Jan 24, 2010
I just got a brand new Mac Mini 2,26 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2 gig RAM, and it's hooked up to my tv with a mini-DVI adapter. Snow Leopard installed. I noticed right away that the screen looks really sluggish, with screen tearing and laggy video performance. Playing videos in Plex for instance there is a lot of screen tear and I had to set the display to 720p to get it decent, and even then it's rough, even on SD videos! So I ran Xbench, and got a remarkable slow score on OpenGL; 43. My MacBook Pro running with the 9400M card got 97.
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Aug 1, 2009
What I have: MBP Penryn 2.4 Ghz, 2 GB, 200 HD, Matte. What I'm looking at: Unibody 15" MBP 2.53 Ghz, 4 GB, 250 HD, Glossy. Love the new trackpads on the MBP, not sure how I'll like the glossy screen. Would be doing some video work down the road (Canon HV40). Please tell me the difference between the performance of these graphics cards and lastly which one you would opt for.
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Apr 29, 2010
I have a 2009 2.53GHz MacBook Pro which I bought a couple months ago. It's been working great, but lately, I've been noticing a lot of strange issues with video playback/general graphics and UI. These includes:- Laggy video performance, frame skipping, generally 2x slow video -- on both iTunes and web video. It's not as smooth as it used to be, though admittedly not totally unbarable - VLC shows a black screen, doesn't show the video - Randomly pixelated icons in the dock (it's almost like the Mac picks a new one everyday to pixelate), dock animation not 100% smooth, although fairly good (not sure if it used to be this way)
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Nov 15, 2007
During installation, my graphics got all screwed up. You can see a screenshot of what's going on at this link: [URL]. I'm actually writing on the defective computer, so it's hard for me to see what's in the screenshot. Here's what I did so far. I tried removing half of the RAM first, then the second half, the problem persist. I rebooted on a different system, it's still there (so not software). I tried Hardware Test utility, it says everything is fine. I unplugged the Video Card, cleaned it a little along with the connectors, nothing. It happened DURING the update to 10.4.11 (not after I rebooted). I'm pretty sure I can take screenshots of it, so it's not simply in the connectors to the monitors. It happens on both my monitors (also when I unplug one of them).
Information:
PowerMac G5 Radeon 9800 Pro
Mac OS X (10.4.10)
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Feb 10, 2010
give me a good explanation from a modern-day perspective, of the inconsistent video performance of my iBook (12" G4, 1.07GHz, 1.25GB, Radeon 32MB GPU?) It can play a DVD at full-screen, full sound without missing a beat, but can't play a lo-res YouTube video without stop-motion and clipped audio. I can plug in a USB webcam and do a real-time video chat, but if I record the stream, it plays back at, like, 2fps or less.
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May 16, 2010
Just want to hear some User Experiences with it so far Kinda more interested in the new graphics card performance...like what around what year of games can it play on the highest settings with great framerate? (speaking about the 13inch specifically)
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Aug 29, 2009
I am seeing very slow performance when using spaces and expose in 10.6. I am on a mac mini with the 9400m graphics chip. It worked perfectly in Leopard, and now it runs at what appears to be 1fps. Sometimes it doesn't even seem to animate, it just jerks into place, from starting point to the end. I realize one solution could be "do a fresh install" but that seems like quite the pain at the moment, and is extremely undesirable. The upgrade worked perfectly on my macbook pro with similar specs. Is there anything I can reset or reinstall that might refresh the graphics performance?
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Jul 10, 2010
If there's no refresh this coming week, we're pretty much going to be forced into settling for one of the 27" iMacs (we're on our third) and hooking up a second (probably 24") monitor to do color sensitive work.
Does anyone out there have a dual-monitor setup running with the 27"? I was wondering if you notice any sort of graphics performance hit with the second monitor attached.
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Feb 27, 2009
I have a 2 x 2GHz Dual Core Intel Mac Pro, with 9GB of DDR2 RAM and 2 Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT graphic cards each running a Samsung 24 inch screen. I recently bought Call of Duty 4 and found that the game runs terribly on anything higher then around medium sort of settings. I know the 7300 Graphic cards aren't the best for gaming, but they have done the job for me perfectly until now. I'm a photographer so I calibrate my screens with a Spyder and run a separate colour profile through each video card per screen, and its always calibrated perfectly.
I'm just curious if there is any actual performance advantage of having 2 video cards other then running a separate colour profile through each card? So for example, If I'm playing call of duty and only 1 screen is displaying information, does the other card just sit there, or does it jump on board and process information for the game being played? Because I would have thought having 2 7300's would somewhat give better performance during gaming then just the one?
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Mar 25, 2012
I run Rhino (64 bit) with windows 7 through bootcamp. The software mfg's recommended graphics card is the AMD FirePro v7900 or v5900, and user group recos the nvidea quadro 4000. I am currently using an Nvidea gtx285 and driving two displays from it. Looking to upgrade both memory and video card for optimal performance.
Info:
Mac Pro, Windows 7, osx 10.7 , 16g ram nvidea 285gtx
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Jan 28, 2010
Preliminaries:
1) I am in the possession of a June 2004 PowerMac G5 DP 1.8.
2) It's the AGP+PCI variety (not PCI-X, not PCIe).
3) It's running Leopard 10.5.8
4) I've got an Ultra 6800 DDL installed.
Main Question:
What is the best way to add another (3rd) monitor?
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Dec 10, 2010
MBP 2.4ghz (MBP4,1)
4gb ram, geforce 8600m gt
Before the update I was gaming perfectly fine on pretty much Medium - High settings. The only game I have been playing lately is HON - Heroes of Newerth. Everything ran exactly as it should and I never had any problems. However, a couple of days ago I booted up the game and tried to play and noticed my FPS dropped by a lot. I even tried cranking down everything to low, and all it does is make everything pixelated, but my fps does not move at all.
I then realized the day before, I ran Software Update and ended up bumping up to 10.6.5. I honestly cannot think of what other reason in why performance would drop. I ran both a disk permission repair and a verify disk repair. Ran onyx to do a clean up scan. Flash online, video files, music, everything else I have tested is performing as it should. Anyone else having issues with the recent osx patch?
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Oct 17, 2009
Has anyone else noticed their MBP running slightly hotter since the recent performance upgrade?
My MBP's CPU was previously idling at about 37C, and is suddenly idling at anything between 44-50C, seemingly for no reason (no extra processes running that I'm aware of, and no changes in general usage), and hasn't dropped below 42C in days. I realise this isn't hot, by a long shot, but it's a pretty noticeable increase from my previous idling temperatures, so I'm naturally a bit curious.
I've cleaned out the vent with compressed air (though the MBP is very new, so I wasn't expecting much effect), and that predictably did nothing to bring the temperature back down to its former average... so I'm wondering now if there's something in the performance upgrade that makes the CPU run a little hotter than it would've done before?
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Mar 1, 2008
Last night I installed Leopard's Graphic Update. I can't boot my macbook since then. Stuck at the gray screen with apple logo. Here's what I already tried to do: Boot with leopard DVD and run Repair Disk - it tells me the disk appears to be ok. If I click on repair permissions tough, it takes a long time and then hangs. Nothing happens, the progress bar even stops spinning.
I then tried to boot with Disk Warrior 4.0 (it's the version I have). I tried reparing disk and files permissions there, and it worked ok. But I can't boot after it as well. Again in Disk Warrior, I tried clicking REBUILD to get my file directory back and retrieve my files, but after some seconds it states there is not enough memory. I hope this is RAM memory, because I just ordered a pair of ram chips, Im gonna upgrade it to 2gb (I only have 512mb ram, first gen intel macbook core duo)
So tried SAFE MODE (shift), nothing. Single user mode, typing fcsk -y , reports the disk is ok, but nothing as well. I have a time machine backup from 11 days ago (apple makes it so easy to backup and I cant even bother plugging in my lacie firewire external hd, retarded me), and for me that's kind of unnaceptable. I go to university and thats 2 weeks worth of priceless annotations, I really need to get them back.
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Sep 19, 2009
What's the likelihood that Apple could update the 13" Pro with a more powerful discrete graphics card like the 9800 GT or 260M GTX? That would enough for me to buy the 13" MBP!
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Aug 18, 2010
I don't know if it's linked to the update "but it started just after I applied it" the cursor jumps about erratically. I tried plugging in a mouse and get the same result. I use a MacBook Pro released this year.
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Aug 20, 2010
And lost my Dock animations. what can I do..when I start an application from my dock it doesn't bounce anymore or show the little bubble under the icon to show that it is open. I have the bubble under the finder icon but nothing else.
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Jun 9, 2012
I have a late-2010 MacBook Pro running Bootcamp 4.0 with Windows 7 64-bit. My graphics card is the nVidia GeForce 320m. I looked online recently and found that there was an update available for my graphics card (previously I had the one that comes with bootcamp, which is from 2009 I believe--quite outdated you see). So I installed it, hoping for better DX11 support, etc... It installed fine, but now my display is stuck on 100% brightness, when before I could adjust it with the F1 and F2 keys. When I try using the keys it shows the Apple popup with the slider moving, but the brightness doesn't change. I went into Control Panel > Power Settings and tried adjusting it from there, with no luck. The nVidia Control Panel doesn't have any satisfactory controls to do this either. It must be, of course, that the driver update changed things, but I'm not sure how to rectify the situation. I uninstalled the Apple Driver-Display from Control Panel and then re-installed from the Bootcamp files, but it didn't help. I've heard some talk about Apple Cinema Display, but I'm not sure if that's the same thing as the Display and whether I should be looking for a driver for it.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Windows 7
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Aug 23, 2010
Every once and a while, usually when my MacBook is running on it's battery, the screen will show a black screen for nearly only a millisecond or two. It's not too bothersome, and it usually blinks back to normal before I can notice it, but nevertheless I don't want it, and from what I can recall, this only started happening after I installed the Snow Leopard Graphics Update. Is anybody else getting these problems on their MBPs or MBs? MacBook config details in my sig.
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Oct 28, 2009
Every program I run starts freezing after I did the performance software update (along with the iMovie update). (I believe this was first made available some 2 weeks ago) - for computers that had hard disk freeze issues.
Preview freezes / not responding
iTunes freezes / not responding
Safari freezes / not responding
Finder freezes / not responding
this is a nightmare !
1. I have time machine backups, can I revert to before the software updates ?
2. and I copied all the "force quit" error reports... would that help to post here to understand what is going on????
3. Any suggestions of what to try? I did shutdown (force shutdown) and rebooted... and the problems persist
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Sep 12, 2009
When 10.6.1 include new ATI Kext.
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Aug 20, 2009
My graphics drivers more precisely. I have NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, but i cant find this card on the Nvidia driver site. The closest thing i can find is GeForce 9M. Can someone tell me how i can update my driver?
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May 3, 2012
I recently purchased mba 2011 (256gb with i5 ulti), and incoming release of Adobe CS6, I would like to ask if my machine is capable of running CS6? In company I will be given a mac mini 2011 and at home I have a macbook air 2011.
The Photoshop CS6 mentions they need: Mac OSMulticore Intel processor with 64-bit support-Mac OS X v10.6.8 or v10.71GB of RAM2GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash storage devices)1024x768 (1280x800 recommended) resolution display with 16-bit color and 512MB of VRAMOpenGL 2.0–capable system?
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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