--- Darcy James Argue <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Radeon 9000. Both are mobility versions. > > Huh? I thought you had desktop computers. Are you > saying you have > mobility (i.e. laptop) GPU's installed in your > desktop machines? No. The two test machines I was comparing are both notebook computers. I'm not using my desktop. > I'm asking you what you *see* on your screen. Let me > put it this way: > if you took a screenshot of a Finale document with > the slider all the > way up, and another screenshot with the slider all > the way down, is > there any difference between the two? Not that I can personally see. > > > You're really missing a big point here. The > controls > > in this dialog are tailor made by the video card > > manufacturer for the specific card. > > Are you sure? For Macs with retail video cards, the > ATI control > panels are the same across the entire family of > cards. Isn't it > possible that the slider for the Radeon 9000 works > the same way > across that family of Radeons? Yes Darcy. I'm 100% positive. It's a fact. Sure thing. The screens in the dialog tabs are COMPLETELY different from one card to the next (verified on my own systems). And the tabs that appear for one video card don't even all appear for another. It's CUSTOMIZED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE VIDEO CARD. > But what features are those? You still haven't said. > What if turning > the slider all the way up enables some 3D-only > feature like, say, > anisotropic filtering, that could cause a > significant performance hit > without actually improving 2D image quality? There is a tab for "3D." The rest have different tab labels. For goodness sake.... look it up on the internet!!!! These features are NOT limited to 3D enhancements. > Or -- > and this seems > more likely with the situation you describe -- what > if it enables > excessive screen caching, filling up the memory on > your video card > and forcing the screen caches to be spooled out to > RAM, or even > virtual memory? All 256MB of video card memory... for a 2D application? There's no hard drive activity going on here. This isn't virtual memory. > This is something that sometimes > happens on Macs with > video cards with insufficient video RAM. (How much > VRAM does your > Radeon 9000 have, anyway?) 128MB > > > If a video card doesn't support one of these > features, > > the feature wouldn't be in the dialog in the first > > place. > > It might if, for instance, nVidia gave you a generic > slider for all > 7XXX-series cards, or even all 7300-series cards, > which (as we've > mentioned) have very different features and > performance depending on > what flavor of 7300 you're using. nVidia and ATI > usually release one > set of drivers for each family of cards, not each > individual card. But the driver software knows the cards they're written for. > Also -- I'm assuming you've installed the latest > drivers for both > these cards, correct? Give me a break. > The fact that you need to turn this slider up for > maximum performance > in some apps and turn it down for maximum > performance in others is > not something I've ever heard anyone complain about > before. Then do a little reading. I found plenty of people discussing this when I looked at the articles in that Google search I gave you. > It sure > sounds to me like something weird is going on. > Again, it would help > if you could describe specifically what features are > enabled or > disabled at various slider positions on your system. I somehow highly doubt it will help. > So, if you'll allow me to put aside all of our other > disagreements > for the moment, I'd like to make a simple, narrow > claim: I doubt a > more expensive video card would significantly > improve the speed of > non-3D tasks in that specific computer. Right. And you believe there is consensus out there among "experts" that 2D performance has been maxed out on video cards for some time now. How about this: Yesterday I sent a letter to Matrox, a company who has established itself as a leader in graphic solutions for 2D productivity applications. I explained that, using my ATI X600 video card with a 2D application, I was experiencing more slow down with the hardware acceleration slider turned up than with it turned down. The response? "If you are experiencing slowdowns it is most likely that your card lacks the power to support the features that it is trying to run with hardware acceleration turned all the way up." Tyler __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
