QUARTZ HARDWARE ACCEL!! - Page 5

[quote]
Wrong attitude and bad business practices is not thee way to make a company with 5% marketshare grow. In fact, its quite foolish. If 10.2 speeds the OS up to the level of OS9 that would be good enough for most people. If having a better graphics card makes it even faster thats OK. But 10.2 should be a robust OS that recent models can use efficiently.
<hr></blockquote>

Cute.

You don't happen to have an MBA do you? It would explain a lot...

Gee... Apple is a hardware company. How is advancing your OS on cutting-edge hardware going to hurt you? The cost of performance is new hardware, thus Apple sells more machines! (Its not like we won't buy them... cause you KNOW we will. <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> )

And don't start on Apple's business practices. Compared to M$, Apple is MUCH better w.r.t philosophy. Anyhow, Apple still cranks out the best OS/hardware integrated commercial computers out there. Your machine is a luxury device therefore is has luxury prices.

And while you are erroneously complaining, recall that Apple price/performace ratios are better now than they have been in a long time. I think I recall Steve saying about the $1,800 iMac G4, (not exact quote) "This machine would have run you $4,500 half a year ago."
Yes there are lots of factors in there (such as the fact that the REASON it was $4500 worth of equipment 6 months ago was because of Apple's jacked up prices in the first place.) But he has a good point. Macs are not the wastes of money they used to be. Period.

BTW, steve666, how exactly do you consider targeting old, aging computers with a bleeding edge OS good business practice? How is it the wrong attitude? How is it foolish? How is costly development for legacy systems going to pay for itself without new hardware sales? How is catering to you, the I-don't-want-to-buy-a-better-computer folk, going to gain them marketshare? You are already stading in their small percentage...

I am sorry. :confused: You are either shortsighted and angry cause you have an old computer (join the club on the old computer bit), or you just don't understand the not-so-subtle points involved in making money as a business, I guess... but which?

Didn't mean this as a flame, but seriously, WTF?

Ooo Ooo

Sorry for the dblpost, but I forgot to address this one...

[quote]
But 10.2 should be a robust OS that recent models can use efficiently.
<hr></blockquote>

Really? What makes you think that?

Just where was there evidence that it wasn't? Aren't we jumping the gun here steve? Have you even USED 9.2 yourself yet? Not that I have, but I have been keeping myself as informed as possible, which includes me reading such things as "JAG SCREAMS!"

Is naysaying without grounds your hobby?

&gt;BTW, steve666, how exactly do you consider targeting old, aging computers with a bleeding edge OS good business practice? How is it the wrong attitude? How is it foolish? How is costly development for legacy systems going to pay for itself without new hardware sales? How is catering to you, the I-don't-want-to-buy-a-better-computer folk, going to gain them marketshare? You are already stading in their small percentage...
I am sorry. You are either shortsighted and angry cause you have an old computer (join the club on the old computer bit), or you just don't understand the not-so-subtle points involved in making money as a business, I guess... but which?
Didn't mean this as a flame, but seriously, WTF?&lt;

My computer is a year old. Even Microbloat doesn't require hardware improvememnts that fast, and if they did there are cheap cards out there for PC users, but not for mac users. Their is a niche of mac users, mostly yuppies, with the dough to keep on buying new machines or overpriced graphics cards, but the market Apple has been trying to target for the last few years are not in this camp. I am happy that Apple has found a way to speed up the new OS. I am not happy that my video card will not be fully supported. If Apple sold me the Nvidia Geforce2MX for $100, I would be happy. Alienating customers is NOT good business practice-you don't need an MBA to know that.........................

[quote]Originally posted by Aslan:
<strong>Ooo Ooo

Sorry for the dblpost, but I forgot to address this one...



Really? What makes you think that?

Just where was there evidence that it wasn't? Aren't we jumping the gun here steve? Have you even USED 9.2 yourself yet? Not that I have, but I have been keeping myself as informed as possible, which includes me reading such things as "JAG SCREAMS!"

Is naysaying without grounds your hobby?</strong><hr></blockquote>

I'm using 9.2 right now-although i assume you made a typo. Perhaps you should remove yourlips from Steve Jobs' butt while you type.

[quote]Originally posted by steve666:
<strong>

I'm using 9.2 right now-although i assume you made a typo. Perhaps you should remove yourlips from Steve Jobs' butt while you type.

</strong><hr></blockquote>

Well, he's right, jag-wire is very fast.

You all still buying macs? Why? They took your money and gave you crap beta software. Then nailed for the final version which is beta quality. Now they drop support for 2 month old hardware? When will you learn?

[ 05-11-2002: Message edited by: scott_h_phd ]</p>

its the hardware being unable to support the future, not the future dropping support for the hardware.

todays 2 month old hardware is NOT unsupported in Jag-wire!

[quote]Originally posted by r-0X#Zapchud:
<strong>its the hardware being unable to support the future, not the future dropping support for the hardware.

todays 2 month old hardware is NOT unsupported in Jag-wire!</strong><hr></blockquote>

The company unable (not willing) to support the hardware. Simple.

Back to troll, Scott?

[quote]Originally posted by scott_h_phd:
<strong>You all still buying macs? Why? They took your money and gave you crap beta software. Then nailed for the final version which is beta quality. Now they drop support for 2 month old hardware? When will you learn?

[ 05-11-2002: Message edited by: scott_h_phd ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
You troll like a girl.

I'm with scott_h_phd (Congrats on the doctorate, by the way) on this one.

I wonder what percentage of Mac owners have a computer with a Quartz Extreme supported video card? I wonder what that percentage will be, say, twelve months after the release of Jaguar?

It's a nice feature for future users, for sure, but it's a bit of a slap in the face for current Mac users, even if there is some improvement in other aspects of the performance.

[ 05-11-2002: Message edited by: Belle ]</p>

Would you prefer that they just axed the technology altogether? Or mothballed it for another 5 years (the average lifetime of a Mac) so that Apple could be 3 years behind MS, failing to exploit their own hardware to its fullest capacity, and all so that some people wouldn't feel left behind?

Did anyone here feel left behind when Apple adopted AltiVec?

[quote]Originally posted by Belle:
<strong>It's a nice feature for future users, for sure, but it's a bit of a slap in the face for current Mac users...</strong><hr></blockquote>

You mean like the G4 with Velocity Engine was?

[ 05-11-2002: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:
<strong>Would you prefer that they just axed the technology altogether? Or mothballed it for another 5 years (the average lifetime of a Mac) so that Apple could be 3 years behind MS, failing to exploit their own hardware to its fullest capacity, and all so that some people wouldn't feel left behind?

Did anyone here feel left behind when Apple adopted AltiVec?</strong><hr></blockquote>
I knew Amorph would make a hard taskmaster when he became an administrator!
No, but surely some of the performance tweaks could be implemented on other cards which support OpenGL?
[quote]Originally posted by BuonRotto:
<strong>You mean like the G4 with Velocity Engine was?</strong><hr></blockquote>
My card supports OpenGL, though.

While I'm being a bit of an antagonist (Not deliberately, obviously), it's just that it seems probable that given the performance enhancements in Quartz Extreme have been gained using OpenGL, even a couple of the features must offer performance gains on lesser graphics hardware.

[ 05-11-2002: Message edited by: Belle ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Belle:
<strong>
My card supports OpenGL, though.

[ 05-11-2002: Message edited by: Belle ]</strong><hr></blockquote>

Whew! We're all posting at the same time. Anyway, the question is does it support this use of openGL [i]adequately[i/]. That is, could it be a case of putting 10 lbs. of you-know-what in a 5 lb. bag? Hence I would think of the VRAM "recommendation." At some point I imagine that the CPU would do a faster, more efficient job of rendering all this stuff than the GPU would. It depends on what each is and the bandwidth for each. They obviously can both handle the screen drawing, the fact that they even made QE proves that. But which approach produces the better, faster, more responsive display on which systems? I think you could force-feed QE into any GPU that handles OpenGL, but would it be worth the trouble? I don't know for sure obviously, but I have seen the content these things are dealing with. Perhaps I am being naive to think that Apple might have a better idea than I do.

I agree with your last edit, Belle. If there is some advantage, then they should milk it. I guess it's a matter of whether you believe they can, and whether they would if they could. It's trying to get into their heads a bit too much IMO and at that point it becomes an emotional argument.

[ 05-11-2002: Message edited by: BuonRotto ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by BuonRotto:
<strong>I think you could force-feed QE into any GPU that handles OpenGL, but would it be worth the trouble? I don't know for sure obviously, but I have seen the content these things are dealing with. Perhaps I am being naive to think that Apple might have a better idea than I do.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There are most certainly parts of Quartz Extreme that could be implemented on lesser cards and offer improvements.

I wouldn't question Apple's technical abilities, just the decision making process that decided not to take the time to offer the performance gains in "old" machines.

I'm thinking we need to stop cross-posting, BuonRotto.

Seeing as I fall into the category of top-of-the-line hardware (PBG4 500) now unsupported by Quartz Extreme, (can we just call it QuartzGL from now on?) i'm a bit miffed at the lack of support for my card.

However, it's my understanding (having read this on many forums and in some dev notes which I will be sure to find and reference here) that the QuartzGL acceleration leverages the T&L unit of the GPU in lowest levels- thereby rendering cards without a hardware T&L unit useless. The Rev. B PowerBooks with the 16 MB RADEON mobility chips have the T& L unit, therefore they will benefit from QGL, however not optimally, as the 32 MB is needed to keep all the Aqua textures in memory. Or so my understanding goes.

Currently, the situation seems to be a win-lose situation for people with Rage 128s: Although there will be a speed boost in the short term due to the other optimizations of Jaguar, long term additions of more eye candy (as the current HW offerings all will support QGL) will slow our legacy machines to a crawl.

If only laptop video cards were upgradable..... <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />


There is the possibility that Apple could, eventually support the Rage 128: it's just that they're delaying working on that to get QGL out the door for a September release. That'd be my hope.

Although, if you really think about it, by the time Jaguar comes out, my computer will be 2 years old.. by the next point release of OS X (when more eye candy would potentially be added, slowing computers like mine to a crawl), it should be time to upgrade, anyway.


I think we were spoiled for way too long with old hardware being sufficient to run the latest OS releases with 9.x. I mean, the 6400/180 I bought in 8th grade would run 9.2 pretty well... heh.

I see that i've begun to ramble. Apologies.

Jonathan, you have it all wrong.
From <a href="http://www.xlr8yourmac.com" target="_blank">www.xlr8yourmac.com</a>

[quote]And the lack of QE Rage128 AGP support was not an arbitrary decision. (The Rage128 chip does not support texture sizes that are not a power of 2. That's why there's no QE support for the Rage128/Rage128 Mobility chips.)
<hr></blockquote>

32MB video memory is recommended, but I pose that if one limits oneself to 16bit color depth and lower resolutions, one could get by with 16MB video memory. The only 16MB chipset that supports Quartz Extreme is the Radeon Mobility chipset found on the Winter 2001 PowerBooks and Summer 2002 iBooks.

[ 05-11-2002: Message edited by: Nostradamus ]</p>

Well, jonathan knows more than I certainly do about why QE is at work on some chips and not others. I'm ignorant about what's going on down there in technical terms. Now, this could be just version 1 of QE, and that a major revision in 2003 will leverage more, uh, "standard" or rather common OpenGL implementations, thus bringing at least some benefit to the Rage 128 crowd. Having said that, I doubt they'll go to the trouble of getting Rage IIs to support QE.

But it's all gravy IMO. To me, the most frustrating aspect of OS X, where the issue about performance pops up the most isn't in the system itself, it's in these crappy "dirty" Carbon ports. If these get more polished both inside and out (and this obviously applies to the Finder), I think everyone's OS X experience will be a lot more pleasurable regardless of whether the screen is being drawn by the GPU or the CPU. These poor apps are the weakest part of the chain in terms of the apparent performance of the OS. Fix them and you've fixed more than QE can ever fix.

[quote]Originally posted by Belle:
<strong>
There are most certainly parts of Quartz Extreme that could be implemented on lesser cards and offer improvements.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Not according to, for example, Arshad from ATi.

The main issue seems to be how efficiently the card can handle gigantic textures of arbitrary size (i.e., windows). Textures in video games are sized and compressed and optimized for high performance, but on-screen windows obviously cannot be. Games also break things down into lots of polygons, exploiting the card's processing power, but a window has a grand total of one polygon, mooting the GPU's pipeline for the most part.

[the following paragraph has been corrected]

Nostradamus just noted a flaw with the Rage 128, in that it requires textures to be sized in powers of two, with height equal to width, but Programmer has noted that although there would be a penalty associated with pulling a lot of extra data across the bus, it could still be easily clipped and displayed. The real problem seems to be that the Rage 128, despite being an AGP card/chipset, doesn't actually support AGP's ability to read directly from system RAM. Whoops. (T&L and programmability have been ruled out as reasons.)

I'm going to note, again, that what Apple ended up announcing is better then the graphics-knowledgeable people here thought they could offer. It would sure be nice if it worked on my friend's original iMac, but Arshad said that Apple and ATi (and probably nVIDIA, but he's not going to mention them) tried getting QE to work on things like PCI video cards, and it sucked. It works on everything they could get it to work on. Given the brute-force nature of the problem (huge textures of arbitrary size) I can't imagine where support for older cards will come from. The next step, I suppose, will be turning some or all of the actual in-window compositing that Quartz does over to the GPU, but that will shut out even more cards - then, programmability becomes a real issue.

[quote]
Originally posted by BuonRotto:

<strong>But it's all gravy IMO. To me, the most frustrating aspect of OS X, where the issue about performance pops up the most isn't in the system itself, it's in these crappy "dirty" Carbon ports. If these get more polished both inside and out (and this obviously applies to the Finder), I think everyone's OS X experience will be a lot more pleasurable regardless of whether the screen is being drawn by the GPU or the CPU. These poor apps are the weakest part of the chain in terms of the apparent performance of the OS. Fix them and you've fixed more than QE can ever fix. </strong><hr></blockquote>

Amen.

But how much do you want to bet that Microsoft will ever clean up Office X?

[ 05-11-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]

[ 05-11-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]

[ 05-11-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by Jonathan:
<strong>I think we were spoiled for way too long with old hardware being sufficient to run the latest OS releases with 9.x. I mean, the 6400/180 I bought in 8th grade would run 9.2 pretty well... heh.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I hope we strike a plateau like that again soon in terms of OS requirements. I have a G4/400 tower. I can upgrade my video card for 10.2 but I'd really like to go to a new rig I'm just waiting for the Hardware to get a bit ahead of the OS. I know Apple needs to have us replacing our hardware from time to time but I cant afford to replace every 18 months.
Now I'm not griping about X. Before I got X I was ready to ditch the Mac. My machine crashed several times a day (hardly appropriate for a $3000 investment). My Mac is a new Mac, a better Mac by and large, with X.

[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:
<strong>Would you prefer that they just axed the technology altogether? Or mothballed it for another 5 years (the average lifetime of a Mac) so that Apple could be 3 years behind MS, failing to exploit their own hardware to its fullest capacity, and all so that some people wouldn't feel left behind?

Did anyone here feel left behind when Apple adopted AltiVec?</strong><hr></blockquote>

All they have to do is make an inexpensive graphics card available. $100 for one of their Nvidia cards. That would placate most folks-me included, as long as 10.2 is available for an upgrade price for those who purchased 10.1 and for those who purchased machines with 10.1 on it.............................

[quote]Originally posted by Nostradamus:
<strong>Jonathan, you have it all wrong.
From <a href="http://www.xlr8yourmac.com" target="_blank">www.xlr8yourmac.com</a>



32MB video memory is recommended, but I pose that if one limits oneself to 16bit color depth and lower resolutions, one could get by with 16MB video memory. The only 16MB chipset that supports Quartz Extreme is the Radeon Mobility chipset found on the Winter 2001 PowerBooks and Summer 2002 iBooks.

[ 05-11-2002: Message edited by: Nostradamus ]</strong><hr></blockquote>

Ugh, don't I feel dumb now?

I had read in many places (Ars, NN) and heard from devs at WWDC that the general consensus for the lack of Rage128 support was the lack of a T&L unit... which, given the amount of translucency, shadow, and lighting effects in Aqua, made a heck of a lot of sense to me...

damn..

[quote]Originally posted by Jonathan:
<strong>The Rev. B PowerBooks with the 16 MB RADEON mobility chips have the T& L unit, therefore they will benefit from QGL, however not optimally, as the 32 MB is needed to keep all the Aqua textures in memory. Or so my understanding goes.</strong><hr></blockquote>

the Radeon mobility 16MB doesn't have a hardware T&L unit. it was one of the major dissapointments with that chipset that the 7500 mobility made up for

I don't think Quartz Extreme is dependant on the T&L unit, at least not according to Arshad over at the xlr8yourmac bbs.

check this out:

<a href="http://msbetas.net/longhorn/" target="_blank">http://msbetas.net/longhorn/</a>

you can find requirements for longhorn's DX9 accelerated UI. Notice it says just the UI needs a bandwidth of 0.93 GB/s for the UI alone. This is AGP4x, and Apple will do it with AGP2x.

Now of course people will think Apple could have came up with a miracle and make it work on RagePros with 2MB or RAM. Those people will whine no matter what.

[quote]Originally posted by SYN:
<strong>you can find requirements for longhorn's DX9 accelerated UI. Notice it says just the UI needs a bandwidth of 0.93 GB/s for the UI alone. This is AGP4x, and Apple will do it with AGP2x.

Now of course people will think Apple could have came up with a miracle and make it work on RagePros with 2MB or RAM. Those people will whine no matter what.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Heh, that's the politician's argument - comparing this governments achievements with that of the last, rather than looking at what good the current government has done.

I admit I'm not as knowledgeable about the engineering required to implement features as I'd like to be, but I know without a doubt that it is possible to implement methods to accelerate Quartz in much weaker hardware than required by QE, though many of the very useful brute force shifting methods would be unavailable.

I understand that Apple has to make a business decision and ensure that any future hardware fully supports the new technology, but I don't like the attitude that current hardware should just be neglected. Products I can buy now won't work with Quartz Extreme.

belle, have you read reports of 10.2 on G4s with Rage128s? Even the Yikes seem to get a *major* speed boost. So I suggest not to bash Apple before 10.2 ships, and you're certain it doesn't help on non agp/ radeon/gf systems.

In the words of MacBidouille's Webmaster:

"If the limitation to geforce/radeon agp class system is an arbitrary one on Apple's part, then rest assured, we will find a way to enable it on other systems"

This from a guy who has repeatedly hacked Apple's DVD player to run on non supported drives (external), and who partnered with a french reseller to sell flashed gf2mxs.

Relax

BTW, you say you know for a fact lesser hardware can manage such acceleration, would you care to elaborate on the issue?

[quote]Originally posted by SYN:
<strong>belle, have you read reports of 10.2 on G4s with Rage128s? Even the Yikes seem to get a *major* speed boost. So I suggest not to bash Apple before 10.2 ships, and you're certain it doesn't help on non agp/ radeon/gf systems.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm not bashing it! I'm questioning Apple's decision making policy that seems to neglect current owners. I'm not convinced by the reports of improvements. For most people, the multi-threaded Finder will make OS X seem like it's flying. Try resizing a window without QE and see how that works out.
[quote]<strong>In the words of MacBidouille's Webmaster:

"If the limitation to geforce/radeon agp class system is an arbitrary one on Apple's part, then rest assured, we will find a way to enable it on other systems"</strong><hr></blockquote>
Wouldn't help. Apple has developed Quartz Extreme to take advantage of the features offered by those cards. It hasn't developed any kind of hardware acceleration for "older" cards. It's that decision that is irksome, not that QE as it stands doesn't work with lesser cards.
[quote]<strong>BTW, you say you know for a fact lesser hardware can manage such acceleration, would you care to elaborate on the issue?</strong><hr></blockquote>
I'm working on the math. Now if someone else can produce the code...

[quote] scott_smarty_pants said:
The company unable (not willing) to support the hardware. Simple. <hr></blockquote>

Well, for all the work, the PhD didn't seem to win you much.

Not willing? Good thing you did your research.... Old hardware will not support QE because AGPx2 write directly to memory. It has nothing to do with willingness. Besides, if I were Apple (which I'm not) I wouldn't devote lots of resources to keep a bunch of people with old hardware happy when the whole point of developing a modern operation system is utilizing modern (read AGP) hardware. Apple isn't trying to screw you, they are just busy making the future better than today for us users. I can't hold grudges for that.

Moral: Wait before buying machines as long as possible, and don't complain when you jump the gun and end up missing.

BTW, just because Jaguar IS fast on all machines (not just QE enabled machines) doesn't mean I am sucking Steve's ass. Steve does plenty of shite to piss me off too, I just think he has much more of a clue of where Apple is and where it should go than you do (address to those (ahemsteve) that are constantly biting ass to bite ass).
BTW, personal attacks != valid arguments, personal attacks == whining/lackOfArgument.

[quote] SYN said:
"If the limitation to geforce/radeon agp class system is an arbitrary one on Apple's part, then rest assured, we will find a way to enable it on other systems"

This from a guy who has repeatedly hacked Apple's DVD player to run on non supported drives (external), and who partnered with a french reseller to sell flashed gf2mxs.

Relax <hr></blockquote>

Hmm... Well.. I am sorta skeptical there if only because of the amount of naysaying from other people in the know. If this is the case then that is really really cool. We have to keep these crazy hacker types busy somehow....

Wait,

Apple comes up with a technology that some of its computers can use now. Unfortunatly it is so cutting edge that not all of equipment can handle it.

Would you rather they wait a year to release it?

This is the same thing as them releasing the Velocity Engine. People with G3s can't piss and moan because their G3 doesn't have Velocity Engine.

The new version of OS X will run just fine on any machine it runs on now. It will probably be faster too. This is a feature that some machines are capable of using. Deal with it!

Side note: My machine won't be able to use it. I'm still happy to see it there!

[quote]Originally posted by Tomahawk:
<strong>Wait,

Apple comes up with a technology that some of its computers can use now. Unfortunatly it is so cutting edge that not all of equipment can handle it.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Wait, are you talking about OS X or Quartz Extreme?