From OS X 10.2 (Jag) onwards, Apple did something cunning. By painting the screen as an OpenGL textured scene, they could offload much of the load of rendering it on the fly to the graphics processing unit (GPU) of a graphics card. Effectively, they've turned the GPU into a co-processor for OS X, specifically tasked with handling the Quartz graphics. This technique, which Apple dubbed "Quartz Extreme" requires a GPU with certain features and performance. Further, it only really works well if the machine use the AGP, rather than PCI, to connect graphics to computer. Apple don't officially support QE via PCI, and although there are hacks to turn it on, it can overload a PCI bus so severely that it causes other problems like random freezes.
hth
GWW
On 11 Apr 2004, at 07:02, Jamie Kahn Genet wrote:
Tom Tubman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On that particular machine, your graphics won't benefit from the speed-ups of Quartz Extreme (which offloads a lot of drawing work to the GPU - but only if it's the right kind of GPU). Further, your display is limited to "10x7", which is a bit cramped for OS X's Aqua. But speed is manageable: I have a server running fine on a beige G3 266, but of course its graphics performance is irrelevant.
You don't get Quartz Extreme on a Rev B-D iMac but you *do* get some Quartz graphics acceleration from the RagePro and it's noticeable. The Rev A iMac and Rev A Beige G3s do not have that acceleration and they're noticeably slower.
Forgive my OSX ignorance, but what's the difference between Quartz and
Quartz Extreme, please? When does the various acceleration show up? That
is, what exactly will be speed up and what won't on my iMac?
I try to stay current on Mac technology, but without the latest OS I find I'm slipping backwards in that respect. Hopefully not for much longer, though :-)
Thanks very much for your reply.
TIA, Jamie Kahn Genet -- If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. -- Message scanned by the Sheriff
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