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    Using only the 9400m

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by Luke1708, Aug 19, 2009.

  1. ni123

    ni123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    The only thing I can show you is the one of the power options where it says hybrid sli. It is the same as Luke1708's.

    [​IMG]

    The device manger only shows the 9600m GT. It is very strange. The device manager says you only have one graphic card and the menu from power options tells you that you have hybrid sli.
     
    ni123, Sep 20, 2009
    #51
  2. Tinderbox (UK)

    Tinderbox (UK) BAKED BEAN KING

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    Have you run 3dmark06 to see if you get any difference?
     
    Tinderbox (UK), Sep 20, 2009
    #52
  3. ni123

    ni123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I don't have 3dmark06 on my macbook pro yet, but I'll post the scores when I have them.
     
    ni123, Sep 20, 2009
    #53
  4. ni123

    ni123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Ok, here's my hybrid sli 3dmark06 score. I don't have time now to do 3dmark06 without hybrid sli. Maybe tomorrow.

    My score 3dmark06: 5731

    Is this good?

    [​IMG]
     
    ni123, Sep 20, 2009
    #54
  5. Luke1708

    Luke1708 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    5731 is your 9600m gt temps. sorry mate but you have not unlocked the 9400m.
     
    Luke1708, Sep 20, 2009
    #55
  6. ni123

    ni123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Strange, then why does power options tell me I have hybrid sli????
     
    ni123, Sep 20, 2009
    #56
  7. masterchef341

    masterchef341 The guy from The Notebook

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    that score looks pretty normal, but i could take a look into this if you guys like. did you pick up the nvidia chipset drivers from their website?

    anyway, we need to lay down our terminology. hybrid SLI can refer to either of the following two things:

    -geforce boost (classic SLI, running more than one graphics card to increase performance)
    -hybrid power (on the fly GPU switching)

    in either case we get two graphics cards acting like one logical graphics card, either one at a time or both at the same time, which is why they both get the SLI moniker.

    now, the reason we are skeptical is because we believe that the 9400m is turned off at the firmware level (beneath the operating system). if this is true, there really isn't anything we can do to enable SLI in windows until apple releases new firmware. the reason we suspect this to be true is that windows doesn't recognize the 9400m at all. If windows could access the 9400m, we could most likely find a way to make it work. But we haven't been able to get that far as of yet. It may be the case that we are wrong, and nvidia chipset drivers unlock some part or all of the hybrid SLI tech. But of course we are skeptical, and the 3dmark 06 score you posted was pretty normal.

    Nevertheless, I'll be looking into this further.
     
    masterchef341, Sep 20, 2009
    #57
  8. ni123

    ni123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    ni123, Sep 20, 2009
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  9. ni123

    ni123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Masterchief, look at what i did on page 5. I used the 15.37 nforce drivers with the display driver. Power options tells me i have hybrid sli, but there's no performance gain.
     
    ni123, Sep 20, 2009
    #59
  10. ni123

    ni123 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Also, in regedit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE .... nvidia ... global... there's a folder called hybrid. Do you guys also have this folder?
     
    ni123, Sep 20, 2009
    #60
  11. Luke1708

    Luke1708 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    you have hybrid sli. but the 9600m gt does not suport grforce boost, ie using the 2 gpus at the same time. it only supports hybrid sli ie only 1 gpu at a time. could your try using the integrated gpu in the power settings and then run the 3dmark06 again?
     
    Luke1708, Sep 20, 2009
    #61
  12. masterchef341

    masterchef341 The guy from The Notebook

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    go into the device manager

    click on "display adapters"

    tell us what you see there, take a screenshot. post it.
     
    masterchef341, Sep 20, 2009
    #62
  13. Luke1708

    Luke1708 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    he said above that he can only see the 9600m gt...
     
    Luke1708, Sep 20, 2009
    #63
  14. masterchef341

    masterchef341 The guy from The Notebook

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    ok.

    that's it then.

    if the device manager isn't seeing two graphics cards, then there aren't two graphics cards active.
     
    masterchef341, Sep 20, 2009
    #64
  15. Luke1708

    Luke1708 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    yeah. that's what i wondered when i dropped the idea of trying to run the 9400m on windows...we need to rely on apple to give us this support under windows.
     
    Luke1708, Sep 20, 2009
    #65
  16. Tinderbox (UK)

    Tinderbox (UK) BAKED BEAN KING

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    Strange the Nvidia website says the 9600m GT does support the GeForce Boost :confused:

    http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_9600m_gt_us.html

     
    Tinderbox (UK), Sep 20, 2009
    #66
  17. masterchef341

    masterchef341 The guy from The Notebook

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    yeah, luke was just flat wrong about that.

    either way, the 9400m isn't accessible in windows at the moment and therefore we don't have access to either of the two distinct elements of hybrid SLI (geforce boost and hybrid power)
     
    masterchef341, Sep 20, 2009
    #67
  18. Luke1708

    Luke1708 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    Luke1708, Sep 21, 2009
    #68
  19. wcipher

    wcipher Newbie

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    Well, has anyone tried to install windows without Bootcamp and see if 9400 shows up there?
     
    wcipher, Sep 22, 2009
    #69
  20. masterchef341

    masterchef341 The guy from The Notebook

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    boot camp is literally just:

    - a partitioning tool in mac os x
    - a set of hardware drivers in windows (software you install after installing windows)

    the problem is occurring beneath the operating system. windows doesn't even recognize that another gpu exists. this is going to happen boot camp or not.
     
    masterchef341, Sep 22, 2009
    #70
  21. claudius753

    claudius753 Notebook Enthusiast

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    So what happens if you only have the 9400m, as in one of the lower MBP models? Why would you get the 9400m then but have it locked if you have the higher end model.

    I bought the high end 15" MBP to use as my personal machine, which I use primarily OS X, but I need to run Windows too. I HATE how hot it gets in Windows 7 because of the 9600. It is literally uncomfortably hot.

    I'm kind of regretting the purchase if I can't get better battery life / temps on Windows. This is BS, Apple! This is not the only notebook with this combo is it? How can others pull it off but Apple has it locked down?
     
    claudius753, Sep 25, 2009
    #71
  22. Luke1708

    Luke1708 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    mate, i was in the same boat as yours but i heard that the system runs noticeably cooler on windows7 which is great new for me. in bootcamp 2.1, i was booting windows in the 70's degrees celcius. i'm now going to install w7 on my fresh snow leopard install. i will tell you how hot the system gets, in a few hours.
     
    Luke1708, Sep 26, 2009
    #72
  23. masterchef341

    masterchef341 The guy from The Notebook

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    even if apple wants to lock out the geforce boost feature of hybrid sli, they should still allow us to take advantage of hybrid power.
     
    masterchef341, Sep 26, 2009
    #73
  24. Luke1708

    Luke1708 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    yes, that's wrong of apple to lock the 9400m.. i have used bc3.0 with w7. battery life is the same (~2hrs) with display set to dim and power mode on balanced. oddly, using the rtm, i do not seem to notice any difference in battery life between balanced mode and power saver.
     
    Luke1708, Sep 27, 2009
    #74
  25. Luke1708

    Luke1708 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    hey guys ,gpu switching works on ubuntu with a hack....now is there a good programmer or technically adept member who can port this implementation to windows??

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro5-1_5-2/Jaunty#EFI



     
    Luke1708, Oct 25, 2009
    #75
  26. mikeyharm

    mikeyharm Notebook Geek

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    I'm using the 13" with only the 9400 and Boot Camp 3.0 to drive Windows Server 2008, and my battery life is much closer on par to my Mac OS X battery life than it was on my MacBook running Leopard and Win7 RC.

    Too many factors have changed though to associate this directly to the BC3.0 drivers, but they definitely level the playing field for the most part.
     
    mikeyharm, Oct 25, 2009
    #76
  27. mikeyharm

    mikeyharm Notebook Geek

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    BTW, that's Windows Server 2008 R2, which is sharing the Win7 kernel and driver model, so you should see improved battery performance on Win7 and the BC3.0 drivers.
     
    mikeyharm, Oct 25, 2009
    #77
  28. Luke1708

    Luke1708 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    i wish we could switch gpu...apparently, the guy who was getting only 1:40 with the 9600m gt managed to get to 3:20 and the laptop is 10° cooler. this leads me to believe that the update in december will actually allow us to switch gpu because windows 7 supports efi natively. perhaps apple is going to disable its bios emulation so as not to lock the gpu in w7...
     
    Luke1708, Oct 25, 2009
    #78
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