>Yes, many bad ones, if you try to get > 8 bit resolution. OS/X ("The world's most advanced operating system" rofl) is deficient and buggy as hell wrt. to > 8 bpc output. Don't waste your money on a mac pro or any Apple hardware for this.
> Hi all,
>
> I plan to buy a mac pro for color and contrast experiments.
> The graphic card of mac pro is ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB GDDR5.
> Before doing that, I need to make sure if mac pro supports 10-bit depth.
> If yes, whether 10-bit color resolution can be achieved with PTB-3.
>
> Does anyone have experience in using Mac pro or be familiar with it?
> Wish you could share your experience with me!
> The recommened combo for > 8 bit precision framebuffers is
> Linux + ATI graphics card:
>
> * X1000 - HD4000 and equivalent FireGL cards, e.g., the
> FireGL V7600, if you need 10 bit output to analog CRT's. Alan
> Robinson had good success with the V7600 on Linux with a CRT
> after some initial difficulties. He wanted to post a wrapup
> of his results here two months ago, but so far hasn't, so
> i'll just quote the last e-mail i got from him: "Beautiful.
> head 0 and head 1 both work in isolation, as does a spanning
> setup (xinerama). Both screens clearly show 10 bit
> resolution. Frankly, the machine is much more usable with
> xinerama, so I'm really happy that worked. It may be a hack,
> but it's a pretty one."
One thing to check would be if you or catalyst customized the xorg.conf file in a way that is incompatible with the free drivers. E.g., simply deleting /etc/X11/xorg.conf if there is a stale one.
--- In psychtoolbox@yahoogroups.com, "Alan Robinson" <robinson@...> wrote:
>
> Just to follow up on Mario's comment/recommendation:
>
> I've held off from posting a wrap-up because I'm still actually having some
> severe issues with the V7600 under Linux, which I was hoping to resolve
> first. I've tried the most recent drivers and those released about 6 months
> ago, and with both I'm having consistent crashes after about 10000 calls to
> maketexture, as though the driver has a memory leak - though the number
> where failure occurs (the crash) varies enough between runs that it's not
> 100% clear what the cause is. I've been unable to further diagnose this
> problem/get serious interest from ATI because about a month ago I carelessly
> allowed Ubuntu to update itself and somehow trashed OpenGL support using the
> ATI binary drivers (and I don't even get X now, when I try using the free
> drivers). Not being much of a linux hacker, I've been putting off figuring
> out just what failed, though I suspect a fresh reinstall might be the
> easiest solution.
>
After that, reinstallation is probably the fastest, given that it probably takes less than an hour to reinstall the os and matlab. But define "unable to get serious interest from ATI"? Does this mean they didn't respond, or that you trashed your system before any diagnosis could be made? What you pay for in a FireGL/FirePro card is basically not (much) better hardware, but more intense driver testing with certain certified applications like CAD software, or Maya, or 3d Studio max and other typical pro software. You also pay for the promise of better customer support, so one would expect you'd get that?
I know we had some conversation about the 10000 textures problem a month ago, but that conversation suddenly stopped on your side, so i assumed "problem solved".In principle any X1000/HD2000/3000/4000 should work with ptb's 10 bit support as well. Another option is using the free graphics driver stack with compiled in floating point framebuffer support. That's how i use that card, haven't used it with a Catalyst driver for quite some time.
> More positively, the 10 bit support, when working, was great. With Mario's
> help, I even managed to get it working on two monitors at the same time
> (dual head). I got as far as verifying that it not only looked better than 8
> bit, but more importantly that 10 bit resolution (roughly following a 2.x
> gamma curve) was measurable using a UDT photometer.
>
> Given the driver problems I've been seeing with the V7600, it's temping to
> think that a different ATI card would be a better choice - esp. since the
> FIREGL pricepoint doesn't actualy buy you anything under linux, at least
> with respect to 10 bit support. I can only hope that ATI does better testing
> of their drivers with consumer level hardware.
>
The HD5000/6000 could do this, but ptb doesn't implement support for it, as i don't have any such card for easy testing, and not much time either.
-mario
> I updated the Wiki a while ago with the specific driver versions, settings,
> etc, needed to get 10 bit frame buffers working under Linux with this card,
> if anybody cares to follow my lead with a different card. I wish you the
> best of luck, and I've love to hear of any successes, esp. with cheap cards
> we could just buy to replace the V7600.
>
> > The recommened combo for > 8 bit precision framebuffers is
> > Linux + ATI graphics card:
> >
> > * X1000 - HD4000 and equivalent FireGL cards, e.g., the
> > FireGL V7600, if you need 10 bit output to analog CRT's. Alan
> > Robinson had good success with the V7600 on Linux with a CRT
> > after some initial difficulties. He wanted to post a wrapup
> > of his results here two months ago, but so far hasn't, so
> > i'll just quote the last e-mail i got from him: "Beautiful.
> > head 0 and head 1 both work in isolation, as does a spanning
> > setup (xinerama). Both screens clearly show 10 bit
> > resolution. Frankly, the machine is much more usable with
> > xinerama, so I'm really happy that worked. It may be a hack,
> > but it's a pretty one."
>
Yes, many bad ones, if you try to get > 8 bit resolution. OS/X ("The world's most advanced operating system" rofl) is deficient and buggy as hell wrt. to > 8 bpc output. Don't waste your money on a mac pro or any Apple hardware for this.
--- In psychtoolbox@yahoogroups.com, ting <ting.cat@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I plan to buy a mac pro for color and contrast experiments.
> The graphic card of mac pro is ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB GDDR5.
> Before doing that, I need to make sure if mac pro supports 10-bit depth.
> If yes, whether 10-bit color resolution can be achieved with PTB-3.
>
> Does anyone have experience in using Mac pro or be familiar with it?
> Wish you could share your experience with me!
In fact, os/x has become pretty deficient and buggy in the last couple of years for most complex visual stimulation tasks beyond simple single display, non-stereo stimulation with standard 8 bit framebuffers. If you have more complex requirements for visual stimulation and aren't scared of installing and using Linux on decent pc hardware, then Apple hardware nowadays is mostly a waste of money, and a major pita to get working correctly (or at all) for such tasks. Apple's hardware is still a good choice (better than MS-Windows) for more standard visual stimulation tasks or for auditory stimulation if you don't want to make friendship with Linux and you also like shiny, good looking, expensive things.
Back to the limitations of os/x wrt. > 8 bit framebuffers:
1. OS/X doesn't support 10 bit framebuffers itself at all, not even on hardware that could do it: cfe. <http://forums.adobe.com/message/3997217?tstart=0#3997217>
2. Psychtoolbox has built-in tricks to get 10 bit framebuffers on os/x with ATI Radeon X1000, HD2000/3000/4000 graphics cards, by bypassing Apple's os, but *not* (yet) with HD-5000 or later. Also, for the "supported cards" there is no guarantee that it works on all macs / os/x combos, as Apple is always working hard to make my life miserable. It used to work on 10.4 and 10.5, i never tested with any later version. Also setting up support for it is a major pita as Apple also works hard to lock down its system, turn it into a total lifestyle toy, and make it more difficult to use for serious applications.
3. Using devices like Bits+ or Video attenuators etc. to get > 10 bit framebuffers is also a increasing pita on os/x due to various bugs in os/x graphics drivers for ATI and NVidia cards, which Apple was entirely unwilling to fix in the past, and which are getting harder to work around with almost each os/x release. The forum has a couple of threads about the "fun" of working with os/x for such purposes.
On MS-Windows you can buy a pro-graphics card (FireGL/FirePro from ATI/AMD, or some QuadroFX cards from NVidia) to get 10 bit output on selected digital flat panel displays, e.g., the HP DreamColor, but *not* on analog VGA - CRT monitors.
On Linux you can do the same as on Windows with NVidia QuadroFX and ATI FireGL/FirePro. Additionally Linux PTB supports 10 bit output also to analog CRT monitors with certain ATI/AMD FireGL/FirePro cards and many Radeon X1000/HD2000/3000/4000 cards, but not yet to HD-5000/6000 cards.
See: <http://psychtoolbox.org/FAQ10BitFrameBufferResolution>
The recommened combo for > 8 bit precision framebuffers is Linux + ATI graphics card:
* X1000 - HD4000 and equivalent FireGL cards, e.g., the FireGL V7600, if you need 10 bit output to analog CRT's. Alan Robinson had good success with the V7600 on Linux with a CRT after some initial difficulties. He wanted to post a wrapup of his results here two months ago, but so far hasn't, so i'll just quote the last e-mail i got from him: "Beautiful. head 0 and head 1 both work in isolation, as does a spanning setup (xinerama). Both screens clearly show 10 bit resolution. Frankly, the machine is much more usable with xinerama, so I'm really happy that worked. It may be a hack, but it's a pretty one."
* If you want to use a Bits+/Bits#/DataPixx/VideoAttenuator etc. i also recommend Linux, with some slight preference to ATI gpu's over NVidia. In principle choice of specific gpu and os doesn't matter with such external devices, but in practice there have been graphics driver bugs at least on Windows, which sometimes make these devices fail. I'm not aware of Linux driver bugs with such devices, but if there would be any, we have more ways in ptb to work around problems on Linux + ATI/AMD gpu's than on Linux+NVidia gpu's, and more ways to solve issues on Linux than on Windows. OS/X is mostly a disaster for high precision framebuffers.
good luck,
-mario
>Ask NVidia or AMD, check their websites, search the internet etc. All we know is what's at the mentioned faq page on our Wiki. The HP DreamColor was successfully tested with the professional class gpu's mentioned on the Wiki. As far as i know both NVidia and AMD only support 10 bit output on certain special DisplayPort panels, and only the DreamColor was so far successfully tested on at least one NVidia card.
> Dear Mario,
>
> In your previous letter, you suggested how to get 10 bit output on
> MS-windows.
> My further question is whether other displays (beside HP DreamColor) could
> be considered.
>
> Best!
>
> Ting
>
> >On MS-Windows you can buy a pro-graphics card (FireGL/FirePro from
> ATI/AMD, or some QuadroFX cards from NVidia) to get 10 bit output on
> selected digital flat panel displays, e.g., the HP DreamColor, but *not* on
> analog VGA - CRT monitors.<
>
>
> 2011/11/6 Mario <mario.kleiner@...>
>
> > **
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In psychtoolbox@yahoogroups.com, ting <ting.cat@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I plan to buy a mac pro for color and contrast experiments.
> > > The graphic card of mac pro is ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB GDDR5.
> > > Before doing that, I need to make sure if mac pro supports 10-bit depth.
> > > If yes, whether 10-bit color resolution can be achieved with PTB-3.
> > >
> > > Does anyone have experience in using Mac pro or be familiar with it?
> > > Wish you could share your experience with me!
> >
> > Yes, many bad ones, if you try to get > 8 bit resolution. OS/X ("The
> > world's most advanced operating system" rofl) is deficient and buggy as
> > hell wrt. to > 8 bpc output. Don't waste your money on a mac pro or any
> > Apple hardware for this.
> >
> > In fact, os/x has become pretty deficient and buggy in the last couple of
> > years for most complex visual stimulation tasks beyond simple single
> > display, non-stereo stimulation with standard 8 bit framebuffers. If you
> > have more complex requirements for visual stimulation and aren't scared of
> > installing and using Linux on decent pc hardware, then Apple hardware
> > nowadays is mostly a waste of money, and a major pita to get working
> > correctly (or at all) for such tasks. Apple's hardware is still a good
> > choice (better than MS-Windows) for more standard visual stimulation tasks
> > or for auditory stimulation if you don't want to make friendship with Linux
> > and you also like shiny, good looking, expensive things.
> >
> > Back to the limitations of os/x wrt. > 8 bit framebuffers:
> >
> > 1. OS/X doesn't support 10 bit framebuffers itself at all, not even on
> > hardware that could do it: cfe. <
> > http://forums.adobe.com/message/3997217?tstart=0#3997217>
> >
> > 2. Psychtoolbox has built-in tricks to get 10 bit framebuffers on os/x
> > with ATI Radeon X1000, HD2000/3000/4000 graphics cards, by bypassing
> > Apple's os, but *not* (yet) with HD-5000 or later. Also, for the "supported
> > cards" there is no guarantee that it works on all macs / os/x combos, as
> > Apple is always working hard to make my life miserable. It used to work on
> > 10.4 and 10.5, i never tested with any later version. Also setting up
> > support for it is a major pita as Apple also works hard to lock down its
> > system, turn it into a total lifestyle toy, and make it more difficult to
> > use for serious applications.
> >
> > 3. Using devices like Bits+ or Video attenuators etc. to get > 10 bit
> > framebuffers is also a increasing pita on os/x due to various bugs in os/x
> > graphics drivers for ATI and NVidia cards, which Apple was entirely
> > unwilling to fix in the past, and which are getting harder to work around
> > with almost each os/x release. The forum has a couple of threads about the
> > "fun" of working with os/x for such purposes.
> >
> > On MS-Windows you can buy a pro-graphics card (FireGL/FirePro from
> > ATI/AMD, or some QuadroFX cards from NVidia) to get 10 bit output on
> > selected digital flat panel displays, e.g., the HP DreamColor, but *not* on
> > analog VGA - CRT monitors.
> >
> > On Linux you can do the same as on Windows with NVidia QuadroFX and ATI
> > FireGL/FirePro. Additionally Linux PTB supports 10 bit output also to
> > analog CRT monitors with certain ATI/AMD FireGL/FirePro cards and many
> > Radeon X1000/HD2000/3000/4000 cards, but not yet to HD-5000/6000 cards.
> >
> > See: <http://psychtoolbox.org/FAQ10BitFrameBufferResolution>
> >
> > The recommened combo for > 8 bit precision framebuffers is Linux + ATI
> > graphics card:
> >
> > * X1000 - HD4000 and equivalent FireGL cards, e.g., the FireGL V7600, if
> > you need 10 bit output to analog CRT's. Alan Robinson had good success with
> > the V7600 on Linux with a CRT after some initial difficulties. He wanted to
> > post a wrapup of his results here two months ago, but so far hasn't, so
> > i'll just quote the last e-mail i got from him: "Beautiful. head 0 and head
> > 1 both work in isolation, as does a spanning setup (xinerama). Both screens
> > clearly show 10 bit resolution. Frankly, the machine is much more usable
> > with xinerama, so I'm really happy that worked. It may be a hack, but it's
> > a pretty one."
> >
> > * If you want to use a Bits+/Bits#/DataPixx/VideoAttenuator etc. i also
> > recommend Linux, with some slight preference to ATI gpu's over NVidia. In
> > principle choice of specific gpu and os doesn't matter with such external
> > devices, but in practice there have been graphics driver bugs at least on
> > Windows, which sometimes make these devices fail. I'm not aware of Linux
> > driver bugs with such devices, but if there would be any, we have more ways
> > in ptb to work around problems on Linux + ATI/AMD gpu's than on
> > Linux+NVidia gpu's, and more ways to solve issues on Linux than on Windows.
> > OS/X is mostly a disaster for high precision framebuffers.
> >
> > good luck,
> > -mario
> >
> >
> >
>