Is GPU hardware decoding of h.264 enabled on new MacBooks, Pros and Airs by Apple?
Rumors are circulating that the new line of Mac laptops with the NVIDIA chipset have decoding of h.264 enabled. This is making geeks everywhere rejoice as their movies suddenly seem to have faster playback and less lag.
The speed increase was noticed by a forum user over on MacRumors, who said that he noticed a superior, faster playback of a 1080p high definition movie on his brand new aluminum MacBook. In fact, he claimed that not only was it faster, it was faster with 28% CPU use compared to his older MacBook at 100% CPU. If that’s the case that is an impressive bump.
The difference may be coming from the new NVIDIA chipsets. The new MacBook line is using the NVIDIA 9400M integrated graphics chipset while the old MacBooks use the NVIDIA 8600M GT. Both MacBooks have the same processor speed overall. GPU accelerated hardware decoding of h.264 is a feature on both types of NVIDIA chipset, but this marks the first time Apple has chosen to integrate that into their laptop line.
As various reports trickle in, users who have noticed the improvements seem to be forming a consensus that it is on both the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. It can be assumed that the MacBook Air would get the same advantage and improvement from Apple but it hasn’t yet been confirmed. Further speculation states that the improvements may be coming from the developers working on Snow Leopard and be a bit of a preview of performance improvements that can be expected once Snow Leopard is in final release.
The folks at MacRumors, where the story first surfaced, also speculate that the speed improvements could be applied to older MacBooks by way of a software update. Apple had said that the last Leopard update was to be the final one prior to Snow Leopard. I am wondering if this might show up quietly as part of a Security Update down the line, prior to Snow Leopard, or if we older MacBook owners really will have to wait for the next Leopard to enjoy the difference.
Related Posts:
