Enable Quartz Extreme Hack for PCI Radeons!

[Hemingray]

YES! A little extra glory for my old G4 400 PCI graphics with a Radeon 7000! By default, Quartz Extreme is NOT enabled for any computers with PCI graphics. HOWEVER, check out the following forum for a discussion on how to override this!

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

While the results weren't staggering, enabling QE actually did boost performance! Keep in mind that this will only work for PCI RADEONS. It will not work for original Rage cards.

This is a beautiful thing.

 

[G5orbust]

cool

my friend got quartz xtreme to work on the rage 128 8 MB on his Tibook.

Haha, 16 Mb min my ass!

 

[Hemingray]

Update

Update: A utility has been released that will automatically change the config file without having to root through the system:

http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=16006&db=macosx

" PCI Extreme! enables machines with PCI graphics and a compatible graphics card [i.e. PCI Radeon/Radeon 7000] to use hardware acceleration in Quartz Extreme, the new composting engine in Mac OS 10.2, Jaguar. Hardware acceleration for Quartz Extreme on PCI machines has proven to boost performance by 5-15% when performing light tasks such as web browsing, e-mail, and word processing. However, it slows down heavy tasks such as encoding or decoding video, especially DVDs by up to 50%. This results in dropped frames, studdering audio, and video falling out of sync with audio.
Bottom line: When the GUI is piped through the slower PCI bus it tends to choke up other tasks that require heavy processing. "

So it's not ALL good. Maybe Apple disabled it for a reason after all...

 

[Sun Baked]

Hemingray beat me by a minute, so I'll just leave the link.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/OSX/quartz_extreme_PCI_mod.html#storytop

 

[sparkleytone]

errrm WTF. I post this nearly 24 hrs before you and you get more replies??? guess i should use buzzwords like "hack" , or even "naked", better yet "sex".

i got it..

Hack OS Sex to enable QE on naked PCI Radeons.

 

[Hemingray]

Strange, I did a search for "PCI Radeon Quartz Extreme" and the engine didn't come up with any matching results related to the subject... sorry Spark. You get full credit.

 

[Geert]

Originally posted by G5orbust
cool

my friend got quartz xtreme to work on the rage 128 8 MB on his Tibook.

Haha, 16 Mb min my ass!

Hey G5orburst, would you be so kind to tell us how, or post a link I have a rage with 8 Mb myself, and you know that I want to enable it if it speeds up things.

 

[MacUser1]

show us the link

Originally posted by G5orbust
cool

my friend got quartz xtreme to work on the rage 128 8 MB on his Tibook.

Haha, 16 Mb min my ass!

WOW! please post a link!

 

[Hemingray]

YIKES! (No pun intended)...

Well, I'm back from testing my G4 with and without Quartz Extreme. And I must say I'm pretty surprised.

I used the program SpeedRun to test the results of my computer before and after. Here are the results. Computer was freshly booted and run in identical settings (i.e. programs and windows) in both cases. All numbers are an average of SEVEN test results. LARGER numbers are FASTER/BETTER:

WITHOUT QUARTZ EXTREME:
Graphics: 256
Hard Drive: 322
Processor: 147
RAM: 261

WITH QUARTZ EXTREME:
Graphics: 108
Hard Drive: 315
Processor: 147
RAM: 261

HOLY SMEG! The graphics performance FELL about 150% with Quartz Extreme enabled! My computer is a G4 400 PCI with 1GB RAM and a Radeon 7000.

Bottom Line: Almost all G3 users have reported slight to significant improvements with enabling Quartz Extreme on their computers. Me, however, I think I'll go back to the way it was... I definitely wouldn't recommend this for Yikes G4 owners with my configuration.

 

[jelloshotsrule]

Originally posted by sparkleytone
errrm WTF. I post this nearly 24 hrs before you and you get more replies??? guess i should use buzzwords like "hack" , or even "naked", better yet "sex".

i got it..

Hack OS Sex to enable QE on naked PCI Radeons.

you posted at like 3 am est time... a lot of late posts seem to go unnoticed or at least less noticed

no reason to get too fired up

 

[G5orbust]

i have no idea i how he did it. he said it ran pretty poorly, but it still ran. It wasnt something anyone else figured out, he just did it. I'll have to ask him how he did it.