thomas de rijk

Hi, im currently in the researching process of buying a macbook pro, (dont try to tell me i dont need one and id be better of buying a dell or whatever, it wont work)

and i have a couple of questions, the most important regarding max msp and jitter

NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT met 256MB

problem, is the extra 200 euro's worth it? (100 gb hd extra, 0,13 ghz (shouldnt even make a difference) and 265 of vram)

Im currently developing my live set, wich consists of ableton audio and effects, and jitter visuals (mostly basic 3d stuff, texture's, feedback and more to come)

I heard about people making everything gpu based, so my question is: will the extra video ram be worth it? Or should I be able to run ableton and jitter just fine with the 4 gb?

AND: what if jitter fuckes up? accidentally takes of loads of ram, be it accidental or trough a crash, will this effect the audio coming from ableton if the whole jitter stuff is working on the extra video card alone?

Will it even be able to run on the video card alone with the 256 mb ram?

I'm sure you understand the decision making point i'm making, and i hope i can get some good advice!

edit: and harddisk speed? 5400 or 7200 rpm, wich is advicable for working with audio in live situations?

15-inch: 2.53GHz
250-GB harde schijf1
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M grafische processor
€ 1.599,00 

15-inch: 2.66GHz
320-GB harde schijf1
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT met 256MB
€ 1.799,00 

AND: what if jitter fuckes up? accidentally takes of loads of ram, be it accidental or trough a crash, will this effect the audio coming from ableton if the whole jitter stuff is working on the extra video card alone?
Will it even be able to run on the video card alone with the 256 mb ram?

edit: and harddisk speed? 5400 or 7200 rpm, wich is advicable for working with audio in live situations?


macbook-pro-questions

You don't really need one, you're better off buying a Dell...

No, seriously, it depends on what your plans are with your set. You seem to be technical enough to see which operation uses what hardware, so you can take the following into account:

Audio requires ram. Are you going to be mixing the tracks for an orchestra or will you use a simple sampler? I don't see the ram amounts in your post, but 4gb sounds ok.

For basic 3d stuff, you can use any videocard nowadays. Just using textures and feedback will run fine. You'll run into cpu problems much sooner. Heavy use of (video on) textures does make a difference, though. Hard to say whether Live will continue running when Jitter crashes (when using Max for Live), don't know too much about it. Using Pluggo shouldn't crash it. An extra videocard is not going to make any difference here.

256 mb isn't huge nowadays but it shouldn't be a problem, you can probably make an estimate of the amount of texture memory you need. (keep in mind textures are stored as raw data on a videocard, use .tif file sizes). You mentioned whether the 4gb would be enough, but please note that the 4gb won't influence this. You use the normal ram for your patches, audio, possibly videos. Video ram is used for drawing things, but if you have too little of it you'd need to swap stuff to and from ram.

The cpu speeds don't differ too much. I wouldn't upgrade for this reason. Audio effects generally take up cpu, are the effects you're using intensive? Big (huge) patches with lots of data handling can also get heavy (like sorting stuff every frame, but I don't see many of those patches).

The bigger HD is only required when you're using lots of video. A faster HD is a big help tho, especially access times are important.

Are you planning to turn professional with this setup? You didn't state how much E200 is to you. I'd say spend it, but I'm not a student anymore. 

For basic 3d stuff, you can use any videocard nowadays. Just using textures and feedback will run fine. You'll run into cpu problems much sooner. Heavy use of (video on) textures does make a difference, though. Hard to say whether Live will continue running when Jitter crashes (when using Max for Live), don't know too much about it. Using Pluggo shouldn't crash it. An extra videocard is not going to make any difference here. 

256 mb isn't huge nowadays but it shouldn't be a problem, you can probably make an estimate of the amount of texture memory you need. (keep in mind textures are stored as raw data on a videocard, use .tif file sizes). You mentioned whether the 4gb would be enough, but please note that the 4gb won't influence this. You use the normal ram for your patches, audio, possibly videos. Video ram is used for drawing things, but if you have too little of it you'd need to swap stuff to and from ram. 

Are you planning to turn professional with this setup? You didn't state how much E200 is to you. I'd say spend it, but I'm not a student anymore. 


and my work isnt that proffesional, its just something i enjoy and i know enough people to be able to make some money with it, 150 a night is a lot for me.

The video card that comes with it standard has 512 mb vram, wich it takes from your 4 gb ram amount i'f i'm correct.

And i know i'd be better of buying a dell, but i have awesome parents who will pay me half (if i work for the other half myself)

but then again, i tend not to use a lot of effects and never more than 8 tracks in ableton (less is more, and if you cant do it with less, you lack skill)

and for the jitter stuff as well, i try to make the most out of the basic stuff i set myself to use, i dont plan on doing real time hair rendering or anything, haha

just thought it would be a good idea to have the extra graphics card with its own memory, to split the audio and video tasks basically

new question: this whole gpu stuff, can someone explain that to me real quick?

what i think it is so far: getting your video card to handle video processing tasks, wich would be handled by your ram as well?

I thought video tasks would always be handled by your video card

and will this gpu based advantage stuff only work when a video card has its own build in vram?

(if so, i'd happily pay the extra euros, you never know what kind of crazy stuff you might want to try)

thanks for the elaborate reply bas, en ik dacht dat van der graaff altijd met 1 f was?

oh and didnt mean crashing regarding to the jitter + ableton thing, i meant overloading.

Example: i once made this random drawing patch, and when i made it so that every milisecond a line would occur, my pc would basically overload for 10 minutes or so untill the mouseclick registered and render could be turned of, that sort of stuff, i was kinda hoping it would act like a safety net, the whole second video card thing: jitter messes up --> ableton keeps running, ableton messes up --> jitter keeps running

and of course, max for live could change all this

and my work isnt that proffesional, its just something i enjoy and i know enough people to be able to make some money with it, 150 a night is a lot for me.
The video card that comes with it standard has 512 mb vram, wich it takes from your 4 gb ram amount i'f i'm correct.

what i think it is so far: getting your video card to handle video processing tasks, wich would be handled by your ram as well?
I thought video tasks would always be handled by your video card

thanks for the elaborate reply bas, en ik dacht dat van der graaff altijd met 1 f was?
oh and didnt mean crashing regarding to the jitter + ableton thing, i meant overloading.
Example: i once made this random drawing patch, and when i made it so that every milisecond a line would occur, my pc would basically overload for 10 minutes or so untill the mouseclick registered and render could be turned of, that sort of stuff, i was kinda hoping it would act like a safety net, the whole second video card thing: jitter messes up --> ableton keeps running, ableton messes up --> jitter keeps running

and of course, max for live could change all this


will a second video card give me safety measures against cpu overload stuff, when using jitter and ableton together?

and: making stuff gpu based, what is it and do i need a videocard with its own ram for it?

thomas de rijk wrote on Wed, 02 September 2009 11:18

I could be mistaken, but when the the NVidia 9400+9600 MacBook Pros came out there was not a way to use both video cards, you had to select one for better battery vs. better performance. From what I read, I think this is a firmware thing that could be changed.

Something else to think about, with Snow Leopard now out, Apple has provided developers with tools to make writing software that uses the GPU as a co-processor easier. This doesn't really offer any advantage TODAY, but has the possibility of being used in future software development. Can't say for sure, but the option with both GPUs *may* be a better long term investment.

thomas de rijk wrote on Wed, 02 September 2009 11:18will a second video card give me safety measures against cpu overload stuff, when using jitter and ableton together?

I could be mistaken, but when the the NVidia 9400+9600 MacBook Pros came out there was not a way to use both video cards, you had to select one for better battery vs. better performance.  From what I read, I think this is a firmware thing that could be changed.

Something else to think about, with Snow Leopard now out, Apple has provided developers with tools to make writing software that uses the GPU as a co-processor easier.  This doesn't really offer any advantage TODAY, but has the possibility of being used in future software development.  Can't say for sure, but the option with both GPUs *may* be a better long term investment.


In addition to this, search for gpgpu on wikipedia. That will clear a few things.

GPU cards were intended for image rendering. They are so fast that several non-graphic calculations is being made with them(like complex stochastic equations or physical models).

If you want to use ableton+jitter, the way to go is to write procedural shaders in order to 'throw' the visual processing to the graphic card. However, this approach might be a little tricky: you can process video using jit.gl.slab but if your idea is to create generative geometry you will need to deal with writing your own shaders. Limitations are that you cannot do multipass in jitter(connect several fragment and vertex shaders), geometries shaders are not available(yet) and the texture mapping sometimes is very'tricky'(most of the jitter shaders use Sample2DRect to map textures). There are some 'ghost' audio shaders included with the program but ,so far, it is not clear if audio process using gpu will be developed within max.

Regards the two video cards: the default is the 9400, however, if you are planning to do heavy visual processing i recommend to switch to the 9600M. It uses more energy but really helps the rendering pipeline.

OpenCL is one of the highlights of the new system:

http://images.apple.com/macosx/technology/docs/OpenCL_TB_brief_20090608.pdf

That means that more and more non-graphic processing can be done on the GPU. It would be interesting to see how this affects the way max handles audio signals.

GPU cards were intended for image rendering. They are so fast that several non-graphic calculations is being made with them(like complex stochastic equations or physical models).
If you want to use ableton+jitter, the way to go is to write procedural shaders in order to 'throw' the visual processing to the graphic card. However, this approach might be a little tricky: you can process video using jit.gl.slab but if your idea is to create generative geometry you will need to deal with writing your own shaders. Limitations are that you cannot do multipass in jitter(connect several fragment and vertex shaders), geometries shaders are not available(yet) and the texture mapping sometimes is  very'tricky'(most of the jitter shaders use Sample2DRect to map textures). There are some 'ghost' audio shaders included with the program but ,so far, it is not clear if audio process using gpu will be developed within max.
Regards the two video cards: the default is the 9400, however, if you are planning to do heavy visual processing i recommend to switch to the 9600M. It uses more energy but really helps the rendering pipeline.
OpenCL is one of the highlights of the new system:http://images.apple.com/macosx/technology/docs/OpenCL_TB_brief_20090608.pdf
That means that more and more non-graphic processing can be done on the GPU. It would be interesting to see how this affects the way max handles audio signals.
Emmanuel


i'll look in to those topics, so going with the 9600 instead of the 9400 would be a good choice then huh?

I might just do that, but then again, if that would cost me too much i could just as well go with the second one in the price range

I think all depends if you want to do your own visual stuff or which type of sound calculations you are planning to do. Everything is reduced to consider what you want to do with the hardware.

concerning those audio calculations, my method so far is to split the audio into 3 parts trough filtering, and then binding visual actions to the gain

any other methods i should look at (frequency analysis for example, didnt get the chance to look at it yet)

and i thought these processes wouldnt be so hard on the cpu?

i was more concerned about the visuals being hard on the cpu

and to clear things up, if i buy the one with two video cards, i wont be able to use them both at the same time?

i'm confused about the usefullness of having 2 cards when they cant work together, or will they still be able to run at the same time, just handle different tasks?

and i would like to get into making my own shaders as well, at least i plan to

at a first glance it seems useless to have two video cards, but in fact it is not. Take a look here, it might clarify some of your questions:

http://gizmodo.com/5063832/giz-explains-why-does-the-new-macbook-pro-have-two-graphics-cards

About the data analysis, it depends. You can do very cheap calculations for making interaction between your music and your visuals. In the case of frequency analysis you can use some of the externals to calculate centroid frequencies, pitch envelopes, etc. The point to keep in mind is that you want to have two processes running in parallel. If your plan is to render a non-expensive visualization then is fine. The problem might be if you really want to use complex visual behaviors(for example displacement maps or manipulating complex geometries) and your computer doesn't have enough cpu power to schedule and keep the processes running without stuttering. Jitter is not precisely cheap in cpu usage(at least compared with some other visual software). Are you planning to use ableton in parallel with jitter?, then i would recommend you to get the computer with the 9600M video card and 'throw' all the visual processes that you can to the GPU. Again, depends on what you want to do.

at a first glance it seems useless to have two video cards, but in fact it is not. Take a look here, it might clarify some of your questions:http://gizmodo.com/5063832/giz-explains-why-does-the-new-macbook-pro-have-two-graphics-cards

About the data analysis, it depends. You can do very cheap calculations for making interaction between your music and your visuals. In the case of frequency analysis you can use some of the externals to calculate centroid frequencies, pitch envelopes, etc. The point to keep in mind is that you want to have two processes running in parallel. If your plan is to render a non-expensive visualization then is fine. The problem might be if you really want to use complex visual behaviors(for example displacement maps or manipulating complex geometries) and your computer doesn't have enough cpu power to schedule and keep the processes running without stuttering. Jitter is not precisely cheap in cpu usage(at least compared with some other visual software). Are you planning to use ableton in parallel with jitter?, then i would recommend you to get the computer with the 9600M video card and 'throw' all the visual processes that you can to the GPU. Again, depends on what you want to do.
Hope it helps!


yeah i figured that would be the best choice, and yes i would be running ableton and max for live with jitter patches in it

thanks for all the advise people, really helpfull indeed

macbook pro questions