[Apple Pro Underwear]

While other operating systems hope to introduce comparable technology in late 2004, Jaguar has it now. Quartz Extreme uses a supported* graphics card built into your Mac to relieve the main PowerPC chip of on screen calculations. This dramatically improves system performance, making Jaguar much more responsive.
Here�s how it works. Quartz uses the integrated OpenGL technology to convert each window into a texture, then sends it to the graphics card to render on screen. The graphics processor focuses on what it does best � graphics � freeing the Power PC chip to do more operations in the same amount of time. Everything is zippier.

So does it mean that the minimum Quartz enabled graphics card will not perform as fast as the absolute fastest graphics card available?

If so:

1. The disparity between the "fast" and "fastest" graphics card now may not be drastic now, but what about a year from now? Will a future "monster" graphics card be able to make OSX Quartz capabilities on current ( and future) powermacs significantly improved?

2. During work flow and NOT entertainment, how much of the video card will be used for just rendering the screen? With single and dual monitors.

3. For somebody who has no need for a "monster" graphics card other than for Quartz Extreme and, is it worth getting the better graphics card just for Quartz Extreme?

[Vanquish]

I had the exact same question but you beat me to it. Now bring on the info !

[iKevin]

It would stand to reason that a better card would speed up performance....but I would also like some confirmation on this.

[Boochie]

I would think that a faster card would speed up performance only to the extent that your system's performance is graphics-card-bound, not CPU-bound. If the CPU is the bottleneck for generating the visuals sent to the graphics card, beyond a certain point it doesn't matter how fast that card is. Conversely, if the CPU, bus, etc. are blazingly fast and the graphics card is the bottleneck, you'd probably want the fastest card you can get.

I'm also interested in what people think about this, because I'd like to replace the GeForce 2MX card in my QuickSilver G4/867. However, I don't know which card to buy.

Originally posted by iKevin:
It would stand to reason that a better card would speed up performance....but I would also like some confirmation on this.

[Millennium]

It all depends. However, unless you have a habit of putting hundreds of windows on your screen, the speed difference is not likely to be noticeable. Remember, the card isn't used for actual drawing in this version of QE, only compositing.

Well, OK, so the 2D part of the card is used for drawing, but that's no different from before.

If you need a better graphics card anyway, I'd suggest you go for as much as you can afford, just because of the 3-D performance. However, it's not likely to affect your regular work much unless running Let1kWindowsBloom is part of your usual work habits.

[The_FrO]

Alright, I don't know too much about exactly how QE works, but it would stand to reason that QE uses OpenGL's 2D functions to render things to the screen (I honestly cannot see how they could or why they would translate the windows to 3D). While that does speed things up, I doubt that if you put in a faster *3D* graphics card, you would gain performance in the 2D arena, since most cards right now are pretty much the same for 2D.

Now, this is all my own speculation, but I highly doubt that QE would gain with a faster 3D card (like a Geforce4 Ti instead of a Geforce2 MX).

Now, honestly, I hope I'm wrong, because I so want to have faster desktop performance under 10.2... heh...

[ratlater]

I've read on the xlr8 forums that performance does vary based on the card. Some people who work for ATI have posted there stating that low end Radeons and GeForce2MXs will not perform as well as GeForce3s or higher end Radeons.

-matt

[iamnid]

I've used macs that support QE and macs that don't. I honestly haven't noticed that much of a difference in performance between those that do and don't have QE running. That said, if there is a difference between a high end QE card and a lower end one it is very likely to be of the smallest nature. I just don't think Quartz Extreme puts enough strain on any of the QE supported cards to make one faster than the other -- maybe down the road when the Quartz Extreme effects get more complex, but for the time being I don't think you'd notice any measurable difference between the same powermac running an original AGP 16mb radeon or a radeon 8500.

[Apple Pro Underwear]

Quartz Super Extreme?

From these forums, making OSX even faster is a reasonable request for the Panther. Will enabling the graphics card be a good idea for Apple's future? Makes sense to me. I have no use for a high end video card unless it actually did stuff.

[Apple Pro Underwear]

So i just checked out this article

http://www.arstechnica.com/reviews/0...10.2-8.html#qe

from arstechnica...

For maximum performance, the textures (window buffers) being composited should be in video memory. But they must also remain in main memory, because they can be evicted from the limited pool of video memory at any time.

Without QE, data flows from the window buffers in main memory to the CPU for compositing. With QE, data flows from main memory to the video card instead. This removes the burden on the bus between main memory and the CPU. But if all of the window buffers in main memory cannot fit into video memory, there will be heavy demands placed on the bus between main memory and the video card.

So it's no surprise that two of the requirements for Quartz Extreme support are at least 16MB of VRAM (32MB recommended) and an AGP2x bus (4x or better recommended). Furthermore, since windows come in many different shapes and sizes, video cards that do not support arbitrary texture sizes (e.g. ATI Rage 128) cannot use Quartz Extreme. The video card must also have support for all the pixel formats used by Quartz, and support multitexturing.

sounds to me...faster video card = better performance because if you have a great graphics card it will be used by QE to the max, leaving the real cpu to do other work

[Rickster]

Alright, I don't know too much about exactly how QE works, but it would stand to reason that QE uses OpenGL's 2D functions to render things to the screen (I honestly cannot see how they could or why they would translate the windows to 3D).

In QuartzExtreme, the composited desktop is indeed treated as a 3D scene -- you just only get to see it in one 2D perspective. Every window is a textured plane. Leveraging the 3D compositing abilities of today's graphics cards is how QuartzExtreme reaps such a performance benefit -- the 2D acceleration capabilities of current and past GPUs don't come close to doing what the window compositor needs to do.

As for the relative performance of different GPUs... it's hard to say. I haven't seen an overwhelming difference among the various QE-enabled systems I've used (which includes brand-new G4s, LCD iMacs, and older G4s with aftermarket Radeon cards). The hardware-accelerated window compositor exercises the GPU in quite a different way than your average 3D app or game does -- it doesn't really matter whether the card can do 16-pass bump-mapped shiny surfaces with hair, for example.

Probably the most important GPU feature for QuartzExtreme is amount of texture memory: the more you can fit onto the card, the less lag you get from swapping window buffers from main memory.
Secondary to that would be fill rate and texture loading bandwidth -- how well does it scale to larger windows and larger screens, and how much muscle is left over for handling video and "real 3D" content.

[l008com]

before jag came out, I sold my GF2 32MB and bought a GF4MX 64 MB. I don't know how it would have been in the GF2, but with the card I have now, the interface, windows dragging etc is AS fast as it was in OS9, this is GREAT! (dual 533, 640MB)

[Jasoco]

/me drools over PowerMac with Geforce4 Titanium with 128Meg's of VRAM.

[dfiler]

I replaced my dual 450's rage128pro with a radeon 8500.

QE and the radeon 8500 don't seemed to have improved my peak graphics performance. In fact, window dragging is now slightly more jerky than before. Take this with a grain of salt because i'm definately a frame-rate junky and both cards have acceptable 2D performance.

What I have noticed is that more CPU power is available during graphics intensive tasks. Its almost like we now get all of the eye-candy and glitz for free (no processing costs). Quartz with a rage128pro would become sluggish at times even though its peak performance was great. With QE and the 8500, this performance is now the norm, no matter what else OS X is doing.

---

Has anyone else noticed window tearing with an 8500 and QE? The frame rate is great but windows don't always look rectangular while being dragged. With a jagged refresh, they appear in the shape of a stair case during vigorous 'window shaking'.

---

QE is a marvel of engineering and industrial management! In retrospect, its obvious that computers were wasting a huge amount of processing power with graphics cards sitting idle most of the time. Moore's law has been most apparent in the graphics chip industry while nearly dissappearing from the CPU industry. (at least with the powerPC)

Its simple decisions like the choice to develop QE which can make or break Apple. There is still so much potential too. While Apple has taken a lot of flak for concentrating on eye-candy, they're headed down the right path. Two years from now when we have distance fog and motion blur in our windowing system with no performance hit, everyone will finally give in and admit that Apple has foresight and was making savy business decisions.

Raise your hands if you want subtle but lickable motion blur on the genie effect! Or how about a live weather app in the shape of a rotating globe with the earth's atmosphere partially obscuring windows behind the globe. Or maybe video conferencing with the person's head floating translucently above your work... with a green screen backdrop you could eliminate everything but the person's image and even gradually fade out the bottom of the image so that their neck doesn't just end. Ooooh, and how about making their image come forward while they're speaking and shrink when they are quiet, all the while, floating translucently above your work and not slowing down your system.

And I thought it was safe to stop licking my computer...

[Apple Pro Underwear]

i think the best part of QE is that it is a fledling technology with a great future ahead of it. Now that it is a standard, many ingenious and innovative software developers may design some killer software.

I think that it also has the possibility of changing OS GUI forever...in future itinerations, we can springload folders through a transparent application windows and stuff like that. Imagine being able to set the transparency of your dock in the preferences panel and even have layers on your GUI...

At any rate, Apple has options to really make it into something special.

[Mack]

A faster card definitely will speed up Jaguar performance. I just upgraded my DP800 from a GeForce 2 to a GeForce 4 and the GUI performance boost is pretty impressive. The new card is faster to begin with and I'm sure the upgrade from 32mb to 128mb of video memory didn't hurt either.

To give a concrete example of the performance difference, I'm using the Marine Aquarium screensaver as my desktop (for instructions see here). With the GeForce 2, the screensaver/desktop worked fine but GUI performance slowed noticeably - to the point that using the screensaver as a desktop was good only as a novelty. With the GeForce 4, however, I can run the screensaver/desktop at max detail with no noticeable GUI hit. In fact, for web browsing and other basic stuff, the GUI is as snappy with the screensaver/desktop as it was before with just a normal desktop.

It's pleasant to surf the web or do other routine chores with tropical fish swimming around and a starfish crawling up my monitor.

[Apple Pro Underwear]

Originally posted by Mack:
A faster card definitely will speed up Jaguar performance.

Can you tell us your experiences without using the screensaver as your desktop?

Comparing tthe Ge2 OSX "normal" with Ge4 OSX "normal"...i assume that Ge4 OSX is as fast as OS9 and the finder is as fast as possible.

[Mack]

Finder, WindowShade and drop-down menus are all virtually instantaneous with the GeForce4 and a normal desktop. I don't have much experience with OS 9 but I don't see how it could be any faster. OS X is now running every bit as fast on my DP800 as Windows XP runs on my 2.2ghz P4. I'm not a benchmark sort of guy but the GeForce4 seems noticeably faster than the GeForce2, enough so that I'm very pleased with the upgrade.