scrolling much slower on mac G4 than G5

[adrianjolles]

I made a simple test with scrolling a 30mb file with bitmap graphics on it. It takes 30 sec. on a G4 and 63 sec. on a G5. I tested 6 machines (3 each), all with more or less the same result. All running under mac os 10.3.7, vw 10.5.1.

why is this?? I read in this forum, that pc is faster than mac, and that os 10.3 is extremely slow with selecting objects. But why is a G5 1.8ghz with 1.5gb ram and 64 mb vram scrolling slower than a G4 466mhz with 512mb ram and 16mb vram??

[Kevin]

I will be very interested in this answer. I have a 466 machine and am looking to "upgrade" to a 1.8. A primary intent of mine is to increase screen responsiveness. Going slower after buying a new machine will not make for a happy architect.

[adrianjolles]

I made the test with a 8-year old PowerMac 9500 with a sonnet G3 card, 300mhz, 256mb ram, and VW 8.5: 52 seconds, that's 11 secs faster than the G5.

Kevin, changing to a G5 will make scrolling slower than on a PowerMac 9500.

[Guest]

There are a few other considerations...

You have to make sure there are no other applications running, the file is the exact same file, the same video card is on both computers, and there are no other services running.

[adrianjolles]

I tested with only vw running and of course always with the exact same file.

The video card seems to have no influence at all: the tests on one of the G4 was done with the original ATI rage 128 (16mb vram) and later with a new ATI radeon 9000 card (128mb vram), with exactly the same results. I guess they are only important with rendering.

It really seems to be a problem between vw and the G5 processor!

[Guest]

Do both computers have the same video card?

Redraw is definately influenced by the video card.

[adrianjolles]

All computers were tested with their original video cards. Therefore the older G4 have other cards than the new G5.

Afterwards I installed a new card in the old G4, with no change in performance as mentioned above. So the only test I haven't done yet, is to install this very same card in a G5 and run the test again. If this helps to clarify things, I'll do that tomorrow.

[wv_vectorworker]

I have a 1gig G4 and a 1.6gig G5 and the g5 is definately faster at everything. the must be some other kind of factor influencing your test. How about refering to xbench, cinebench or whatever.

[adrianjolles]

It's a mystery to me too! The three G5s that I tested are also faster at everything, including cinebench, including opening/activating large vw-files, including all other functions I use in vw, EXCEPT scrolling vw-files with large bitmaps.

Unfortunately this is a situation that we often use. We renovate old houses and scan in old plans as a base layer. Waiting 60 seconds for scrolling through a A3-plan is extremely annoying.

I would be very grateful if anyone could conduct a similar test on G4 and G5 and report the result: import large bitmap-graphics (my test-file size is 30mb), zoom in close enough, hit the arrows key 10 or 15 times and measure the time for the scrolling process.

[Kevin]

A few months ago there was a thread regarding a similar issue. The post stated that his new dual 1.8 with an upgraded video card was more responsive than his previous 2.0 with stock card.

You might check out your local computer store to see if you can buy and try a faster card with the option to return it. I did this on my computer but ended up returning the new card as it created problems in Open GL. The ATI drivers never properly loaded.

I know what you mean about scrolling scanned images. This is why I wish NNA would share their data regarding various video cards and VW.

[wv_vectorworker]

I have a 11MB site plan open now a scan of survey drawing, scrolling around is pretty snappy on the G5