[geeks] nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro

[Joshua Boyd]

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 08:28:08PM +0100, Mike Meredith wrote:
> On Wed, 21 May 2008 14:44:26 -0400, Joshua Boyd wrote:
> > On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 07:17:50PM +0100, Mike Meredith wrote:
> > > Thinking from a position of ignorance, wouldn't using Spaces lower
> > 
> > I suspect that you are thinking that windows on another space are
> > purged from the GPU memory.  If they did that than switching spaces
> > would be rather sluggish, so I suspect that all windows stay on the
> > GPU regardless of what space they are showing on.
> 
> More or less, although doing the equivalent under X (which definitely
> doesn't keep windows contents in the GPU) seems pretty much as snappy.
> Of course I'm glossing over the effect of "please redraw your windows
> now please" which is how (I think) X handles off-screen windows.

I believe that "please redraw your windows now please" is how
traditionally off screen windows were handled by window managers that
supported off screen windows.

However it very much looks to me like compiz just caches the last update
of each window, for people who have that turned on.  I don't.  It
doesn't work well on any machine I've tried it on, except an Intel 965G
machine (which was only one I was setting up for someone else, not one I
actually use).  Nvidia was a bit flaky.  The radeons I've tried have required
that I not use more than 1024x768.  The Via chipset I tried it on had
weird black borders (maybe as they release the source for drivers that
will end up being fixed).