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King_Rat · Jul 4, 2002, 09:02 PM

I was wondering if anyone knows of a solution for the Diablo II low frame rate problem. I have it on my duel 800 G4, with a Gforce 3, running Mac os 9. Blizzard says that it is a driver problem and that they have told Apple and Nvidia, but they have not yet fixed it.

Does anyone know of a solution (other than buying a new graphics card)?

Noob · Jul 4, 2002, 09:47 PM

Run it under software rendering.

davechen · Jul 5, 2002, 10:22 AM

Yeah, the OpenGL implementation sucks.

Osirisis · Jul 5, 2002, 10:40 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by King_Rat:
I was wondering if anyone knows of a solution for the Diablo II low frame rate problem. I have it on my duel 800 G4, with a Gforce 3, running Mac os 9. Blizzard says that it is a driver problem and that they have told Apple and Nvidia, but they have not yet fixed it.

Does anyone know of a solution (other than buying a new graphics card)?<hr /></blockquote>I have the exact same system and asked the exact same question last October. They really haven't done much to fix the issue. Apparently it has lots to do with the way that the video is handled by Diablo II. You can run in OpenGL and it is better now than it was then, but it still sucks. You're better off just sticking with Software rendering. Maybe 10.2 might have some new drivers... Maybe...

joe · Jul 5, 2002, 07:53 PM

King_Rat:
Add my vote to software rendering. I also have a GF3. It's installed in a dual 500Mhz G4 Cube. D2 software rendering in OSX is excellent on a dualie - ESPECIALLY when there's a lot of action/monsters on screen. Give it a try.

FWIW, the only good hardware acceleration for D2 is if you have a Voodoo card and Glide. Everything else bogs down - including both Rave and OpenGL in either OS9 or OSX. It may look good when you are encamped or on the lower levels. But Rave and OpenGL very seriously bog down when there are a lot of monsters on screen. So if you're in Nightmare or Hell, you're much better off running in software rendering. The way Blizzard reps explained it was that Rave and OpenGL are very slow at loading new textures - something DiabloII does continuously but most other games don't. Glide OTOH is very good at loading new textures continously. But Glide only works on Voodoo cards and OS9. So for the rest of us, best to stick to software rendering in D2 - especially at the higher levels like Nightmare and Hell. Regards........joe

mac freak · Jul 9, 2002, 01:30 AM

RAVE works just fine for those of us with Radeon variants -- faster than software, of course, and much prettier!

Nvidia has just done a craptastic job with their Mac drivers...

joe · Jul 9, 2002, 03:01 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by mac freak:
RAVE works just fine for those of us with Radeon variants -- faster than software, of course, and much prettier!<hr /></blockquote>I had a Radeon in my Cube before upgrading to GF3 (both OEM). In benchmarks RAVE is faster than Software rendering. But the problem with RAVE is that it slows down quite a bit when there are a lot of monsters on screen (IE Nightmare, Hell, secret cow level, etc). Software may not benchmark as fast as RAVE - but it doesn't slow down as much when there are a lot of monsters around. Just my experience though. You might want to try the secret cow level as a test with your Radeon running RAVE - and then again running Software rendering..........joe