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taking a fresh look at macintosh - Page 2

post #21 of 43
4/7/05 at 11:36am
Thread Starter 
I read on anandtech that OS Tiger is going to be much more reliant on the graphics card ("...in Tiger, every single pixel on the screen will actually be rendered by the graphics card."), so if that's accurate, I can hardly expect the ibooks NOT to be redesigned: Unless Tiger's a wonder of modern technical efficiency, 32 megs in a MR 9200 just won't cut it.

Take THAT, glib Apple sales guy! Besides, it's not like they'd only put Tiger on the desktops and powerbooks, leaving the ibooks and mini to suffer, right? That'd be like Microsoft putting out a special "toned-down" version of xp pro on laptops because they couldn't handle the real thing.
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post #22 of 43
4/7/05 at 1:56pm
Tiger will do two things: For video cards with programmable GPUs, Tiger will shunt pretty much all visual data directly to the GPU which will speed up pretty much anything graphic intensive. For video cards without programmable GPUs, Tiger will have a lot of new Altivec optimisations which will help speed things up.
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post #23 of 43
4/7/05 at 2:23pm
Thread Starter 
So maybe it IS a wonder of modern efficiency after all?
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post #24 of 43
4/7/05 at 2:26pm
anyone suppose a toned down tiger could be an alternative, just as microsoft is doing with longhorn having a full blown 64bit and a crippled 32bit version for systems that are not "up wiht the times". but in all honesty, even panther would like more juice than what a stock out-of-the-box emac or mini imac can pull out (speaking from experience). i mean, its ok with 1 or 2 apps, but say you open: firefox (internet browser), fire (IM client), FlashMX 2004, Word, and Terminal and you can really feel the lag. However just adding more ram solves that issue. Same might be true for tiger. If panther's sweet sport is 512...could tiger perhaps only purr with 768?
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post #25 of 43
4/7/05 at 2:30pm
Thread Starter 
Whatever they do with respect to Tiger, I'd like to see pci-e in their laptops, even with an x300/64. It'd be a good boost from what they're using now, for the most part.
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post #26 of 43
4/7/05 at 3:33pm
Since when is Longhorn for 32 bit going to be crippled? Considering the installed numbers of current 32 bit computers capable of running Longhorn, they wouldn't dare cripple the 32 bit version.

With the release of Tiger Apple is supposed to give all Macs 512 stock.
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post #27 of 43
4/7/05 at 6:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kakaze
With the release of Tiger Apple is supposed to give all Macs 512 stock.
good...256 is just not enough. they should have done it with the release of os x 10.0 anyways. they knew that the more "linux" (vs earlier bsd) design would be more resource hogging.

*runs for cover*
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post #28 of 43
4/7/05 at 8:09pm
it may also be a situation like windows xp, where the OS determines the amount of eye candy it will run based on the hardware at hand. IMO one of the weaknesses of OS X (currently) is that it doesn't take enough advantage of the GPU's hardware capabilities. see anandtech's Mini review for an echo of agreement. so abf, it may be possible that w/ tiger, if the processor isn't having to deal w/ extraneous graphics stuff it might actually be less system RAM intensive.

that said, i'm all for the iBooks getting 64MB VRAM standard, and the PBs getting 128+. who's with me?!
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post #29 of 43
4/7/05 at 8:49pm
the ibooks could really use 512mb ram and at least a 64mb 9600 for a start. the pbs can use 512mb (which they have) and a 256mb 9700 or 128mb 9800 for starters. the mac mini and emac should also be bumped to 512mb and be given 5400rpm hdds, 4200 is much too slow these days.

and you're right. if the OS makes better use of the gpu, the cpu will have time to take a breath and do the work, not run the eye candy.

as for the winxp-like config where the amount of eye candy depends on hardware. i am cool with that..as long as just like with winxp, it can be manualy adjusted. if it was up to me even if i had a top of the line system, i'd make the eye candy most bare bone so that i have more juice to run the proggies
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post #30 of 43
4/7/05 at 9:30pm
Actually, with 512 ram in my Powerbook, I can run 6-8 applications or more before I notice any slowdown. I have yet to slow it completely down, or at least to more than a second or two pause between switching apps. Perhaps you should try out that "Mac from experience" again.
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post #31 of 43
4/7/05 at 9:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by abf
the ibooks could really use 512mb ram and at least a 64mb 9600 for a start. the pbs can use 512mb (which they have) and a 256mb 9700 or 128mb 9800 for starters. the mac mini and emac should also be bumped to 512mb and be given 5400rpm hdds, 4200 is much too slow these days.

4200RPM is too slow? For whom? The people that I've seen buying the mini don't know what speed the drive is spinning at anyway. If they put 512 in an iBook people would bitch that it wasn't 1GB of RAM.
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post #32 of 43
4/7/05 at 9:49pm
Thread Starter 
Given that mac laptops aren't exactly the NASA supercomputers that the dells, asuses, and acers seem to be, I wouldn't be trying to land a space shuttle with them. That said, 768 RAM should be a sweet spot for pretty much anything you wanna do in OS X. The gpu could definitely use an upgrade, though, if only to be able to do Tiger justice.
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post #33 of 43
4/7/05 at 9:52pm
Now that's funny.
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post #34 of 43
4/7/05 at 11:11pm
For fun, I opened up 21 different applications earlier. These ranged from different media players to text document editors to photo programs to an ftp client and etc. It took it a moment to open everything. But, I had them all rocking back and forth with Expose without any slowdown. Switching through them, though a bit delayed, was also possible.
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post #35 of 43
4/7/05 at 11:16pm
Ellement, you know the Shuttle still uses 8086 chips in it's computers, right?
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post #36 of 43
4/7/05 at 11:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ellement
...That said, 768 RAM should be a sweet spot for pretty much anything you wanna do in OS X...
*Anything* except running the "Motion" program (which is an absolute RAM whore).
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post #37 of 43
4/8/05 at 12:35am
From Apple
Quote:
2GB or more recommended for real-time interactivity
We have 4GB in our G5 and real-time is still fiction, I think its the app itself though.
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post #38 of 43
4/8/05 at 1:16am
What video card do you have in your G5, Andy? That's one of the major components that Motion relies on. Also, is it a dual G5?
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post #39 of 43
4/8/05 at 1:40am
Yup dual 2GHz the video card is a 9800XT, I'm planning on upgrading to the X800 once I find one instock somewhere.
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post #40 of 43
4/8/05 at 2:11am
I'm running Motion on a G5 Dual 2.0 with 2.5gb of RAM. The video card is a 9600 though... Doesn't the 9800 limit PCI slot availability?

Also... i didn't know about the X800... I just got another G5 yesterday (Dual 2.5ghz) with the 9600 XT... If the X800 leaves me the same amount of slots, I'd pick that up for sure!
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