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Successful install on P4 and Athlon64


MadDog2k
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Okay, I installed OS X on a friend's IBM ThinkCentre (don't know the exact specs but I will post them later on) and Quartz Extreme worked right off the bat, no modifications done at all and I am sure it doesn't have Intel GMA 900! Core Image does NOT work. I can also confirm that the NIC worked.

 

System Specs of my friend's PC

IBM ThinkCentre

Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.4 Ghz with HT, no SSE 3

 

More info at a later time

 

A day later, I installed in on my own PC but this time neither Quartz Extreme nor Core Image worked. For some weird reason my PS/2 keyboard also didn't work but my Razor Diamondback worked. More on this later as well.

 

System Specs of my PC

Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI nForce4 SLI

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester 90nm

Sapphire RADEON X800 XT PE 256MB ViVo PCI-Express

View Sonic VP171b-2 17"

 

Before, I say anything else, I would like to mention that I have never used OS X before, so I have a few n00bish questions I would like to have answered. ;)

 

1. As far as I can tell Quartz Extreme is some kind of hardware acceleration for fancy graphical features like 'Expose', right?

 

2. What exactly is Core Image and what does it do?

 

3. What exactly is Rosetta and what does it do?

 

4. Are the SSE 3 instructions useless, if I can just use a patch to make it run on SSE 2 only CPUs? Or are there quirks when doing this, like performance loss?

 

5. Does the Developer's Edition come with a compiler (besdies gcc) that I could use to compile, for example VideoLAN for x86 OS X?

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1. When you move, resize and scroll windows in real time on Mac OS X, you're witnessing the power of Quartz Extreme. Combining the performance of modern graphics cards and OpenGL with the visual quality of the Quartz 2D window-compositing system, Quartz Extreme delivers responsiveness you won't find anywhere else. Every time you move or resize a window on your Mac, Quartz uses the integrated OpenGL technology to convert each window into a texture, then sends it to the graphics card to render on screen. The graphics processor focuses on what it does best — graphics — freeing the processor to perform more operations in the same amount of time. Drawing windows, resizing, moving, scrolling — everything is zippier. I personally think of this as sorta like video overlay in Windows, but for the whole OS.

 

2. Until now, harnessing the power of the GPU required in-depth knowledge of pixel-level programming. Core Image allows developers to easily leverage these programmable GPUs for blistering-fast image processing that can eliminate rendering time delays. Effects and transitions can be expressed with a few lines of code. Core Image handles the rest, optimizing the path to the GPU. The result is real-time, interactive responsiveness as you select and apply filters. This is basically like using DirectX for windows to render effects in 3D Programs such as Maya.

 

3. Rosetta is what apple invented to emulate a PowerPC G3 processor on a x86 processor so people can run programs that are not compiled for an Intel processor yet. It lets you run programs like Office 2004, iTunes, and games on an Intel processor. This is like compatability mode in Windows XP emulating DOS to play old games.

 

4. SSE3 is used by Rosetta as a security measure to prevent it from running on Pentium 4 and AMd Procesors with oly SSE2. The atual programs are not required to use SSE3 instructions according to Apples guidelines. The only slowdown I would see for the SSE3->SSE2 patches is when a program first boots, the SSE3 check may take longer than a SSE3 enabled processor because the instructions are being translated. The aplicatio should then continue to run are the same speed after the check is through.

 

5. The Developer Edition DVD has Xcode 2.1 to recompile or write programs in universal binaries to run on both PowerPC processors and Intel processors. If you cannot find it on the DVD, then you can down it here:

https://connect.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObject...de=VSPA_2005-01

You have to be a member of the Apple Developer Connection to download, but online registration is free.

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Its rather doubtful that QE worked. None of the ati or nvidia kexts are fully complete really. But, they do sell Thinkcentre models that have 865g graphics which are partially supported under OS X. But even that requires some editing to work out of the box usually.

 

Nick answered the other questions quite well though. :)

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Thank you, Nickhamm for that quick and precise reply!

 

Its rather doubtful that QE worked.  None of the ati or nvidia kexts are fully complete really.  But, they do sell Thinkcentre models that have 865g graphics which are partially supported under OS X.  But even that requires some editing to work out of the box usually.

 

Nick answered the other questions quite well though. :)

I swear Quartz Extreme worked as soon as I booted up OS X for the first time! I will post the exact hardware specs and model number of that ThinkCentre series later tomorrow.

 

Also, I used the plain deadmoo image and 'dd'ed it over to a seconday hard drive in Windows XP using 'dd for window 0.3'.

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I swear Quartz Extreme worked as soon as I booted up OS X for the first time!

 

You can easily check if QE is on:

 

Apple Menu -> About this Mac

 

Then press the "More info..." button and then click under "Hardware -> Graphics/Displays"

 

You should see something like:

 

Display:

Resolution: 1024 x 768

Depth: 32-bit Color

Core Image: Not Supported

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Quartz Extreme: Not Supported

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EXCELLENT REPLY! I don't know if you wrote that by hand or cut and paste. But thats exactly why I wanted to read Nick. Thank you!

 

If you want to really see that Quartz Extreme can do, install Quartz Desktop and be amazed!

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