Does my video card ever do anything?

[macsurfer]

I have an ATI Rage 128 Pro 8mb video card in my iMac. I don't play games and I know my video card will not support Quartz Extreme. So the question is, does my video card ever do ANYTHING or does it just sit there reading the paper and drinking coffee all day?

 

[Sun Baked]

The video card manipulates a high energy GUN at the back of your CRT, which is sitting there trying to fry your eyeballs by accelerating electrons towards your head.

 

[macsurfer]

Hmmmm....

Funny, but ummm, that doesn't help me!

 

[AlphaTech]

Without a video card, you would be reduced to viewing a black screen since there wouldn't be any way for the computer to display what it is doing. With the current OS's being more graphic intensive, you need a better (and faster) video card to keep up. Without a video card to take on the display processing, your computer would run at half speed (if you are lucky). The more graphically intense the application, the more it will use your video card. That is part of the reason why games have minimum requirements, and why even applications like PhotoShop perform better with better video cards (even if the rest of the computer is identical to another).

I saw a performance boost when I upgraded the graphic card in my (formerly my) G4 tower. I went from the Rage 128 (16MB) that it shipped with to the ATI Radeon Mac edition (with 32MB of DDR memory).

That help you any better???

 

[macsurfer]

A little. What applications is my video card being used for? Quicktime? iMovie? Final Cut Pro? iTunes visualizations? My video card is not rendering any of the GUI is it? I'm running 10.1.5. As you can tell, I know very little in this arena....

 

[topicolo]

your vid. card is just acting as a framebuffer unless the programs you're using support openGL.

 

[macsurfer]

What is a frambuffer?

Okay, so QT in OS X uses OpenGL right? The screen savers with disolving pictures, that is OpenGL based, right? The dock magnification is too?

 

[bousozoku]

Originally posted by digitalvideo
A little. What applications is my video card being used for? Quicktime? iMovie? Final Cut Pro? iTunes visualizations? My video card is not rendering any of the GUI is it? I'm running 10.1.5. As you can tell, I know very little in this arena....

Everything going to the display is going through the video card.

 

[macsurfer]

ahhh okay

ahh okay got it so, how does the the type of video card affect say, Quicktime movie playback? Say a Gforce4 or whatever vs. my card?