[dividend]

ok, i know that this thread has been discussed earlier, but i am getting sick of playing warcraft III and performance is sooooooo bad. My question is to those of you who have a Ti550 (or worse), running Warcraft 1.04 in OS X 10.2.x (I have 512 mb ram + 16 vram):

Is performance for you also very very poor, even if you put everyting down to low or off?

It is not only in big battles that my cursor stops being of use, loading the game, choosing game, ordering workes to build etc - all is very very poor.

Does anyone know if an update is coming that makes the game somewhat more enjoyable?

This is the first game that I bought legally because blizzard is such a cool company...

Is there anything but playing in OS 9 that I can do to increase performance. I usually play with the no-cd crack.

Besides, the computer becomes very load with all the fans kicking in... is that what you are experienceing too?

[Dex13]

Are you serious?
Thats surprising, that doesnt even happen to me on my imac dv, mind you i have everything low or off.
Do you have any other apps running?
How much disk space do you have left, and maybe you need to to go to the setup screen, press option before opening the game and check you have the lowest resolution and settings.

good luck

[dividend]

what i use is the following:

Video
screen 1178 * 7xx 16 mb
everything else is low or off

no big difference playing with 10xx * 7xx,
playing with 800 or 600 makes the game so ugly that it is not worthwhile playing at all

Sound
most of it is on, except one or two. no big difference whatever I do with the sound.

At the moment I only have 3 GB free, but I used to have more before and there was no difference.

The only programme that is running is Snard (Dock version)

[kdogg73]

Still, this could be a result of your video processor. I have just recently purchased WCIII and find it, so far, meeting my performance requirements. I am on a Dual 867 G4, 512 RAM. Under 9, I have got into huge battles, in large maps, that made the scroll a little jumpy. I'll be sure to report what I find when I run into the same scenario under 10.2.3.

[parallax]

Yeah. I just boot into 9 because there's nothing else I can do. :/

If I put it on 800x600 all low it's okay but looks terrible.

[poulh]

10.2.3 speeds up warcraft.

[dividend]

I thought it would, but it didn't to any measureable degree, nor did it make W3 slower. I guess i will have to play with lowest resolution, no sound, and minimum players and soldiers. how fun is that?

i am hoping for an other update from blizzard.... until then it is difficult to recommend W3 for anyone with 550 mhz or less and 16 mb vram. that sucks, 'cause i otherwise really like the game.

[xyber233]

I have a 700mHz LCD imac w/ 32mb geforce2mx. I cannot play it in X even at low settings. I have to boot into 9 and even then its still bad in big battles.

[dividend]

if 700 mhz and 32 mb vram is not enough, then how about Blizzard's recommended set-up:

600 mhz, 256 mb ram, 32 mb vram

one word: poooooor

[poulh]

the latest osX update had a bunch of opengl improvements in it. blizzard also came out w/ a "jaguar patch".

however i have a feeling that you need at least a 32 meg video card to see any of these improvements.

and i wouldn't blame blizzard. i would blame apple. hopefully they can keep squeeezing performance out of osX.

[dividend]

sure, blizzard i guess are doing what they can. apple sold (or I bought) a computer too expensive for its specs, but that's the way it is.

I only hope that the changes that 10.2.3 made can be utilised in W3 in a new patch.... until then - no sound, no screen and the game is somewhat ok.....

still sickening

[rhino_g3]

I am glad to see this thread. I was considering buying WarCraft III at Walmart today. I am using an 800Mhz PowerMac with 512mb ram and an ATI Radeon 7500 with 32vram. Althought that sounds decent doesn't look like it would make much difference when playing WarCraft III.

rhino

[dividend]

i think that 800 mhz and 32 mb ram should be somewhat ok, perhaps you will have to play on medium-resolution

[xyber233]

It will probably be better on a radeon then my geforce2mx at least for WC3. Go ahead and buy it. You will like it .

[dividend]

I just tried W3 on an iBook 800 mhz with 32 mb vram - it plays very nicely (at least in the very beginning) The question is: is it primarily the mhz or is it the vram that makes the difference?

[Catfish_Man]

It runs almost flawlessy @ 1152x870x32 with everything on high on my dual 867 with 512MB of ram. 10.2.3 may have slowed it down a tiny bit. I have a 32MB GeForce4mx. Also, I think running it from the CD drive rather than the HD sped it up very slightly (perhaps because it can use them both simultaneously).

[dividend]

does running it from the cd instead of from the harddrive (using the crack) make it faster? I have to try that, but shouldn't it be faster if it runs from the HD, isn't the HD faster than a cd-drive? Besides, it does not seem to read very much from the cd anyway...

[Mr Ti]

I have a Ti 550 512 mb, bought Warcraft as my first ever Mac game as well, I always used my console for gaming before. It plays like a dogs arse, I took it back to the shop to trade in for a new console game instead a week later. I felt robbed. I'll try it again if I can get myself one of those 1ghz 64mb graphic card powerbooks, although it will probally be Warcraft V by then and run slow as hell again......

[blackgasmask]

Ive got a 700mhz emac with 640mb ram, it runs perfectly under 10.2. err..it did until my emac got the dreaded raster shift.

[PowerBub]

anyone run WC III on an iBook 700 (16mb vram). I'd really like to buy it, but first want to check if it runs acceptably. I only have 128mb system ram, will that make a difference? I know i need to upgrade it soon.

[xyber233]

Originally posted by PowerBub:
anyone run WC III on an iBook 700 (16mb vram). I'd really like to buy it, but first want to check if it runs acceptably. I only have 128mb system ram, will that make a difference? I know i need to upgrade it soon.

Definitely more RAM .

[dividend]

hmm, if W3 runs ok with 700 mhz G4 and 32 mb vram, but very poorly on 550 mhz G4 and 16 mb vram, it seems as if it is the videocard memory and not the processor - i can't believe that 250 mhz more makes such a huge difference.

Does anyone know if W3 uses AltiVec, or if there is any use of it at all - I heard that AltiVec is useless for games.

I played Myth 3, and it seems to be altivec-using. Besides, it runs very nicely. I cannot understand why W3 runs so poorly when Myth 3 runs nicely.

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by dividend:
Does anyone know if W3 uses AltiVec, or if there is any use of it at all - I heard that AltiVec is useless for games.

DEFINITELY no way! AltiVec is VERY useful for games!! Quake 3 on Mac perform better than Windows' side, seriously (John Carmack mentioned this himself). Quake 3 heavily use AltiVec and Dual Processor.

Warcraft 3 doesn't support Dual or AltiVec at this time. I think I read somewhere saying that they're working on a patch to partly support AltiVec and Dual Processor (for seperate audio and video). I hope it's true

Oh, if anyone want to know how WC3 perform on my computer, I have TiG4 400mhz with 512mb with ATI Rage 128 8mb, all setting low or off, WC3 is reasonably but in large battle, it's definitely bad!

[Thinine]

I've played WC3 on a 15" iMac and it was really smooth, even with everything maxxed out. And this was before the Jaguar upgrade to WC3. Now, on my iBook 500, its another story.

[redJag]

It's impossible to play competitively running OS X. It gets impossible to control your mouse when there are many units on the screen (especially casting spells/auras). Booting into OS 9 I can play very well. My computer is a G4 733mhz, 1GB RAM, tried it with stock GeForce2MX(32mb) and Radeon8500 All-in-Wonder(64mb). Made no difference on graphics card.

[dividend]

ok, it seems to be more of an videocard-memory issue than mhz, and G3 or G4 doesn't matter.

So, we poor fellows who bought a Ti400, 500, 550 and perhaps 667 and who cannot change videocards - all we can hope for is for W3 to use AltiVec and at least somewhat improve the game.

I guess adding altivec is not going to be cost-effective for Blizzard - it is only Ti-users who are in an awkward position - all other G4-users either have enough
videomemory or can upgrade it.

In other words - we could just as well sell the game...

[theory]

dividend the resolution you are using is the big problem.

Use alower reoultions such as 640x480 16bit you will see a big
perfromance increase.

Read the manual that came with the game it has info on how each video options effect performance

animation quality uses RAM (use low if you have 128 uses others if you have more than 256)

texture quality uses vram (amount used increases with resolutions) only if you have 64Mb of vram should you set it to high or medium

and so on. It also says that the only sonud option that effects performance is the unit response option.

Dwarve 1: We must defeat the dwarve!
Dwarve 2: We are the dwarves stupid

I love unit reponse

[dividend]

theory: you make me feel stupid

I have the manual, but never looked into it. Guess that is what I should do first instead of complaining. I just hope 640 * 480 isn't going to look too bad, but we will see...

[dividend]

well, I just tried with the lowest resolution, all things off. the mouse still jumps/hangs everynow and then, even in the very beginning. In the first fight with perhaps 10 against 10 troops my mouse was worthless.

Guess what? I died. And so did the game. Is there anything else that I could do?

I have 550 mhz G4, 16 mb vram, 512 mb ram, and the game is still sooo bad. How can it at all be playable on 400 mhz G3 and 128 mb ram? Guess I will have to install classic

[Thinine]

Have you updated your ATI drivers using the ones they released? I don't know whethter .2 or .3 replaced those but its worth a shot. Also, check and make sure your power saver isn't on at all. Just suggestions, since I was able to beat the single player on my iBook at 800x600 and everything low or off. Also, turn down sound quality and turn off 3D sound. I can't play battle.net on my iBook so there is a difference there.

[marky_boy]

im also annoyed at warcraft 3 performance on my powerbook 667 w/512ram & 32meg radeon. in 10.2.3 with the 1.04 patch at 1024x768 all medium/low detail its horrible. in large melee's it crawls to a halt. Not to mention scrolling is terrible - it seems to scroll the screen in 'chunks' and thus gives the appearance of being jerky (i fiddled mouse scroll for 1/2 day trying to fix it)

I do alot of LAN'ing and thought the powerbook might be handy to take along instead of my hunking PC (link here ) along. Not just for warcraft3, but others like q3, rtcw etc.
But looks like ill have to keep doing this. its totally unplayable on X, performace on my old p3-700 w/256ram & 32megTNT2 at the same (or better) graphics and sound settings is better

[xyber233]

I just hope it runs fine on the new 12" powerbook. Thats going to me my next computer and it can't boot into 9. WC3 better run well...

[a2daj]

The 12" PB doesn't have an L3 cache, which might make a noticeable difference in performance.

[bborofka]

I've got an eMac 700 G4 with a 32MB GeForce 2 MX running 10.2.3 and it runs piss-poor in OS X. (And yes, my WC3 is the latest too.. 1.04, and all my settings are turned to their lowest quality.) I can complain about my underpowered and overprice hardware all I want, but I think the real culprit of slowness is the game itself and my video card drivers.

I believe WC3 just isn't optimized all that much for OS X (because I do get marginally better performance in OS 9.) Maybe the cooperative multitasking has something to do with it, but having a computer with almost twice the MHz and double the VRAM as the system requirements should should do just fine in OS X. But it doesn't... it does crappy...

And what can I expect from a video card that had what.... two, maybe three driver updates all last year?

[appledude83]

Hmmm my new iBook 800mhz with 640MB of RAM plays it very well. Even at 1024x768x32 with all details on high it takes alot of units on screen to chop up.

[MartiNZ]

Same here.. same setup . I've only played single player thus far, but I can cope with it fairly well. I generally have everything set to medium and shadows off. Don't even know what occlusion is so it stays on.

It looks awful on an LCD at lower resolution, and I haven't got os 9 installed to try for a difference. I would say that if I played online I would take things down to low.

Either way, I'm glad I waited for the demo to come out rather than going in blindly not knowing exactly what to expect for performance... and I'm glad I managed to sell my 600MHz combo with 8MB VRAM in December .

[xyber233]

Originally posted by MartiNZ:
Same here.. same setup . I've only played single player thus far, but I can cope with it fairly well. I generally have everything set to medium and shadows off. Don't even know what occlusion is so it stays on.

It looks awful on an LCD at lower resolution, and I haven't got os 9 installed to try for a difference. I would say that if I played online I would take things down to low.

Either way, I'm glad I waited for the demo to come out rather than going in blindly not knowing exactly what to expect for performance... and I'm glad I managed to sell my 600MHz combo with 8MB VRAM in December .

OS 9 performance is so much better but I hate restarting all the time. Everything works fine until theres a big battle. That may have something to do with my video card though .

[::maroma::]

FYI - I've got a G4/500 Sawtooth with a GeForce3 (64MB) and 1G of RAM, OS 10.2.3. I play at 640x480x16 will everything turned to low. I am experiencing the same problems as most of you. Plays OK when there's nothing going on, but any sort of real battle, and I'm screwed. OS 9 isn't THAT much better for me. I know I need a new machine, but I was hoping that I could at least play with all of the settings to the lowest. Oh well, such is the price of progress I guess.

[xyber233]

Can anyone with an 800mhz iBook or 867/1ghz Powerbook comment on WC3 performace in X? Just curious to know how they do.

[Deicide]

I feel like a broken record because I keep saying this. I have tested WC3 on all kinds of Macs. first gen Tibooks to the latest, dual USB ibooks, 800Mhz iMac, Dual 533, Dual 1 gig mirror, freakin everything. They all experience the same problem. No matter what settings the game has these slight pauses. The quickest way to test this is to load a custom game with fog of war turned off and use the arrow keys to scroll. You will see stuttering. The second problem is the curser. In battles the curser jumps around and it makes issuing commands very difficult. Once you have played on a PC you wont want to play it on your Mac under MacOS X. Even my 533Mhz celeron, 256MB ram, and Geforce 1 SDR play WC3 smooth as silk. I believe it can play just fine on the Mac because Quake3 is proof. I think programmers are having a hard time taking advantage of the programming tools in MacOS X. Just look at how poor all the Macromedia and Adobe apps run. Even some of Apples own Apps are slow or just plain written poorly (finder, iPhoto and iCal).

[ChaperonNoir]

I have a macintosh g4 192 mb ram 400 mhz 16 mb ati second generation ( Agp ones i think)

I handle well the 1on1 game. Not too bad on the 2on2. But my comp cant keep up with the 3v3 of ffa. Its just disgusting. And all my settings are set to low. I tried it on a pc and WOW!!!!. Thats just very sad. Hopefully , ill give it a try in 0s9 just to see how hes doing.

[newmanium]

Oh man, im just glad i'm not the only one with the same problem. I'm running on the new 1ghz iMac with a GeForce4 MX (64MB DDR) and the game plays HORRIBLY!!!! when its just standing still its fine, but the minute my peon takes a step all hell breaks loose! jeez, my girlfriend's dell pc puts my imac to shame when running WCIII

[junkie]

I have a 550 and I am very careful about having all the setting low and having no other apps running. WC3 crawls in OSX. I have been playing it though and just adapting - like not looking at the battles!!!

Tonight I tried it in OS9 and it is way way wya better. Kind of annoying. At least the pain of switching may help me with my bad WC3 habit...

[junkie]

I noticed that the processor is maxing out under OSX playing WC3. I think that is it the bottleneck - but it could also mean that the video card jsut cant handle it and is dishing it back to the G4.

If there is not altvec then g3 vs g4 should not make a difference.

If you have a 1 ghz iMac with 64 mg vram it should look pretty good - you probably are doing something wrong. My friend has anew powerbook 15 and it looks great on that under OSX....

[xyber233]

Warcraft III is optimized for Mac OS X 10.2 and up as long as you have the version 1.04 patch installed. However, Mac OS X is still slower at certain Open GL functions than Mac OS 9. As Apple removes the driver problems which cause this in Mac OS X, the game will get faster on Mac OS X. We are also looking into additional speed increases for the Mac
OS X code in the game.

http://www.macgamer.com/wcgi-bin/ubb...1&t=000214

And it seems that most people are having the most problems with nvidia. That 15" Powerbook has a radeon in it. I wish someone would fix something .

[newmanium]

Originally posted by junkie:
I noticed that the processor is maxing out under OSX playing WC3. I think that is it the bottleneck - but it could also mean that the video card jsut cant handle it and is dishing it back to the G4.

If there is not altvec then g3 vs g4 should not make a difference.

If you have a 1 ghz iMac with 64 mg vram it should look pretty good - you probably are doing something wrong. My friend has anew powerbook 15 and it looks great on that under OSX....

from all the reading i've done on the subject, i believe the problem lies in the video card and how the game handles nvidia vs. and ati. you're friend's tiG4 is running an on ati video card (9000 i think) and its a great card, more than capable of running WCIII. my card should do the same in performance but with a lack of decent drivers and/or performance tweaks that optimizes the game. anyways, until blizzard can utilize altivec or something else required.

thanks goes to xyber233 for all the reference and material.

[xyber233]

newmanium, update to 10.2.4. I saw some performance enhancements. Also, try it in different resolutions. I find it weird but it runs better in 1024*768 than 800*600.

[newmanium]

hey xyber233, i took your advice and tried updating to 10.2.4; for the most part i can't tell much difference (i tried the running the game on resolutions 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, and 1440x900), the only good thing is that the game runs decent on a 1v1 game when building my army, but the minute i attack or get attacked, the lag rears its ugly head again. i tested the game with >1 opponents and it was back to the usual lag all around.

i guess i can enjoy a 1v1 game for now, and just close my eyes and pray when there's a battle

[meducus]

Originally posted by PowerBub:
anyone run WC III on an iBook 700 (16mb vram). I'd really like to buy it, but first want to check if it runs acceptably. I only have 128mb system ram, will that make a difference? I know i need to upgrade it soon.

i have the ibook 700 (16MB vram) but with 384 MB of RAM.....WC3 runs OK with everything set to its lowest under OSX, (I am level 12 Solo , with over 100 wins on the europe Bnet ladder...so it is still fast enough to win some games).

it sucked when i only had the 128 MB of ram that came with the machine though.

[AlanApple]

I have a G4 800 with 640 ram and a GeForce 4 Ti. Game runs great but...sadly there is a but...is that it crashes every so often. Complete freeze. Majorly pissed.