QUARTZ HARDWARE ACCEL!!

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  • Reply 101 of 191
    groveratgroverat Posts: 10,872member
    Users that upgrade to Jag-wire will odo-matically get significant speed increases.
  • Reply 102 of 191
    In the June issue of German MacWorld there is an interesting comparison between OS 9 and OS X. They tested all current Macs plus the last generation and a few older ones (e.g. G4/350, iMac G3/500, ...).

    Bottomline is: All processor-tasks are appr. 10-20% faster in OS X, harddisk-performance is much faster in OS X, 3-D graphics is only little slower in OS X but 2D-graphics is 4-times (!) slower than in OS 9.

    This is the reason why I still work with OS 9, because although OS X is faster than OS 9, it feels so much slower. In OS X I sometimes feel like beeing set back to old times of multi-finder...
  • Reply 103 of 191
    [quote]Originally posted by Aquatik:

    <strong>

    This MUST mean updates for the iBook, at least.

    </strong><hr></blockquote>

    Well, yes, likely they'll be getting the Radeon Mobility at some point. Probably not 32MB of VRAM (but as the Apple page says, that's only necessary for full potential), though.

    [quote]<strong>

    Shadow Knight, I am overclocking my iBook 500 to 600/100 in June. I'll post my results. But, on the 500, OS X is almost unusable. I do only have 128 megs of RAM, but you can tell when VM kicks in. I can't get my screw on the Airport riser out, I've tried everything! Glue w/ pin, etc. So I'm doing it when I overclock, going to 384 megs.

    </strong><hr></blockquote>

    If your iBook has a 66MHz bus and 128MB of RAM, then that explains a lot. I wouldn't expect OS X to be "unusable" on such a system (it runs great on a 466/66 iBook with 192MB of RAM), but I would expect it to be relatively quite slow. The bus speed alone makes a huge difference, and OS X seems to magically improve if you have greater than 128MB of RAM. I suspect that overclocking and upgrading the RAM will make your complaints largely go away (it will still seem slower than Mac OS 9 for screen drawing, though processor intensive things will be much faster).

    [quote]<strong>

    But, I thought the iBook had AGP!? Someone here said it was the first Mac to get AGP, in an argument about how sometimes portables get new tech first.

    </strong><hr></blockquote>

    It does have AGP, but that's not the only requirement for Quartz Extreme. The other requirement was a sufficiently advanced video card... the iBook is using the Rage128-based chipset, which doesn't have some hardware features that Quartz Extreme apparently needs. Quartz Extreme apparently will only work with Radeons, and GeForce2MX or better. So maybe then my 400MHz G4 (which I have put a GeForce2MX card in) will be faster than the iBook 600...

    [quote]<strong>

    Oh, and Shadow Knight, ZO, I went to an Apple store and looked at the CPU monitor while mousing on the Dock. On the iBook 600 (14 inch, form factor is NOT a factor, no pun intended) I got the Dock to eat 100% (!) of the CPU, and on the PBG4 667 it was only 1 bar away from the doing the same thing. Nothing else running. Now, I'm not technically proficient with OS X yet, so I have a theory people may have to correct: OS X is dynamic. When it can use 100% of the CPU it will. But this doesn't sound very preemptive. I thought you'd have to nice it up to do that. Plus, apps like Word eat the CPU for breakfast, while they're just idling, just SITTING there, with no autosave, live word count, etc!</strong><hr></blockquote>

    If you are running nothing but CPU Monitor and the Dock, I'd expect it to easily peg at 100%. For one thing, CPU Monitor itself can eat a lot of CPU. For another, since no other process needs the CPU and drawing the Dock does, then the Dock gets all the cycles. If something else required CPU time, then they'd automatically split it up, still pegging the CPU at 100% whenever possible (that's a good thing, it means no wasted cycles). As for Word eating CPU even when idle, that's because it's a ported Carbon app... it's still using the WaitNextEvent loop instead of using the Events model. Hopefully they'll eventually port it to take advantage of all that Carbon offers (which is a lot, but it's hairy and ugly, as opposed to Cocoa, which is sleek and pretty (just talking about code, here, not necessarily the finished application)).



    later,

    Shadow Knight
  • Reply 104 of 191
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Ah yes, Shadow Knight, I remember now. Amorph kindly explained how the old WaitNextEvent system keeps polling, looking for input. Cocoa revisions of all our apps next year (!) or in 2004 is going to be shweet.



    And yes, mine's a 66mhz bus. Apple crippleware. I really love everything about the iceBook, except the bus (you're right, I hear that's more a factor than even the CPU's clock speed, and at 350 w/ 100mhz bus, it gets 105% the performance, with more battery of course!)



    Still, for those who can use it, we'll be anxiously awaiting news of Quartz Extreme. This is definitely going to be the hottest item on Hotline
  • Reply 105 of 191
    philterphilter Posts: 21member
    Well, despite what I have said in other posts, let us wait and see before we pass judgement on Jaguar and sell our PowerBooks on Ebay...



    ... still, I do not think that any GUI ought to require the hardware Apple is designing Aqua to demand. It's slow and unnecessary. I don't know what they hope to be accomplishing here. It ought to be a feature that you can turn off, in any case.



    This is an argument that is very old and predates OS X's commercial release, but I still find myself often restarting and running under OS 9 because frankly, Platinum is a far superior interface to Aqua in many respects. There is less nesting of folders. Windows, dialog boxes, menus etc. take up less screen real estate. It runs faster. It's prettier to look at. Fonts look better rendered by ATM than by Quartz. Etc. ad infinitum.
  • Reply 106 of 191
    thegeldingthegelding Posts: 3,230member
    loving my new iMac more and more, and can't wait for jag to come out....by then (sept. 2002?) my kids can use iChat, chimera should be freakin version .99 by then at the speed we are getting updates from them and i can throw out IE and maybe even entourage (though entourage has been nice to use)....if quark would come out with an os X version i could throw out word and have a microsoft free machine....g
  • Reply 107 of 191
    philterphilter Posts: 21member
    &gt; &gt; &gt;

    Remember, folks, asking for this kind of acceleration on low-end hardware is like asking FCP to do real-time effects on a G3. There's a technological minimum that *has* to be met for these things to even be possible. You people should at least be a little satisfied that Apple found ways to support most current cards without having to develop completely new, custom "4th generation" GPUs like the rumors had been saying for the past year.

    &lt; &lt; &lt;



    No, look, you fool... this is the WHOLE PROBLEM. Apple should not have a lame processor-intensive GUI in the first place! Aqua sucks!! Who cares about drop shadows, genies, and all that crap? Give me Platinum running over Darwin and I would cut off two of my fingers and be happy! Because despite the loss of two fingers the computer would still be more pleasurable to use than with this ridiculous excuse for a GUI. Whatever happened to Apple? Whatever happened to minimalist utilitarianism and form following function? Now the interface looks like a bad mushroom trip from Steve's days at Reed College! Look, the happy little red-yellow-green buttons that look like a traffic signal but are half as functional as their equivalents in OS 9! Look, the Apple menu that's only 1/4 as functional as its counterpart in OS 9! Look, the horrendous dock that has no hierarchicalness and takes up way too much screen real estate and besides that is not at all as helpful as spring loaded folders or the tear-off Applications Menu? Oh look, a new type of open/save dialog box that SUCKS!! compared to its OS 9 equivalent!



    People say, "Well, when OS 9 first came out in 1984, well it was OS 1 back then, and it sucked then too. So lay off." But, why did Apple ditch all the great things about Platinum and all the great interface enhancements? I guess they just need time to add them all back in and make OS X as good as OS 9. But ... hurry up Apple! And don't charge me extra for it; I should have had it to begin with! Whatever happened to Copland? We should've had Copland in 1998! And can you hurry up and port OS X to run on Wintel hardware? I'm tired of using motherboards, RAM, and processors that are now 1.4 GHZ **SLOWER** THAN THE OTHER GUYS!!



    sheeesh... they better not charge for Jaguar, I'm tellin' ya... not that I would pay for it, even if they did. That's what the old CD burner is for guys!! To say "f u" to companies like Apple when they pull crap like this!!
  • Reply 108 of 191
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    [quote]Originally posted by Aquatik:

    <strong>

    But, does anyone here think it's odd that Quartz Extreme doesn't apply to currently SHIPPING iBooks, CRT iMacs, and the just recently updated PBG4!?</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Think of Quartz Extreme as being like AltiVec: If it's there, you get a speed boost. If it's not, you don't. But all the panicking about whether your computer is not supported is silly. Almost all iBook owners - and all iceBook owners - bought their machines knowing that they were trading off a major software accelerator (AltiVec) for a small, cool, efficient laptop. This is just more of the same. Jaguar should still be an unambiguous improvement to any iBook.



    [quote]<strong>But, I thought the iBook had AGP!? Someone here said it was the first Mac to get AGP, in an argument about how sometimes portables get new tech first.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    The iBook was indeed the first Apple product to sport AGP, and it shipped with AGP 2x. But Quartz Extreme also needs at least a RADEON or GeForce2-class chipset, and the iBook's Rage 128 Mobility doesn't cut it. It'll continue to accelerate OS X in those ways that it can, however.



    Remember, most of the rumors on this site concentrated on nifty Raycer coprocessors to accelerate Quartz, a solution which would not have worked on any current Apple hardware at all, and which, in its proposed forms, couldn't have been added to any current machine via an upgrade, either. What Apple gave us was significantly better than that.



    [quote]<strong>Oh, and Shadow Knight, ZO, I went to an Apple store and looked at the CPU monitor while mousing on the Dock. On the iBook 600 (14 inch, form factor is NOT a factor, no pun intended) I got the Dock to eat 100% (!) of the CPU, and on the PBG4 667 it was only 1 bar away from the doing the same thing. Nothing else running. Now, I'm not technically proficient with OS X yet, so I have a theory people may have to correct: OS X is dynamic. When it can use 100% of the CPU it will. But this doesn't sound very preemptive.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    High CPU utilization by a user-level app (which the Dock is, AFAIK) means two things: 1) the code is tightly written, and 2) there's nothing else requiring anything of the CPU. If you start a Photoshop filter, rip a CD, play a DVD and render a DVD, then scrub the Dock, and the Dock still eats 100% of the CPU, then you can suspect that someone is doing an end run around the preemptive scheduler.



    [quote]<strong>I thought you'd have to nice it up to do that.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    All background apps in UNIX (and UNIX-alikes) are automatically nice'd to a certain degree, because UNIXen have always placed the highest priority on interactive tasks. So even in the above scenario, where there are a lot of tasks running, the Dock will probably be the foreground task for as long as you're scrubbing the mouse over it, so it'll get preferential treatment from the scheduler. If you then foreground Photoshop, Photoshop will. And so forth.



    [quote]<strong>Plus, apps like Word eat the CPU for breakfast, while they're just idling, just SITTING there, with no autosave, live word count, etc!</strong><hr></blockquote>



    That's called a bad Carbon port.
  • Reply 109 of 191
    drudru Posts: 43member
    [quote]Originally posted by AppleCello:

    <strong>From MacCentral:



    "Quartz Extreme: Takes the compositing engine in Quartz, and accelerates it in graphics cards. Combines 2D, 3D and video in one hardware pipeline via OpenGL



    It is not possible on older graphics cards like RAGE 128 cards, said Jobs -- that means it'll work on newer iMacs and eMacs, but not on older machines, he emphasized. AGP 2x and 32MB video RAM are required for this new technology."



    HOT!



    [ 05-06-2002: Message edited by: AppleCello ]</strong><hr></blockquote>



    It has occured to me the whiners are seeing this ALL wrong!



    This is Apple unleasing the untapped potential of older PowerMacs, TiBooks and the new iMac.



    To join the Quartz Extreme party the old AGP PowerMac/Cube users just need to grab a nVidia GeForce2MX, GeForce3, GeForce4 Ti, GeForce4 or GeForce4MX or any AGP ATI Radeon card.



    That's A LOT of machines with extra performance sitting around waiting to be set free.



    The whiners can be contented knowing that they'll be able to run Jaguar at least as well as 10.1.4. They haven't shelled out for hardware which has sat under-utilized for a year or more! So there!
  • Reply 110 of 191
    guitarblokeguitarbloke Posts: 125member
    [quote]Originally posted by philter:

    <strong>No, look, you fool... this is the WHOLE PROBLEM. Apple should not have a lame processor-intensive GUI in the first place! Aqua sucks!! Who cares about drop shadows, genies, and all that crap? Give me Platinum running over Darwin and I would cut off two of my fingers and be happy! </strong><hr></blockquote>Many Apple users have installed OS X in decidedly sub-optimal setups (like my Wallstreet, for example), simply because they prefer the new UI and don't mind sluggishness, if the benefits are, for example, more graphical cues and an infinitely superior file browser within applications (try organizing linking in a 1000-page plus website using the OS 9 file browser for a couple of hours and you'll see what I mean).



    Your opinion on Aqua is just an opinion, y'know.
  • Reply 111 of 191
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    [quote]Originally posted by philter:

    <strong>No, look, you fool... this is the WHOLE PROBLEM. Apple should not have a lame processor-intensive GUI in the first place! Aqua sucks!! Who cares about drop shadows, genies, and all that crap? Give me Platinum running over Darwin and I would cut off two of my fingers and be happy!</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Replace Aqua with System 7 and Platinum with System 6 in your post and we're all the way back in 1990.



    Come to think of it, I remember some grousing when the old MacOS UI was retired for the more chrome-heavy Platinum. I also remember some of that grousing came from yours truly.



    Mileage varies. I, for one, only boot into OS 9 when I absolutely have to, for as long as I have to. Aqua to me is gorgeous and more Mac-like. I can't remember ever associating Mac interfaces with "minimalist utilitarianism." They've always been clean and pretty, and they've had drop shadows on windows since System 1.0.
  • Reply 112 of 191
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    [quote]Originally posted by Scott F.:

    <strong>



    Think, before you reply. I am not a psychic. I needed to buy a computer... I run dual displays which I already owned... the G4 CAME with the AGP card and I needed a SECOND one to drive the 2nd display. I bought the best that was available (at the time) at Micro Center...



    How was I to know that:



    a) 3dfx would die a horrible death

    b) OSX would not support it in the FUTURE... it wasn't OUT yet.



    EDIT: I just realized the disconnect: I earlier stated that I bought my G4 LESS than a year ago... it's actually just OVER a year now... I got it a few weeks before OSX was released



    [ 05-07-2002: Message edited by: Scott F. ]</strong><hr></blockquote>





    Well, (oh wait, I have to remember to to THINK BEFORE I REPLY....wait....hold on a sec....OK!)



    Buying a new GPU a few weeks before the official release of a major operating system upgrade that you were planning on getting, was, in a word DUMB.
  • Reply 113 of 191
    scott f.scott f. Posts: 276member
    [quote]Originally posted by SDW2001:

    <strong>





    Well, (oh wait, I have to remember to to THINK BEFORE I REPLY....wait....hold on a sec....OK!)



    Buying a new GPU a few weeks before the official release of a major operating system upgrade that you were planning on getting, was, in a word DUMB.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Why are you so rude...? You don't know all the facts... I HAD TO buy a new machine... my other Mac had crapped-out on me in the middle of a MAJOR project and I had to buy one THAT DAY to continue... hence taking the card that came with it and buying the PCI card for the second monitor.



    Stop being such a know-it-all... sheesh!!!



    Fine...! You're smart... I'm dumb... happy?



    (idiot)
  • Reply 114 of 191
    junkyard dawgjunkyard dawg Posts: 2,801member
    [quote]Originally posted by Scott F.:

    <strong>



    Did you not read my post...?



    3 Monitors

    1 AGP Slot

    2 PCI cards needed to run other 2 displays.



    the 3rd display is to be (I HOPE) run from a Matrox RT-Mac for Final Cut Pro accelleration and full-screen preview. The Matrox RT-Mac does NOT support FireWire output in real-time... hence the third monitor. I use my NTSC Monitor for FireWire preview(s).



    I am a multi-monitor guy. One display will not cut it... and I doubt there's an AGP board that'll run TWO 19" monitors at 1600 x 1200 75hz millions of colors.



    hence me being "S-O-O-L"</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I thought there were some AGP video cards out recently that support two monitors: one ADC and one VGA? I could swear this is the case. If so then there's your answer.



    Anyways, even without Quartz Extreme, Jag-WIRE is going to be faster than Puma. How can you complain if a new OS update speeds up your hardware?
  • Reply 115 of 191
    cubedudecubedude Posts: 1,556member
    [quote]To join the Quartz Extreme party the old AGP PowerMac/Cube users just need to grab a nVidia GeForce2MX, GeForce3, GeForce4 Ti, GeForce4 or GeForce4MX or any AGP ATI Radeon card.

    <hr></blockquote>



    btw, does anyone know where i can get one for a decent price(under 200), even on ebay the lowest i can find is 255
  • Reply 116 of 191
    spartspart Posts: 2,060member
    [quote]Originally posted by applenut:

    <strong>cough..24.191.110.119... cough upload cough please cough



    carracho



    [ 05-06-2002: Message edited by: applenut ]</strong><hr></blockquote>



    So you run one too, eh? I'd be willing to trade accounts That is, after I dl the new Carracho (Frogblast all the way....)
  • Reply 117 of 191
    chromoschromos Posts: 191member
    [quote]Originally posted by philter:

    <strong>&gt; &gt; &gt;

    ...Now the interface looks like a bad mushroom trip from Steve's days at Reed College! Look, the happy little red-yellow-green buttons that look like a traffic signal but are half as functional as their equivalents in OS 9...</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I don't know what metrics you're using to determine "half functionality", but I find OS X window widgets to be more functional than their OS 9 counterparts. Here's why: you can close a background window without first having to click on it to give it focus. That's one click in OS X versus two in OS 9. So I say that OS X widgets are twice as functional as OS 9 ones are.
  • Reply 118 of 191
    serranoserrano Posts: 1,806member
    [quote]Originally posted by CubeDude:

    <strong>

    nope i'm stuck with the Rage 128 Pro, too bad i can't upgrade</strong><hr></blockquote>



    why not? put a radeon or gf2 in there! hell, slap in a geforce3 and dual gig that sucker! although then you'd need a fan too... while you're at it 120GB that hard drive, weeeeee! 1.5GB that ram!



    the cube is massively upgradeable and a hardware hackers dream, a challenge
  • Reply 119 of 191
    katekate Posts: 172member
    All this "extreme" (LOL) business would be void if Apple had not opted for the Quartz/Aqua thing. This is the main cause for todays trouble and for alienating Mac users.



    What I still am failing to see are the benefits of Quartz/Aqua. We still run all 2D aspects of X 400% slower than under 9 and I see no advantage for doing so. Could someone point out any benefit gained by using Quartz compared to any other 2D drawing technology? I.e, Quickdraw(full graphics card support and acceleration), OpenGL(dito) .



    The only pay off of Quartz seen by anyone is that it pays off for Apples hardware sales. There is neither a need nor a payoff nor any usable advantage by using a suchlike drawing model IMHO. Any help or insight? Only disadvantages weigh in so far as I am concerned and Apple is trying to cure the sickness by rising minimum hardware specs, which in my view is admitting that the decision for Quartz was premature.



    It is sad that Apple delivered tech is a drawback rather than a move forward. But I would be less disappointed if anyone could provide a list of current and future advantages of Quartz that really outweigh all this hassle and pain. Anyone?
  • Reply 120 of 191
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Amorph, why is everyone saying the Rage 128 can't cut it? What SPECIFIC features of the nVIDIA and Radeon cards are recquired? I realize this is all very soon, and perhaps the info isn't out, but it would be nice if Apple or someone could provide specifics. Quartz Extreme looks so awesome! If I could merely shift the work to the GPU, the CPU would be freed a lot. And that in and of itself is "acceleration." You know what I mean?
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