Confused abotu nVidia support

[Doug the Impaler]

First of all, here's my specs:

 

Dell Dimension 4700c

2.8GHz Prescott 1MB cache

1.5GB PC4200 DDR2

GeForce 6600GT

2x80GB SATA

AOpen 16x DVD+-RW/DL

 

When I installed OS X x86 via instructions found here and it worked flawlessly. I varied from the directions a little, since I'm dedicating an entire HD to the OS, so I didn't futz with partition magic, I just blew away the partition map on the drive with Disk Utility, and I can choose my boot disk every time I reboot the computer. A very nice solution that didn't much of anything, honestly. Anyway, I only got to play with it for 15-20 minutes, but it appears that with my 6600GT that at least Quartz Extreme is enabled because the GUI is incredibly responsive, more than I would expect with VESA mode...honestly it's more responsive than an upgraded PowerMac Digital Audio I have with a 1.6GHz CPU and a Radeon 8500. I'm utterly blow away, honestly. I do have the "stuck at 1024x768" issue and I know how to resolve that and pick another resolution, but here's where I'm confused: I thought QE required OpenGL, and therefore to function in the UI, my 6600GT would have to have hardware acceleration. Is that not true?

[DrJägermeister]

First of all, here's my specs:

 

Dell Dimension 4700c

2.8GHz Prescott 1MB cache

1.5GB PC4200 DDR2

GeForce 6600GT

2x80GB SATA

AOpen 16x DVD+-RW/DL

 

When I installed OS X x86 via instructions found here and it worked flawlessly. I varied from the directions a little, since I'm dedicating an entire HD to the OS, so I didn't futz with partition magic, I just blew away the partition map on the drive with Disk Utility, and I can choose my boot disk every time I reboot the computer. A very nice solution that didn't much of anything, honestly. Anyway, I only got to play with it for 15-20 minutes, but it appears that with my 6600GT that at least Quartz Extreme is enabled because the GUI is incredibly responsive, more than I would expect with VESA mode...honestly it's more responsive than an upgraded PowerMac Digital Audio I have with a 1.6GHz CPU and a Radeon 8500. I'm utterly blow away, honestly. I do have the "stuck at 1024x768" issue and I know how to resolve that and pick another resolution, but here's where I'm confused: I thought QE required OpenGL, and therefore to function in the UI, my 6600GT would have to have hardware acceleration. Is that not true?

Take a look at the system profiler, you probably don't have QE with a Nvidia card.

[sigxcpu]

It does not have, for sure, but VESA mode on Mac OS seems to be very fast, indeed.

[rohde]

Indeed, if you have QE with nVidia something's wacked.

 

And nice specs by the way

[Doug the Impaler]

Holy {censored} I write run-on sentences.

 

Anyway, I'll check when I get home...I didn't get long to play with it because I let the OS install overnight and created an account this morning. If this is just VESA, I'd love to see what QE responsiveness is like...to steal a line from teh MacNN forums, teh snappy, indeed.

 

Guess I'll just have to pick up an X1600 or something equivolent and play WoW on this box in OS X when the universal binary is available...life will be good, because WoW performance on my PPC Mac is what keeps me in Windows

Edited January 12, 2006 by Doug the Impaler

[Doug the Impaler]

Yeah, you're right. I took the card out and I'm using the onboard Intel graphics for now, just because I don't want the CPU to be pegged at 100% (which it won't be, but it's ironic that the onboard video is accelerated when my card isn't) running the GUI.