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Bigfoot · Jan 19, 2006, 09:06 PM

Was at the Apple store today playing with the new Intel imac's. To me it seemed that the mouse curser (pointer) had a bit of that Windows jerkyness and ghosting to it as it moved across the screen. Then walked over to a G5 powermac... smooth. Back to the macintel... definate courseness. Not as bad as windows, but not the smooth fluid movement of G5 models. I ask an employee and confirmed what I thought I was seeing. He said he didn't notice it until I pointed it out but he agreed with me. Anyone notice this?

jwoods · Jan 19, 2006, 09:23 PM

Perhaps it was just happening on that particular iMac?

fleaplus · Jan 19, 2006, 10:15 PM

Was the machine using a bluetooth wireless mouse? Or maybe did it have the tracking speed set too high that the attached mouse couldn't physically handle.

Personally, I use a Kensington Pocketmouse Pro, fast response time, usb connection that never fails, and fits my hand perfectly

I didn't even bother unwrapping the Mighty Mouse that came with my iMac Intel 17" yesterday. I haven't ever really liked the responsiveness of the Apple mouse offerings.

Bigfoot · Jan 19, 2006, 10:44 PM

Same effect on both the 17" and 20". I did check to see what speeds they were set at and all including the G5 were two clicks back from highest setting. I was actually looking to see if there was a pref for the ghosting tail thinking that maybe it was added... nope. Wired mice.

I was just wondering if its something that is an artifact of being an intel chip or what. The guy at the Apple store seemed perplexed after I called his attention to it. But he clearly agreed I wasn't imagining it.

Oneota · Jan 20, 2006, 12:22 AM

Hm. Ours seems fine. Feels just like the G5 iMac sitting next to it.

fleaplus · Jan 20, 2006, 01:12 AM

My iMac Intel 17" definitely does have a ghosting effect with the mouse cursor. I hooked up a 17" Studio Display CRT onto the DVI port and noticed no ghosting trails on it, so this must be an issue with the built in iMac LCD's. All I can guess is that the Cinema Displays have better gray-to-gray response time; since the cursor is black, it might be the worse case scenario as far as color change is concerned.

Oh, and no laggyness with the cursor here. If you reboot the demo machines at the apple store, the system is automatically re-installed, so that might help things if a runaway process was eating computer time or something.

harrisjamieh · Jan 20, 2006, 02:40 AM

Off topic, but fleaplus, howcomes you only have DDR2-4200 in your new iMac? Its designed for 5300

Keda · 08:55 AM

No problems here. The cursor looks sharp and moves quickly.

BTW, this thing is fast. After all the grumbling about Rosetta, I was afraid that photoshop would be horrible. I haven't done any large format stuff, but I was working with layered, screen res images without any trouble. Google Earth performs well also.

20" iMac CD, X1600 256MB, 1GB RAM

toddtmw · Jan 20, 2006, 12:06 PM

Could be caused by Coalesced Updates being turned on in the iNtel mac, but not on the iMac.

This is what is responsible for the low User Interface scores that the iNtel iMac gets on the XBench tests.

-Todd

fleaplus · Jan 20, 2006, 01:15 PM

Originally Posted by harrisjamieh

Off topic, but fleaplus, howcomes you only have DDR2-4200 in your new iMac? Its designed for 5300

Because DDR2-4200 is much cheaper and more readily available. Since its an intel chipset it can support all the lovely memory dividers that PC's have enjoyed for years.

Big Mac · Jan 20, 2006, 01:17 PM

Memory dividers?

toddtmw · Jan 20, 2006, 03:41 PM

Originally Posted by fleaplus

Because DDR2-4200 is much cheaper and more readily available. Since its an intel chipset it can support all the lovely memory dividers that PC's have enjoyed for years.

Doesn't that cause a performance hit?

ciparis · Jan 20, 2006, 10:07 PM

Originally Posted by fleaplus

Because DDR2-4200 is much cheaper and more readily available. Since its an intel chipset it can support all the lovely memory dividers that PC's have enjoyed for years.

Hm. My iMac did not like the DDR2/533 that I pulled out of my Thinkpad T43 in the middle of a long development session when I kept running out of RAM while compiling (which was unbelievably painful to sit through). Wouldn't start up.

Just received my 2GB of Kingston RAM though ($118 per stick) so I can take the 512 that I purchased in desperation the next day from Apple back and take a restocking hit (or ebay it

).

fleaplus · Jan 20, 2006, 10:09 PM

Originally Posted by toddtmw

Doesn't that cause a performance hit?

How can I tell? I score a 95 overall and 91 on memory with xbench if that matters? Maybe I could run that handbrake program that everyone talks about, once with each type of memory?

fleaplus · 11:15 PM

Originally Posted by ciparis

Hm. My iMac did not like the DDR2/533 that I pulled out of my Thinkpad T43 in the middle of a long development session when I kept running out of RAM while compiling (which was unbelievably painful to sit through). Wouldn't start up.

My iMac would only start up when I used memory sticks rated at the same speed. 2x1GB DDR2-4200 worked, for instance, but using 1x1GB DDR2-4200 and the apple oem 512mb DDR2-5300 did not work, resulting in a blinking sleep light upon boot, and no boot chime.
Update: I must have had the memory inserted wrong before. I am now running both sticks of ram (at the different clock speeds) for a total of 1.5GB @ DDR2-4200 speed.

whiskerdisker · Jan 21, 2006, 06:33 AM

Originally Posted by Keda

No problems here. The cursor looks sharp and moves quickly.

BTW, this thing is fast. After all the grumbling about Rosetta, I was afraid that photoshop would be horrible. I haven't done any large format stuff, but I was working with layered, screen res images without any trouble. Google Earth performs well also.

20" iMac CD, X1600 256MB, 1GB RAM

Hey this is exactly what I'm wanting to know about. I'm running a Rev1 17" 1Ghz Powerbook and I really want to know how Photoshop CS2 under Rosetta compares to running on my machine.

Would you mind if I sent you an image file and then we could both set up an action set for it and time the two machines?

g.

Keda · Jan 21, 2006, 08:50 AM

Sure, if you make the file available and tell me what to do, I'll try it out. One small complicator tho...I'm on PhotoShop 7. I'm not sure how badly that would distort the results, but I'll give it a try.

whiskerdisker · Jan 21, 2006, 05:44 PM

Originally Posted by Keda

Sure, if you make the file available and tell me what to do, I'll try it out. One small complicator tho...I'm on PhotoShop 7. I'm not sure how badly that would distort the results, but I'll give it a try.

Awesome, thanks. I've got Photoshop 7 as well, so I'll install it again and then upload a file to my site so you can download it.

Talk soon.
WD

John123 · Jan 21, 2006, 05:57 PM

Originally Posted by whiskerdisker

Hey this is exactly what I'm wanting to know about. I'm running a Rev1 17" 1Ghz Powerbook and I really want to know how Photoshop CS2 under Rosetta compares to running on my machine.

Would you mind if I sent you an image file and then we could both set up an action set for it and time the two machines?

g.

Why don't you post a link to that file here? I am sure a lot of us would all be interested in comparing benchmarks. A lot of the benchmarks available from the "pro" sites are pathetically done due to RAM differences across machines. And I certainly haven't trusted XBench for a long time.

whiskerdisker · 12:43 AM

Great idea John,

I've posted the photo URL and Action details HERE so that I don't hijack this thread...

Looking forward to seeing some results!

WD