Since when Apple announced that OpenCL should be introduced into the new Snow Leopard I thought about the cooling system implemented in Apple’s laptops.
It’s well known that a MacBook Pro has several cooling problems and because of I have a November 2007 MBP, I ask myself:
Will my MacBook Pro survive to Snow Leopard?
If you’ve ever used a MBP, you surely noticed a consistent overheating while doing heavy operations such as video conversions, math computing, 3D rendering, etc… OpenCL will improve the computation velocity using the GPU unused power; this won’t leave CPU in an idle state! So if we consider that when CPU is at its maximum activity it rises 100°C, how about GPU? How will the MBP take care about the heat?
Time ago I took a screenshot of my MBP temperatures: I was using BoincManager and the CPU was at its maximum (my MBP mounts an Intel Core 2 Duo). Stunning!
MacBook Pro 3.1 15" temperatures - CPU is at 100% usage and GPU is idle.
Some weeks ago Apple released an update of the cooling system firmware; now even if the fans begin raising their speed at low temperatures than before and with a major speed, I haven’t noticed big improvements. And if you look at the Snow Leopard tec specifications you can see that the following video cards are supported by OpenCL:
OpenCL
- NVIDIA Geforce 8600M GT, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GTS, Geforce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130.
- ATI Radeon 4850, Radeon 4870
This means I’m able to run Snow Leopard and to use OpenCL with my video card because I have a Geforce 8600M GT mounted on my MBP, but probably I’ll get overheating problems… who knows?!
