powerbook GL support

[tsuraan]

Does anyone know what the capabilities of the graphics cards on the powerbooks are? I saw that the 12" ones come with geforce fx (mobile) cards, and the larger ones have mobility radeon 9600s. Do either of these cards support fragment shaders, or other fun stuff like that?

Even better, if someone knows what Cg fragment profile one can use, that would help a lot. I'm thinking of getting a powerbook to replace my current laptop, and I'd love to find something that supports decent graphics stuff

[OneSadCookie]

Both support ARB_fragment_program. You can usually find details here: http://developer.apple.com/opengl/extensions.html , but it hasn't been updated in a while...

AFAIK, Cg doesn't officially work on Mac OS X. I have had some success building the NVidia Linux SDK on the Mac though, so YMMV.

[tsuraan]

Thanks! I had found the extension list, but since no geforce FX cards were listed, I figured it might be a bit out of date... So as I understand it, basically the mobile fx card is a full-fledged fx (not like the gf4 compared to the gf4mx), and the mobile ati is a full radeon, just both are probably a bit slower due to power and heat constraints. Thanks for the info.

[Dr^Nick]

Here are the stat's on my powerbook's 9600.
(Its going to be ugly to read, its a cut and paste job from OpenGL Info)

Hope this helps.
---

ATI Radeon 9600 OpenGL Engine
Vendor Name ATI Technologies Inc.
Version 1.3 ATI-1.2.26
Renderer Name ATI Radeon 9600 OpenGL Engine
OpenGL Extensions
GL_ARB_transpose_matrix
GL_ARB_vertex_program
GL_ARB_vertex_blend
GL_ARB_window_pos
GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays
GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint
GL_EXT_rescale_normal
GL_EXT_draw_range_elements
GL_EXT_fog_coord
GL_APPLE_client_storage
GL_APPLE_specular_vector
GL_APPLE_transform_hint
GL_APPLE_packed_pixels
GL_APPLE_fence
GL_APPLE_vertex_array_object
GL_APPLE_vertex_program_evaluators
GL_APPLE_element_array
GL_NV_texgen_reflection
GL_NV_light_max_exponent
GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip
GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap
GL_APPLE_texture_range
GL_APPLE_vertex_array_range
GL_APPLE_ycbcr_422
GL_ARB_fragment_program
GL_ARB_imaging
GL_ARB_multisample
GL_ARB_multitexture
GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp
GL_ARB_texture_compression
GL_ARB_texture_cube_map
GL_ARB_texture_env_add
GL_ARB_texture_env_combine
GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar
GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3
GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat
GL_ATI_blend_equation_separate
GL_ATI_blend_weighted_minmax
GL_ATI_text_fragment_shader
GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3
GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once
GL_ATI_separate_stencil
GL_EXT_abgr
GL_EXT_bgra
GL_EXT_blend_func_separate
GL_EXT_blend_minmax
GL_EXT_blend_subtract
GL_EXT_blend_color
GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array
GL_EXT_secondary_color
GL_EXT_stencil_wrap
GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc
GL_EXT_texture_env_add
GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias
GL_EXT_texture_rectangle
GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
GL_NV_blend_square
GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp
GL_SGIS_texture_lod
Display Mask 1 (0x00000001)
Renderer ID 136704 (0x00021600)
Off Screen No
Full Screen Yes
Hardware Accelerated Yes
Robust No
Backing Store No
MP Safe Yes
Window Yes
Multi Screen No
Compliant Yes
Screen Mask Yes
Buffer Modes 15 (0x0000000f)
Color Buffer Modes 33792 (0x00008400)
Accum Buffer Modes 8421376 (0x00808000)
Depth Buffer Modes 7169 (0x00001c01)
Stencil Buffer Modes 129 (0x00000081)
Max Aux Buffers 2 (0x00000002)
Total Video Memory 67108864 (0x04000000)
Total Texture Memory 61673472 (0x03ad1000)
Generic