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quartzGL good if opengl is improved

F

funkybass

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 20, 2002
10
0
denver CO
Hello
So i'm looking at the possibilities that are going to open up when opengl is used for rendering of windows and such but I hope jaguar comes with an updated version of opengl drivers.
I'm sure it well but They'd better really make some improvements. I have a tibook with an ATI radeon 16 meg card and the opengl implimentation sux. My voodoo2 card on my PC can render frames faster then the ATI.
ATI has always had problems with drivers but if the whole operating system is going to rely on the graphics card to render everything the drivers had at least be decent and preferably amazing.
As a computer science student I've written short opengl code and run it on both the tibook and an athlon 1ghz with a voodoo2 card and the athlon kicks the crap out of the tibook.
OK I know maybe I should give the ti a break since it's got the overhead of a bloated OS but I'm running XP on the athlon and XP is in no way a sleak OS

is anyone else feeling the same way as I.
Oh one more thing, what about openGL 2.0, any thoughts as to what role apple could play in this or vise versa
L8
 
Originally posted by irmongoose
Quartz Extreme won't even work on your machine (since it needs 32 MB video RAM). So, the result of Quartz Emtreme will be much better than what you expect.




irmongoose
Click to expand...
No, QE runs OPTIMALLY with 32MB. It will still run with 16MB. How well is anyone's guess, but it will run. Damnit. It will. (16MB TiBook owner)
 
umm... Quartz Extreme does not need 32MB, thats optimal like someone else said. ive heard that people have been running Jaguar on 8mb ibooks. so... it should work beatifully, i mean, it has to run on the new ibooks which have Radeons.



Agreed... Apples OpenGL sucks donkey balls, its soooo slow. how does a 1GHZ PC with Geforce 3 get more fps than a Dual 1GHZ PowerMac with Geforce 4?? sucky drives and sucky OpenGL. Ohh yeah, i do think Apple is putting OpenGL in overdrive for Jaguar, theyll need all the performance they can get, and ive read that many of the features missing from Apples OpenGL(or was it OpenGL 1.3??) like Pixel Shaders and Vertex Shaders, are going to be in Jaguar, so i would expect newer much faster OpenGL drivers... I mean COME ON!!! 13fps on a new 700mhz ibook with a 16mb DDR mobility Radeon?? my cousin gets 21fps in Quake III at 1024x768 with a ****ty ass 4mb Integrated Intel i740(is that the ****ty model) on his Celeron 533... I do not understand at all why you would be getting 13fps on that set up(www.barefeats.com)
 
funkybass

Hey, fellow Denver guy. Do you play in a band in town? I was the lead singer for a local blues band called Built for Comfort. We have stopped playing since our lead guitar player (also a die-hard Mac user) developed a brain tumor.

Also, more on-topic, you can't spell bloat without XP. Well, okay, you can. But there's no way OS X is more bloated than XP.

Let me know where/when/if you play around town.

Chris
 
Well a few things in reply chmorley.
First off I think that both OSs are quite bloated. XP runs quite a bit quicker and launches in 1/5 the time as osx, you can't tell me that that's all because of the lack of hardware acceleration. there's a lot more to it then that.
it's funny because XP will run decently on a mechine with 128megs of ram and a 600mhz processor, those specs would make osx crawl. However OSX seems to do a really much better job with higher specs.
For instance I have 1 gig of ram on my tibook and I've never had a page out (from virtual memory) however even if you have a gig of ram on an XP mechine it will still use virtual memory. That's rediculous.
Unix kernals tend to me a bit bloated to begin with. I'm running linux on an x86 and it's very difficult to have a full functioning OS that's under 500 megs. However thare aren't many options to reduce osx to much less then 1 gig.

I really don't want to sound like I'm defending XP because I hate the os, after using linux and especially osx I try to go back to XP and nothing works without a fight. Ever try moving the users directory in XP, you can't windows won't let you even with tweakUI but on a mac it's a simply matter of changing a few entries in the netinfomanager.
That and my tibook has been running for 4 months straight. I have about 10 applications running and just close the lid to put it to sleep. That just can't happen on XP, hell XP crashes at least once every other day or so.


Oh and I'm not currently not in a band. unfortunatelly.
I've been playing for about 2 years and have yet to find a band, it' was kinda discouraging so I put bass on the backburner until I graduate college.
 
If you build Linux from scratch, you can get a "fully functioning OS" for under 200 meg. If you use Vector Linux, you can have a fully functional (with XWindows) OS for around 350MB. If you use crappy distros like Mandrake, then you won't be able to get a "fully functional OS" for under 500MB because of all the bloat of Mandrake.

That's not Linux's fault, that's the fault of the distrobution of Linux. Linux can actually be very small and very clean (I've read about Linux distros for embedded devices that are 8MB TOTAL).

Also, the Linux "kernel" isn't bloated. The Linux (or any other *nix) kernels are quite astoundingly compact compared to Windows. Many Linux distros are very bloated, but the kernel is actually quite small. My current Linux kernel is 658.6KB. My old, bloated Mandrake kernel that had options for everything was only 1MB.

Do you even know what you are talking about? You seem to misunderstand what the difference between a kernel and an OS are.
 
ouch dude.
well there are a few things to consider. In linux many options that used to be modules are not embeded in the kernal which makes it a little larger. USB for instance used to be a module that must be installed but is now a part of the kernel, 2.4.something I think. It wasn't my intent to say that linux is the most bloated of the OSs, I have a print server that runs off of 1.4 meg floppy, but that's all it does. I think of all the possibilities linux could potentially be the sleakest OS simply because you don't have to install all the BS if you don't need it. I probably worded things incorrectly in my message but yes I do know the difference between a kernal and OS are.
Your right the kernal won't take up 500 megs but the whole OS, with X windows, KDE a browser, networking utilities and everything else will come close.
Another thing, is boot up time. XP will boot up in like 30 seconds, a fully functional linux OS with everything XP or OSX have would take well over a minute. At least that's my experience. I could be wrong but I would never admit to it.
Anyway my intent wasn't to rip on linux but I just thought it was interesting that XP as a full functional OS seems to be performing better then most other options. Damn it's like I'm defending M$. I don't mean to but I'm just stating what I notice. just observations

hey I've never heard of "vector linux" what is that just another disto. or what. has anyone tried using the X86 version of Darwin?

oh CHMorley I checked out some of the stuff on your web site. Pretty cool stuff, how long had you been playing before the spiltup? I think I remember hearing of your band floating around, prob on KUVO.
 
Sorry about the attitude of my post. Now that I reread it, that was pretty harsh.

That is true, Windows does seem to boot faster then Linux. My Linux (on my Athlon XP 1800) system takes about a minute to boot. Windows takes about 20 seconds. However, since I have the boot of Linux display text instead of a pretty picture, I know the reason my Linux setup takes so long is because of it's new hardware scan... it takes forever!

Yeah, Vector Linux is another distro. (http://www.ibiblio.org/vectorlinux/). Their purpose is to make a small, non-bloated Linux distro that comes with KDE and XWindows that doesn't take more then a couple hundred meg.

I prefer building Linux from source, which allows me to make my install very small and very efficient. Not everyone would want to do that, though...

Anyway, none of this has anything to do with Macs and OpenGL... sorry for dragging the thread off-topic!

(added: I just clocked my Windows and Linux boots. Linux takes 49 seconds to boot, Windows takes 26. Linux takes 16 seconds to reboot, Windows takes 5.)
 
Originally posted by PCUser
Linux can actually be very small and very clean (I've read about Linux distros for embedded devices that are 8MB TOTAL).
Click to expand...
I've seen QNX (a real-time OS) run off a floppy, able to surf the Internet and serve java games to the world. Very impressive from off a floppy!
 
whew, all temors have flared down.
Well I'm just wondering if the blame of the poor opengl performance is more a fault of ATI or the os. I mean it's the job of the graphics card manufacturer to produce opengl drivers. However everything that occurs on the computer must go through the OS so I guess it would be a combination.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that with quartz extreme making all these calls to opengl ATI had better a make sure their drivers are silky smooth. Unfortunatelly they haven't done so in the past.
I say ATI since I have a TIbook and apple seems to be very persistant at placing ati cards in their laprops. all the other card manufacturers seem to be able to create decent versions of their drivers.
I'm just a little skeptical about pushing the burdon of performance from the OSX team to the openGL team ( namely ATI ). I'm sure it will be better then what we have now but will it be the best it can?

sorry for rambling
 
yeah, im getting an ibook 700/12, and I KNOW that that iBook, with its hardware should be getting more than 15fps @ 1024x768x32xMAX in Quake III, i mean seriously, if the 700mhz G3 'sahara' compares to a 900mhz PIII(maybe more or less??) with its 16mb DDR Ati Radeon, how does it get such low fps??? the reason... BAD DRIVERS!
 
"Bloat"

Originally posted by funkybass
...I checked out some of the stuff on your web site. Pretty cool stuff, how long had you been playing before the spiltup? I think I remember hearing of your band floating around, prob on KUVO.
Click to expand...
We played together for about 5 years. We did all right. I miss it, but am not sure I have time for it anymore.

As far as bloat goes, I agree that some of the factors you mentioned (e.g., boot speed and total size of the OS) are relevant, but I don't think they're what's at the core of "bloat."

To me, bloat is the stuff I don't want. XP is full of this stuff (including the browser built into the OS). The stuff I worry about with M$ OS's is what's in there that they don't tell us about. There have been a number of instances in which seemingly innocuous routines (e.g., "support" features included in Win95, which sent a copy of your FAT to M$ is utilized a certain way) result in private information being sent across the internet to M$ (and perhaps observed by others). That is bloat!

I am annoyed that OS X isn't faster, but it is a young OS. XP has had the benefit of being built upon previous generations of NT, 2000 and perhaps to a degree the DOS-based versions of Windows. According to all reports, Jaguar will help it run much faster. I am not particularly concerned about how fast it boots, as I hardly ever have to reboot. OS X's lack of speed seems to be due to the eye candy that it comes with. To me, those are not unwanted features. AND, I can turn off most of it very easily if I choose to. M$'s bloat is stuff I don't want and is difficult (if not impossible) to turn off.

I think we are agreeing that OS X needs to be faster and has huge overhead. I simply don't know that I agree that it is "bloat". I don't equate "big" with "bloated". I equate "full of crap I don't want or need" with "bloated."

That is XP. To be fair, it is M$'s specialty, and not particular to XP.

Nice to have a day without smoke, eh? Blue skies are nice.

Chris
 
Originally posted by Beej
I've seen QNX (a real-time OS) run off a floppy, able to surf the Internet and serve java games to the world. Very impressive from off a floppy!
Click to expand...
i've seen it too,it's so fast! it launches apps instantly! i never saw something that fast in my life..
 
Originally posted by jadam
Agreed... Apples OpenGL sucks donkey balls, its soooo slow. how does a 1GHZ PC with Geforce 3 get more fps than a Dual 1GHZ PowerMac with Geforce 4??
Click to expand...
GeForce4 MX - NV 17
GeForce3 - NV 20
GeForce4 Ti - NV 25

GeForce 3 is much faster then GF4MX
 
those MX cards are a joke.
honestly you can get a very low end TI card (4200) for around the same price as the MX cards.
The MX cards are definitally worse then the geforce3 cards.
I can't believe Nvidiea even released such a card. It's emberassing for the company.
I believe that the MX core is the same as they use on the mobile geforces, it's also the same core the Xbox uses. COnsidering the performance the Xbox gets you'd think the core would be better but I've seen nothing to that effect.
Poor ATI. I think the Radeon 7500 just eaks out the MX thips but not by much and then the TI come in and crush anything that ATI has to offer. We were promised that the Radeon 8500 would absolutely crush Nvidia's TIs, and on paper it definitally does, but poor drivers have left it at the bottom barely able to compete with the TI4200, which you can get for under 150 bucks.
Matrox is supposed to have a pretty sweet card coming out here soon, I wonder how it will hold up. They've been in a coma for 6 years or so.
Ranting and raving againg
L8
 
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