[Simon]

OK, maybe some of you have been following the thread about my massacred PowerBook. Anyway, instead of my beloved rev B 12" (1 GHz, 768MB, FX 5200 Mobility) I am now using an old battered Ti 867MHz with 512MB RAM and a Radeon 9000 Mobility.

Now, both GPUs are running on 4x AGP and both have 32MB VRAM, but in CoD or MOHAA I get much better frame rates with the replacement Ti PowerBook than with my normal 12" Al. Whereas I usually had lots of dropped frames in MOHAA with the 5200 and even low detail settings, the 9000 runs fine, without a jerk and even allows higher detail.

So, what's the deal? How can the 5200 suck so much that it gets killed by a completely outdated 9000 mobility running with a slower CPU, on an older board? How can this be? The 12" rev B design is at least a year less old than this Ti and nevertheless Apple managed to put in a GPU giving worse rates on a 3D game. I would never have believed that this old Ti can beat my rev B, but it really does. What's going on?

[iREZ]

I know that Apple released some Nvidia GPU updates that totally fscked all us 12" owners over, but they since have released another update that fixed it, and another Nvidia Ati Update on todays 10.3.6 update. 5200 is based on an older GPU with very little differences, I would consider this as suspect. I to hate my 12" Rev B GPU but hey it's the only GPU I have for now so I gotta make do.

[popstand]

My 5200 works again, now that I'm up to 10.3.6. Apple fixed the driver problem created in updates after 10.3. Homeworld 2 was totally unplayable with the old drivers, and now it plays beautifully.

[Simon]

Originally posted by popstand:
My 5200 works again, now that I'm up to 10.3.6. Apple fixed the driver problem created in updates after 10.3. Homeworld 2 was totally unplayable with the old drivers, and now it plays beautifully.

Ah, I didn't think of that.

Could it be that the 5200Go would perform better (especially when comparing it to an old Mobility 9000) with better drivers? Were there some bugs with that driver?