Anand Lal Shimpi takes an in-depth look at Apple’s new Mac OS X Tiger operating system for AnandTech. It’s a very thorough review and worth taking the time to read it through. One issue in particular stood out. Anand Lal Shimpi writes:
“Quartz 2D Extreme, the complete handling of UI rendering and compositing by the GPU, is not enabled in the release version of OS X Tiger. As such, users of Quartz 2D Extreme supported GPUs gain no performance benefits in Tiger as the CPU is still left to handle all UI rendering and the GPU handles all compositing after the CPU renders the interfaces to textures in AGP memory. The only benefit modern day GPUs offer in Tiger (other than their improved performance in 3D applications) is that there are certain visual effects that are only enabled if you have a GPU that supports Tiger’s Core Image. For example, when dropping a widget onto the Dashboard, you get a very nice ripply-wave effect on GPUs that support Core Image; and on those that don’t, there’s no effect. But from a performance standpoint, there’s no benefit to either ATI’s Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition or NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL.”
Full article, highly recommended along with the Ars Technica review listed below, here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Ars Technica: Mac OS X Tiger ‘at least twice as significant as any single past update’ – April 28, 2005
wtf?!?
i thought it was only microsoft that left things out of their OS releases.
shame on you apple! i hope its in 10.4.1
Found the following at Macfixit- apparently Apple is copying Microsofts approach to OS’s by installing programs that report back to the Mother Ship. This is why I try not to use MS software, and also why I won’t install Tiger until I find out why Jobs needs to know more about my computer:
“dmnotifyd” apparently sending Apple user information Several users have reported that an application called “dnotifyd” is sending system information back to Apple.
“Since my upgrade last night to Tiger, I have noticed something going on in the background. This was never observed in the past, but thanks to Little Snitch I ‘caught’ this one.
“This particular app is attempting to contact ‘configuration.apple.com’ every few minutes. I don’t have a packet sniffer, but am curious just exactly why Apple needs to ‘check my configuration’ every few minutes.
i installed tiger on my powerbook over the weekend. the first thing i noticed was how much faster it is than panther. whew! the second and third things i noticed were how ugly the widgets look. they’re like candy-colored toys. i also noticed the change in the color blue of the apple and the Spotlight icons in the menu bar. they, along with the drop down Spotlight interface, look un-mac-like. they reminded me of Wiindows XP. I hope apple changes these as they are either ugly or remind me too much of microsoft. i imagine someone will come out with better looking widgets or ways to change the ‘skins’ of these.
The disabled Quartz 2D Extreme situation was also noted in the Ars Technica review.
That review also documented how much faster CPU-based Quartz has become under Tiger (so all supported systems benefit). Therefore, it is inaccurate to say that users of supported GPUs “get no performance benefit” from 10.4. More accurately, they get no ADDITIONAL benefit (yet).
Apparently, Quartz 2D Extreme isn’t fully debugged. Bummer.
Pretty good article to link to.
It’s nice to see MDN pointing to some reasonable and rational material for a change.
Maybe the “fanatics” will give the “dual-users” a break for not becoming “switchers”.
—
Mac & PC Guy
Dual-User
Pretty good article to link to.
It’s nice to see MDN pointing to some reasonable and rational material for a change.
Maybe the “fanatics” will give the “dual-users” a break for not becoming “switchers”.
—
Mac & PC Guy
Dual-User
Pretty good article to link to.
It’s nice to see MDN pointing to some reasonable and rational material for a change.
Maybe the “fanatics” will give the “dual-users” a break for not becoming “switchers”.
—
Mac & PC Guy
Dual-User
No no no…..I was at Comp USA and the Apple guy did a demo on the latest G5 Tower and I saw the ripple he did mention that depending on the video card that supports it or not you will not see a ripple effect on stock machines with a G4 or below. That was one of the first things he mentioned. I guess they informed him on that issue.
The ripple effect works on my G4 Powerbook
To enable it, quit all programs, download this :
http://www.johnnylundy.com/Quartz Debug.zip
hit command D and enjoy !
Installed it on my dual 2.0 G5 with ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. It gets ripple effect. Installed on my 17 inch 1Ghz PowerBook G4 with GeForce 4MX, and it gets no ripple effect. Installed for client on 15 inch 1.5GHz PowerBook G4 with ATI 9700. It gets ripple effect.
Grandpa: thanks for making me worry: seems it’s a.Mac related thing.
Terminal output:
Welcome to Darwin!
Sisko:~ $ sudo find / |grep dmnotify
/private/etc/mach_init_per_user.d/dmnotify.plist
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DMNotification.framework/Versions/A/Resources/dmnotifyd
Sisko:~ $ sudo cat /private/etc/mach_init_per_user.d/dmnotify.plist
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.dotmac.notification</string>
<key>Command</key>
<string>/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DMNotification.framework/Resources/dmnotifyd</string>
<key>OnDemand</key>
<true>
</dict>
</plist>
Sisko:~ $
Have fun!
Jeroen: “Grandpa: thanks for making me worry: seems it’s a.Mac related thing.”
Yup. It’s seems that it only happens when you have you computer set to automatically sync with .mac.
Apple is NOT secretly sending information to the mother ship.
Dual 1.8GHz with 2GB RAM and GeForce FX 5200 here, got ripple and Exposé seems crisper when deployed.
G4 15 inch powerbook gets ripple effect. way cool. better-looking than the droplet effect in Keynote!
Grandpa: “”This particular app is attempting to contact ‘configuration.apple.com’ every few minutes. I don’t have a packet sniffer, but am curious just exactly why Apple needs to ‘check my configuration’ every few minutes.”
I hear the new OSX Tiger with Spotlight can track down if you ever wrote a negative thing about Steve Jobs and it is forwarded to Mac HQs where they put you on the Apple sh#t list. You write something bad about Steve and then wonder why you are getting unsatisfactory customer service from Apple…or your computer starts acting up…well, now you know.
It´s Steve´s company – he can do with his software and products whatever he wants to. Be nice to Steve and he will be nice to you.
– Signed, that little bit of code in OSX 10.4 you don´t know about.
I get the ripple on my dual 2.5 G5 but not my 667 TiBook. Everything on the G5 seems much snappier. Lovin’ the Tiger!
Tiger makes my dual 2GHz G5 at home MUCH faster – especially with Photoshop. So if there’s some promise of it being even faster once this gets turned on (Photoshop is 2D after all) then I don’t care. Any speedup is a good thing, and I’m more than happy with the increase in speed for my G5 over what Panther did for me over Jaguar a month after I got the G5 originally. The difference is even greater this time.
Where’s MDN’s take proclaiming this FUD? Surely, Apple would not do this!
The ripple effect is dependant on whether your graphics card supports Core Image. It has nothing to do with Quartz 2D Extreme being activated or deactivated.
Run your system profiler. Under Graphics/Displays if it says Core Image: Supported, then you’ll get the ripple effect when you drop widgets.
one of the best unbiased articles I’ve read in a LONG time. And no attack from MDN. Perhaps MDN has a non-fanatic at the helm today.
>ottomabulb wrote: Perhaps MDN has a non-fanatic at the helm today.
>ottomabulb wrote: Perhaps MDN has a non-fanatic at the helm today.
>ottomabulb wrote: Perhaps MDN has a non-fanatic at the helm today.
macnut222
i have that from apple themselves too