3D Graphics: These are already handled by OpenGL.Quartz is Mac OS X's 2D graphics layer and some people assume that Quartz Extreme accelerates all of it. There are a lot of misconceptions about what exactly Quartz Extreme accelerates. However, when doing CPU-intensive operations, performance may degrade on slower machines.Īs the above writeups explain, Quartz Extreme is Apple's name for a technology that uses OpenGL to accelerate parts of Quartz. When doing operations involving the OS X window server, performance increases greatly. The PCI bus is much slower than the AGP bus, hence, throughput is much less. I verified that QE was enabled with a utility called 'Quartz Extreme Check', available here ().Īpple chose not to enable QE on PCI machines because of potential performance problems. PCI Extreme installed without any problems. I have a PowerMac G3 Rev A, with a Radeon Mac Edition (32MB DDR). It is called PCI Extreme, made by a small company called Dangerous Wares. What about users who have a PCI PowerMac, with a PCI graphics card which has 32MB VRAM? Apple does not enable QE by default, however, a third-party hack enables it. Apple lists the NVIDIA GeForce2 MX, GeForce3, Geforce4MX, or GeForce4 Ti, or any AGP-based ATI Radeon as compatible graphics cards. ** For those with a more technical background, this load-shifting is accomplished by pipelining Quartz through OpenGL to the GPU.Īpple states that you need an AGP-based graphics card with at least 16MB VRAM for Quartz Extreme (QE) to take effect. *Apple recommends a graphics card with 32 MB of VRAM however, it should be noted that the newer iBooks (which have 16 MB cards) CAN take advantage of QE. Along with a number of other small tweaks, Quartz Extreme is perhaps the single most important technology responsible for speeding up OS X.Īpple's symbol for Quartz Extreme is a two-color Q, silver and dark blue. The most notable thing about Quartz Extreme is that, assuming you have a compatible graphics card*, the calculations needed to render the desktop (a three-dimensional scene with textures) are handled by the GPU**. The heavy load, in some situations, made OS X slighly sluggish while the CPU figured out how to draw everything pretty-like.Īnnounced as a new feature of Mac OS 10.2 (“ Jaguar”), Quartz Extreme is an overhaul of Quartz. Unfortunately, a CPU is not really designed to do the computations required to draw graphics. Nearly all of the computations required to draw graphics were performed by the CPU. Quartz was the underlying graphics system, which allowed OS X to have translucent menus, throbbing blue buttons, anti-aliased fonts, and all sorts of Aqua-y goodness. That part of VersionTracker is supported by the Pro and Plus services, Risch said.īoth the Web site, VersionTracker Plus, and VersionTracker Pro offer access to the latest upgrades and patches (over 11,000 applications and counting have been tracked) and user reviews and comments.In Mac OS X 10.1, nearly all graphics appearing on a screen were a product of Quartz. Plus, the company has an engineering team dedicated to the Mac platform. The subscription services let VersionTracker invest in the functionality of their online property and products, he added. Why the changes? The advertising business has been tough lately, and there are costs in maintaining a Web site’s content and keeping the site up and running, Risch said. The Advanced Search was also used very little and will be a paid feature.” “The Editor’s Picks, Top Downloads, and Previous Days Listings are all now part of the Plus version. “We looked at the usage of features on the Web site and found three or four areas that weren’t being used very much,” Risch said. The VersionTracker Web site, which is free, will stay basically the same, though a few features have been moved over to the subscription services. The Plus version has an introductory price of $19.95 for the first year. The Pro service costs US$49.95 per year - from now through May 23, you also get a free T-shirt for signing up.
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