2D Video Acceleration... |
September, 25, 2002 11:15 PM |
alan |
According to what I have read, OS X handles 2D video in the CPU, not on your Graphics Card. As a result, things like scrolling a document seem much slower in OS X than in OS 9. I notice this most in IE. Making the window narrower, or dropping the colors from millions to thousands makes the scrolling smoother. This is the biggest complaint I have (performance wise) with OS X. I have a ATI Rage Orion 16M card (Rage 128 Pro). Would I get any better 2D performance by upgrading my card to a PCI Radeon 7000, or would that just help 3D video? Anyone know if Apple will be moving the processing for 2D video back to the Graphics Card? |
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RE: 2D Video Acceleration... |
October, 02, 2002 9:54 PM |
avit |
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On the whole, your system will be (marginally) slower the more pixels you want to display. Adding a monitor will slow your system a bit, regardless of which video card is driving it. I would suppose that your system would slow down by the speed it takes to display the 640x480 or 800x600 from your internal card. It's impossible to quantify; you'll just have to try it and see if the extra desktop space you gain is worth the speed hit. |
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RE: 2D Video Acceleration... |
September, 29, 2002 2:52 PM |
jpanch |
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So it does seem like a video card will help with the acceleration in OSX. Can anyone tell me what happens when a second monitor is added to the existing in-built video. I s only stuff on the accelerated video be fast. I was thinking of just putting a 15 inch on the unused internal. Thanks. |
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RE: 2D Video Acceleration... |
September, 29, 2002 2:26 PM |
fuzzball |
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I also have an 8600/G4-450. I added an ATI 16 MEG Video card and it does make a big difference from the 4 MEG on-board Video. Even works in OS X. |
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RE: 2D Video Acceleration... |
September, 29, 2002 2:19 PM |
jpanch |
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I have a comment and a related question. I have a beige G3 266 which has 6mb of vram at work that I have upgraded to a G3 500. At home iahve an 8600/200 that is upgrade using a sonnet G3/500. The test that I ahve is the switch ads on the apple site. The beige G3 rocks whreas the 8600 at home is slow with the same processor. I also added 2mb to max the vram out to 4mb but this made absolutely no differece to video rates. Lots of stutter and stoppage. Hers is the question or questions. Would this quicktime movie playback be considered 2D? What would be a suggestion for improving the speed of such playbacks? e.g. a video card or a quicker CPU. Would the general architecture of the machine be such that I am SOL. Thanks. I need to know how I can dump more money into my mac. |
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RE: 2D Video Acceleration... |
September, 28, 2002 4:11 PM |
krevnik |
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Well, lemme say this: the odds of OS X being 'comparable' to OS 9 on the same hardware are a few thousand to one. Now that being said, if you want to spend money on a new CPU, get a whole new machine. For the price Sonnet and PowerLogix wants for a G4/800 upgrade, you can get a used dual G4/500 or better. I recently purchased a G4/400 upgrade, since they are in the sub-200$ range, which would be the average cost to get a bare-bones B&W G3, let alone the G4 chip I could greatly benefit from in my programming experiments. Before you decide, choose wisely. With Quartz in the picture, it just isn't a question of 'this will always be better'... the CPU, system bus, and video card all have to be in good shape. Our PowerSurge machines are rather limited in the system bus, and in the end that will be our greatest limitation. Throwing a G4/800 in a PowerSurge will not enhance scrolling as much as buying a nice used G4 machine for the same price. |
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RE: 2D Video Acceleration... |
September, 27, 2002 8:28 PM |
alan |
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So what I am hearing is that the only way to get better scrolling, is to get a faster CPU - correct? Upgrading my Video to a Radeon 7000 would not help correct? I wonder if upgrading from a G3/500 to the G4/800 would help? I just want to get back to something comparable to OS 9 |
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RE: 2D Video Acceleration... |
September, 27, 2002 2:58 PM |
marcush |
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Actually, QE does nothing for 2D drawing to the screen it is still handled by the CPU. That's the reason why even the newest macs still have slow window resizing and slow scroll speed. There is an in-depth article on the workings of QE at Arstechnica. Here's the URL: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q3/macosx-10.2/macosx-10.2-8.html#qe Here's a direct quote from the article: "Now let's look at what QE does not do. First, it does not affect Quartz 2D or any of the other drawing APIs at all. They all continue to function just as they always have, with the same amount of participation from the CPU." |
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RE: 2D Video Acceleration... |
September, 25, 2002 11:37 PM |
avit |
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"Anyone know if Apple will be moving the processing for 2D video back to the Graphics Card?" Yeah, it's called Quartz Extreme, and it's only for the AGP graphics cards in the newer machines. However, people have managed to make Quartz Extreme work on PCI graphics cards, with positive results in most cases, from what I've read. Have a look through the forum for topics regarding Quartz Extreme. The how-to is in here somewhere. (I don't know if your Orion card can hack it. I think I read that QE needs a 32mb card. Radeon 7000s seem to be popular.) |