[iSoldier]

Do any of you have a Pismo G3 laptop? A laptop that commanded a premium back when it can out? Well have you been alarmed to find out that 3D games in X flat out stink in X?

Have you ever tried running RTCW only to run in horror? Well here I petition to anyone that hears my plea: Could you give me a G4, better yet a G5 prototype. I will work odd jobs?

SORRY FOR THIS PATHETIC RANT. The problem is that I can no longer play the most demanding games. Actually Quake 3 stressed the system enough. This is a 400mhz/320mb. The only time that I can play RTCW is at work on our Dual 800 G4s. Oh well.

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[SteveJobs]

Well, notebooks were never made for games, macs were never made for games. So go play other good games or whatever...

[xyber233]

The Pismo and iBooks never had good graphics cards. Its even hard to play games in OS 9. That is why Apple put an ATI Radeon mobility in the TiBook. Even the TiBook has some troubles playin RTCW though.

[seanyepez]

I have a Pismo, and I completely agree. The gaming performance sucks in RtCW. I used to actually play Unreal Tournament at an acceptable framerate on my notebook, but since then, games have evolved considerably. The ATi Rage, outdated technology, can't keep up with any of today's modern games.

Try running OS 9. You will get a significant performance increase. I suppose this is because OS X has too much overhead that taxes the Rage chipset in the background.

[juanvaldes]

Originally posted by seanyepez:
<STRONG>I have a Pismo, and I completely agree. The gaming performance sucks in RtCW. I used to actually play Unreal Tournament at an acceptable framerate on my notebook, but since then, games have evolved considerably. The ATi Rage, outdated technology, can't keep up with any of today's modern games.

Try running OS 9. You will get a significant performance increase. I suppose this is because OS X has too much overhead that taxes the Rage chipset in the background.</STRONG>

Yeah probably. This past summer I used both the 400 & 500 versions of the Pismo and played a many Diablo 2 & UT and it all was fine. In OS 9 of course

[seanyepez]

It all depends, Juan.

The Pismo isn't terrible for Unreal. Anything over 35 frames per second can be enjoyable, but notebook gaming is completely unviable (even the fastest Dell gaming notebooks) for competitive LAN parties.

[juanvaldes]

Originally posted by seanyepez:
<STRONG>It all depends, Juan.

The Pismo isn't terrible for Unreal. Anything over 35 frames per second can be enjoyable, but notebook gaming is completely unviable (even the fastest Dell gaming notebooks) for competitive LAN parties.</STRONG>

Never said this was 'competitive' I am sure you need only the most up to date hardware for that. But just pointing out that you can run (yes not RTCW, though I don't have it yet, nor should you BTW Mac that is) some intensive games on a Pismo and have fun doing it.

[seanyepez]

I suppose. I do admit that I can still have fun playing on a Pismo at a LAN party. Sure, I won't win, but it's the company, right?

[Cipher13]

Not every game played revolves around a LAN full of people who use massive FPS to compensate for... other lesser qualities of theirs, Sean.

OSX on a Pismo sucks.
Of course Games on OSX on a Pismo suck.
You didn't really expect your Pismo to run X well did you?

[Chimpmaster]

osx performance on my ibook is fine (indigo model). For gaming, only certain games are playable - usually rpgs and rts such as aoe2, bg2 and starcraft.

FPS games do not run well on the ati rage 128 mobility card - though i can play quake 3 at 640x480x32 at around 30fps which is playable.

I actually found castle wolf not too bad. It forces you to play really well when your fps is low and makes you heaps better at lans and cafes on fast machines.

[Leonard]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
<STRONG>OSX on a Pismo sucks.
Of course Games on OSX on a Pismo suck.
You didn't really expect your Pismo to run X well did you?</STRONG>

I still haven't loaded OSX and probably will never load OSX on my Pismo 400. Unless, of course I find a nice 800Mhz G3 or a 600Mhz g4 upgrade at a reasonable price. Even then, does it make sense upgrading it when you can't upgrade the graphics chip.

I have to agree with Cypher, I don't expect it to run OSX well - leave OS 9.x on it. The Pismo does well in everthing except 3D with OS 9.x.

Of course, having Office X, has tempted me to often think about installing OSX on my Pismo.

[ 01-28-2002: Message edited by: Leonard ]

I use my pismo with OS X for iMovie, iTunes, Photoshop 5.5 in classic, mail, ie5 Freehand 10, office x, and used to use the golive beta (hope to get the release, ASAP). The only problem I have are with poorly ported apps (IE 5 and Office X), really.

Unfortunately, I can't comment on game performance, as I just don't have time for them. I would like to play civ III at some point.

Sorry I have to disagree, but a Pismo w/ X is a great environment for my work.

[/LIST]

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by seanyepez:
<STRONG>I have a Pismo, and I completely agree. The gaming performance sucks in RtCW. I used to actually play Unreal Tournament at an acceptable framerate on my notebook, but since then, games have evolved considerably. The ATi Rage, outdated technology, can't keep up with any of today's modern games.</STRONG>

I have a Pismo 400 mhz with 384 RAM... It runs MacOS X 10.1.2 and it isn't TOO slow. I notice slowdowns in the GUI sometimes that really bug me, and as long as I'm not crunching Ubero or dnetc, applications launch within a few bounces.

I play Quake 3 sometimes on this machine and it's very nice. I am very happy with the results... I get 35-40 FPS. I don't know what I did to get it to run so well, but it does. RtCW MP test runs like SHIT, no argument there.

[Dan Szwarc]

I've been running OSX on my Pismo 500 since 10.1 came out. While I play very few games, I've found that even with 640MB of ram, I get page-outs often and slow-downs in the OSX interface (like moving windows and the like).

I have given up and I am selling it on ebay is anyone is interested. I will soon be computing on a refurbed 800DP. I think it should play Alice and others quite well...

[rampant]

I used to play Unreal Tournament at 6-10 fps on my 240mhz G3, it was AWFUL, thas was 320 x 280 doubled and lineskipped. I could win online sometimes too. Now I have my new PeeCee laptop, and I can play UT at 120 frames per second, and it's waaaay more fun.

[iKevin]

OS 9, OS X..it don't matter. Most notebook video cards suck for gaming.....this is a byproduct of their design, both PC and Mac. Plain and simple case really...they weren't designed for gaming!

The only notebook i've seen any really decent gaming performance on is the new Dell Inspiron 8100 w/Geforce2go 32mb video. But it still lags behind anything i would consider premo gaming.

[rampant]

Actually, the new Radeon is better. I've got a mobility radeon 32meg DDR, and it's really good on my laptop, UT will go up past 200fps sometimes at 800 x 600, the only thing I don't run max detail is Quake 3, where the fux0red the physics .

[milhous]

I hope we can all agree that the performance of X on any G3 system, regardless of how much you soup up is going to run like crap, plain and simple.

We can only hope for increased OS optimization to make the experience more pleasant.

[Cipher13]

Originally posted by &lt;Nigel Mellish&gt;:
<STRONG>I use my pismo with OS X for iMovie, iTunes, Photoshop 5.5 in classic, mail, ie5 Freehand 10, office x, and used to use the golive beta (hope to get the release, ASAP). The only problem I have are with poorly ported apps (IE 5 and Office X), really.

Unfortunately, I can't comment on game performance, as I just don't have time for them. I would like to play civ III at some point.

Sorry I have to disagree, but a Pismo w/ X is a great environment for my work.

[/LIST]</STRONG>

Now thats funny... life in slow motion... interesting.

[BigMark]

Mac OS X 10.1.5 runs fine on my Pismo 500. haven't played any games other than Alien vs Predator and that ran fine. Tried RTCW but it starts up and then displays no video. Obviously I couldn't get much gameplay from it but would have been nice to see what it looked like. I see in the read me that it requires 16MB of VRAM. Oh well...

Besides, I didn't buy the Pismo intending to play games on it. It does everything I want it to do just fine. And no crashes. Boy, is that ever sweet to get away from OS 9.

[7Macfreak]

err.... i have a 400mhz pismo with 320mb ram and i used to play the RtCW multiplayer demo. it wasnt terribly bad at the 'fastest' (or whatever) setting(20-35fps). i've also used it for q3 gaming in OS 9 (get about 40-50fps even)

i finished the SP version of RtCW on my ibook recently with 'acceptable' frame rates. its not unplayable or anything like that.

if you really want a better performance, why dont you upgrade to a powermac or an imac or something. a powerbook g4 wouldnt be worth as an upgrade just for gaming.

also there is a g4 500mhz upgrade for the pismo.

[::maroma::]

How can anyone expect an older laptop like the Pismo to be able to play "the most demanding games"? I have a G4 Sawtooth and I don't even expect today's most demanding games to run well on it. In fact, RtCW crashes constantly on my machine. Virtually unplayable.

You have a Mac.

You have a laptop Mac.

It's a Pismo.

Duh.

[Leonard]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">Originally posted by ::maroma:::
<strong>How can anyone expect an older laptop like the Pismo to be able to play "the most demanding games"? I have a G4 Sawtooth and I don't even expect today's most demanding games to run well on it. In fact, RtCW crashes constantly on my machine. Virtually unplayable.

You have a Mac.

You have a laptop Mac.

It's a Pismo.

Duh.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="1" face="Geneva, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">I have to agree, a 2 year old laptop will not play the latest games and you shouldn't expect it to. Hell, the graphics in it are 2 generations old... it has a Rage 128 Mobility... the newer Powerbooks have migrated to the Radeon Mobility and now the Radeon 7500 Mobility. In fact the Radeon 7500 Mobility is getting a bit old now... it's over 6 months old.

I don't use my pismo to play RTCW, at the very most I play UT on it, but that's it. UT is fairly slow. I basically use the Pismo to do mobile web surfing (good ol' airport), administrative work, and some simple gaming. In fact my Pismo still runs OS 9.2.x, I certainly wouldn't put OS X on it. I use my desktop DP800 with 1.2GB RAM, OS X 10.1.5 and a Geforce 3 to play games... it does a good job.