How is the 2d acceleration of the 15in Powerbook

[iBunny]

I am looking to buy a powerbook I think in the very near future. I really wanted an iBook, however the PB has many advantages that I feel I would like.

As for gaming, I will only play Warctaft III and Starcraft. I am not a big gamer really. Maybe something else in the future, but nothing like doom III or anything like that.

I am going to deploy to IRAQ in Janurary, However I will be in buildings so I wont have to worry about sand or anything where I will be using my machine.

So, This will be my first mac. I really want a Laptop, and want to start making the transition to mac now. so if i like it, when i come back I can buy a Dual G5 Powermac

My main concern is 2d quality and speed. I will be working on Office 2004 alot.. I will probably have Encourage and Word open all day, every day... I will also use all the other apps in office. I will have AIM up all the time, and deffinatly iTunes... and Surfing multiple web pages at one time. With all these programs and windows open, i need my 2d acceleration to be top notch. This is my proposed system, let me know if it is good. Again, I never used a Mac before, my main concern is very very fast 2D speed. Thanks all

- Powerbook 15in 1.5Ghz G4
- 1GB DDR RAM
- Mobile 9700 Pro w/ 128MB VRAM
- 80GB 5400 RPM HDD
- Everything else the same.

Thanks again for all your help, and let me know if I should get more Ram... if I dont need all that VRam.... or if you reccommend me a iBook instead... let me know! Thanks

 

[Counterfit]

I don't think 2D acceleration has really been a question on anything for a few years now. I think that system should be good for you, especially with 1GB of RAM and the 5400RPM drive.

 

[Jigglelicious]

You have to keep in mind that ever since Jaguar and the introduction of Quartz Extreme, all UI elements drawn, including all 2d stuff, is done by the 3d hardware. The Powerbook has a very good 3d card, and should be very smooth with anything you work with - iTunes, Safari, Mail, etc.

 

[combatcolin]

Keep your head down out there.

 

[iBunny]

Keep your head down out there.

Thanks


he only reason I ask is because my friend bought a 1.6Ghz G6 iMac. Its a very neat machine however, I was using it and it was sluggish moving windows around etc... however he only had 256MB of ram (I dont know if that was the problem)

 

[Counterfit]

however he only had 256MB of ram (I dont know if that was the problem)

Yeah, that's the main problem there.

 

[iBunny]

What would be my cheapest way to get 2GB of ram in my Powerbook when I get one. If I order it all from Apple they are going to charge me 1000$ for the Ram... thats insane...

 

[Jigglelicious]

Thanks


he only reason I ask is because my friend bought a 1.6Ghz G6 iMac. Its a very neat machine however, I was using it and it was sluggish moving windows around etc... however he only had 256MB of ram (I dont know if that was the problem)

The sluggishness you describe is inherent to OS X. You will never get that same snappiness as a windows machine with OS X. However, most recent machines should be fast enough that the slowdown shouldn't really be all that noticible. If in doubt, try the macs down in your local Apple store or apple retailer.

 

[7on]

Window slugginess has always been a problem on OSX. Dunno why, might be the way everything is threaded. Like the system prioritizes the app over the GUI or something. I dunno, but iTunes under Windows has the same problem with window redrawing. It's weird.

 

[James_C]

To be honest unless you are manipulating large photoshop files or doing heavy photoshop work, 1 GB should be fine. I use my powerbook at work and will have word, excel, entourage, SAP, iTunes and Safari open at the same time, and I have absolutely no problems with memory or moving windows about at all. Once you go above 1GB the performance improvements are going to be pretty limited unless you are doing some serious graphic or video work.

 

[TDM21]

You might be disipointed in othe speed fo Office though. I know from first hand that Office2004 tends to be a bit sliggish compared to it's Windows counterpart. I have seen other people talk about this problem in these forums. They do say it is an improvement over Office.X, but I still do not like it. An alternative is OpenOffice which I find to be a little faster than Office 2004 and still has a lot of the bells & whistles.

In case you are wondering, I did put in another 512 mb of ram in my PB and what a difference it makes.

 

[darkwing]

sluggishness?

I'm not Mac zealot, but I wonder what you guys mean by sluggishness? A few weeks ago I was showing a friend my rev C 17" PB and he was impressed at how snappy things popped up and responded compared to his XP machine, which was a 2.something ghz P4. Several times the windows machine slowed down while doing things and you had to wait 1-2 seconds to switch windows or have the start menu come up, while the Mac kept on responding no matter what you do to it.

From what I can tell, user input always takes priority on a Mac. If I am doing a dvd encode or something and using word in the background, my keystrokes or menu presses don't seem to lag at all. It doesn't make a difference. Right now fink is building a bunch of stuff and my cpu usage is 100% and I notice no slowdowns at all.

Where I do notice sluggishness on a Mac is when WindowServer gets busy. it doesn't do well with parallel drawing. It acts like processes can send it stuff only one at a time. I think WS is a crappy program that needs the most rework out of everything on OSX. It uses ~20% of the CPU when terminal is blaring text by, even if the window is minimized. I believe putting text on a screen with hardware this advanced should be a relatively easy operation. I think Apple's made a horrible inefficient system there.

Steve