🚀 go-pugleaf

In article 
<kob3nospamplease-0A5D2B.17520801072002@news-vip.optusnet.com.au>,
 Kenton <kob3nospamplease@optusnet.com.au> wrote:

> One of the things I look for in a graphics card is 3D game performance, 
> but another is Quicktime performance for applications like Final Cut Pro 
> and imovie. However no reviews mention the latter. Why isn't it so ?
> 
> I emailed the guy from xlr8 your mac and he said most consumers aren't 
> interested in it, however I think alot of industry people would be.

Cards don't accelerate rendering, just playback. And you don't see 
performance figures for the same reason you almost never see 2D graphics 
benchmarks anymore -- all the cards on the market can handle this task 
so well that there's effectively no difference between them.

-- 
"My trip to Asia begins here in Japan for an important reason. It begins
here because for a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed
one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that 
alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific." 
                                                     - George W. Bush

In article <znu-F2FCD4.04175901072002@news.fu-berlin.de>,
 ZnU <znu@mac.com> wrote:

> Cards don't accelerate rendering, just playback.

So they accelerate 3D rendering but not Quicktime rendering ? that seems 
pretty lame. So I assume the rendering is done by the CPU ?

I had a Voodoo 3000 and a Rage Pro, and the Rage pro was better at 
rendering in Adobe after effects, although that's not just quicktime 
it's rendering there.

-- 
- K

In article 
<kob3nospamplease-C52D4A.19040001072002@news-vip.optusnet.com.au>,
 Kenton <kob3nospamplease@optusnet.com.au> wrote:

> In article <znu-F2FCD4.04175901072002@news.fu-berlin.de>,
>  ZnU <znu@mac.com> wrote:
> 
> > Cards don't accelerate rendering, just playback.
> 
> So they accelerate 3D rendering but not Quicktime rendering ? that seems 
> pretty lame. So I assume the rendering is done by the CPU ?

3D cards accelerate real-time 3D. This is useful for games, and for the 
process of modeling in 3D programs. But it doesn't help with final 
renders of the sort generated by apps like LightWave or Maya -- for that 
you just need lots of CPU power.

Basically, any time you see high-quality 3D on TV or wherever, that's 
something that was rendered by a CPU, not something generated by a 3D 
card. The specialized 3D hardware on graphics cards is still too 
limiting to be used for photo-realistic rendering of arbitrary 3D 
scenes. Game developers have to be careful about keeping polygon counts 
low and texture sizes relatively small, and certain effects, such as 
refraction through glass or reflections off of complex surfaces, simply 
can't be done at all.

> I had a Voodoo 3000 and a Rage Pro, and the Rage pro was better at 
> rendering in Adobe after effects, although that's not just quicktime 
> it's rendering there.

It shouldn't make a great deal of difference. Really.

Quartz Extreme (due in the next release of OS X) will allow compositing 
within QuickTime movies to be accelerated by 3D hardware, but it's 
unclear if this will be used to generate final output, or just for 
real-time previews.

-- 
"My trip to Asia begins here in Japan for an important reason. It begins
here because for a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed
one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that 
alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific." 
                                                     - George W. Bush

In article 
<kob3nospamplease-0A5D2B.17520801072002@news-vip.optusnet.com.au>,
 Kenton <kob3nospamplease@optusnet.com.au> wrote:

> One of the things I look for in a graphics card is 3D game performance, 
> but another is Quicktime performance for applications like Final Cut Pro 
> and imovie. However no reviews mention the latter. Why isn't it so ?
> 
> I emailed the guy from xlr8 your mac and he said most consumers aren't 
> interested in it, however I think alot of industry people would be.

That sort of response is often a journalist's way of saying "I'm not 
interested in that," "I hadn't thought of that," or "I don't understand 
that." It's a technical reviewer's job not only to measure a system's 
performance but also to explain why any particular measurement is 
important.

-- 
Timberwoof <timberwoof at infernosoft dot com> Chief Perpetrator
Infernosoft: Putting the No in Innovation. http://www.infernosoft.com
"The opposite of hardware is not easyware."