Quartz Extreme. How Extreme?

[3film]

I'm just wondering what everyone's experience with Quartz Extreme is like. I got a Titanium 550 with an Radeon 16MG GPU, so far it hasn't really impressed me, it doesn't feel that mich faster to me, although it's noticebly a bit faster. Oh and it's nice to have transparency over DVDs. So anyway, I'm wondering maybe users with a 32MB GPU is having a much nicer time, just a bit dissapointed that my Ti is only 8 months old, and it can't run the latest OS at optinum speed.

[thlandgraf]

Regarding to Apples description the Ti550 should use Quartz Extreme (QE), since it has a AGPx2 16MByte Radeon Graphics. Someone told me the Shadow unter the mousecursor is an indication for QE, even the sceensaver runs on finderbackground as mentioned in this forum earlier (ok, its really slow). But the Quartz Extreme Check tool (can be found somewhere on the internet) says "This Display is not accellerated" :confused:

RFC

[3film]

I think us Ti550 users can just barely run QE, that's why it's hardly any faster, but I guess it might reduce the CPU load lightly (honestly when I checked CPU monitor, it doesn't seem much lower than before). Anyway, it seems that Transparencies are really fast, but window resizing and scrolling is still pain, I found this very ironic.

[bassi]

Here's a link which claims that the new update may improve the QuartzGL performance. They've been right in the past so maybe we'll see some improvements.

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/macosx1021.html

[houchin]

Originally posted by thlandgraf
Regarding to Apples description the Ti550 should use Quartz Extreme (QE), since it has a AGPx2 16MByte Radeon Graphics. But the Quartz Extreme Check tool (can be found somewhere on the internet) says "This Display is not accellerated" :confused:

The Quartz Extreme Check tool reported that my Ti550 WAS accellerated.
FWIW, I upgraded to Jaguar by means of clean install.

[thlandgraf]

Originally posted by houchin


The Quartz Extreme Check tool reported that my Ti550 WAS accellerated.
FWIW, I upgraded to Jaguar by means of clean install.

... Aarg, I did an upgrade :mad:

[3film]

thlandgraf. As long as you can have transparency over the terminal, you have QE. I did an upgrade on my Ti550 and I think QE is working.

[thlandgraf]

What do you mean with "transparency over the terminal", does it mean an other transparent Window e.G. the Dock over the Terminal.app ?

[3film]

Sorry, I meant you set the Terminal window transparent, then place it over an running DVD movie, if you can still see through the Terminal, then you have QE running. Or you can simply use the media key to change the volume while a DVD is running and see whether you can see through the volume indicators.

Oh and if you got QE running, you should be able to see a slight shadow under you mouse cursor.

[3film]

There's an interesting thread going on about enabling QE on PCI cards at this site!

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=8300945231&m=7390915135

[macmath]

I did not vote because I don't notice any speed change from QE or Jaguar in general. I have an eMac (32 MB Nvidia). I am typically pretty easy-going and positive on Apple...if I had noticed even a slight increase (as I did from 10.1.4 to 10.1.5) then I would place a very positive vote on Jaguar's or QE's behalf.

BTW: I did a clean install with the archive option.

[SpongeBob]

I'm starting to wonder about this Quartz Extreme stuff. I have a Powerbook 667Mhz that does use Quartz Extreme, but if I hook up an external monitor and run it, then I have no Quartz Extreme according to Quartz Extreme Check. I'm not running mirroring and I've only bumped up my res from 1152x870 to 1280x1024. So with the monitor no QE, and without I have QE. What kind of funky monkey stuff is this? I'd think it would either do it or not. I only have 16MB of VRAM, but still if I bump down the res on the monitor to 800x600 which is less than when I run without the monitor and should use less VRAM, it doesn't work. Why am I saying all this? One, to complain and two to let people know that I don't know that what they see is necessarily indicative of QE running or not.

[3film]

I think we should all stop using QE Check, I think that App is a lot of none sense. We should all just have a look to see whether theres a drop shadow under the mouse cursor.

[rusto]

Arrow drop shadow is not a valid check for QE, the drop shadow was there on my non-AGP unit.

[thlandgraf]

On my Ti550 (supposed to support QE) I have a shadow under the cursor but a transparent Terminal.app window isnt transparent over DVD Player playing a movie -> I think I have no QE! I hope X.2.1 will fix this.

RFC

[3film]

thlandgraf: yep, I think you don't have QE, I don't know why though, since my mac is also an Ti550+CDRW/DVD combo+Radeon16MB. I did an upgrade from 10.1.5 without a hitch, so I don't know what went wrong for you.

[3film]

I'm surprised that on all setups, most users report it's only a bit faster than 10.1. Of course those with a better GPU generally have a better CPU as well.

[j|m]

I have a TiBook 800 that was one of the ones that came with the Jaguar upgrade in the box. It's fast. Wicked fast.

Question is, this was doing an upgrade over the 10.1 preinstall; would doing a clean install get me even more speed? Does the upgrade CD even allow a clean install?