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mkral · Jan 14, 2003, 11:51 PM

I have a 700 mhz ibook, and I'm trying to find out the lowdown on Quartz Extreme. I see that the "min" requirements include 16 Megs of VRam, which my ibook has, but the "recommended" requirements include 32 Megs. What do I lose by not having the 32 Megs? I read in another post that with my machine QE is disabled when it's connected to an external monitor. Does this happen only when using the VGA Connector? What about when using S-Video? Are there any other limitations to my setup?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

chabig · Jan 15, 2003, 12:28 AM

Don't know about QE on the external monitor (I can't imagine it would make any difference) but you definitely have Quartz Extreme. I have the same machine and it's much faster than my older iBook 600 without QE. The difference between those two machines is dramatic. I don't think the difference between 16 and 32 megs of VRAM is as dramatic.

Chris

mjarski15 · Jan 15, 2003, 07:52 PM

Originally posted by mkral:
I have a 700 mhz ibook, and I'm trying to find out the lowdown on Quartz Extreme. I see that the "min" requirements include 16 Megs of VRam, which my ibook has, but the "recommended" requirements include 32 Megs. What do I lose by not having the 32 Megs? I read in another post that with my machine QE is disabled when it's connected to an external monitor. Does this happen only when using the VGA Connector? What about when using S-Video? Are there any other limitations to my setup?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

I believe, and someone will correct me if I am mistaken, that when you connect to an external monitor your iBook Vram is cut in half because it is divided up between the two monitors. Because it is divided, only 8 megs now, you can't support QE. I don't think that it would matter which way that you are connected to the external monitor. Again this may be all wrong but it makes sense.

chabig · Jan 15, 2003, 08:10 PM

Since the display is simply repeated on the external monitor, the VRAM shouldn't be cut in half. It's just showing the same picture on two monitors.

Chris

BkueKanoodle · Jan 15, 2003, 08:44 PM

I think he may have been refering to a post that refers to the monitor spanning hack. Yes it does cut the amount of vram in half but QE will still work, you just have to modify the configuration file to let it know that the vram is now split

Stratus Fear · Jan 16, 2003, 12:35 PM

yes, that config file mod does work, just be careful to not put the resolution too high on the CRT or the VRAM gets very tight and the display slows enough that you can't tell whether or not it has QE

Up to 1280x1024 (IIRC) seems to be fine. On the other hand, even if you do push the res that high, the LCD's QE still runs fast, probably since the VRAM is divided between the two displays (they each have their own framebuffer).

mkral · Jan 16, 2003, 05:43 PM

so if I'm not using the monitor spanning, but am just using an external monitor (or TV) to replicate what is on the screen, then am I still getting QE, or is it disabled?

velocipede · Jan 16, 2003, 06:57 PM

Originally posted by mkral:
so if I'm not using the monitor spanning, but am just using an external monitor (or TV) to replicate what is on the screen, then am I still getting QE, or is it disabled?

If you're not using spanning then you will have Quartz Extreme enabled.

olli2 · Jan 18, 2003, 08:14 AM

What is spanning? Having two monitors with different content on them? And how is it supported on the iBook?

Panzer · Jan 20, 2003, 11:46 PM

Originally posted by mjarski15:
I believe, and someone will correct me if I am mistaken, that when you connect to an external monitor your iBook Vram is cut in half because it is divided up between the two monitors. Because it is divided, only 8 megs now, you can't support QE. I don't think that it would matter which way that you are connected to the external monitor. Again this may be all wrong but it makes sense.

FYI:
"In OS X the video card's memory is not hard-split in half (example: 32MB + 32MB). A game is free to require much more than 32MB of video memory and it will get it. Video memory is a shared resource between both display heads and is allocated by the OS as needed."

That's from an ATI dude.

I believe there is a hack to run QE with 8mb vram, assuming your gpu is applicable. 16mb radeon mobility for example. But at that point it's not running optimally, but I'm not exactly sure what that means!

cww · Jan 21, 2003, 04:58 PM

Originally posted by Panzer:
FYI:
"In OS X the video card's memory is not hard-split in half (example: 32MB + 32MB). A game is free to require much more than 32MB of video memory and it will get it. Video memory is a shared resource between both display heads and is allocated by the OS as needed."

That's from an ATI dude.

I believe there is a hack to run QE with 8mb vram, assuming your gpu is applicable. 16mb radeon mobility for example. But at that point it's not running optimally, but I'm not exactly sure what that means!

Panzer,
You don't happen to know this hack to run QE with 8 MB VRAM, do you? Because I'm upgrading to Jaguar soon and I'd like to have it on my iBook with 8 MB VRAM...

Panzer · Jan 22, 2003, 12:03 AM

Originally posted by cww:
Panzer,
You don't happen to know this hack to run QE with 8 MB VRAM, do you? Because I'm upgrading to Jaguar soon and I'd like to have it on my iBook with 8 MB VRAM...

Sure thing. Check out:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/OSX/quart...e_PCI_mod.html
Go to the very bottom of the page and it gets explained.

Or just download this and don't worry about the details:
http://www.versiontracker.com/morein...6006&db=macosx

But if your iBook only has 8mb VRAM then I believe it has the Rage 128, which is not a supported GPU. Radeon mobility is minimum supported chip.
Enjoy