Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

d4nth3m4n · Dec 23, 2003, 06:00 PM

k, so i know that after you do the spanning hack on a 16vram ibook, you have to turn down the minimum ram needed for quartz extreme to work, and i know that the FUS (fast user switch) cube is a quartz extreme thing

what i want to know is: does this minimum switch (i guess its a hack) work for the FUS cube? has anyone tried this? im sitting here upgrading two ibook 500s and wondering if i can do this to show off to the two girls i borrowed these from.

thanks.

im willing to be the guniea pig, but i would like someone who kinda knows what theyre talking about to tell me to to go for it

-Dan.

ccsccs7 · Dec 24, 2003, 12:57 AM

The 500MHz iBook only has the 8MB Rage card, so the hack will not work on it, in fact, it could "kill" it. Are you referring to another model to hack?

d4nth3m4n · Dec 24, 2003, 02:21 AM

i dont want to pull the spanning hack on the 500mhz ibook, i know that the hack will kill the comp. what i want to do is what you have to do when you enable spanning on a 16vram ibook- lower the minimum vram needed to run quartz extreme. i want this at 8 so i can have snazzy things like the FUS cube... i do not want these 500mhz ibooks to span

did you read what i posted?

pat++ · 06:41 AM

Originally posted by d4nth3m4n:
i dont want to pull the spanning hack on the 500mhz ibook, i know that the hack will kill the comp. what i want to do is what you have to do when you enable spanning on a 16vram ibook- lower the minimum vram needed to run quartz extreme. i want this at 8 so i can have snazzy things like the FUS cube... i do not want these 500mhz ibooks to span

did you read what i posted?

His post answers your questions. ANY hack will NOT work on 500mhz iBook. 500Mhz iBook DO NOT SUPPORT Quartz Extreme. Period. Whatever you do. Lowering the minimum RAM will not magically change the video card in the iBook. He didn't mention anything about spanning.

Did you read what he posted ?

ccsccs7 · 06:47 AM

Originally posted by d4nth3m4n:
i dont want to pull the spanning hack on the 500mhz ibook, i know that the hack will kill the comp. what i want to do is what you have to do when you enable spanning on a 16vram ibook- lower the minimum vram needed to run quartz extreme. i want this at 8 so i can have snazzy things like the FUS cube... i do not want these 500mhz ibooks to span

did you read what i posted?

Okay, I get it now. Still, the problem is with the 8MB ATI Rage graphics processor. It only supports textures in powers of 2 and square. The screen width (standard resolution) the screen buffer (uncompressed) would take up 2.25 MB (1024x768 resoultion x 24 bits per pixel) The required texture for the Quartz Extreme effect would be 3 MB (1024x1024 x 24 bits per pixel). So, if Quatz Extreme could be implemented for just that purpose, maybe, but we have to consider the other elements on screen as well which would have to be factored in (we'd have to consider another 3 MB for the Desktop, the dock�we'll say it's 800 pixels wide, so add another 1.8 MB (800x800) This leaves a total memory requirment of about 10 MB�this exceeds the amount of available memory for the 8 MB ATI Rage-based iBooks So, unless compression or swapping from memory was to be used...). But, the bottom line is that the Rage chipset is not supported because of its texture size requirments.

Here's some more reading.

d4nth3m4n · Dec 24, 2003, 09:47 AM

Originally posted by pat++:
His post answers your questions.... He didn't mention anything about spanning. ...

Did you read what he posted ?

look man, if hes talking about killing my ibook, im led to believe he didnt understand the question i posted, and yes, the

guy, was a little over the top, but i dont think i was out of line. k?

ANY hack will NOT work on 500mhz iBook. 500Mhz iBook DO NOT SUPPORT Quartz Extreme. Period. Whatever you do. Lowering the minimum RAM will not magically change the video card in the iBook.

this was not in his post, and i obvously didnt know this, or else this thread would not exist.

d4nth3m4n · Dec 24, 2003, 09:52 AM

Originally posted by ccsccs7:
Okay, I get it now. Still, the problem is with the 8MB ATI Rage graphics processor. It only supports textures in powers of 2 and square. The screen width (standard resolution) the screen buffer (uncompressed) would take up 2.25 MB (1024x768 resoultion x 24 bits per pixel) The required texture for the Quartz Extreme effect would be 3 MB (1024x1024 x 24 bits per pixel). So, if Quatz Extreme could be implemented for just that purpose, maybe, but we have to consider the other elements on screen as well which would have to be factored in (we'd have to consider another 3 MB for the Desktop, the dock�we'll say it's 800 pixels wide, so add another 1.8 MB (800x800) This leaves a total memory requirment of about 10 MB�this exceeds the amount of available memory for the 8 MB ATI Rage-based iBooks So, unless compression or swapping from memory was to be used...). But, the bottom line is that the Rage chipset is not supported because of its texture size requirments.

Here's some more reading.

k, so itll be ugly at best then. should i try it no matter? is the system at risk if i try?

the only thing i dont get is that i can turn the min ram down on a 16mb machine, hook up two monitors (my ibook for example) and get QE to work on both of them. i dont use the spanning on MY ibook often, so i cant tell you what happens when i have a shitton of stuff on the desktop, but i would imagine it would just slow WAY down.

thanks for the replies all.

ccsccs7 · Dec 24, 2003, 10:47 AM

Originally posted by d4nth3m4n:
look man, if hes talking about killing my ibook, im led to believe he didnt understand the question i posted, and yes, the guy, was a little over the top, but i dont think i was out of line. k?...

Hey, it's best to err on the side of caution.

d4nth3m4n · Dec 24, 2003, 11:03 AM

ok, im just going to leave them alone. it doesnt matter all that much to me. i dont even think these girls will get outta ichat long enough to notice the FUS thingy anyway.

Luca Rescigno · Dec 24, 2003, 11:50 AM

Yes, and you can't enable QE and make it look "ugly at best." What so many people fail to realize is that you MUST have a Radeon or GeForce 2MX (or better) in order to run Quartz Extreme. The amount of VRAM isn't even that important - you can technically run it with only 8MB by simply changing a .plist file. But that doesn't matter - everyone sees the 16MB requirement and immediately assumes that they'll be able to run it on their Sawtooth's 16MB Rage 128, and they CAN'T. You can't run it on a 500 MHz iBook because it has a Rage 128, not because it has only 8MB of VRAM.

d4nth3m4n · Dec 24, 2003, 12:23 PM

then why does QE work on my ibook that has a rage with 16mb?

there has to be more to it than just the card...

Luca Rescigno · Dec 24, 2003, 12:38 PM

RageM6 = Radeon.

That's just ATI's weird naming scheme. My PowerMac G4 has a Radeon and it even has a chip on it with "RageM6" printed on it.

Your iBook has a 16 MB Radeon Mobility. The only 16 MB module graphics chip that has ever shipped in any Apple portable was the Radeon Mobility.

d4nth3m4n · Dec 24, 2003, 12:51 PM

oh

tooki · Dec 25, 2003, 03:39 PM

It's as simple as this:

If your Mac has a PCI graphics card, QE won't work. (Ignoring hacks here, as they don't improve performance.

If your Mac has an nVidia graphics chip, or an ATI Radeon-series graphics chip, then you can run Quartz Extreme.

Any other graphics card WILL NOT support Quartz Extreme, no matter what you do.

It has nothing to do with VRAM -- AGP allows system memory to be used as VRAM as needed. (There is a speed penalty for doing this, which is why Apple recommends certain amounts of VRAM. Note also that ALL Macs that shipped with nVidia or Radeon graphics have the minimum recommended VRAM.)

tooki