> Never mind the "bus speeds" of the VRAM or the PCI card. The speed > of the video chip serving the video out is the *only* thing that's > important on older Macs.
Can you elaborate on that just a bit? As I understand it, Quartz renders each window (including component like menus) and then sends the already rendered bitmap to the card. This is why you can save memory and improve performance by keeping the windows compressed. This matches my experience with the 604e/180 I started with: rendering a window was slow, but once it was rendered operations on the window were surprisingly fast. This doesn't seem to leave much room for 2d acceleration, which is why Quartz Extreme uses OpenGL. It also means there's a lot of traffic between the processor and the video memory even without OpenGL. I could see getting some speedup moving windows around, but the bottleneck I see is the rendering... the second or so delay before it opens most windows. Once they're open, it's plenty fast at moving them around already. > The onboard video of the 73-9600 Macs is > very slow for OS X. Even a Beige G3 rev.B (Rage Pro) is noticeably > faster with a same G3 chip/RAM config in it. The Beige G3 has a 66 MHz system bus, so it's got 33% faster access to main memory than a 7500. That means it can render bitmaps larger than the cache (that is, just about any large windows) 33% faster than the 7500. If that's the bottleneck, and that seems to be the case, I'd expect the Beige G3 to be faster with a given CPU. You can't do an apples-apples comparison on the G3 because it's got no built-in video to compare it with. You can on the 7500. Do you know where there's any kind of report on that? > A Rage128 PCI card is *much* faster than the onboard video for OS X > (and OS 9, too). OS/9, yes, Quickdraw can make good use of 2d acceleration. OS/X? That's what I'm trying to find out. I've had people confidently assert both that it would make good use of 2d and that it doesn't matter if the video is accelerated or not if you're not using OpenGL. What I haven't seen is any kind of figures. > In fact, I find that to be a requirement for a > useable OS X experience on any Mac. A PCI Rage 128, Radeon Mac Ed. > or Radeon 7000 Mac. Ed. will make OS X fun to use even with only a > 300 MHz G3 and 256 MB RAM. Just remember to use OS 10.2.x and set > the video to Thousands of colors for best speed. I've heard that, but I get significantly better speed with millions of colors. When I went from 2M to 4M VRAM I didn't see any difference until I increased the screen depth. > WeLoveMacs' 16M Rage VR is a Rage128 based card, then you're set. Yeh, I keep looking at that. Also, the Radeon 7000 OWC's selling. Then I look at this 64M PC Geforce-2 for $40, and get depressed. :-P > Don't mess with the 17" CRT ASD without a supported video card in an > appropriate G4. Get a 17" CRT to replace it for $100 or less. I already have a 17" CRT, but it's not nearly as 1337 as the CRT ASD with its '60s BBC glam sci-fi styling. Oh well. -- Unsupported OS X is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Unsupported OS X list info <http://lowendmac.com/lists/unsupported.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive <http://www.mail-archive.com/unsupportedosx%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
