Enabling Quartz 2-D Extreme in Tiger
All of you folks with a Radeon 9600 or better, or nVidia 5200 go or better, don't forget to turn on Quartz 2-D Extreme. The following is copied from John Siracusa's fantastic Tiger review on Ars Technica:
Right click this link to download, unzip and run the Quartz Debug application at
http://www.johnnylundy.com/Quartz%20Debug.zip
Choose "Enable Quartz 2-D Extreme" from the menu and leave Quartz Debug open. RE-LAUNCH all apps that you want to take advantage of it.
I will put this post in a sticky at the top of Mac OS.
Right click this link to download, unzip and run the Quartz Debug application at
http://www.johnnylundy.com/Quartz%20Debug.zip
Choose "Enable Quartz 2-D Extreme" from the menu and leave Quartz Debug open. RE-LAUNCH all apps that you want to take advantage of it.
I will put this post in a sticky at the top of Mac OS.
Comments
Note too that there's very likely a reason why Apple deemed Q2DE not quite ready for prime time in 10.4.0. That said, enjoy!
Originally posted by Algol
It doesn't make sense to me why apple would have it turned off sense it should increase performance of the OS on computer with newer GPUs.
It's probably buggy.
http://www.neeyik.info/3dspecs/
or Apple just turn it off to avoid clash with low-end graphic cards?
Originally posted by Hobbes
You can also edit the plist com.apple.windowserver.plist located in /Library/Preferences/; change Quartz2DExtremeEnabled to YES.
Does this mod require that you re-enable it after a restart, or is it a lasting change?
Originally posted by DanMacMan
Does this mod require that you re-enable it after a restart, or is it a lasting change?
I believe it's lasting, until the plist attribute is changed back to NO.
Secondly, after testing it on a Powerbook 15.2" 1.5Ghz system with:
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with 64MB of DDR SDRAM
com.apple.windowserver.plist property list is there but no reference to Q2D Extreme.
Downloading the Debug Utility and enabling it indeed shows improvement in Tiger.
Originally posted by ipodandimac
how safe is all of this? i don't want my card getting overheated or voiding some warranty.
Works just fine. In debug mode, if anything you might be able to discover some reproducible bugs that you can submit to Apple and have it role into 10.4.1.
I filed several yesterday on Preview.app and its PDFX-3 flaws among other issues. I gave them the various scenarios and steps to reproduce and encouraged them to tag it against Appkit and where else necessary.
Bugs will be found and should be found--we are the best testers Apple can afford.
Originally posted by mdriftmeyer
It should be noted that com.apple.windowserver.plist does not exist in a system without Q2D Extreme graphics capabilities (iBook 1Ghz G4 as an example).
Secondly, after testing it on a Powerbook 15.2" 1.5Ghz system with:
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 with 64MB of DDR SDRAM
com.apple.windowserver.plist property list is there but no reference to Q2D Extreme.
Downloading the Debug Utility and enabling it indeed shows improvement in Tiger.
Hey Mdriftmeyer,
I have the same powerbook but i do not have the com.apple.windowserver.plist on my system. Any suggestions?
Thanks.
Originally posted by mdriftmeyer
com.apple.windowserver.plist property list is there but no reference to Q2D Extreme.
Oh, is that so? I'm quoting someone else here, don't have Tiger yet. Plists are now binary by default, unfortunately, so you'd have to edit/convert them using plutil.
Originally posted by ipodandimac
how safe is all of this? i don't want my card getting overheated or voiding some warranty.
I've been running it for at least six months and my Radeon 9600 is fine.
Originally posted by icfireball
I enabled it in the debug utilt. but it dosnt stay enabled.
it only stays enabled while the debug is open.
plutil 1 /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist
?? Not knowing anything about terminal at all?
Cheers
Dan