4 ms·

I'm wondering whether this live blur effect might have played a big part here. Since its full screen, macOS doesnt need to render all these fancy effects. I'd l

I'm wondering whether this live blur effect might have played a big part here. Since its full screen, macOS doesnt need to render all these fancy effects. I'd like to see similar tests with live blur turned off.

amelius 9y ago
Are these effects active also in "steady state use"?
- sz4kerto 9y ago
  Normally yes -- a bit similar to e.g. when a game is displaying a seemingly 'static' image (when you don't move your character), then the GPU is still rendering at X frame/second.
  - amelius 9y ago
    Yikes, that would indeed be the first thing to fix on a battery-powered platform then.
  - captainmuon 9y ago
    What?! That sounds like something I would write as an amateur. I thought that modern graphics systems would be smart enough to only render when the screen has actually changed. I.e. a tick still comes at 1/60 times a second, and it checks if a region is dirty, but the whole copying of textures and re-compositing (which practically doesn't take time - or rather fixed time - and runs on the GPU, but costs power) is only invoked when something is dirty. Actually, I remember reading something that Windows doesn't do any blitting / buffer swapping if you just leave it idle and no updates happen on screen. However, there are many ways to throw this off and force drawing every frame if you are not careful.
LeoNatan25 9y ago
Of course. If you disable it in settings, you should see a noticeable boost in batter life (~1–1.5 hours in my testing).
- miheermunjal 9y ago
  forgive my ignorance here (new to Mac), but which setting is this specifically?
  - LeoNatan25 9y ago
    In System Preferences, under Accessibility -> Display, there are two settings of interest: “Reduce motion” and “Reduce transparency”. The latter is the more important.
  - jibreel 9y ago
    try in settings->Accessibility->Reduce transparency. this will also make the OS more responsive (minimizing, switching windows....)
- ajkblue 9y ago
  I wonder if turning off the blur/transparency effects in iOS results in any substantial battery difference...
  - LeoNatan25 9y ago
    It does, yes, but less substantial than on Mac, due to tighter vertical integration between software and hardware.
- ritchiea 9y ago
  Can you be more specific? What exactly do I need to disable to see a battery life boost?
  - LeoNatan25 9y ago
    It's right there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14948178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14948178
  - joshvm 9y ago
    You need to enable the linked options which in turn disable some visual effects.

amelius 9y ago

Are these effects active also in "steady state use"?

sz4kerto 9y ago
Normally yes -- a bit similar to e.g. when a game is displaying a seemingly 'static' image (when you don't move your character), then the GPU is still rendering at X frame/second.
- amelius 9y ago
  Yikes, that would indeed be the first thing to fix on a battery-powered platform then.
- captainmuon 9y ago
  What?! That sounds like something I would write as an amateur. I thought that modern graphics systems would be smart enough to only render when the screen has actually changed. I.e. a tick still comes at 1/60 times a second, and it checks if a region is dirty, but the whole copying of textures and re-compositing (which practically doesn't take time - or rather fixed time - and runs on the GPU, but costs power) is only invoked when something is dirty. Actually, I remember reading something that Windows doesn't do any blitting / buffer swapping if you just leave it idle and no updates happen on screen. However, there are many ways to throw this off and force drawing every frame if you are not careful.

LeoNatan25 9y ago

Of course. If you disable it in settings, you should see a noticeable boost in batter life (~1–1.5 hours in my testing).

miheermunjal 9y ago
forgive my ignorance here (new to Mac), but which setting is this specifically?
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  In System Preferences, under Accessibility -> Display, there are two settings of interest: “Reduce motion” and “Reduce transparency”. The latter is the more important.
- jibreel 9y ago
  try in settings->Accessibility->Reduce transparency. this will also make the OS more responsive (minimizing, switching windows....)
ajkblue 9y ago
I wonder if turning off the blur/transparency effects in iOS results in any substantial battery difference...
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  It does, yes, but less substantial than on Mac, due to tighter vertical integration between software and hardware.
ritchiea 9y ago
Can you be more specific? What exactly do I need to disable to see a battery life boost?
- LeoNatan25 9y ago
  It's right there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14948178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14948178
- joshvm 9y ago
  You need to enable the linked options which in turn disable some visual effects.