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VRAM is scaring me!
- Thread starter biohazard6969
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James Philp
macrumors 65816
LISTEN TO THIS...
I am currently running 10.3.9 with an 8MB VRAM!! All that happens is the quartz extreme stuff is SKIPPED (you DONT see any transitions, cube or otherwise).
OF COURSE the CPU doesn't step in and handle it -proposterous!! For a start, your system would hang, also, how is the CPU suddenly ging to jump over the GPU to put data on the screen!?
CoreImage will be the same. I'm pretty confident that 10.4 will run on my G3 500, 384MB RAM 8MB VRAM (may get more RAM though!), so you have NO reason to worry!
Look at the base specs, does your system cover it?:
"A Mac with a PowerPC G3, G4 or G5" and "256MB RAM" - still ok, then good "a DVD drive" - still there? If not, no worry, you can send back for CD's. That's pretty much all you need. Apple know pretty much what people have in their machines - they built them!
ALL THE OTHER SPECS ON THE PAGE ARE EXTRA! NOT NEEDED FOR 10.4, but the knobs and whisles (which I can live without!).
Dashboard and all that jazz will all work, but what you see may be *ever.. so.. slightly* different to someone on a TOP SPEC G4 PB or PM
I am currently running 10.3.9 with an 8MB VRAM!! All that happens is the quartz extreme stuff is SKIPPED (you DONT see any transitions, cube or otherwise).
OF COURSE the CPU doesn't step in and handle it -proposterous!! For a start, your system would hang, also, how is the CPU suddenly ging to jump over the GPU to put data on the screen!?
CoreImage will be the same. I'm pretty confident that 10.4 will run on my G3 500, 384MB RAM 8MB VRAM (may get more RAM though!), so you have NO reason to worry!
Look at the base specs, does your system cover it?:
"A Mac with a PowerPC G3, G4 or G5" and "256MB RAM" - still ok, then good "a DVD drive" - still there? If not, no worry, you can send back for CD's. That's pretty much all you need. Apple know pretty much what people have in their machines - they built them!
ALL THE OTHER SPECS ON THE PAGE ARE EXTRA! NOT NEEDED FOR 10.4, but the knobs and whisles (which I can live without!).
Dashboard and all that jazz will all work, but what you see may be *ever.. so.. slightly* different to someone on a TOP SPEC G4 PB or PM
well i am pretty sure eyecandy will be disabled on noncompliant cards. however coreimage is more than those fun things.... it is basically APIs for developers to tap into and yes those cant be disabled and will be handled bu the cpu so people without a complaint card will see slower time to use whatever effect just as it would be in photoshop if this was the way it worked. So basically effects will be disabled unless asked for by the user...through some other programMacTruck said:
Abstract
macrumors Penryn
Okay, if you don't have a CoreImage compatible video card, your system will work exactly like it did in Panther. CoreImage lets the video card handle a bigger amount of the load. If you don't have a compatible card, it won't do this. In other words, it'll mean your computer works in the same way it did with Panther.
I think. 😛
Anyway, I have a question. If I have a 32 MB Nvidia 5200 Go in my rev B 12" Powerbook with 1Ghz G4, will it mean it won't run as fast as a 1GHz G4 iBook? Sounds like a silly question, but if the iBook can't take advantage of the CoreImage effects, it can't try to run them, whereas my 12" 1Ghz Powerbook has a Coreimage compatible card, and so it'll try to run CoreImage effects, but due to a lack of vRAM, it will run these effects very poorly. So maybe if my system didn't run CoreImage, it would be faster. 😕 Otherwise, it'll be slower than the equivalent 1GHz iBook with 32MB of vRAM.
I think. 😛
Anyway, I have a question. If I have a 32 MB Nvidia 5200 Go in my rev B 12" Powerbook with 1Ghz G4, will it mean it won't run as fast as a 1GHz G4 iBook? Sounds like a silly question, but if the iBook can't take advantage of the CoreImage effects, it can't try to run them, whereas my 12" 1Ghz Powerbook has a Coreimage compatible card, and so it'll try to run CoreImage effects, but due to a lack of vRAM, it will run these effects very poorly. So maybe if my system didn't run CoreImage, it would be faster. 😕 Otherwise, it'll be slower than the equivalent 1GHz iBook with 32MB of vRAM.
Mord
macrumors G4
when it says 9800 it means all 9800's including the retail 9800 pro the OEM 9800 pro the g5 9800 SE pro and the OEM 9800 XT.
the x800 xt is also supported
basically it's 5200 and up and radeon 9600 and up, this is on model numbers not performence a geforce 3 is faster than a 5200 at most things as is a geforce 4 ti but both are not core image supported.
as for the game API's the games in mind will require a core image graphics card as this technology is for furture games, some developers may put in an update for current games to take advantage of core image if you have a card just like all new games now require a T&L capable card like quartz extreme did aka radeon or geforce.
these cards are supported and this is at least the fourth time i have posted it
radeon 9600 pro & XT
radeon 9700 pro
radeon 9800 pro/SE/XT
radeon x800 XT
radeon 9600 mobility
radeon 9700 mobility
geforce 5200 go
geforce 5200 ultra
geforce 6800 ultra/GT
dont start saying oh my 5200 has 32MB vram i need more vram IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH VRAM. core image will work fine on any of those cards no matter the vram configuration.
also if you dont have one of those cards it's not the end of the world it's not a bad thing it's just a lack of a good thing your cpu wont be bogged down by those effects they just wont happen, cpu's are no where neer capable of doing those types of effect in real time, you try rendering something like it in shake it'll take a fair while to render.
no more of this vram BS and no more "the effects will happen anyway but will be done with the cpu" BS you have a card or you dont full stop, you want the effects buy a new card or if you dont have an agp slot buy i new mac, if i were a powermac owner i'd upgrade to a 9600 pro from OWC and do the tape trick to make it work in a 4x slot.
the ibook has a 9200 which is a little slower than the 5200 at most things your powerbook is fast full stop, also the effects are done on dedicated shader hardware vram is only filled up with large textures in games and 3D apps a little ripple effect should not faze it, the core image frameworks allow these effects and put in the frameworks for API's to allow the shaders and features in your card to help more like how quartz extreme helped speed up the UI by dumping it on the gpu not the cpu.
the x800 xt is also supported
basically it's 5200 and up and radeon 9600 and up, this is on model numbers not performence a geforce 3 is faster than a 5200 at most things as is a geforce 4 ti but both are not core image supported.
as for the game API's the games in mind will require a core image graphics card as this technology is for furture games, some developers may put in an update for current games to take advantage of core image if you have a card just like all new games now require a T&L capable card like quartz extreme did aka radeon or geforce.
these cards are supported and this is at least the fourth time i have posted it
radeon 9600 pro & XT
radeon 9700 pro
radeon 9800 pro/SE/XT
radeon x800 XT
radeon 9600 mobility
radeon 9700 mobility
geforce 5200 go
geforce 5200 ultra
geforce 6800 ultra/GT
dont start saying oh my 5200 has 32MB vram i need more vram IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH VRAM. core image will work fine on any of those cards no matter the vram configuration.
also if you dont have one of those cards it's not the end of the world it's not a bad thing it's just a lack of a good thing your cpu wont be bogged down by those effects they just wont happen, cpu's are no where neer capable of doing those types of effect in real time, you try rendering something like it in shake it'll take a fair while to render.
no more of this vram BS and no more "the effects will happen anyway but will be done with the cpu" BS you have a card or you dont full stop, you want the effects buy a new card or if you dont have an agp slot buy i new mac, if i were a powermac owner i'd upgrade to a 9600 pro from OWC and do the tape trick to make it work in a 4x slot.
Abstract said:
the ibook has a 9200 which is a little slower than the 5200 at most things your powerbook is fast full stop, also the effects are done on dedicated shader hardware vram is only filled up with large textures in games and 3D apps a little ripple effect should not faze it, the core image frameworks allow these effects and put in the frameworks for API's to allow the shaders and features in your card to help more like how quartz extreme helped speed up the UI by dumping it on the gpu not the cpu.
All of this VRAM talk makes me wants to ask a simeple question instead of starting a new thread...
Can you add VRAM???
Can you upgrade ram in Powerbooks... I may be able to get a 15 PB 1.67, but with only 64MB RAM. I that turns out to be insufficient, can you later add VRAM??
Sorry if that's a dumb question - I'm a Mac newbie 😱
Can you add VRAM???
Can you upgrade ram in Powerbooks... I may be able to get a 15 PB 1.67, but with only 64MB RAM. I that turns out to be insufficient, can you later add VRAM??
Sorry if that's a dumb question - I'm a Mac newbie 😱
slooksterPSV
macrumors 68040
On the older computers, I think the ram was call SGVRAM which was upgradeable. Now days, its all integrated - non-upgradable - video cards. Unless Apple does like Dell did (I think it was dell) have laptops with upgradeable video cards. But on most now days, you have to buy a brand new video card to upgrade the VRAM on it.
VanNess
macrumors 6502a
Regarding the dashboard ripple effect...
I would be amazed if it tied to core image. On Panther, right now, the ripple effect can be seen as a slide show transition effect in iPhoto, and its seen in other apps as well. So why would the effect be suddenly bound to core image compliant high end graphics cards in Tiger? Why wouldn't it be rendered in Quartz Extreme, like it has in the past? Has anyone looked at dashboard's preferences to see if there is anything there regarding effects?
In Apple's developer documentation, it mentions the "dashboard server" as the abstraction layer which, among other tasks, is responsible for the effects. Not a word about core image requirements or utilization.
The Dashboard page for Tiger makes no mention of core-image requirements for the ripple effect.
The Dashboard Technology brief pdf makes no mention of core-image usage or requirements for effects when adding a widget
The new Powermac page describing graphics has this: "Powerful graphics give Quartz Extreme the power to display Mac OS X features such as drop shadows and ripple effects" (The words "Quartz Extreme" is hyperlinked to the current Quartz Extreme page, which displays the graphics card requirements, which are not the same as those for core image.)
Well, I guess I'll find out when Tiger shows up here today, but if it is true that the Dashboard ripple effect is bound to core-image with a relatively high end vid card, I'm going to be somewhat pissed. Apple marketed that aspect of Dashboard pretty strongly, and should have disclosed the high end hardware requirement - somewhere. They did with multiple person video-conferencing with iChat AV, and just about every other hardware/feature relationship in the OS.
I would be amazed if it tied to core image. On Panther, right now, the ripple effect can be seen as a slide show transition effect in iPhoto, and its seen in other apps as well. So why would the effect be suddenly bound to core image compliant high end graphics cards in Tiger? Why wouldn't it be rendered in Quartz Extreme, like it has in the past? Has anyone looked at dashboard's preferences to see if there is anything there regarding effects?
In Apple's developer documentation, it mentions the "dashboard server" as the abstraction layer which, among other tasks, is responsible for the effects. Not a word about core image requirements or utilization.
The Dashboard page for Tiger makes no mention of core-image requirements for the ripple effect.
The Dashboard Technology brief pdf makes no mention of core-image usage or requirements for effects when adding a widget
The new Powermac page describing graphics has this: "Powerful graphics give Quartz Extreme the power to display Mac OS X features such as drop shadows and ripple effects" (The words "Quartz Extreme" is hyperlinked to the current Quartz Extreme page, which displays the graphics card requirements, which are not the same as those for core image.)
Well, I guess I'll find out when Tiger shows up here today, but if it is true that the Dashboard ripple effect is bound to core-image with a relatively high end vid card, I'm going to be somewhat pissed. Apple marketed that aspect of Dashboard pretty strongly, and should have disclosed the high end hardware requirement - somewhere. They did with multiple person video-conferencing with iChat AV, and just about every other hardware/feature relationship in the OS.