New MacBooks have hardware h.264 decoding

Posted by John Brownlee, October 21, 2008 5:45 AM | permalink

According to Mac Rumors, the latest MacBooks might have an unannounced new feature: GPU-accelerated h.264 codec decoding.

According to anecdotal evidence, the new aluminum MacBook's processor runs around 75% slower when playing back 1080p movie when compared to a last-gen MacBook Pro with the Nvidia 8600M GT.

That makes sense: the MacBook's built-in 9400M chip is designed to support offloading video decoding to the GPU. But it's nice to see confirmation; more over, it seems to hint that we'll be seeing a lot more high-definition content on iTunes, sooner rather than later.

Apple Enabled GPU Hardware Decoding of h.264 [Mac Rumors]

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Discussion

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#1 posted by zikman

, October 21, 2008 6:47 AM

noted

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#2 posted by Anonymous , October 21, 2008 8:27 AM

I recommend to correct this: " the new aluminum MacBook's processor runs around 75% slower "

Actually, the cpu utilization is 75% less. Speedstep is not THAT good yet, so cpu frequency scaling is not the same as CPU usage.

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#3 posted by Anonymous , October 21, 2008 9:37 AM

But is this performance boost from the new video card or the new version of OSX shipping on the new MacBooks/Pros?

Will I see the same performance boost on my old MacBook Pro when the new version of OSX is released publicly? (the incremental release, not Snow Leopard)

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#4 posted by dculberson , October 21, 2008 10:08 AM

Yeah, theoretically the current 8600M GT should be able to do this just fine, too.