24" iMac + large external monitor. Buttah or Nutta?
I'm curious if anyone is running a current gen 24" iMac and a large external monitor (1920x1200)? I'd love to hear how it holds up - I'm wondering if 256MB of VRAM is enough to keep things smooth with a lot of Spaces and lots of windows open at a time (think 15 apps or so apps running and and maybe 6-8 Spaces).
Any real world experiences? I'm considering purchasing a 24" iMac but am really scared about the GPU (and RAM) limits.
Thanks for any thoughts!
Any real world experiences? I'm considering purchasing a 24" iMac but am really scared about the GPU (and RAM) limits.
Thanks for any thoughts!
Comments
Well my MacBook Pro with 256MB vram is runnning 8 spaces right now with 9 programs running....like a charm....dont know how the iMac would do considering the geforce 8600 is better than the card in the imac
Yeah I'm not worried about running one monitor - it's doubling the pixels I'm pushing that worries me. It seems like 256MB could get eaten really fast with 2 x 1920x1200, tons of windows and all the eye candy of OS X...
Yeah I'm not worried about running one monitor - it's doubling the pixels I'm pushing that worries me. It seems like 256MB could get eaten really fast with 2 x 1920x1200, tons of windows and all the eye candy of OS X...
1920x1200 at 32 bit colour is 9 MB per plane, I'm not sure how many OSX and the hardware will use, but maybe not more than 4-8? So two screens, with 8 planes would use 144 MB, leaving 112 for textures and the like.
I think it'd be fine.
Cheers,
Martin.
1920x1200 at 32 bit colour is 9 MB per plane, I'm not sure how many OSX and the hardware will use, but maybe not more than 4-8? So two screens, with 8 planes would use 144 MB, leaving 112 for textures and the like.
I think it'd be fine.
Cheers,
Martin.
Each plane is a window I'm assuming? So that means approx 18MB or so per window? Currently in this space I've got 18 windows open and this is probably about average for me. Hopefully when I've got a computer that can handle Spaces properly (without choking) I'll have more Spaces and fewer windows per Space, but I shouldn't buy a computer assuming my current habits are going to change.
18x18 is 324MB. Sounds like with my current usage 256MB wouldn't be buttah? If I buy a new machine and I can't use it in a normal fashion without windows and effects stuttering, I'm going to be kicking myself.
Each plane is a window I'm assuming? So that means approx 18MB or so per window? Currently in this space I've got 18 windows open and this is probably about average for me. Hopefully when I've got a computer that can handle Spaces properly (without choking) I'll have more Spaces and fewer windows per Space, but I shouldn't buy a computer assuming my current habits are going to change.
18x18 is 324MB. Sounds like with my current usage 256MB wouldn't be buttah? If I buy a new machine and I can't use it in a normal fashion without windows and effects stuttering, I'm going to be kicking myself.
No, a plane is a whole screen, but OSX overlays different ones over it. They get called buffers too.
This sort of thing:
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel/CS433/L...S/CS433_24.pdf
From the PDF there's:
Front Buffer
Back Buffer
Auxiliary Buffer
Overlay Buffer
Depth Buffer
Accumulation Buffer
Stencil Buffer
These probably need about 9MB each, per display, plus texture maps and assorted odds and ends.
It's basically different layers that are combined to make the image on the screen or track what's happening per pixel for different operations, so each window doesn't necessarily use a buffer (far from it), the exact number of buffers in use varies with the OS, and which version of OpenGL (they add more as time goes on), and what apps want to use the more exotic ones.
Cheers,
Martin.