VRAM is scaring me!

[biohazard6969]

ok all this talk aobut tiger, some 'core image' thing and vram seems to point at the fact that i will need a 128mb vram card to run tiger sufficiently. i have a 12" 1.33ghz powerbook G4, i don't know what card i have in here, but i'm scared, i don't want to have to buy another computer, i wasn't planning on doing that untill the G5 powerbooks (god willing ) but now i'm scared, i don't want tiger to run slow. why would apple do something like this when they KNOW that half of the people who are going to want to run tiger will probably have oleder systems. not everyone is RICH and up to date.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Tiger will run fine on your iBook. You have nothing to worry about... it may even run faster than Panther.

 

[iGary]

What she said.

I went through a bunch of hoo-hah last night to try and find a card for my G4 and finally decided it isn't worth worrying about...at all.

That said, though, anyone buying a NEW machine should seriously look at the VID card options when buying (although the iBook doesn't have anything yet.

 

[Logik]

Tiger will run fine on any recent machine. However you may not have CoreImage support in the graphics card. You will get partial CoreImage support, but it will be rendered by the CPU instead. Expect to not have all the fancy effects available to you though.

64mb of video ram is MORE THAN SUFFICIENT UNLESS you do the following

a) use multiple monitors
b) play games at high resolutions
c) expect to use CoreImage excessively
d) use apple's pro apps (FCP, DSP, Motion, the new ones are rumored to support coreimage)

those are the bigger reasons. if you don't do any of that you won't need 128mb of video ram.

 

[Mord]

core image is fully suported on your powerbook dont worry vram is a non issue unless running twin HD moniters.

 

[themacman]

it will work fine

all u need is 64mb vram to run everything fine. Your powerbook will do wonderfully with tiger. I have an imac 800mhz and ik it will run tiger fine. Dont sweat it

 

[Mord]

core image will not even make macs without a supported card slower it just wont get core image magic, which you do, tiger feels faster than panther on pretty much any mac unless it's staved for ram, i wish i had a 1.33GHz powerbook g4 to run tiger on all i got is my 600MHz g3 ibook

 

[James L]

I really don't know why people are stressing about this... Apple always does a good job of taking care of legacy hardware... I know people running panther on 400mhz G3 laptops!

This is not much different really than when Quartz came out. If you had a video card that could handle it great, if not, no problem!

Relax and enjoy your machine!

 

[TDM21]

I have the same PB (rev c) and the CoreImage page at Apple says that it will work on the nvidia Go 5200 (the cards that are in the Rev C 12" PBs). That will not be a problem. With the older hardware you won't see all the eye candy. Remember when Quartz Extreme came out. If your Mac didn't support it, you didn't see it. This is pretty much the same situation.

 

[MacTruck]

I have the same PB (rev c) and the CoreImage page at Apple says that it will work on the nvidia Go 5200 (the cards that are in the Rev C 12" PBs). That will not be a problem. With the older hardware you won't see all the eye candy. Remember when Quartz Extreme came out. If your Mac didn't support it, you didn't see it. This is pretty much the same situation.

That is not correct. Its not that you won't see it, its that the video card won't process it, the CPU will. Computers that don't support Core Image will be slow. Use Panther with a video card that is not supported by Quartz Extreme and see what I'm talking about.

 

[earthtoandy]

That is not correct. Its not that you won't see it, its that the video card won't process it, the CPU will. Computers that don't support Core Image will be slow. Use Panther with a video card that is not supported by Quartz Extreme and see what I'm talking about.

people have said it over and over.... Apple developer, instead of taking that route, decided to diable some of the UI eye candy on machines that dont support core image. The performance will be the same. You wont even know you are missing something.

The misinformation on this one topic is astounding

 

[Mord]

That is not correct. Its not that you won't see it, its that the video card won't process it, the CPU will. Computers that don't support Core Image will be slow. Use Panther with a video card that is not supported by Quartz Extreme and see what I'm talking about.

stop chatting BS it will not do the effects if you dont have the hardware, i have run 10.4 and i just did not get the effects on my ibook but i did on my cube (it has a radeon 9700 )

 

[LeeTom]

That is not correct. Its not that you won't see it, its that the video card won't process it, the CPU will. Computers that don't support Core Image will be slow. Use Panther with a video card that is not supported by Quartz Extreme and see what I'm talking about.

The above statement is false.

 

[Logik]

Again, the Ripple effect will not show if you do not have a supported video card. it REQUIRES a shading engine to do. As such the CPU cannot do it due to being too slow. it's just that simple. Some effects will be fine, others will not be shown due to the complexity.

If anyone is interested in getting some stuff together we can put up a FAQ on CoreImage so these questions can hopefully stop being repeated 5 times a day. PM me if interested in helping.

 

[swingerofbirch]

my emac with radeon 7500

I have an eMac I gigahertz superdrive with 768 mb ram, and what i believe is an ATI RADEON 7500 with 32 mb vram,

AND,

I just pre-ordered Tiger,

so I guess my card doesn't work with the ripple, anyone heard of upgrading an emac's graphics card? or adding vram to it?

 

[Logik]

I have an eMac I gigahertz superdrive with 768 mb ram, and what i believe is an ATI RADEON 7500 with 32 mb vram,

AND,

I just pre-ordered Tiger,

so I guess my card doesn't work with the ripple, anyone heard of upgrading an emac's graphics card? or adding vram to it?

adding video ram to the graphics card won't do you any good.. you need a programmable Shader 2.0 compliant card for CoreImage.

I believe just like the powerbook and the ibook, the graphics chipset used in the emac and imac are actually attached to the motherboard (mainboard, however you'd like to call it) and is not replacable or removable at all.

So you're probably outta luck.

You just wont' get the GPU end of CoreImage, it'll still fuction just fine. Not as many bells and whistles though.

 

[MacTruck]

If anyone is interested in getting some stuff together we can put up a FAQ on CoreImage so these questions can hopefully stop being repeated 5 times a day. PM me if interested in helping.

Good idea, I think a FAQ on this topic is required. I have seen the info both ways from reputable people and I just don't think anyone knows for sure until tiger is on our systems. I have heard ripple effects will show just slowly and have heard they won't show at all. Confused.

 

[swingerofbirch]

adding video ram to the graphics card won't do you any good.. you need a programmable Shader 2.0 compliant card for CoreImage.

I believe just like the powerbook and the ibook, the graphics chipset used in the emac and imac are actually attached to the motherboard (mainboard, however you'd like to call it) and is not replacable or removable at all.

So you're probably outta luck.

You just wont' get the GPU end of CoreImage, it'll still fuction just fine. Not as many bells and whistles though.

arggg

you know i bought my emac on the day panther came out, i was at the launch event at my apple store..i know it was october 24th..hasn't been that long and already i am obsolete when it comes to ripple!

whaaaaaaaaaaa

 

[MacTruck]

This is what it says on apples website:

For computers without a programmable GPU, Core Image dynamically optimizes for the CPU, automatically tuning for Velocity Engine and multiple processors as appropriate.

[ so it seems you will see ripple just it will be slow ]

When a programmable GPU is present, Core Image utilizes the graphics card for image processing operations, freeing the CPU for other tasks. And if you have a high-performance card with increased video memory (VRAM), you'll find real-time responsiveness across a wide variety of operations.


Core Image-capable graphics cards include:

- ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
- ATI Radeon 9600 XT, 9800 XT, X800 XT
- nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200
- nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
- nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, 6800 GT DDL

Core Image is powered by floating-point calculations, which produce extremely fine color accuracy on a pixel-by-pixel basis. You see great detail, quality and range of color that automatically scales with new generations of GPUs and CPUs.

 

[Logik]

This is what it says on apples website:

For computers without a programmable GPU, Core Image dynamically optimizes for the CPU, automatically tuning for Velocity Engine and multiple processors as appropriate.

[ so it seems you will see ripple just it will be slow ]

When a programmable GPU is present, Core Image utilizes the graphics card for image processing operations, freeing the CPU for other tasks. And if you have a high-performance card with increased video memory (VRAM), you'll find real-time responsiveness across a wide variety of operations.


Core Image-capable graphics cards include:

- ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
- ATI Radeon 9600 XT, 9800 XT, X800 XT
- nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200
- nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
- nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, 6800 GT DDL

Core Image is powered by floating-point calculations, which produce extremely fine color accuracy on a pixel-by-pixel basis. You see great detail, quality and range of color that automatically scales with new generations of GPUs and CPUs.

ok well you can let me know when you get tiger installed.

personally i'm hoping to be able to turn some of the eye candy OFF when i'm on battery power as i don't want to be using my video card (which is a power hog) when i don't need to be using it. when it's plugged in, hey, show me the eye candy, but until then let's let my battery life stay in the 3-4 hour range.

 

[ravenvii]

If I can see all the eye candy even though my card sucks, I'll be hugging my Mac mini and saying "baby, please forgive me I didn't mean to say your GPU is small, it's just fine...!"

...

 

[Logik]

If I can see all the eye candy even though my card sucks, I'll be hugging my Mac mini and saying "baby, please forgive me I didn't mean to say your GPU is small, it's just fine...!"

...

i would seriously not count on it. I know i've heard somewhere that some effects will simply not be usable on a non-coreimage supported GPU. I watched the WWDC sessions dvd again ... just the coreimage session, not the keynote which might have been where i heard it. regardless way too little information is available right to totally determine what's going on. I however feel that the CPU is too slow to do the work of a shading 2.0 compliant video card and as such those effects will not work. remember some of these cards provide 10 TIMES the power of a CPU in terms of processing power when dealing with graphics. need i really say more?

 

[26139]

Uh oh...

ok all this talk aobut tiger, some 'core image' thing and vram seems to point at the fact that i will need a 128mb vram card to run tiger sufficiently. i have a 12" 1.33ghz powerbook G4, i don't know what card i have in here, but i'm scared, i don't want to have to buy another computer, i wasn't planning on doing that untill the G5 powerbooks (god willing ) but now i'm scared, i don't want tiger to run slow. why would apple do something like this when they KNOW that half of the people who are going to want to run tiger will probably have oleder systems. not everyone is RICH and up to date.

Dude...I think this guy got bitten. Take him out where we took Ol' Yeller....and be merciful.

Oh and yeah...Tiger will run fine...but you don't NEED IT.

 

[Mord]

look all the new core image effects will require a core image card, all the under the hood core image improvements will just be handled by the cpu just as it's done in 10.3 so you get no benefit at all.

FACT.

apple's list of cards missed out one that i know is supported the mobility 9600

it's not about vram at all it's about the core and when it comes down to it you need a DX9 card (even though the mac dosen't use DX it's the same physical requirements from the card)

the 32MB 5200 in the 1GHz rev. B 12" powerbook works fine with core image

the 128MB geforce 4 Ti dose not work with core image because it dose not it need the required shading engine and this cannot be done by the cpu either.

for all thsoe thinking they wont upgrade to tiger because it will be slow without core image: it's just a benefit you wont get it'll work exactly like quartz extreme did back for 10.2 if you get it it's great but if you don't it's no worse than 10.1 you just dont get some cool effects.

imagine if you had a g4 cube or a 600MHz ibook or a 500MHz powerbook g4 all macs which didn't support quartz extreme (unless you had a BTO card on the cube) they dumped the things just because they didn't get some eye candy, it's just a bonus to those that have the hardware and not such a big deal thats going to make your hardware obsolete.

 

[Applespider]

apple's list of cards missed out one that i know is supported the mobility 9600

Thanks Hector. That's the one I really wanted to know about since it dropped off the list sometime in the past 3 months and there was no clarity about whether that was because it was no longer current or whether there had been a change in specs that meant it was no longer supported.