v3.3.1

[Mr_P]

OK - so we got 3.3.1


nice to see some fixes after almost 12 months af waiting....

havent tested eveything yet but...

what spec can it run on - ignoring 10.4 for the moment.....

Can we all upgrade to 10.3.9??

Can we use: ATI 'January 2005 RADEON update for Mac OS X 10.3.6 or higher'
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/...uestionID=1361

Can we use: ATI DISPLAYS 4.5.7
https://support.ati.com/ics/support/...ge&folderID=27

Are the ATI Control panel settings still relevant for the Open GL settings??

Also - what makes this release BETA .. if its just a load of fixes that we've been waiting for - Is it show safe??? as show safe as 3.3 without the fixes??

Great to see theres a realease - but please tell us more.... shows will be using 3.3 for a little while yet....

- V4 is still a long way from being ready in my opinion.... Need some good doumnetation to start with and explanations of how things work - or were designed to work. And theres got to be some change in the GUI - try setting up and saving a preset, (while being able to see what you're doing) then re-playing it in the correct output - you'll see what I mean....

Answers on a stamped addressed envolope..............


Cheers

S

[samsc]

3.31 is intended to deal with issues that arose as between 10.3.3 and 10.3.9
it doesnt have any new features.
what happened is that major changes in graphics were made silently by apple without any forewarning or api changes.
i have no clue what they changed. but it broke some things.

3.31 also works on tiger. necessitated by apple depreciating some functionality on tiger - which requires support for ati and nvidia.

what makes it a beta is that apple continuously has made dozens of changes to hardware and software all last year - including major architecture changes in both hardware and software.
and all these changes cannot possibly be tested for.

tiger jun05 broke low level support in the os for scsi and video input - in the os - which wasnt fixed until 10.4.3

the change to pci-express in oct05 again throws another spanner in here -as all pci cards have to be changed- and all drivers have to be changed and retested.
both atto and decklink have not had hardware available or drivers ready.
apple moved over to nvidia on the pci-express machines - but the nvidia drivers - didnt really work properly.
10.4.4 only just makes the nvidia cards work properly.

as far as ati drivers?
quite honestly - its not been possible to give any advice - as they changed so rapidly - its just not been possible to make any kindof sense of how these things interact with any control panels.
then in oct05 the change to pci express - and no ati boards -

just too many changes. constantly.
and apple gives developers no access to hardware in advance of release to the public.
---

pci-express cards.

the 6600 is a bit of a downgrade in performance from the 9800/x800
the 7800 only became available just before christmas
the 4500 is a 2 pci-slot monster - that caused kernel panics on my machine.....

[samsc]

- V4 is still a long way from being ready in my opinion.... Need some good doumnetation to start with and explanations of how things work - or were designed to work. And theres got to be some change in the GUI - try setting up and saving a preset, (while being able to see what you're doing) then re-playing it in the correct output - you'll see what I mean....
S

dont quite understand what you mean.
please explain more.

what do you mean by 'correct output'?

[samsc]

Also - what makes this release BETA .. if its just a load of fixes that we've been waiting for - Is it show safe??? as show safe as 3.3 without the fixes??

show safe? - isnt that the question in making this a beta?

3.3 and 3.31 should work interchangeably - but they might not....
3.3 definitely doesnt work on tiger - because apple removed something i used.

is it show safe?

with all the hardware and software changes?

did i miss anything - hopefully not?

and tiger - is that show safe? - i need people to check this out and tell me it works - or its doesnt work.

i dont know until more shows get done.....

please spot chicken and egg.

[Spam Butterfly]

In my tests the 6600 gives much the same performance as the 9800. The 7800 and 4500 don't add much, although if you use Quartz Composer compositions then the more powerful graphics cards are going to help. I'd plump for 7800 myself. The 4500 takes up two slots and is a complete beast - you need third party DVI to VGA converters as you can't fit two apple ones on the back because of the stupid 3D video port.

v.3.31 looks pretty good and we've been unable to break it in the office, which is good news. It's been tested under 10.3.3 - 10.4.4.

We put release candidates up for public review because there will always be stuff we don't spot.

One of the other neat things is Richard has put some extra tweaking for matching frame speed with sync frequency. Very useful. Catalyst also times the sync frequency itself rather than relying on feedback from the monitor back to the OS, which is usually incorrect..

Hugh

[samsc]

One of the other neat things is Richard has put some extra tweaking for matching frame speed with sync frequency. Very useful. Catalyst also times the sync frequency itself rather than relying on feedback from the monitor back to the OS, which is usually incorrect..

Hugh

this was the main problem that appeared between 10.3.3 and 10.3.9 - and unfortunately the apple api tp measure these frequencies on dual graphics cards was broken until 10.4.3 - so the problem was unmeasurable.

for example the graphics card says its running at 60hz - it isnt exact - sometimes its 59.9 sometimes its 60.2 seems to depend on the screen resolution.
this caused a low level performance problem running at 60hz but less of an issue in europe at 75hz.

apple made an internal architecture change which affected me.

[samsc]

In my tests the 6600 gives much the same performance as the 9800.
Hugh

but the architecture doesnt have the same number of shader bits as the 9800 so things which need a lot of ummph like blurring wont work well on 6600.

6600 not recommended its a graphics capability downgrade from the 9800

[Mr_P]

woooah... quite a lot to read....
BUT

You've missed the point slightly..... We have NO plans to upgrade our Macs to 10.4.x (tiger) so I'm not interested in V4 or anything to do with Tiger yet - we are still going to be running everything on 10.3.x for the moment - V4 and tiger is NOT show safe.

My question is:
Does Cat v3.3.1 address the issues whereby CatV3.3.0 would only sucessfully run and be show safe when running on Mac OS10.3.3 and ATI 4.5.1 with the Open GL Overide settings?

Therfore by using Cat v3.3.1 - can we all upgrade to OS10.3.9 without any fear of the open GL issues crashing Catv3.3.0??

With some newer Macs delivered with OS10.4 could not be downgraded to 10.3.3 due to firmware issues - so we HAD to upgrade to 10.3.9 and sun the discs slow to avoid crashes. In reality - there is only 1 machine like this - so not a problem. However, any Macs now purchased will suffer the same issues.

SO - to summarise my points and pose the questions:

1) Does Catv3.3.1 mean that we can upgrade to 10.3.9?
2) Do we need to stick with ATI 4.5.1 or upgrade to current 4.5.7?
3) If only running MacOS10.3.9 (not 10.4.x) - is Catv3.3.1 still considered a BETA or a show safe bug fix?


Thanks

S