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katanman · Feb 13, 2003, 12:25 PM

I have a question regarding to Quartz extreme (QE) and dual monitors. I'm looking at this before I get too excited about upgrading my AGP card.

I currently have a dual monitor setup using a ATI Rage Pro 128 16 MB video card in both the AGP slot and a PCI slot. This enables my G4 450 Mhz for dual monitors.

The question I have is, if I replace the AGP ATI card with a new ATI card, such as the 8500, would QE function as expected on the main monitor? I'm trying to understand which of these scenarios might happen:

1. QE works on the main monitor, and not on the second. Passing between monitors just automagically works by the CPU doing more tasks on the second monitor.

2. The system goes to lowest common denominator, meaning no QE at all.

3. The system won't even work at all, it'll want me to unhook the second monitor.

Anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks

Riemann Zeta · Feb 13, 2003, 12:51 PM

I have PowerBook Ti 1GHz SD--with a 64 MB Radeon 9000 chipset. I also have two monitors, one is the internal LCD (1280*854), the other is an analog LCD (1024*768). Both operate in 16.7*10^6 colors and QuartzGL runs on both. I believe VRAM is the rate limiting step for QE--the more VRAM, the better.

bradexample · Feb 13, 2003, 01:15 PM

i've got a gforce4ti that I run two monitors off of, quartz extreme runs on both. peace.

katanman · Feb 13, 2003, 01:28 PM

I think it'll work just fine if I run both monitors off the one video card. However, I'd like to keep the PCI 16 MB card in play.

Its not like I'm planning on doing any gaming on the second card.

miro7 · Feb 13, 2003, 10:55 PM

I think it'll work just fine if I run both monitors off the one video card. However, I'd like to keep the PCI 16 MB card in play.

The 8500 comes with all the adaptors needed to run two VGA monitors off the one card. Given that will enable QuartzGL on each of the displays, why would you even consider keeping the Rage128 around?

By exclusively using the 8500, not only would you gain QuartzGL on both displays (the 64MB of memory is dynamically allocated to the displays as needed--not split between the two), but you would also be freeing up a PCI slot.

Now, you could run three monitors... but don't look a gift horse in the mouth

roders · Feb 13, 2003, 11:43 PM

QE is enable on my LCD and an external monitor on my 12" G4 PB with only 32Mb Vram, works great.
Dual dislpays work really well on the mac.

Catfish_Man · Feb 14, 2003, 01:28 AM

It'll be off for the Rage and on for the Radeon.

the weatherman · Feb 14, 2003, 09:57 PM

Originally posted by Catfish_Man:
It'll be off for the Rage and on for the Radeon.

Probably not seen this yet.

No hacks. But my set up: A B&W G3 running on a G4 600, with Radeon PCI Edition 32 mb and the original ATI Rage Orion with 16mb-- both monitors have QE on.

And I don't seem to feel any performance hit at all. At least nothing obvious as I haven't really removed QE (though frankly I dont know how it feels without QE on Jag, my comparison is with 10.1.5)

Don't know how it happened, probably beacuse I installed Jag over 10.1.5, with both cards attached and of course the monitors. My only theory, Jag installer thought I had one those dual head cards.

warnergt · Mar 9, 2003, 06:00 PM

I have two monitors/two video cards on my Dual 500 G4. How do I know if QuartzExtreme is working on either or both?

I have a Radeon 8500 AGP and a Radeon 7500 PCI. The 8500 drives a 17" flat studio display. The 7500 drives a 20" CRT display (but I have another 17" flat studio display ordered).