[OT] Re(2): Quartz blitter/hardware support?
[OT] Re(2): Quartz blitter/hardware support?
- Subject: [OT] Re(2): Quartz blitter/hardware support?
- From: Jens Bauer <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 23:22:03 +0200
Hi Allan,
(Sorry for going off-topic)
>
A 733 MHz G4 with a GeForce II and 384 MB RAM.
>
>
The default size of the NSScrollView in question is 450x320 pixels (and
>
it's the only element in the window). But at this size it can just
>
manage the 60 updates pr. second (scrolling), though make it twice as
>
high or wide, and it starts to skip frames (I have a method which just
>
calls scrollToPoint 60 times pr. second).
I once borrowed a 733MHz G4, and I had the feeling that it was *slower*
than a *very* old 350MHz G4.
This was most likely because of the differences in the graphics cards.
{snip}
>
>
What a shame that my 10 year old Amiga outperforms my high-end Mac in so
>
many aspects -- even the fastest graphical web browser for Mac OS X is
>
noticeable slower than what I use on my 40 MHz Amiga, both parsing,
>
layout, rendering and scrolling, and it *does* conform to HTML 4 and the
>
Amiga actually has a very Objective-C inspired run-time binding used for
>
the GUI system, so it's not even the flexibility of this that can excuse
>
the Mac...
The Amiga ofcourse runs Amiga OS, but is the O/S you're running based on
a Linux kernel, or is it the old O/S from the "golden age" ?
-The reason I ask, is that if it's Linux based (I've heard the new Amiga
OS is based on Linux), the chance of optimizing these things may be better.
You should ofcourse remember that Mac OS X is capable of having a window,
which is translucent and the fonts are ofcourse antialiased and
translucent as well, on top of your window, which has all the
antialiasing stuff too.
If you had that on the Amiga, I'm sure you'd get in trouble with the
scrolling speed as well.
But indeed, you are right. Today, we have very fast computers, they boot
much slower than our old ones, the old ones can open a window just as
quickly as the new ones. (Anybody who did not notice this ?)
We programmers are sloppy. -We don't put the same effort into our
programming as we did 15 years ago, where it was *needed*.
Today, we are satisfied if the program runs at "human readable speed"
rather than allowing 100 applications of the same kind to run on the same
machine.
On computers back then, we could "hog" the display, even the CPU; today,
we have to respect that other programs might want to use the display as
well, so we can't do direct-to-screen drawing, and we can't hog the CPU
either.
Even though we can't do this, I believe it's still possible to find parts
of the graphics system that can be optimized, maybe by using completely
different algorithms.
You may not be able to get 20 times the speed on a 800 MHz computer
compared to a 40MHz (680x0), but it would probably be possible to reach 5
times the speed if working *really* hard on it.
-Remember, the 680x0 is faster per MHz than a PowerPC!
Again, there's a lot of issues involved in it, which you (I) don't take
into account.
Love,
Jens
--
Jens Bauer, Faster Software.
-Let's make the World better, shall we ?
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