So I've received a few emails since my post (I also sent out a few emails last night when I first started worrying about the issue) and here's what I've got so far:
1) In the latest build of Tiger released to developers (8A351) the Mac mini does not offer support for Core Image or Quartz Extreme 2D.
2) ATI has written me and explicitly stated that the Radeon 9200 was not designed with support for Core Image in mind.
Visually OS X Tiger should look identical on the mini as it would on any platform with Core Image support, the difference is that Tiger will continue to task the CPU for the rendering of all GUI elements instead of offloading it to the GPU. It appears that Core Image does require full fp support and it doesn't look like there are any plans to extend support down to DX8 class cards.
From what I have gathered, performance of the Mac mini under current beta Tiger builds is quite similar to performance under Panther, which is good to know, especially considering the beta status of Tiger. I did receive some reports saying that Exposé was choppier but that could be a result of a number of things. Dashboard performance is supposedly pretty solid as well.
More info as I get it...
1) In the latest build of Tiger released to developers (8A351) the Mac mini does not offer support for Core Image or Quartz Extreme 2D.
2) ATI has written me and explicitly stated that the Radeon 9200 was not designed with support for Core Image in mind.
Visually OS X Tiger should look identical on the mini as it would on any platform with Core Image support, the difference is that Tiger will continue to task the CPU for the rendering of all GUI elements instead of offloading it to the GPU. It appears that Core Image does require full fp support and it doesn't look like there are any plans to extend support down to DX8 class cards.
From what I have gathered, performance of the Mac mini under current beta Tiger builds is quite similar to performance under Panther, which is good to know, especially considering the beta status of Tiger. I did receive some reports saying that Exposé was choppier but that could be a result of a number of things. Dashboard performance is supposedly pretty solid as well.
More info as I get it...
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
18 Comments
View All Comments
TigerUser - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
Kenote 2 has two transitions (Burn and Flash) that use Core Image. On a system that doesn't support Core Image, they're labeled as being "Unable to be played on this computer" or something like that. On Panther systems, they might not be displayed at all.This is a very minor loss, I think.
Nick - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
#6, any claim of 300% speed gains will only apply to specific cases or tasks. There are no "magic bullets" that will increase performance of all applications by such huge amounts.Endymion - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
There was talk a while back about great room in Mac OS for optimisation. I read or 50 to 300% speed gains. IBM, I seem to recall, was developing/improving compilers which Intel has used to great effect for years (& which Motorola never did for the G4). I'm way out of my depth here but some info explaining this:"compiling" "auto-vectorising" and potential for sharpening up the OS would be interesting. Any chance of a chat with IBM - like you do with ATi?
Mike Akers - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
Even on hardware that doesn't support Core Image, Quartz is supposed to perform better on Tiger than Panther due to streamlining and re-factoring in the Quartz pipeline to make Core Image possible.Or so I've heard ;)
ksherman - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
cool beans... was a little worried about this oneDavid Smith - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
FlameDeer: Tiger'll run on stuff a lot older than that just fine. :) (G3s and such). I would expect similar speeds to 10.3, maybe a little better (in general, I can think of some specific cases where it might not be).LiekOMG - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
Hopefully Core Image will mean a snappier UI for OS X, as currently there is a lot of laggy behavior in scrolling up/down webpages and other graphic intensive apps.FlameDeer - Thursday, January 27, 2005 - link
Quick update. Good to know Mac mini at least can run OS X Tiger only without GPU support of Core Image.