Fastest card for DTP in OS X (NOT gaming) ?
Have there been any REAL-LIFE application tests between various ATI and nVidia GPUs in how they handle graphics drawing/redrawing speed in OS X GXX/DTP apps (Photoshop, Freehand, InDesign)?
I'm interested in comparisons that show how fast a card is in OS X:
- Photoshop, Freehand, Indesign, etc draw speed
- graphical glitches or issues (if any)
- CPU usage differences when drawing on screen (if any)?
I'm NOT interested in 3D game speed, artificial benchmarks (i.e. from benchmarking apps) or GPU specification comparisons.
Does anybody know of "2D" graphics/DTP tests comparing different cards? ("2D" in quotation marks due to how Quartz Extreme works).
regards,
Halcyon
I'm interested in comparisons that show how fast a card is in OS X:
- Photoshop, Freehand, Indesign, etc draw speed
- graphical glitches or issues (if any)
- CPU usage differences when drawing on screen (if any)?
I'm NOT interested in 3D game speed, artificial benchmarks (i.e. from benchmarking apps) or GPU specification comparisons.
Does anybody know of "2D" graphics/DTP tests comparing different cards? ("2D" in quotation marks due to how Quartz Extreme works).
regards,
Halcyon
Comments
These are good questions as I am interested in these Apps as well, I`ll dig around my usual sites today and see what I can bring up and post back here later on today if no one has beat me to it.
I personally didn't notice any difference in OS X and InDesign. Scrolling around was still jerky, with screen redraws leaving white areas everywhere.
Xbench reported as small increase in processing power (in fact there were small increases across the board - I guess the GPU was doing it's job and freeing up the CPU), but in the real world I think you'd be pushed to tell the difference...
If you find any benchmarks, please do report them here.
If anybody has a chance to test even an older ATI card (say Rage 128 Pro) against a newer ATI or nVidia card with real-life apps, I'd really appreciate it.
I only have access to a single MacOS X machine right now and even that is a laptop. So I can't change cards myself
My current working hypothesis is that CPU is still very much the bottle neck in many display related tasks, even with a relatively high speed display card.
However, I wish there was at some speed benefit from the brand new GPUs.
I don't game so I can't justify the purchase of a Radeon 9800 Mac edition, unless it speeds up all grahpics related tasks in real-life considerably.
cheers,
Halcyon
Quartz Extreme. Mac OS X is really heavy in its UI and the more a GPU can off load the CPU from doing UI rendering the better. Using really large screens (like 2x 1600x1200) will require A LOT of VRAM for doing the compositing of Quartz Extreme.
So.. I would guess that the Radeon 9800 Pro with 128 MB VRAM in 8x AGP-flavour in the new G5 would be the fastest graphics card for 2D apps like PS, Ill, InD and so forth.
However, theory does not a real world application speed make.
Any Radeon up to Radeon 8500/9000 (64 Mb) I've seen is dog slow in redraws and rendering extensive graphics in OS X. Even with all the shadows/opacities/dock/candy turned off.
Isn't there any way to speed up these operations?
Something like scrolling in Photoshop, moving a full window or instructing a redraw in InDesign is painfully slow.
Hell, even moving a big Safari or Finder window causes CPU usage to jump to near 100%. That's a blit operation on other operating systems and takes less than 3% of cpu time on most operating systems.
Isn't there a way to speed this up other than waiting for 3 GHz CPUs?
Any practical tips that I could use?
Any tip on a graphic card that truly is faster than the competition in tasks like above?
And of course there is still the font-problem. Using much text in a document slows your layout-scrolling down a lot. So me hopes Fontbook will change this too.
amarone
The built-in card will be more than enough
Originally posted by halcyon
Hell, even moving a big Safari or Finder window causes CPU usage to jump to near 100%. That's a blit operation on other operating systems and takes less than 3% of cpu time on most operating systems.
Hmm, here on my old Dell (700Mhz) laptop, moving an IE window causes the CPU usage to shoot through the roof instantly. The window even gets torn because the CPU cannot keep up.
This might not be the case with a super-modern gfx card on a 3Ghz P4, but even then, I somehow doubt the 3%.
My Ti/400 is certainly not worse than the Dell, albeit not much better either (less torn window edges).
[edit]
Oh yea, there was one thing... my wallet was lighter!
[/edit]
Originally posted by halcyon
Have there been any REAL-LIFE application tests between various ATI and nVidia GPUs in how they handle graphics drawing/redrawing speed in OS X GXX/DTP apps (Photoshop, Freehand, InDesign)?
I'm interested in comparisons that show how fast a card is in OS X:
- Photoshop, Freehand, Indesign, etc draw speed
- graphical glitches or issues (if any)
- CPU usage differences when drawing on screen (if any)?
I'm NOT interested in 3D game speed, artificial benchmarks (i.e. from benchmarking apps) or GPU specification comparisons.
Does anybody know of "2D" graphics/DTP tests comparing different cards? ("2D" in quotation marks due to how Quartz Extreme works).
regards,
Halcyon
Any new card is enough for 2 D applications. There is differences in term of speed, but these differences do not interest anymore the benchmarkers.
The main difference, you will see is the quality. ATI used to be better for this one, but if my memory is correct, the lattest generation of nvidia cards are very near.
maybe ill even do some benchmarks now...
-ST
have you had time to try out your R9800?
Any comments? Even subjective measures of speed differences, if any?
Thanks!
you should look at the CPU utilisation rate when you move windows.
Not a pretty sight.
Yes, it's fast on a 900Mhz CPU, but it should not take 80% + of the CPU time like it does.
I can even crash the latest Panter build Finder just by moving and resizing finder windows for 30 secs.
That's why I'm looking for more speed with less cpu hit.
Originally posted by halcyon
ryaxnb,
you should look at the CPU utilisation rate when you move windows.
Not a pretty sight.
Yes, it's fast on a 900Mhz CPU, but it should not take 80% + of the CPU time like it does.
I can even crash the latest Panter build Finder just by moving and resizing finder windows for 30 secs.
That's why I'm looking for more speed with less cpu hit.
I just tested it on my G4 Dual 450 with an ATI Radeon 8500 AGP with 64 MB:
No more than 20% CPU utilisation when moving Finder windows !
ATI is well known for good 2D performance since their first VGA cards nearly 15 years ago ! And also for high picture/signal quality !
Alex.
I have an AMD 1800 512M 2100 DDR Stupid ATI Rage card at work and a AMD 2500+ Barton 3200 DDR Geforce4Ti 4400 128M at home. Both running Win2k. And both will use 100% CPU instantly when moving windows around fast. Same on a PII 450.
I think it is how the OS works. It gives #1 CPU priority to moving windows.
So I wouldn't use this as a performance measure. However opening a 200M+ photoshop file zoom in and drag around and see if you get many redraws. This is a due to CPU and video card performance I think.