VW 10 on a brand new 800 mhz iBook?

[propstuff]

Hugo,

My TiBk (sadly outdated -from Feb this year! :-O ) has a 16Mb video card.

Experimenting with the CPU Monitor and Process Viewer while using VW has yielded some interesting information.

VW, for some reason, virtually max's the CPU WHENEVER it's running and rapidly causes the cooling fans to start; regardless of whether it's actually executing a process or not. When processing (eg rendering), all available CPU capacity is used.

On the other hand; memory is not.

With only VW running, a rendering job used only about 100Mb of the 500Mb RAM I have and about 120Mb of Virtual memory. I.E., "Speed" is nearly all down to the processors and Bus capability.

For my system, having to WAIT for a rotated wireframe to redraw is simply PATHETIC. (Not very 21st Century at all!) It's only that it's a small part of my business that makes it commercially feasable.

It's very hard to get a real understanding of the various merits of Mac vs Pc systems that's free of the partisan B.S. that goes around, but my guess is that until Apple get some "current" processing hardware (IBM Power PC chips next year???) in their machines, Mac, rendering, and processing speed are going to be mutually exclusive terms. :-(

That being said; unless you are doing complex 3D, lots of NURBS, large renderings, or Gaming till 3.00am every night, these speed issues are NOT going to be a problem. Make sure you get the 14" screen not the 12", and if you're doing "regular" drafting you'll be racing.

For me, Apples hardware issues are somewhere between sad and laughable, but I'd still rather have my Mac than a PC any day ;-))

N.

[Hugo]

I'm actually working on a 400 mhz iMac with 768 mb of ram and VW runs perfectly well. But I need some mobility and been thinking on upgrading to a new 800 mhz iBook, which has a 32 mb video card (Ati Radeon) instead of my modest 8 mb Ati Rage 128 pro. Also I think that an extra 400 mhz could be a nice thing. I can't afford a Powerbook G4, but I also do not need so much power, so I think the iBook can be a perfect choice. My only complain is that a 12.1" screen may be a bit small, but at 1024 x 768 I'll have the same workspace as in my actual iMac. Also, VW won't be the primary use of this iBook. And I can connect an external monitor some times.

But I will be using it many times, and I wanted to have some feedback about this. I read some comments about poor Open GL support under Mac OS X for the previous Rage cards that equipped some iBooks. Has this been corrected with the actual Radeons? I have had no issues with my 8 mb Rage 128 Pro on my iMac, so I think I will be screaming with the 32 mb Radeon, or am I wrong?

[ 12-25-2002, 12:13 PM: Message edited by: Hugo ]

[Kurt Magness]

Hugo & Nick:

I have a powerbook titainium 667mhz processor, 512 ram, aty rage w/ 32 mb vram. (stock setup 4mos ago) I run vwks 9.5.3 under os 10.2.3. It works pretty good with open gl rendering, walk thru & flyby tools work good for fairly complex architectural models. It has some weird artifacts with some textures but all in all I am pleased. Maybe vwks 10 is doing some thing different or nick you might have something else going on other than funky apple hardware or maybe the extra 16mb of video ram i have is helping. Also i think for quark extreme rendering to work under os10.2 you need at least 16mb vram. i think i'd get a titainum versus a ibook for the g4 processor, better video card, more vram and the bigger screen. Although the ibook is pretty cool.