[Andrew Stephens]

Box arrives on Tuesday (apparently). But will it play Halo at a decent speed with the graphics wound up to full?

[SteveJobs]

What is decent?

[RooneyX]

Originally posted by SteveJobs:
What is decent?

Morpheus, dat you?

[Andrew Stephens]

well...

1. faster than my 1Ghz G4 tower

2. Fast enough that I don't get butt kicked by the PC players and X Boxers waiting for the machine to respond.

3. Well enough to ramp up the graphics beyond the lowest settings.

All 3 would be nice!

[rag on a muffin]

my rev b plays halo very well. it can do the nv vertex+pixel shaders.

[Andrew Stephens]

I have to force Halo to load on my 867Mhz 12in although it should be OK it always tells me tha the processor is not 800Mhz or faster (er...). When it does load it plays mega choppy, unplayable in fact. My 667Mhz Ti 15 played it much better but with the graphics turned waaaay down. My 1Ghz G4 tower plays it the best but still won't run advanced graphic options. Here's hoping the new 15in 1.33 Pb is a better machine!

[iomatic]

...

...freelance, running errands, playing with kids, date night with wife, out with friends later...I'll get to installing it on my 12" 1.33, oh, around 1AM PST tonight... is that OK?

seriously, been thinking about that too. (and damn MacSoft for slapping us legitimate users with their so-called CD "protection" scheme.)

...

[jessejlt]

I don't understand why anyone would buy a laptop when the most important use of that laptop for them is to play a video game.
jesse ;-)

[jtwiskowski]

Halo runs at a playable level at 800X600 with pixel and vertex shaders, but some things on LOW and MEDIUM. I really wish it had an ATI chipset. It is fun to be able to play Halo anywhere, but just do not expect PC or G5 performance. However, if you love Halo as I do, it is amazing to play on the road!

12-inch revision C
1.33GHz/768MB/60GB

[0s and 1s]

Originally posted by Andrew Stephens:
2. Fast enough that I don't get butt kicked by the PC players and X Boxers waiting for the machine to respond.

Wait.....Halo is available online for Xbox now?????? Since when??

[Andrew Stephens]

...is it not. I just assumed it would be as there must be more xbox gamers than Mac. Just goes to show!

As a designer it is obvious that the most important function that my Mac can perform is to play Halo well enought to encourage me to take a "creative thinking" break every so often.
By not playing Halo fast enough I am encouraged to keep working on layouts too long, resulting in designer fatigue and sub-standard page layout for the client.

So you see, in fact I have my priorities completely straight!

[Justin216]

You won't see blistering performance, but you will yield around 25-30fps at medium/low settings, which for Halo is pretty decent. Sad to say, the 12" PB has a low end graphics card, with the iBooks 9200 besting it on occasion.

[Andrew Stephens]

yes but my new machines a 15incher. Doesn't that get a faster card!

[iomatic]

yes. you're right... I think I confused the issue by chiming in with my 12" install (which never happened... too much to do...)

Originally posted by Andrew Stephens:
yes but my new machines a 15incher. Doesn't that get a faster card!

[iomatic]

works well for me. looks pretty good at these settings, online play is fine, over network, bluetooth apple mouse (!) and keyboard.

haven't applied any patches (what's the point of carrying a cd around with my "portable"?). same specs, save for the 5400RPM drive in mine.

fan comes blazing though!

Originally posted by jtwiskowski:
Halo runs at a playable level at 800X600 with pixel and vertex shaders, but some things on LOW and MEDIUM.
...

12-inch revision C
1.33GHz/768MB/60GB

[hldan]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by jtwiskowski:
Halo runs at a playable level at 800X600 with pixel and vertex shaders, but some things on LOW and MEDIUM. I really wish it had an ATI chipset. It is fun to be able to play Halo anywhere, but just do not expect PC or G5 performance. However, if you love Halo as I do, it is amazing to play on the road!

12-inch revision C
1.33GHz/768MB/60GB [/QUOTE

Don't expect PC or G5 performance? The G5 I understand, but not a PC. Just as a G5 will play games better than the Apple notebooks a PC has to be high on specs as well. PC's in general donot play games any better than a Mac. That's ridiculous to assume this. There are more games out on PC but most of the good ones are on both platforms but a PC notebook or tower with small cache and an "ok" graphics card and slower HD won't perform good either. I play UT2003 on my 17"PB and it plays fantastic at higher settings. The highest setting will cause some unstable play but the same will happen on a Sony Vaio notebook 3.06Ghz with the Radeon graphics card equal to the Apple graphics. There's nothing better about a PC that makes it play games better than a Mac.

[h00ligan]

price : performance, you will get more out of a pc laptop then a mac laptop as far as games are concerned.

For $1300 you can get an athlon 64, 512 ram, 60 gig drive, radeon 9000 mobility with 64 megs of ram

so yah , i think his comment was legit.

[Zim]

My extra 512M hasn't arrived, so 1.33G 12"PB/256M (stock), plays Halo just fine at 1024x768, with medium settings, and shadows (and the other option near it) off. When I tried it on high, it seemed slow, but as soon as I turned it back to medium, it seemed very fluid. Now its just a matter of wondering if I'll ever be any good with a trackpad.

Mike

[iREZ]

You'll be able to play but without eyecandy thats for sure. I play on my 12" Rev B, and I still whoop ass with it. You'll be fine unless your a stickler for your video games to look like real life. I personally think that its more gameplay then graphics that makes the game great, and with multiplayer on Halo it just doesn't get any better. Killer graphics is just icing on the cake.

[Andrew Stephens]

I'll look out for you on the net then iRez. You can spot me as either Andrew2 or runrig, mostly the first!

I'll be expecting a good spanking then!!

[h00ligan]

oops i meant 9600 not 9000

this $1250 laptop i am typing on now gets over 3300 in 3dmark03.

fwiw

[bradoesch]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by hldan:

Originally posted by jtwiskowski:
There's nothing better about a PC that makes it play games better than a Mac.

Unless the game was optimzed for SSE, 3DNow, etc. It all depends on how the Mac port was done. Otherwise I agree with your statement. Most of the PCs I see advertised here have crappy integrated graphics that steal main memory instead of having dedicated video memory. Ugh.

[heresiarh]

Ofcourse it should run halo. It might not be that great with full settings.

[riotge@r]

Run Halo!? HAHAHA. Halo runs like crap on all PowerBooks. The Xbox version of Halo is faster and better looking than any PowerBook running Halo. Save yourself some heartache and get an Xbox and Halo for $169 and enjoy your PB with Photoshop or FCP.

[heresiarh]

True, Macs arent the greatest for gaming. I run Halo on my AMD Athlon system.

[zEnderz]

Originally posted by Andrew Stephens:
I have to force Halo to load on my 867Mhz 12in although it should be OK it always tells me tha the processor is not 800Mhz or faster (er...). When it does load it plays mega choppy, unplayable in fact. My 667Mhz Ti 15 played it much better but with the graphics turned waaaay down. My 1Ghz G4 tower plays it the best but still won't run advanced graphic options. Here's hoping the new 15in 1.33 Pb is a better machine!

Change the resolution to 1024/768, upgrade to jaguar or panther and upgrade Halo to the latest version..
Halo defaults the resolution to 640/480 (or 6/8 I dont remember) and that absolutely kills performance on the 12" 867 Powerbook.

Changing the rez to 1024/768 and upgrading to Jaguar/Panther should approx double performance based on a lower-res and pre-jaguar 12". At least thats what i remember. The report that your proc is less than 800mhz is a bug,

Anyway, I Halo is very playable on this system. Probably 25-30 frames per sec average.

[James L]

Originally posted by riotge@r:
Run Halo!? HAHAHA. Halo runs like crap on all PowerBooks. The Xbox version of Halo is faster and better looking than any PowerBook running Halo. Same yourself some heartache and get the Xbox and Halo for $169 and enjoy your PB with Photoshop or FCP.

Actually, you're wrong!

I have been playing Halo on my 1.5Ghz, 1GB ram, 128MB VRAM, 5400rpm HD for a week now, and it plays just fine.

I can't think of my settings of the top of my head, but I do know it is in 800 x 600 res, has vertex shaders and no FSAA, and everything set at about medium.

I have no complaints with it. I did notice when it arrived with the default 512MB RAM that it stuttered a bit when there were 15-20 marines / bad guys on the screen. This stutter went away when I increased my ram, so I am thinking all the AI and lack of ram was causing the stutter.

It all depends on what people deem to be "acceptable". I don't whine like a baby when I can't play with all the settings on max. The game looks great in 800 x 600 with medium settings. It plays great with no stutter at those settings. I haven't bothered increasing it above those settings as I am happy with it there.

Hope that helps!

[jtwiskowski]

I am sorry - but the guy who says games run no different on Macs than PCs is one of those Mac users that make us all look bad.

Look, long story short DirectX is a big part of Halo and many other games thanks to the monopoky Microsoft has and the way they treat their developers. There is no DirectX for the Mac, therefore OpenGL needed to be used. Nothing wrong with that, excpet some stuff is missing or not implemented the way the developers originally intended. I loved my G5, and love my PowerBook ... but my Athlon 64 that I bought for $1000 whoops their asses at playing Halo, not to mention a slew of other games I cannot play on a Mac without waiting a year or two for the part ... and some games I would never be able to play.

Sadly- Halo Custom Edition, which I just installed on my PC, and I assume all PC Halo lovers will do so soon, will end the compatiability between Mac and PC ... sure we can play PC users who do not upgrade to Custom Edition ... but again Mac users will be missing out.

[a2daj]

Make sure you keep Lens Flare to Low or Medium. Because those effects are done in software (no currently availabe OpenGL extension to accelerate it) turning them to High or Extreme can kill performance in areas with a lot of light sources, especially with FSAA enabled.

[heresiarh]

yep, just out of personal experience over the years, macs are not meant to play games.

[denaps]

Originally posted by Andrew Stephens:
Box arrives on Tuesday (apparently). But will it play Halo at a decent speed with the graphics wound up to full?

not to rain on your parade, but your new powerbook will not even come close to the speed of some 16 year-old's alienware Radeon 9800XT equipped mega ass-kicking neon-lined box, and it will most likely not be as fast as your old tower either. especially in Halo, which is notoriously slow since be ported to both PC and mac compared to the XBOX version.

and yes, unfortunately, even being the huge mac-head that i am, most of the times games run better on PC's - it's just a fact of life. Like someone said above, many games are developed with Windows specific API's in mind, which have to be either transformed completely or hacked when ported to mac. Also, Most enthusiast/extreme high-end graphics cards become available for PC's first (or ONLY - take the Radeon X800 series and GeForce 6800) and developers have these cards in mind (and their specialized texture engines, etc) when creating games.

My $1200 P4 2.8 with 1GB PC3200 Ram and 9800 Pro 128 makes the dual 1.8 g5 at my office look stupid when running Halo (for one) and UT2K3.

[heresiarh]

denaps, the 9800 pro and the xt cards are kick ass. even the 9600xt is decent. why would anyone buy a 17" pbook to run games?

[Dimitri]

Most don't buy a PB specifically to run games, they just want to know if that's one of the things they'll be able to do without spending $1000 on a PC machine (if they don't already have one). Myself I don't even play computer games anymore, I prefer consoles.

[MacPulse Zack]

I have to force Halo to load on my 867Mhz 12in although it should be OK it always tells me tha the processor is not 800Mhz or faster (er...). When it does load it plays mega choppy, unplayable in fact

Really? My 12" Powerbook G4 12" 867Mhz G4 works great with Halo.

In fact, I play it online with several of my PC and Mac using buddies. I've even used it to host a LAN Party with 4 other Macs, with my Powebook as the server.

Heck, even UT2003 and UT2004 work fantastic on this machine, and the box says that it won't work on a 12" PBG4. Weird. (Thank God for demos before you buy)

I guess "decent" is a relative term... means something different to everyone.

In single player mode I can set my PBG4 to 1024x768 with all the highest settings and it works awesome, great framerate. I've beat the game this way twice.

In multiplayer I usually set it at 800x600 and lowest settings for highest framerate.

Anyhow, that's my 2 cents. Is there more than one revision of the PBG4 12" 867?

[heresiarh]

what are your system specs?

[typ993]

Look, long story short DirectX is a big part of Halo and many other games thanks to the monopoky Microsoft has and the way they treat their developers. There is no DirectX for the Mac, therefore OpenGL needed to be used.

Actually, the just-released Halo Custom Edition is an end-run by Gearbox around DirectX. They're blaming Direct3D for the glacial performance on the PC. On my Athlon 2700/Radeon 9700 system, I had to run in 800x600 and use PS 1.4 to get decent multiplayer performance. In Halo CE, I'm getting 50-60 FPS at 1280x1024 with everything set at max. That's a huge improvement.

Gearbox says they've sent the fast shaders code over to Westlake, so we'll see what they can do with it.

[Xapplimatic@Ade]

Originally posted by jessejlt:
I don't understand why anyone would buy a laptop when the most important use of that laptop for them is to play a video game.
jesse ;-)

Why have a gameboy when you can take your games on the road Mac style?

[riotge@r]

Originally posted by James L:
Actually, you're wrong!

I have been playing Halo on my 1.5Ghz, 1GB ram, 128MB VRAM, 5400rpm HD for a week now, and it plays just fine.

I can't think of my settings of the top of my head, but I do know it is in 800 x 600 res, has vertex shaders and no FSAA, and everything set at about medium.

I have no complaints with it. I did notice when it arrived with the default 512MB RAM that it stuttered a bit when there were 15-20 marines / bad guys on the screen. This stutter went away when I increased my ram, so I am thinking all the AI and lack of ram was causing the stutter.

It all depends on what people deem to be "acceptable". I don't whine like a baby when I can't play with all the settings on max. The game looks great in 800 x 600 with medium settings. It plays great with no stutter at those settings. I haven't bothered increasing it above those settings as I am happy with it there.

Hope that helps!

It looks great to you because you haven't played it the way it was meant to be played... which is with all settings at max.

[riotge@r]

Originally posted by MacPulse Zack:
Really? My 12" Powerbook G4 12" 867Mhz G4 works great with Halo.

In fact, I play it online with several of my PC and Mac using buddies. I've even used it to host a LAN Party with 4 other Macs, with my Powebook as the server.

Heck, even UT2003 and UT2004 work fantastic on this machine, and the box says that it won't work on a 12" PBG4. Weird. (Thank God for demos before you buy)

I guess "decent" is a relative term... means something different to everyone.

In single player mode I can set my PBG4 to 1024x768 with all the highest settings and it works awesome, great framerate. I've beat the game this way twice.

In multiplayer I usually set it at 800x600 and lowest settings for highest framerate.

Anyhow, that's my 2 cents. Is there more than one revision of the PBG4 12" 867?

Playing a modern game at 800x600 at the lowest setting is unacceptable to me.

[Podolsky]

What is Halo?

[solero]

Originally posted by Podolsky:
What is Halo?

A first person shooter (computergame)

[solero]

HALO