I just filed my income tax. Bigger return than I hoped for. I have no need for a new laptop or desktop as my iMac G5 and 1.5ghz 15" PB are do me just fine.
However, now I am really hoping for either a true iPod video, tablet, or PDA type device so I can blow money I should probably save.
Alas, I have little hope for any of these products come tomorrow.
I just filed my income tax. Bigger return than I hoped for.
You just inspired me to start my 2005 return.
I love how turbotax imports last years data.
Haven't done any deductions or additional earnings yet, but I owe some money. Not a big surprise though and its a good thing I made estimate payments throughout the year.
Not only has the "Drawing Reuslts" moved over onto the GPU, so has Quartz 2D.
The fact that the results are stored in VRAM as opposed to RAM is a side effect?in AGP systems (remember, that chart pre-dates PCI-E), it was prohibitively slow to move data from the GPU back to regular RAM. Uploading textures to the card isn't a bottleneck, thus storing them in VRAM alone has no benefits. The only benefits are the drawing speedup.
Additionally, you forget one thing about Integrated chips. They're, well, integrated. This means that they access regular RAM almost as fast as dedicated GPU's access VRAM, so even if the VRAM memory store WERE to make a difference, integrated chips wouldn't suffer at all.
And just to be clear, Quartz 2D Extreme isn't enabled yet, anyway.
Main system memory isn't nearly as fast as VRAM. Single channel 667 MHz DDR2 RAM has a bandwidth of 5.3 GB/s. I highly doubt the mini would even get 667 MHz RAM, much less dual channel, so the memory bandwidth would look even worse. This has to be shared with whatever else the system is doing at the time. DDR3 is up to around 16 GB/s, and this is dedicated purely to drawing.
Also, it's more than just textures that are kept in the VRAM. Fonts, bitmaps, window textures, interface controls, etc are all cached in VRAM. Now think about when resolution independence hits, and all those bitmap elements need to be resized in real time. Having bitmaps cached in speedy dedicated VRAM will make a difference. If it didn't, Apple wouldn't go through the trouble of moving the backint store to VRAM at all.
Yes, I know that. You still don't get it. The GPU doesn't actually run that Quartz 2D bit that much faster than a CPU. It just means the the CPU doesn't have to do the work, so a few cycles are freed up for the CPU to spend on other tasks.
Yes and no. The GPU is dedicated to drawing and can handle dramatically more vector operations than can either Altivec or SSE3. That's why people have GPU's. They're fast.
That said, you're also right, it also gets some nice speed benefits by freeing up the CPU.
Quote:
Correct.
Incorrect. The pathway that was 2.1 GB/s is now 30 GB/s. That is a bottleneck in Quartz, as the output from the "Quartz 2D" block is huge bitmaps - a lot of data. Yes, you are right that the diagram was drawn in the days of AGP, and that PCIe is faster, but system RAM is still DDR2 whilst VRAM is DDR3, so VRAM is still faster.
You just contradicted yourself?but you're right the first time. Say you're drawing to a large window... say, 1024 x 1024 pixels, or one megapixel. That works out to exactly 4 MB of data. 2.1 GB/s works out to 35.84 MB per screen refresh. So you can upload 9 uncompressed megapixels per frame. In fact, Apple's 30 inch display can only support 4 megapixels. So even with two 30" displays, you could never possibly be sending so much data to the memory card that it would be a bottleneck.
Therefore, ALL speedgains in Quartz 2D Extreme come from performing the drawing operations on the GPU itself, not from the caching them there.
Quote:
Again, system RAM and VRAM are one generation apart in terms of speed, so dedicated VRAM does have significantly higher bandwidth.
I'm not sure what you mean by this...
My point was that while with dedicated GPU's, RAM accesses are slow (not a bottleneck in terms of drawing, but certainly in terms of Core Image operations or gaming). With Integrated GPU's, RAM access isn't nearly as slow because it doesn't have to go through AGP or PCI-E? the GPU gets RAM as fast as the processor can, much much faster than a PCI-E GPU can access RAM.
I misunderstood and thought that you assumed that Integrated Graphics were as slow for RAM accesses as were stand-alone GPU's, which is not the case.
Main system memory isn't nearly as fast as VRAM. Single channel 667 MHz DDR2 RAM has a bandwidth of 5.3 GB/s. I highly doubt the mini would even get 667 MHz RAM, much less dual channel, so the memory bandwidth would look even worse. This has to be shared with whatever else the system is doing at the time. DDR3 is up to around 16 GB/s, and this is dedicated purely to drawing.
See above about this. For basic drawing and compositing, this makes no difference because so few resources are used. Bandwidth only becomes an issue when it's a bottleneck, it's not in this case.
Quote:
Also, it's more than just textures that are kept in the VRAM. Fonts, bitmaps, window textures, interface controls, etc are all cached in VRAM. Now think about when resolution independence hits, and all those bitmap elements need to be resized in real time. Having bitmaps cached in speedy dedicated VRAM will make a difference. If it didn't, Apple wouldn't go through the trouble of moving the backint store to VRAM at all.
Sort of. Fonts are not cached, because Macs use sub-pixel kerning. Each time a character is drawn to screen, it's slightly different. Also, interface controls are only cached as part of the window, the pieces themselves aren't cached.
Bitmaps can be cached if you program it yourself using OpenGL contexts?it's not done for you and it's not all that easy.
Windows themselves have been cached since Jaguar, I believe, but in fact they often cache in system memory (and compressed) for two reasons. One, GPU's only support lossy compression, which is totally unsuitable for anything but game textures. Second, they add up really fast?once you add more than a handful of windows, your VRAM is all filled up.
Typically, only the front-most handful of windows are cached in VRAM.
?? No, I haven't. I said that an operation that doesn't need to send much data (drawing commands) isn't bottlenecked by memory bandwidth, but operations that do send a lot of data (drawing results = bitmaps) are bottlenecked by memory bandwidth.
Quote:
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
Say you're drawing to a large window... say, 1024 x 1024 pixels, or one megapixel. That works out to exactly 4 MB of data. 2.1 GB/s works out to 35.84 MB per screen refresh. So you can upload 9 uncompressed megapixels per frame. In fact, Apple's 30 inch display can only support 4 megapixels. So even with two 30" displays, you could never possibly be sending so much data to the memory card that it would be a bottleneck.
The thing that is limited to the number of pixels on the screen is the output of the quartz compositor. In the case of the 30" display, this will be 2560 pixels wide by 1600 high by 24 bit pixel depth. The output of "Quartz 2D" is edit modifications to /edit bitmaps edit which are cached in RAM (Quartz 2D) or VRAM (Quartz 2D extreme) /edit with 32 pixel depth (24 bit colour + 8 bit alpha channel). Each individual bitmap is limited to the size of the screen, but there is not just one bitmap, there are many, many bitmaps (at least one bitmap for each window + plenty of other stuff), which are then blended together by the quartz compositor to make the final scene that is sent to the display. edit In the case of Quartz 2D, the compositor has to read all of these bitmaps from the system RAM cache, and in the case of AGP, this is bottlenecked to 2.1 GB/s. Moving the cache to VRAM gives the quartz compositor much faster access to the bitmaps it must blend together.
You are right that the memory bandwidth for an integrated GPU is higher than a GPU running over AGP, but it still is not as high as a GPU with dedicated VRAM. This means that the performance differential between no dedicated VRAM vs. dedicated VRAM is smaller for an integrated GPU than for an AGP GPU, but there will be a differential (probably only observable when there are many open windows). /edit
Quote:
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
Therefore, ALL speedgains in Quartz 2D Extreme come from performing the drawing operations on the GPU itself, not from the caching them there.
No, some of the gain is from the GPU doing the calculations (and this helps more as non-quartz CPU load increases), but most of the gain is from the increased memory bandwidth.
*cough* Currency market *cough* The US price is the same, he was also standing in the US when he said it.
If that were so, the Intel model should be cheaper as the $ is weaker now that it was back when the G5 was launched at £899. However it's irrelevant as the price of the G5 model stayed at £899. Even with Apple's policy of never changing the prices unless they release something new, it made us Brits do a double-take.
[BSort of. Fonts are not cached, because Macs use sub-pixel kerning. Each time a character is drawn to screen, it's slightly different.[/B]
IIRC Fonts ARE cached in Quartz2DE as hints, not bitmaps, and redrawn by the GPU. This explains why enabling Q2DE on my old iMacG5 with FX5200 is so slow at drawing text. Slower than using the CPU to do it. It's the one reason I don't enable it as most of the time I'm using text. UI speed is a bit slower too.
Pity really as almost all the other graphic operations are faster.
If that were so, the Intel model should be cheaper as the $ is weaker now that it was back when the G5 was launched at £899. However it's irrelevant as the price of the G5 model stayed at £899. Even with Apple's policy of never changing the prices unless they release something new, it made us Brits do a double-take.
International prices are what they are. Just deal with it.
Isn't an Apple computer that gets shipped to someone in Europe made in the same place as one that gets shipped to the US?
It is pretty much the same computer, but it crosses different borders. Those border differences mean different currencies and different import taxes. Taxes make a difference except in the very smallest transactions. When I buy something from overseas, I don't consider duties, national sales tax, VAT or import taxes. A buddy from a different country might have to deal with one or more of those.
This site is truely screwed up today. Took me most of the day to get on. Now it seems as though posts are missing, even though I got notices in my e-mail.
Where are all the posts between Aegisdesign's and JeffDM's?
It is pretty much the same computer, but it crosses different borders. Those border differences mean different currencies and different import taxes. Taxes make a difference except in the very smallest transactions. When I buy something from overseas, I don't consider duties, national sales tax, VAT or import taxes. A buddy that orders from a different country might have to deal with one or more of those.
This isn't about taxes. It isn't about currency rates.
Our taxes didn't increase.
The US price remained the same. The UK price went up.
Apple UK are just weird. For instance, the UK store has this graphic on it's page...
yet you click through to the iMac and you get this...
Been like that since the iMac Core Duo launch when the G5 was £899. The G5 iMac 20" is coincidentally £1049 but they've got that price right. We quite often get prices plucked out of thin air here.
This isn't about taxes. It isn't about currency rates.
Our taxes didn't increase.
The US price remained the same. The UK price went up.
Apple UK are just weird. For instance, the UK store has this graphic on it's page...
yet you click through to the iMac and you get this...
Been like that since the iMac Core Duo launch when the G5 was £899. The G5 iMac 20" is coincidentally £1049 but they've got that price right. We quite often get prices plucked out of thin air here.
That's the problem with currency rates fluctuating moment by moment.
If the pound goes up by .5%, your price will reflect that. .5% on a 1,000 pound device is 50 pounds. the price on last weeks now discontinued item would have been less.
That's the problem with currency rates fluctuating moment by moment.
If the pound goes up by .5%, your price will reflect that. .5% on a 1,000 pound device is 50 pounds. the price on last weeks now discontinued item would have been less.
NO IT'S NOT.
Please read again and look at the graphics.
But if you want to play the exchange rate game, the price should have gone DOWN if US dollars is the baseline. We get more pounds to the dollar now than we did last year.
Here's how many pounds to the dollar ...
However, I suspect this has more to do with the Taiwan Dollar exchange rate which took a tumble at the start of this year. Apple USA seem to have absorbed it. Apple UK haven't. Or for the conspiracy theorists, Apple USA is clawing back the difference from Europe.
But if you want to play the exchange rate game, the price should have gone DOWN if US dollars is the baseline. We get more pounds to the dollar now than we did last year.
Here's how many pounds to the dollar ...
However, I suspect this has more to do with the Taiwan Dollar exchange rate which took a tumble at the start of this year. Apple USA seem to have absorbed it. Apple UK haven't. Or for the conspiracy theorists, Apple USA is clawing back the difference from Europe.
I'm not playing a game, and I haven't looked at the rates. It was just a suggestion.
I doubt that Apple sets their prices around the world arbitrarally.
Comments
Originally posted by aegisdesign
Original price. At launch the Intel iMac was £929 as opposed to £899 for the G5 despite Jobs standing on stage saying 'Same Price'.
*cough* Currency market *cough* The US price is the same, he was also standing in the US when he said it.
However, now I am really hoping for either a true iPod video, tablet, or PDA type device so I can blow money I should probably save.
Alas, I have little hope for any of these products come tomorrow.
Buy a shuffle and send me the rest of your tax refund...
an itms gift certificate will be sufficient.
Originally posted by ryanh
I just filed my income tax. Bigger return than I hoped for.
You just inspired me to start my 2005 return.
I love how turbotax imports last years data.
Haven't done any deductions or additional earnings yet, but I owe some money. Not a big surprise though and its a good thing I made estimate payments throughout the year.
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
Look at the diagrams again.
Not only has the "Drawing Reuslts" moved over onto the GPU, so has Quartz 2D.
The fact that the results are stored in VRAM as opposed to RAM is a side effect?in AGP systems (remember, that chart pre-dates PCI-E), it was prohibitively slow to move data from the GPU back to regular RAM. Uploading textures to the card isn't a bottleneck, thus storing them in VRAM alone has no benefits. The only benefits are the drawing speedup.
Additionally, you forget one thing about Integrated chips. They're, well, integrated. This means that they access regular RAM almost as fast as dedicated GPU's access VRAM, so even if the VRAM memory store WERE to make a difference, integrated chips wouldn't suffer at all.
And just to be clear, Quartz 2D Extreme isn't enabled yet, anyway.
Main system memory isn't nearly as fast as VRAM. Single channel 667 MHz DDR2 RAM has a bandwidth of 5.3 GB/s. I highly doubt the mini would even get 667 MHz RAM, much less dual channel, so the memory bandwidth would look even worse. This has to be shared with whatever else the system is doing at the time. DDR3 is up to around 16 GB/s, and this is dedicated purely to drawing.
Also, it's more than just textures that are kept in the VRAM. Fonts, bitmaps, window textures, interface controls, etc are all cached in VRAM. Now think about when resolution independence hits, and all those bitmap elements need to be resized in real time. Having bitmaps cached in speedy dedicated VRAM will make a difference. If it didn't, Apple wouldn't go through the trouble of moving the backint store to VRAM at all.
Originally posted by Mr. H
Yes, I know that. You still don't get it. The GPU doesn't actually run that Quartz 2D bit that much faster than a CPU. It just means the the CPU doesn't have to do the work, so a few cycles are freed up for the CPU to spend on other tasks.
Yes and no. The GPU is dedicated to drawing and can handle dramatically more vector operations than can either Altivec or SSE3. That's why people have GPU's. They're fast.
That said, you're also right, it also gets some nice speed benefits by freeing up the CPU.
Correct.
Incorrect. The pathway that was 2.1 GB/s is now 30 GB/s. That is a bottleneck in Quartz, as the output from the "Quartz 2D" block is huge bitmaps - a lot of data. Yes, you are right that the diagram was drawn in the days of AGP, and that PCIe is faster, but system RAM is still DDR2 whilst VRAM is DDR3, so VRAM is still faster.
You just contradicted yourself?but you're right the first time. Say you're drawing to a large window... say, 1024 x 1024 pixels, or one megapixel. That works out to exactly 4 MB of data. 2.1 GB/s works out to 35.84 MB per screen refresh. So you can upload 9 uncompressed megapixels per frame. In fact, Apple's 30 inch display can only support 4 megapixels. So even with two 30" displays, you could never possibly be sending so much data to the memory card that it would be a bottleneck.
Therefore, ALL speedgains in Quartz 2D Extreme come from performing the drawing operations on the GPU itself, not from the caching them there.
Quote:
Again, system RAM and VRAM are one generation apart in terms of speed, so dedicated VRAM does have significantly higher bandwidth.
I'm not sure what you mean by this...
My point was that while with dedicated GPU's, RAM accesses are slow (not a bottleneck in terms of drawing, but certainly in terms of Core Image operations or gaming). With Integrated GPU's, RAM access isn't nearly as slow because it doesn't have to go through AGP or PCI-E? the GPU gets RAM as fast as the processor can, much much faster than a PCI-E GPU can access RAM.
I misunderstood and thought that you assumed that Integrated Graphics were as slow for RAM accesses as were stand-alone GPU's, which is not the case.
Originally posted by Mr Beardsley
Main system memory isn't nearly as fast as VRAM. Single channel 667 MHz DDR2 RAM has a bandwidth of 5.3 GB/s. I highly doubt the mini would even get 667 MHz RAM, much less dual channel, so the memory bandwidth would look even worse. This has to be shared with whatever else the system is doing at the time. DDR3 is up to around 16 GB/s, and this is dedicated purely to drawing.
See above about this. For basic drawing and compositing, this makes no difference because so few resources are used. Bandwidth only becomes an issue when it's a bottleneck, it's not in this case.
Also, it's more than just textures that are kept in the VRAM. Fonts, bitmaps, window textures, interface controls, etc are all cached in VRAM. Now think about when resolution independence hits, and all those bitmap elements need to be resized in real time. Having bitmaps cached in speedy dedicated VRAM will make a difference. If it didn't, Apple wouldn't go through the trouble of moving the backint store to VRAM at all.
Sort of. Fonts are not cached, because Macs use sub-pixel kerning. Each time a character is drawn to screen, it's slightly different. Also, interface controls are only cached as part of the window, the pieces themselves aren't cached.
Bitmaps can be cached if you program it yourself using OpenGL contexts?it's not done for you and it's not all that easy.
Windows themselves have been cached since Jaguar, I believe, but in fact they often cache in system memory (and compressed) for two reasons. One, GPU's only support lossy compression, which is totally unsuitable for anything but game textures. Second, they add up really fast?once you add more than a handful of windows, your VRAM is all filled up.
Typically, only the front-most handful of windows are cached in VRAM.
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
You just contradicted yourself
?? No, I haven't. I said that an operation that doesn't need to send much data (drawing commands) isn't bottlenecked by memory bandwidth, but operations that do send a lot of data (drawing results = bitmaps) are bottlenecked by memory bandwidth.
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
Say you're drawing to a large window... say, 1024 x 1024 pixels, or one megapixel. That works out to exactly 4 MB of data. 2.1 GB/s works out to 35.84 MB per screen refresh. So you can upload 9 uncompressed megapixels per frame. In fact, Apple's 30 inch display can only support 4 megapixels. So even with two 30" displays, you could never possibly be sending so much data to the memory card that it would be a bottleneck.
The thing that is limited to the number of pixels on the screen is the output of the quartz compositor. In the case of the 30" display, this will be 2560 pixels wide by 1600 high by 24 bit pixel depth. The output of "Quartz 2D" is edit modifications to /edit bitmaps edit which are cached in RAM (Quartz 2D) or VRAM (Quartz 2D extreme) /edit with 32 pixel depth (24 bit colour + 8 bit alpha channel). Each individual bitmap is limited to the size of the screen, but there is not just one bitmap, there are many, many bitmaps (at least one bitmap for each window + plenty of other stuff), which are then blended together by the quartz compositor to make the final scene that is sent to the display. edit In the case of Quartz 2D, the compositor has to read all of these bitmaps from the system RAM cache, and in the case of AGP, this is bottlenecked to 2.1 GB/s. Moving the cache to VRAM gives the quartz compositor much faster access to the bitmaps it must blend together.
You are right that the memory bandwidth for an integrated GPU is higher than a GPU running over AGP, but it still is not as high as a GPU with dedicated VRAM. This means that the performance differential between no dedicated VRAM vs. dedicated VRAM is smaller for an integrated GPU than for an AGP GPU, but there will be a differential (probably only observable when there are many open windows). /edit
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
Therefore, ALL speedgains in Quartz 2D Extreme come from performing the drawing operations on the GPU itself, not from the caching them there.
No, some of the gain is from the GPU doing the calculations (and this helps more as non-quartz CPU load increases), but most of the gain is from the increased memory bandwidth.
I suggest that you read this
Originally posted by Telomar
*cough* Currency market *cough* The US price is the same, he was also standing in the US when he said it.
If that were so, the Intel model should be cheaper as the $ is weaker now that it was back when the G5 was launched at £899. However it's irrelevant as the price of the G5 model stayed at £899. Even with Apple's policy of never changing the prices unless they release something new, it made us Brits do a double-take.
Originally posted by gregmightdothat
[BSort of. Fonts are not cached, because Macs use sub-pixel kerning. Each time a character is drawn to screen, it's slightly different.[/B]
IIRC Fonts ARE cached in Quartz2DE as hints, not bitmaps, and redrawn by the GPU. This explains why enabling Q2DE on my old iMacG5 with FX5200 is so slow at drawing text. Slower than using the CPU to do it. It's the one reason I don't enable it as most of the time I'm using text. UI speed is a bit slower too.
Pity really as almost all the other graphic operations are faster.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
If that were so, the Intel model should be cheaper as the $ is weaker now that it was back when the G5 was launched at £899. However it's irrelevant as the price of the G5 model stayed at £899. Even with Apple's policy of never changing the prices unless they release something new, it made us Brits do a double-take.
International prices are what they are. Just deal with it.
Originally posted by minderbinder
International prices are what they are. Just deal with it.
...easy for you to say
Originally posted by xflare
Isn't an Apple computer that gets shipped to someone in Europe made in the same place as one that gets shipped to the US?
Yes - China/Taiwan, although we do get the better power supply in European iMacs.
Originally posted by xflare
Isn't an Apple computer that gets shipped to someone in Europe made in the same place as one that gets shipped to the US?
It is pretty much the same computer, but it crosses different borders. Those border differences mean different currencies and different import taxes. Taxes make a difference except in the very smallest transactions. When I buy something from overseas, I don't consider duties, national sales tax, VAT or import taxes. A buddy from a different country might have to deal with one or more of those.
Where are all the posts between Aegisdesign's and JeffDM's?
Originally posted by JeffDM
It is pretty much the same computer, but it crosses different borders. Those border differences mean different currencies and different import taxes. Taxes make a difference except in the very smallest transactions. When I buy something from overseas, I don't consider duties, national sales tax, VAT or import taxes. A buddy that orders from a different country might have to deal with one or more of those.
This isn't about taxes. It isn't about currency rates.
Our taxes didn't increase.
The US price remained the same. The UK price went up.
Apple UK are just weird. For instance, the UK store has this graphic on it's page...
yet you click through to the iMac and you get this...
Been like that since the iMac Core Duo launch when the G5 was £899. The G5 iMac 20" is coincidentally £1049 but they've got that price right. We quite often get prices plucked out of thin air here.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
This isn't about taxes. It isn't about currency rates.
Our taxes didn't increase.
The US price remained the same. The UK price went up.
Apple UK are just weird. For instance, the UK store has this graphic on it's page...
yet you click through to the iMac and you get this...
Been like that since the iMac Core Duo launch when the G5 was £899. The G5 iMac 20" is coincidentally £1049 but they've got that price right. We quite often get prices plucked out of thin air here.
That's the problem with currency rates fluctuating moment by moment.
If the pound goes up by .5%, your price will reflect that. .5% on a 1,000 pound device is 50 pounds. the price on last weeks now discontinued item would have been less.
Originally posted by melgross
That's the problem with currency rates fluctuating moment by moment.
If the pound goes up by .5%, your price will reflect that. .5% on a 1,000 pound device is 50 pounds. the price on last weeks now discontinued item would have been less.
NO IT'S NOT.
Please read again and look at the graphics.
But if you want to play the exchange rate game, the price should have gone DOWN if US dollars is the baseline. We get more pounds to the dollar now than we did last year.
Here's how many pounds to the dollar ...
However, I suspect this has more to do with the Taiwan Dollar exchange rate which took a tumble at the start of this year. Apple USA seem to have absorbed it. Apple UK haven't. Or for the conspiracy theorists, Apple USA is clawing back the difference from Europe.
Originally posted by aegisdesign
NO IT'S NOT.
Please read again and look at the graphics.
But if you want to play the exchange rate game, the price should have gone DOWN if US dollars is the baseline. We get more pounds to the dollar now than we did last year.
Here's how many pounds to the dollar ...
However, I suspect this has more to do with the Taiwan Dollar exchange rate which took a tumble at the start of this year. Apple USA seem to have absorbed it. Apple UK haven't. Or for the conspiracy theorists, Apple USA is clawing back the difference from Europe.
I'm not playing a game, and I haven't looked at the rates. It was just a suggestion.
I doubt that Apple sets their prices around the world arbitrarally.