--- In
psychtoolbox@yahoogroups.com, Maryam Vaziri Pashkam <mvaziri.p@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I am planning to buy a new Macbook pro, but I just noticed that apple has
> changed the NVIDIA graphic card on the Macbook pro 13 inch. Has anybody
> tested the new Macbook pro (13 inch) with psychtoolbox? The new graphic card
> is integrated intel HD graphic 3000. I found a website that claimed that
> the integrated intel graphic card is not well compatible with OpenGL
> applications.
> http://t-gaap.com/2011/3/9/macbook-graphics-face-off-intel-hd-graphics-3000-vs-nvidia-geforce-320m
>
> Any idea how well the new 13 inch Macbook pro would be with psychtoolbox?
>
Purely from looking at the specs at <
http://homepage.mac.com/arekkusu/bugs/GLInfo.html>, "on paper" the HD-3000 has all the functionality that PTB requires and is almost on par feature-wise with the other gpu's. It does lack OpenCL support though, which isn't a problem yet, but means you won't be able to take advantage of some fancy ptb features which will probably show up in 6-12 month's from now. That limitation is only relevant if you need to create compute intense, complex stimuli in real time. Also it can't do anti-aliasing quite at the same quality as the NVidia or AMD parts, "only" supporting 4 sub-samples per pixel instead of 8. Also it can't do frame-sequential stereo for use with shutter glasses.
In practice:
Testing by <
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-HD-Graphics-3000-graphics-solution.43710.0.html> says that the performance improvements over older Intel GPU's are impressive, that it is quite useable for not too demanding 3d graphics, but that the drivers of NVidia and AMD are more mature than the Intel drivers - Some games showed graphics bugs. Driver quality could be an issue, especially as these chips are very recent and the drivers didn't have much time to mature at this point. This can especially be a problem on Apple hardware. Apple is slow in updating its graphics drivers, likes to "think different" instead of using the same, likely more mature, driver code as Windows does and the company is the world leader in arrogance and indifference when it comes to acknowledging or fixing graphics driver bugs.
So i don't know. They are certainly much better than older Intel GPU's, probably quite useable for most not too demanding tasks. That's also what my "inside connections" at Intel told me. But only testing by brave PTB users will show how well theory translates to practice.
In general i advise to get AMD graphics cards for the simple reason that it is easier for us to implement work arounds for possible bugs and limitations. We could do the same for Intel - they also provide the neccessary information and low-level documentation. However, given the man-power, as Intel GPU's are still a niche for PTB applications, there's more focus on getting the more widespread AMD parts working well.
What kind of stimuli do you use? For "bog standard stims" the Intel will probably do. The dangerous areas are usually high precision stimuli (high bit depths color or luminance or contrast, high spatial precision -- generally "low level" stimuli or very high timing precision [unless used on Linux]). Showing pictures or videos or text or 3d graphics or animations is probably less of a potential problem.
-mario
> Maryam
>