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zign · Aug 3, 2005, 08:06 PM

I have a 20" iMac G5 2Ghz, 2Gb RAM and 12" iBook 1.2Ghz, 768Mb RAM. They both came with Tiger.

Tiger's Expose and the dock are smoother on iBook. They are actually perfect on iBook. On iMac they are not so smooth. What is the problem? Could this be due to the difference in resolution (1024*768 on iBook and 1680*1050 on iMac )?

OogaBooga · Aug 3, 2005, 08:18 PM

Could be, but most likely it's placebo.

zign · Aug 3, 2005, 08:37 PM

Originally Posted by OogaBooga

Could be, but most likely it's placebo.

Means nothing to me

Is there a way to fix this?

zign · Aug 3, 2005, 08:49 PM

No. It is definitely slower. I mean everything else is a lot faster, but things such as minimazing, expose "all windows" and dock are not as smooth.

Maybe i just got a really good iBook

)

Graymalkin · Aug 3, 2005, 09:27 PM

Are you running Virex on your iMac?

zign · Aug 3, 2005, 10:19 PM

Originally Posted by Graymalkin

Are you running Virex on your iMac?

Nope

Butch Hauke · Aug 4, 2005, 11:20 PM

What is your processor speed set to? I keep mine on maximum, as I found small slowdowns with menu response really annoyed me when it was set to automatic. Perhaps this is causing the problem?

Butch

cleanup · Aug 5, 2005, 12:26 PM

Check your System Profiler. How much VRAM do you have? You should have 128.

Joe Cool · Aug 5, 2005, 12:38 PM

My iMac G5 had a bad logic board and I saw the same type of issues, replaced the logic board everything was smooth.

zign · Aug 6, 2005, 12:24 PM

Originally Posted by cleanup

Check your System Profiler. How much VRAM do you have? You should have 128.

128mb

osxrules · Aug 7, 2005, 01:31 PM

It could be the difference in resolution. I don't think the G5 imac and ibook GPUs are very different assuming the ibook is a G4. The ibooks have a Radeon 9200 and I think the G5 has a GeForce FX5200. They are fairly similar performance-wise and are both low-end chips.

Try putting the G5 on a lower resolution and see if the jitter is still there. I have my Mac Mini at 1280x1024 and expose and Dashboard are pretty smooth - as long as I don't keep loads of widgets open. I was really surprised at one point because I was playing a game fullscreen and hit F12 thinking it was one of the buttons in the game and in fact it activated expose and it slid ino the corner smooth as butter. I was pretty impressed that I kept pressing it to see if I could slow it down but it was fine.

Now the resolution would have been lowered for the game to about 800x600 so that probably helped the performance.

I really don't think the G5 imacs should have been shipped with such a weak chip. Same with the Mac Mini. I would have paid an extra £50 for a decent chipset. BTW, does the imac G5 chip set support CoreImage? The Radeon 9200 doesn't so maybe the G5 is being slowed down by some extra effects. You can check by looking for the droplet effect in Dashboard or just use System Profiler.

cleanup · Aug 7, 2005, 01:40 PM

Originally Posted by osxrules

It could be the difference in resolution. I don't think the G5 imac and ibook GPUs are very different assuming the ibook is a G4. The ibooks have a Radeon 9200 and I think the G5 has a GeForce FX5200. They are fairly similar performance-wise and are both low-end chips.

Try putting the G5 on a lower resolution and see if the jitter is still there. I have my Mac Mini at 1280x1024 and expose and Dashboard are pretty smooth - as long as I don't keep loads of widgets open. I was really surprised at one point because I was playing a game fullscreen and hit F12 thinking it was one of the buttons in the game and in fact it activated expose and it slid ino the corner smooth as butter. I was pretty impressed that I kept pressing it to see if I could slow it down but it was fine.

Now the resolution would have been lowered for the game to about 800x600 so that probably helped the performance.

I really don't think the G5 imacs should have been shipped with such a weak chip. Same with the Mac Mini. I would have paid an extra £50 for a decent chipset. BTW, does the imac G5 chip set support CoreImage? The Radeon 9200 doesn't so maybe the G5 is being slowed down by some extra effects. You can check by looking for the droplet effect in Dashboard or just use System Profiler.

False. My iMac G5 runs expose, dashboard, and other Quartz Extreme effects "smooth as butter," as you said.

Likely a failing logic board. I'd take it to your nearest Apple Reseller.

zign · Aug 7, 2005, 03:45 PM

Originally Posted by cleanup

False. My iMac G5 runs expose, dashboard, and other Quartz Extreme effects "smooth as butter," as you said.

Likely a failing logic board. I'd take it to your nearest Apple Reseller.

I don't think so. I am not saying that it's ugly slow. I am saying that it is not as smooth as iBooks expose (all windows). I thought it might be the resolution since the windows have almost twice as much to travel and therefore there is more time for you to see the glitches. I'll explain what happens. When you have ten windows or so open and you use expose to cascade them all on your screen and then when you click on one of them it comes forward. When the window is coming forward you can sometimes expirience a slight jump in the animation. It doesn't happen all the time. Also, the problem with the dock was the blue-tooth mouse which isn't as smooth (movement) as usb mouse. By the way, the new apple mighty mouse is really cool. Scrolling is finally smooth.

These are my xbench results: http://ladd.dyndns.org/xbench/merge.xhtml?doc1=125059 and I don't think that my board is failing. My temps are below average for the 20" iMac G5 2.0Ghz.

zign · Aug 7, 2005, 03:52 PM

Originally Posted by osxrules

It could be the difference in resolution. I don't think the G5 imac and ibook GPUs are very different assuming the ibook is a G4. The ibooks have a Radeon 9200 and I think the G5 has a GeForce FX5200. They are fairly similar performance-wise and are both low-end chips.

Try putting the G5 on a lower resolution and see if the jitter is still there. I have my Mac Mini at 1280x1024 and expose and Dashboard are pretty smooth - as long as I don't keep loads of widgets open. I was really surprised at one point because I was playing a game fullscreen and hit F12 thinking it was one of the buttons in the game and in fact it activated expose and it slid ino the corner smooth as butter. I was pretty impressed that I kept pressing it to see if I could slow it down but it was fine.

Now the resolution would have been lowered for the game to about 800x600 so that probably helped the performance.

I really don't think the G5 imacs should have been shipped with such a weak chip. Same with the Mac Mini. I would have paid an extra £50 for a decent chipset. BTW, does the imac G5 chip set support CoreImage? The Radeon 9200 doesn't so maybe the G5 is being slowed down by some extra effects. You can check by looking for the droplet effect in Dashboard or just use System Profiler.

I have a rev B iMac with Radeon 9600 128mb vram. Coreimage is supported

Maybe I was just alittle paranoid

Or maybe the reason is that I run quite a lot of apps on my iMac.