[zurek106]

I have Fast Switching enabled but when I switch between two different accounts it doesnt do that cool looking cube transition. Why?
Thanks
-Dan

[Misanthrope]

I'm betting your mac can't take advantage of Quartz Extreme, which is what enables the fancy effects.

What kind of mac do you have?

[zurek106]

Originally posted by Misanthrope:
I'm betting your mac can't take advantage of Quartz Extreme, which is what enables the fancy effects.

What kind of mac do you have?

iMac DV Special Edition G3 500 Mhz 384 Ram

[proton]

The iMac DV Special Edition 500 MHz has a RAGE 128 video card. That video card is not good enough to take advantage of Quartz Extreme features.

You can still use fast user switching OK, just no cool cube effects.

- proton

[Misanthrope]

As I suspected.

You see, the graphics chipset inside of your iMac isn't powerful enough to meet the demands of Quartz Extreme, and so it doesn't take advantage of the fancy effects.

And to prevent another thread (and just to be thorough), the chipset cannot be upgraded. Ever.

[zurek106]

That sucks! I wana see this cube effect!

[Boondoggle]

not gonna happen.

You need a newer mac for the cube effect.


16MB of video memory (32MB recommended) • AGP 2X (AGP 4X recommended) •Any Macintosh desktop computer with an AGP 2X slot or better can be upgraded with a supported graphics card to take advantage of Quartz Extreme. Supported graphics cards • NVIDIA GeForce2 MX,GeForce3,GeForce4 Ti,or GeForce4 MX graphics cards •ATI AGP-based Radeon graphics cards • On cards with 16MB of video memory,Quartz Extreme is not supported in the extended desktop mode of multiple-display configurations.Quartz Extreme is supported in video mirroring mode.

[besson3c]

Originally posted by Boondoggle:
not gonna happen.

You need a newer mac for the cube effect.


16MB of video memory (32MB recommended) • AGP 2X (AGP 4X recommended) •Any Macintosh desktop computer with an AGP 2X slot or better can be upgraded with a supported graphics card to take advantage of Quartz Extreme. Supported graphics cards • NVIDIA GeForce2 MX,GeForce3,GeForce4 Ti,or GeForce4 MX graphics cards •ATI AGP-based Radeon graphics cards • On cards with 16MB of video memory,Quartz Extreme is not supported in the extended desktop mode of multiple-display configurations.Quartz Extreme is supported in video mirroring mode.

I don't think you need QE for the cube. My wife's TiBook with Rage 128 (I believe) does the cube. Her machine isn't QE, is it?

[Misanthrope]

Originally posted by besson3c:
I don't think you need QE for the cube. My wife's TiBook with Rage 128 (I believe) does the cube. Her machine isn't QE, is it?

Hmm...how fast is it?

[besson3c]

Originally posted by Misanthrope:
Hmm...how fast is it?

550 Mhz

[absmiths]

Originally posted by besson3c:
I don't think you need QE for the cube. My wife's TiBook with Rage 128 (I believe) does the cube. Her machine isn't QE, is it?

My TiBook 667 does QE.

[OptimusG4]

Originally posted by absmiths:
My TiBook 667 does QE.

Ditto here.

[THE MAC GOD]

It's not the CPU that matters... gotta have 16mb of vram or more.. period. Now, having said that, there are utilities on versiontracker taht force QE to work on lesser cards... not sure what they are called... but I know they exist.

[besson3c]

Originally posted by THE MAC GOD:
It's not the CPU that matters... gotta have 16mb of vram or more.. period. Now, having said that, there are utilities on versiontracker taht force QE to work on lesser cards... not sure what they are called... but I know they exist.

Then why does it work with this Rage 128 TiBook?

[Misanthrope]

Originally posted by besson3c:
Then why does it work with this Rage 128 TiBook?

It's because every TiBook with a speed above 550MHz had a 16MB Radeon, not a Rage 128 (those were the Pismo's and TiBook 400/500s).

[cmoney]

This is partially off topic, but I noticed that when I have 2 displays, I don't get the cube effect also.

[Misanthrope]

What kind of mac do you have? What kind of video card?

[ZackS]

You need a Radeon chip, an AGP card AND 16MB of VRAM to use Quartz Extreme. The hack allows you to knock the VRAM requirement down to 8MB (for dual displays on laptops) or to use a graphics card on the PCI bus (which still must meet the other requirements).

[Phrogman]

Originally posted by cmoney:
This is partially off topic, but I noticed that when I have 2 displays, I don't get the cube effect also.

Yeah, David Pogue did a demo of FUS on TechTV (The Screensavers) yesterday. He had his 12" Powerbook hooked up to the plasma screen and the Cube effect would not work with that set-up. I wonder why that is???

[ZackS]

Originally posted by Phrogman:
Yeah, David Pogue did a demo of FUS on TechTV (The Screensavers) yesterday. He had his 12" Powerbook hooked up to the plasma screen and the Cube effect would not work with that set-up. I wonder why that is???

Because the laptop has 16MB of VRAM. He hooks it up to 2 displays and it gets split. 8MB does not fit Apple's Quartz extreme requirement. You can hack it in to working though.

[besson3c]

Originally posted by Misanthrope:
It's because every TiBook with a speed above 550MHz had a 16MB Radeon, not a Rage 128 (those were the Pismo's and TiBook 400/500s).

I promise you, this laptop has a Rage (although it is 16MB)

[ZackS]

Originally posted by besson3c:
I promise you, this laptop has a Rage (although it is 16MB)

No, it's a Radeon. Rage cards cannot do QE because it is technically impossible, or the texture sizes and swapping would take so much overhead that it would negate the benefits.

The 550 TiBook has a Radeon: http://www.lowendmac.com/pb2/g4-550.html

[alphasubzero949]

I've tried the QE hack, and while it looks cool, you take a major performance hit.


iBook 600 (Late 2001) with 8 MB VRAM here.

[besson3c]

Originally posted by ZackS:
No, it's a Radeon. Rage cards cannot do QE because it is technically impossible, or the texture sizes and swapping would take so much overhead that it would negate the benefits.

The 550 TiBook has a Radeon: http://www.lowendmac.com/pb2/g4-550.html

[ZackS]

RageM6 means Radeon (for some reason, ask ATI). No Apple laptop ever shipped with a Rage card with 16MB of vram.

[Misanthrope]

^^^That is the right answer.

[sniffer]

Originally posted by alphasubzero949:
I've tried the QE hack, and while it looks cool, you take a major performance hit.


iBook 600 (Late 2001) with 8 MB VRAM here.

That's impossible. ATI rage 128 mob/pro doesn't support QE.

[Drakino]

Originally posted by ZackS:
RageM6 means Radeon (for some reason, ask ATI). No Apple laptop ever shipped with a Rage card with 16MB of vram.

The M6 part is short for Mobility 6, IE, the 6th revision of the Mobility graphics cards. My Radeon 9600 shows RV350M10. RV350 being the internal name of the chip, and M10 meaning Mobility 10.

[asidrane]

On my B&W 63 with an original radeon pci card and the quartz extreme hack (PCI Extreme 2.1) installed, I get quartz extreme working. I know it is I can see the difference in expose, but I don't get the cube effect when doing the fast user switching

[Luca Rescigno]

I remember when Apple released the system requirements for QE... man, it was seriously about three or four pages of this.

"Is my iMac supported? Will it run Jaguar? OMG APPLE SUX I CANT RUN JAGUAR ON MY IMAC"

"My PowerMac has a 16 MB Rage card, will it work?"

"My PowerBook only has 16 MB, will it work?"

"I heard you can run QE with just 8 MB of VRAM, will my iBook work?" (this was before iBooks had Radeons).

So if you have a computer with Rage 128 graphics, it won't work no matter how much you beg. There were even some 32 MB Rage 128s out for a while that you could buy as third-party upgrades - they don't work either. You can check what graphics your computer has by looking at www.apple-history.com.

[JKT]

According to a report at MacFixIt, the cube effect doesn't appear if the two accounts you are switching between use different screen resolutions - does this explain some people's results?

[lenox]

Interestingly enough, on my mdd mac:

With the stock geforce4mx card (32mb vram) installed, I do not get the FUS effect. However, with a (pc flashed) radeon 8500 with 64mb vram, I do.

I have a feeling that it's because my monitor is set to 1600x1200, and if I had perhaps set it to 800x600, the geforce4mx would have worked fine.

No bother, however, because I love the Radeon about ten times more!

[Gankdawg]

533 G4, 32MB GeForce 2MX, 1280 MB RAM.

FUS works everytime at 1024 X 768 and 1280 X 1024. At 1600 X 1200 (which is what I use), it works about 10% of the time.

[besson3c]

Originally posted by Drakino:
The M6 part is short for Mobility 6, IE, the 6th revision of the Mobility graphics cards. My Radeon 9600 shows RV350M10. RV350 being the internal name of the chip, and M10 meaning Mobility 10.

The M standing for Mobility makes sense, but there was never a Radeon Mobility, was there?

I'm not trying to sound standoffish or defensive, but it doesn't make any sense to me why it *appears* that this laptop has a Rage Mobility, yet I get the cube effect. It would be nice to determine whether this laptop is, indeed, QE enabled like it seems to be at this point...

[Axel]

Originally posted by besson3c:
It would be nice to determine whether this laptop is, indeed, QE enabled like it seems to be at this point...

Download Quart Extreme Check and you'll know

[alphasubzero949]

Originally posted by sniffer:
That's impossible. ATI rage 128 mob/pro doesn't support QE.

QE support is determined by a single file. There's a hack on VT that swaps the file to fool the system into thinking the computer is QE-compatible.

I forgot what it's called.

[besson3c]

Originally posted by Axel:
Download Quart Extreme Check and you'll know

According to this, this machine is indeed QE enabled. Interesting, for the longest time I thought it wasn't

[tonywriter]

How come the cube effect works on my pismo for slide transitions in Keynote? Or is that different?

[coolmacdude]

Originally posted by besson3c:
The M standing for Mobility makes sense, but there was never a Radeon Mobility, was there?

Umm, all Radeons used in Powerbooks are Radeon Mobility.

[phillryu]

Is it possible to get that hack to work on my own 600mhz ibook with 8mb rage? Or just 8mb radeons.

[Luca Rescigno]

Originally posted by besson3c:
The M standing for Mobility makes sense, but there was never a Radeon Mobility, was there?

I'm not trying to sound standoffish or defensive, but it doesn't make any sense to me why it *appears* that this laptop has a Rage Mobility, yet I get the cube effect. It would be nice to determine whether this laptop is, indeed, QE enabled like it seems to be at this point...

I don't know why it shows up like that but I can assure you, all 550 MHz and faster PowerBooks have Radeon variants. Supported models are marked with an asterisk (*).

400 MHz: Rage Mobility 8 MB
500 MHz: Rage Mobility 8 MB
*550 MHz: Radeon Mobility 16 MB
*667 MHz w/ VGA: Radeon Mobility 16 MB
*667 MHz w/ DVI: Radeon 7500 Mobility 32 MB
*800 MHz: Radeon 7500 Mobility 32 MB
*867 MHz: Radeon 9000 Mobility 32 MB
*1 GHz Titanium: Radeon 9000 Mobility 64 MB
*867 MHz Aluminum 12": GeForce 420 Go 32 MB
*1 GHz Aluminum 12": GeForce FX 5200 Go 32 MB
*1 GHz Aluminum 17": GeForce 440 Go 64 MB
*1.33 GHz Aluminum 17": Radeon 9600 Mobility 64 MB
*1 GHz Aluminum: Radeon 9600 Mobility 64 MB
*1.25 GHz Aluminum: Radeon 9600 Mobility 64 MB

500 MHz iBook G3: Rage Mobility 8 MB
600 MHz iBook G3 w/ Combo drive: Rage Mobility 8 MB
*600 MHz iBook G3 w/ CD-ROM drive: Radeon Mobility 16 MB
*700 MHz iBook G3 w/ Combo drive: Radeon Mobility 16 MB
*700 MHz iBook G3 w/ CD-ROM drive: Radeon 7500 Mobility 16 MB
*800 MHz iBook G3: Radeon 7500 Mobility 32 MB
*900 MHz iBook G3 w/ Combo drive: Radeon 7500 Mobility 32 MB
*iBook G4: Radeon 9200 Mobility 32 MB

Originally posted by phillryu:
Is it possible to get that hack to work on my own 600mhz ibook with 8mb rage? Or just 8mb radeons.

It is not possible to get the hack to work on your iBook. The Rage Mobility simply cannot run QE, it is completely incompatible. There is also no such thing as an 8 MB Radeon, although it should be possible to run QE on a laptop that has a 16 MB Radeon Mobility, even in dual-monitor mode (when each monitor is given 8 MB).

[tritonus]

Originally posted by alphasubzero949:
I've tried the QE hack, and while it looks cool, you take a major performance hit.


iBook 600 (Late 2001) with 8 MB VRAM here.

My g/f has got the same iBook. She's disappointed that she doesn't have the cube effect. So you wouldn't advise me to do the QE hack, right?

Anyway, why is there no info about system requirements for that on www.apple.com/macosx ?

[Nebrie]

Originally posted by tritonus:
My g/f has got the same iBook. She's disappointed that she doesn't have the cube effect. So you wouldn't advise me to do the QE hack, right?

Anyway, why is there no info about system requirements for that on www.apple.com/macosx ?

There is on the quartz extreme page http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quartzextreme/

[Boondoggle]

Originally posted by tritonus:

My g/f has got the same iBook. She's disappointed that she doesn't have the cube effect. So you wouldn't advise me to do the QE hack, right?

Anyway, why is there no info about system requirements for that on www.apple.com/macosx ?

Yeah, and there is one in my post above, taken directly from apple's page.

I guess nobody read it. Could have saved a lot of typing.

bd

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by Misanthrope:
As I suspected.

You see, the graphics chipset inside of your iMac isn't powerful enough to meet the demands of Quartz Extreme, and so it doesn't take advantage of the fancy effects.

And to prevent another thread (and just to be thorough), the chipset cannot be upgraded. Ever.

two words: Soldering Gun.

[tooki]

Also, people, PLEASE remember this: the graphics card in a Pismo is a Rage Mobility 128 -- not Rage Mobility.

Similarly, Blue G3s have Rage 128 cards, not Rage.

You must remember that there were many other members of the Rage family: the original Rage (the only one that can correctly be called Rage), the Rage II, the Rage Pro, and then finally the Rage 128 (and slightly improved Rage 128 Pro). There were also Mobility versions: Rage Mobility, Rage II Mobility, Rage Pro Mobility, Rage Mobility 128. (I don't know why ATI moved the word Mobility around.)


None of those can run Quartz Extreme. Period. Their hardware does not support some functions that are essential to QE. If you use a hack to make-believe that your machine does QE, then it's rendering it in software, taking a big performance hit.


The reason Keynote can do the cube (and other) transitions on Macs that don't do QE is that Keynote scales down the image to low resolution to paste on the cube -- QE demands that the image be full-resolution (at any arbitrary resolution). The Rage series cannot handle that.

tooki

[mindwaves]

I don't know. Works fine here on a Dual 867 G4 MDD with a Radeoon 8500 with 64 MB VRAM.

[lenox]

If you have a QE-enabled card and are still not seeing the effect, try lowering the resolution, and making sure both users you are switching from/to, have the same resolution set.

My geforce4mx with 32mb vram wouldn't enable the FUS effect at 1600x1200, but it would at 1280x1024. However, my radeon 8500 with 64mb vram will show the effect at basically any resolution. I think ram really comes into play because it has to store both entire desktops as textures in the vram as it animates the effect. talk about detailed textures!