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by m-schuetz9 hours ago |
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upvoteby afandian9 hours ago|
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I had a relatively recent graphics card (5 years old perhaps?). I don't care about 3D or games, or whatever.

So I was sad not to be able to run a text editor (let's be honest, Zed is nice but it's just displaying text). And somehow the non-accelerated version is eating 24 cores. Just for text.

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/discussions/23623

I ended up buying a new graphics card in the end.

I just wish everyone could get along somehow.

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upvoteby ronsor8 hours ago|
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The fact that we need advanced GPU acceleration for a text editor is concerning.
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upvoteby jsheard6 hours ago|
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Such is life when built-in laptop displays are now pushing a billion pixels per second, rendering anything on the CPU adds up fast.

Sublime Text spent over a decade tuning their CPU renderer and it still didn't cut it at high resolutions.

https://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/hardware-accelerat...

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upvoteby the84725 hours ago|
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Most of the pixels don't change every second though. Compositors do have damage tracking APIs, so you only need to render that which changed. Scrolling can be mostly offset transforms (browsers do that, they'd be unbearably slow otherwise).
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upvoteby simonask2 hours ago|
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That’s not the slow part. The slow part is moving any data at all to the GPU - doesn’t super matter if it’s a megabyte or a kilobyte. And you need it there anyway, because that’s what the display is attached to.

Now, the situation is that your display is directly attached to a humongously overpowered beefcake of a coprocessor (the GPU), which is hyper-optimized for calculating pixel stuff, and it can do it orders of magnitude faster than you can tell it manually how to update even a single pixel.

Not using it is silly when you look at it that way.

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upvoteby Dylan1680723 minutes ago|
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Sure, use it. But it very much shouldn't be needed, and if there's a bug keeping you from using it your performance outside video games should still be fine. Your average new frame only changes a couple pixels, and a CPU can copy rectangles at full memory speed.
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upvoteby 7 hours ago|
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deleted
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upvoteby ianlevesque8 hours ago|
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Text editor developers get bored too!
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upvoteby hyperman19 hours ago|
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No. I remember a phone app ( Whatsapp?) doggedly supporting every godforsaken phone, even the nokias with the zillion incompatible Java versions. A developer should go where the customers are.

What does help is an industry accepted benchmark, easily ran by everyone. I remember browser css being all over the place, until that whatsitsname benchmark (with the smiley face) demonstrated which emperors had no clothes. Everyone could surf to the test and check how well their favorite browser did. Scores went up quickly, and today, css is in a lot better shape.

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upvoteby aeldidi8 hours ago|
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The Acid2 test is the benchmark you’re thinking of, for anyone not aware: acid2.acidtests.org
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upvoteby Octoth0rpe9 hours ago|
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> we should more readily abandon GPU vendors

This was so much more practical before the market coalesced to just 3 players. Matrox, it's time for your comeback arc! and maybe a desktop pcie packaging for mali?

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upvoteby dyingkneepad4 hours ago|
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The market is not just 3 players. These days we have these things called smartphones, and they all include a variety of different graphics cards on them. And even more devices than just those include decently powerful GPUs as well. If you look at the Contributors section of the extension in the post, and look at all the companies involved, you'll have a better idea.
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upvoteby Animats5 hours ago|
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NVidia says no new gamer GPUs in 2026, and increasing prices through 2030. They're too focused on enterprise AI machines.
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