[emark]

There are plenty of threads with debates about Halo:

should I rip off a copy to "demo"? smp support? timing? compatability? BLAH BLAH BLAH

Short and sweet, to make do with WHAT IS:

Now that the patch is out, how is the performance?????

Yes, this is subjective. No, not looking for other topics or debates, let the #'s speak for themselves:

SIMPLY:

(1) PLAYABILITY RATING: 1-10, 10 IS BEST

(2) YOUR MACHINE: single/dual; speed; graphics card (esp. if not OEM standard for that case)

(3) OVERALL RATING: 1-10

[Buck_Naked]

Originally posted by emark:

SIMPLY:

(1) PLAYABILITY RATING: 1-10, 10 IS BEST

(2) YOUR MACHINE: single/dual; speed; graphics card (esp. if not OEM standard for that case)

(3) OVERALL RATING: 1-10

Playability: Very playble with the update except for the bug with the sniper rifle and my GF4 card.

Machine: Dual800 1.12GB-SDRAM GF4

Overall rating: 6, would be 8 without the sniper rifle bug.

[Arkham_c]

1) Playability: 8 -- it's smooth as can be, but I can't run it with as many options on as I should be able to with the beast of a Mac I have
2) Dual 2GHz G5, Radeon 9800, 1GB RAM
3) Overall -- 8. It's definitely good enough to get. I play online all the time and enjoy it a lot. Blasting a banshee out of the sky with a tank is great fun.

[SouthPaW1227]

1.) 6 - Everything's fine except sometimes w/ details and stuff turned up there's graphical glitches when firing any weapon w/ my GF4Ti 128MB card. In all honestly, I think my graphics performance DROPPED w/ this update...maybe b/c I've got an nVidia card?

2.) Dual G4 1.25Ghz Tower/2GB/GeForce4 Ti

3.) 8 - Jumps up 2 points only b/c now we can play w/ PC users. Performance dropped, but at least there's more servers to choose from.

[Steb Mad]

To some people here, they think that 15 fps is smooth...

If you think Halo is very smooth even on Dual G5 then you definitely don't know what you're talking about.

Halo with patch get 5/10 from me. Such a piss-poor product with:

• Bad Network Code
• Game unexpectedly crash occasionally
• Lot of artifacts and graphic glitches
• "Fake" Full-Screen that have a slight impact on performance
• Lack of optimizations such as Alti-Vec or Dual-Processors support
• Doesn't support multi-buttons mouse or gamepads out of the box
• Huge problem with Griefers aka TKers even with 1.03 patch
• Online Multiplayer Interface is so poorly done. Couldn't disguise the difference between chat and game info such as who killed who.
• Stupid move on requiring CD to be insert in order to play. Other cd-required games can be worked around by using no-cd patch or disk image mount

I know plenty of people who are returning this game back to stores.

[codywalton]

Originally posted by emark:
(1) PLAYABILITY RATING: 1-10, 10 IS BEST

(2) YOUR MACHINE: single/dual; speed; graphics card (esp. if not OEM standard for that case)

(3) OVERALL RATING: 1-10

(1) PLAYABILITY RATING: 8 - Very nice. I still can't turn the graphic quality to 100% highest without a little choppiness, but medium quality makes it run silky smooth.

(2) YOUR MACHINE: Single 1.8 G5, 512 RAM, Nvidia GeForce FX 5200

(3) OVERALL RATING: 8

[emark]

thanks for the posts so far.

please continue, for those who've risked (and that's what it sounds like) their $50, please advise as you can.

Unfortunately, my question had an underlying assumption that the patch increased performance...how silly of me. One poster above noted a suspicion, which, seems to be corroborated by barefeats saying a nominal loss in speed....

Ohh well. I have a machine on the edge, Quicksilver dual 800 w/ the minimal GF 2MX, and will wait till I see enough good posts, or they offer a demo....

But, I shouldn't dilute the thread's intention, so to all who have, and all who will post, again, thanks....there are many of us here interested and waiting to see if we've got the hardware so that it's fun, not just runs.

thanks

[a2daj]

(1) PLAYABILITY RATING: 9 The patch didn't really affect performance. The timedemo scores can vary up to 10% even on two subsequent runs before and after the patch... one reason I don't agree with Barefeats assessment. If people with the NVIDIA cards enabled NV Shaders, of course there's going to be a much bigger performance drop because there's a lot more going on.

(2) YOUR MACHINE: dual; 1.2 GHz Quicksilver; Radeon 9800 Pro

(3) OVERALL RATING: 8 Altivec and SMP support wouldn't make a difference so complaining about it isn't important. I've only had one crash, and that was trying to join a net game. Out of the 100+ games I've joined (yes I've been playing a lot) I haven't been able to reproduce it. I played through the entire single player campaign a few times without any crashes. Many of the graphical glitches have been driver related. Even some of the performance issues are due to Apple's OpenGL missing some features (like those needed to implement Light Flares, Halo has to do them in software)

Definitely wait for a demo and try it yourself. There's going to be a large enough vocal minority that dislike the game enough to overstate problems.

[DBvader]

i.) 9. To be completely honest, the patch didn't do much (if anything) to my performance. FPS slow down is minimal (especially compared to what it was at before with my Radeon 9000) when things get going. That's good. Time Demo shows just shy of 30 FPS (w/ vertex shaders; 18 FPS with pixel/vertex shaders) with minimal deviation (Again, especially compared to how it ran with my 9000). It runs faster and better looking than my Athlon machine at home (2000+, 512, Ti4200). The only reason I can't give it a 10 (I guage my performance on my CPU, after all, Dual 867 is nothing special) is the pixel shader FPS numbers. I wish I could get that into the low 20s, becuase the game looks stunning with them on.

ii.) MDD Dual 867, 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9600.

iii.) 9. Performs great compared to when I had my Radeon 9000 (which makes me think that most people's performance problems are not the coding but rather the hardware). 28-30 FPS vs 17 FPS. There is rarely any slowdown either, which is not too shabby considering my computer's speed. The 9600 was really a god send.

I would love to see the game on a Dual G5/Radeon 9800 combo. It would just be perfect.

[Xidius]

1: Very playable. With the settings down it flies. (More than 50fps to me = flies. =P) I love teaming with other mac users and kicking others' butts. =)

2: 800mhz G3 iBook 640mb 32mb ATI7500 Mobility.

3: 6 - Meh. I only like to play online, and.. Let's face it. The interface sucks. =\ Also, suddenly the sniper rifle got really shitty. It used to be my favorite weapon. >.<

- Xidius

[littlegreenspud]

1: 8 Very playable

2: Dual Gig quicksilver, GeForce 4Ti

3: Overall 8


For all you out there worried about performance. I installed halo on my old B/W G3 350 (over clocked to 450) with a Radeon PCI card and with most of the goodies turned down it plays! Not brilliantly but playable.

[iREZ]

Very playable-8

12inch powerbook 1ghz

I could never get tired of Halo-10