I ran some tests to figure out exactly how much video memory was enough for a single display. Those depend on having enough video memory to store/manipulate all open windows. The issue is never about how many windows you can have open, but how smoothly effects like Dashboard and Exposé run. Faster memory busses and PCIe 2.0 both help minimize the impact, but it’s there nonetheless.
The trip to system memory is much higher latency than just grabbing windows from video memory, and thus we see performance suffer. If you run out of video memory, the GPU has to swap data in and out of system RAM. What it also means is that the amount of video memory you have matters. The result is much lower CPU and system memory usage. The GPU is much faster at all of this than the CPU so it made sense. Ars Technica’s John Siracusa has an excellent explanation of the whole process.Įach window gets treated as a 2D OpenGL surface and all of the character and image rendering, blending and display happens on the GPU. Ever since OS X 10.4, the entire drawing and display process happens on the GPU and in video memory. Previous versions of OS X either drew windows in system memory and then composited all of them in video memory, or did everything in system memory and just outputted the final scene to the video card. The contents of each window and the windows themselves are drawn by the GPU and stored in video memory. Honestly, one of the biggest uses for a new graphics card under OS X is having additional video memory.
HOW MUCH MEMORY DO I NEED FOR OS X MAVERICKS MAC OS
How Much Video Memory Do You Need in Mac OS X? I've been considering doing more things like this in the future, where you get pieces of a review as I finish them before the full thing is done.
I just finished writing a section about GPU memory usage under OS X (since the 285 has a hefty 1GB frame buffer) and thought I’d publish it as a standalone before the review is done. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m working on a review of EVGA’s GeForce GTX 285 Mac Edition.
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