[Frumpy]

I've been keeping tabs on a topic of mine over in the PowerBook section, all about whether the PowerBook 12" or 15" is for me. If you'd like to know all about it you can check it out over here...http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...readid=207658. My major concern has become about gaming. I've attended a few LAN parties, and have started to really get into the whole thing. Unfortunately as it stands now I have to stick to Quake 3 and the original UT as my main source of gaming entertainment. BUT, with the purchase of a nice new PowerBook, things should change, right? I mean, I know the 12" is just about the same specs as what I own right now, so all I would be gaining as far as gaming goes is portability. But the 15" seems to have a fantastic graphics card, and a big enough boost in speed, memory speed & bus speed that I should be able to play games like UT 2004 & Halo without any problems, right? RIGHT?! Please tell me I'm right. But then it becomes all about how long? How long will I be able to play these games on a 15" PowerBook before even that's outdated for the newest, flashiest games?

[RayK]

I own a 15" Al 1.25 and I have to say that its decent for gaming. Its not a beast of a gaming machine, if thats what you are asking, but it gets things done. The only game I have a problem with at the moment is UT2004 Demo. I'm told that the retail (which I have pre-ordered) fixes the issue that causes the slowdown, but for me right now I get around 9 to 15 frames per second on the Onslaught Torlan level. I've not played Halo on it yet, but I will have by next Monday, as I am getting it as well. The games I do have right now run good. Here a list of what I have played that runs great.

Runs great (Almost no or no slowdown)
Warcraft II BNE
Warcraft III & Frozen Throne
Starcraft
Diablo
Diablo II and Expansion
Quake
Quake II
Quake III and expansion

Runs Decent (Some slowdown)
Star Trek Elite Force II (Running on medium setting gets a good boost in FPS, I play on High)
UT 2003 Demo (It was long ago, but it runs actually pretty well I believe)

Runs Like Poo
UT2004 Demo (Which according to the mac port coder is fixed in the retail and might be fixed in a demo patch)

I'll post more on Halo, Sin, and more once I get a chance. Hope this helps!

Edit: I think that the 15" is the best choice though because of the video card and screen size. The 12 uses Nvidia's card which I think are inferior IMHO. The 17" uses the same card as the 15" but the higher screen resolution can hinder performance more. I have to say though More RAM is always a good idea. 512 is not enough!
Edit again: Argh, forgot to mention that when its possible I switch to the native resolution of the screen 1280x854 to game. I don't find a huge performance difference in running it at that resolution.

[Frumpy]

As soon as it's purchased I plan on adding another 512 ram from crucial.com. I have 768 in my iMac, and I couldn't imagine having any less than that. I know that SiN runs great on my iMac, so i'm not too concerned with that game. But UT 2004 with more memory than 512 along with Halo would be very interesting to know about. Thanks!

[RayK]

I'll be getting Tomb Raider Chronicles, Sin Gold, and UT 2004 hopefully be the end of the week. If I can find some memory for a decent price I'll be picking that up too. I hope that my post was a bit of help, and I'll be sure to post more as I go.

[a2daj]

Doesn't the 17" PowerBook use a Radeon 9600 now? I think the 12" is the only one using an NVIDIA chipset now. I agree that the 15" is the best choice for gaming as you can run the game closer to the display's native res without saturating the video card.

[RayK]

Yep, you're right the 17" does have the 9600. I will change post.

[SpiffyGuyC]

Generally I've found that a PowerBook packs a pretty good punch, and you'll be able to play today's games just fine. Tomorrow's games, however.....

After about a year I'm finding that the "next big game" will be a struggle on my PowerBook. Luckily, I try to upgrade every year.

S

[Frumpy]

Alright, I bought my PB 12", and you can see my specs below, but what am i missing?! UT 2004 demo runs at 20fps in deathmatch...with ALL of the settings OFF. I have a 64mb GeForceFX in this thing. What the hell is going on?! Tried the Call of Duty demo too, and that was horrible as well. I'm going to be testing out the new Medal of Honor demo, but I'm not expecting anything. What's going on here? Am i missing something here? BRAND NEW MAC, and the games that are out today kill it?! Come on...

[Lateralus]

What do you expect from something with a GeForce FX5200? The 5200 is based off of the GeForce 4MX, which was nothing more than a 2MX on steroids. You're using a machine with a GPU based off of 4 year old tech.

A 128MB FX5200 card on the PC side can be had for under $55, with shipping.

[Frumpy]

Wow. Thanks for all the help on that one. REALLY constructive. ANYWAY...for anyone else that might take a gander at this thread...even Apple's own site with the newest PowerBook 12" tells about how UT 2004 runs great on it. "Great" better not equal ALL of the settings turned down at 20fps. And PowerMacMan...how long has the G4 been around? And most in the Mac cummunity are still using those. Take your four year old tech and sh@#e it.

[Lateralus]

Originally posted by Frumpy:
Take your four year old tech and sh@#e it.

CPUs are not GPUs. Operating systems are not video games.

All I did was fill you in on why you're getting the performance you're getting. Drop the attitude.

[roders]

As has been stated a number of times in this thread, the UT2004 demo has a bug that massively drains CPU cycles (a sound bug) this is not present in the full retail game, where you will see much improved performance.
Also look for UT2004 performance Faq's as these can greatly increase FPS, you should find your 12" Alu PB absoloutly fine for current games, as long as you don't stretch the res or the garphics options to high, and have enough ram (absoloute min of 512MB).

P.S I could get UT2003 running & looking fine on my Rev A 12" PB (876Mhz/256K cache) so you shoud be fine with the right tweaks etc (lower No of sound channels and up Vram allocated to Vid card from 32 to 64 in your ini file).

[tekno_geek911]

I have no problem at all running Unreal 2004 on my new 12" PowerBook...I was actually surprised how smooth it ran after I installed the latest update.

[arekkusu]

The Geforce4 MX and the Geforce FX 5200 are not that similar.
http://homepage.mac.com/arekkusu/bugs/GLInfo.html

And yes, the Go5200 in the 12" Powerbook is functionally identical to the 5200 in the G5. It is vastly superior to the 4 MX.

[Frumpy]

I appreciate the post arekkusu. Sorry for the attitude in my last post. But if someone told you that your brand new laptop was no good for gaming...I think any of you would be at least the slightest peeved. Especially when it's coming from a moderator.

ANYWAY...what I was trying to say in my first post was that these games...UT, UT 2003, UT 2004 (demo) were all running great until that damn 10.3.4 update. But now that i've updated and i'm stuck with it until the next update, is there anything I can do in my system to get the best performance out of it? I realize that there's a bug with the sound in the UT 2004 demo, but even the Call of Duty and C&C: Generals were giving me horrible frame rates even when dropped to the lowest specs. These are games with system requirements that top out at 1GHz. With a 1.33 G4 , 768 PC2700 & the 64mb GeForceFX 5200, I should be able to run these games just fine. I'm just trying to find out what the deal is.

[James L]

Frumpy,

As stated there is the audio bug in the 2004 demo, and the level that is in the CoD demo (burnsville) is the MOST intensive level in the game (I just finished the game). Also, the demo does NOT run as well as the actual game.

I am playing Halo, MoH, and CoD on a 15" PB 1.5Ghz machine. These games run great.... for a laptop, and for a Mac laptop at that. It is common knowledge that games are not optimized as well for the Mac as for the PC, though I must say that Call of Duty is an AMAZING port. I am playing it at 1024 x 768 res with most settings at medium, some at high, and I love it. Sure it stutterered in the Stalingrad scene when all hell was breaking lose, but I also watched it stutter there on a high end PC. Whatever, it had a second or two of poor game play and then back to the great stuff. This to me is not stuff to worry about at all.

I hope this helps. The only other peice of advice I can offer you is to never trust the system requirements on game boxes. Most of the time the minimum requirements are almost unplayable, and the recommended requirements are decent for game play.

Unless you just dropped big $$$ on a serious high end system, with a PRO video card (which yours is not) never expect to be able to take today's games, crank everything to high, and have it butter smooth. it just ain't going to work that often!

[Frumpy]

In other words, I should expect that most Mac games, ESPECIALLY demos, are not going to run very well with the quality turned up. It's true that UT 2003 (full version) ran fine on here. And while the Call of Duty and C&C demos weren't great looking, the new Breakthrough demo for Medal of Honor runs fantastic in 640x480. Should I usually expect that the full retail versions of games are going to play a significant amount better than the demos? in other words, should I bother purchasing UT 2004?

[James L]

I think you are asking a question no one can really answer.. no one can make a blanket, general statement about ALL demos and gold master releases.

What I can say, however, is in almost every case I can think of (except CoD) the demo comes out before the game has gone GM, which means it could be from a beta release and not fully optimized.

I would say it is more a case of having realistic expectations. You have a decent machine (as do I, I use the 15" big brother of your PB), but we do NOT have top end machines. For example, we have 50% of the total CPU power the desktops have. I love the ATI 9700 video card with 128MB of VRAM in my PB, but mobility cards are usually slower than their desktop counterparts. This is all part of the tradeoffs for having portability.

The Medal of Honor series has run great on all Macs I have played it on. Call of Duty is my ALL TIME favourite game! I have really enjoyed both on Powerbooks. As for UT2004, the developer himself addressed the audio bug that slows down the demo. If you want to know what 2004 plays like without the bug, search back in these forums. There is a way of changing the config file of the demo to disable the audio, and the framerate goes WAY up apparently. This would give you a better feel for what the retail version would be like.

Enjoy your PB, I love mine! It chews through Final Cut, Photoshop, Flash for my web design stuff and video editing hobby, and it plays games to an enjoyable level for me!

[Luca Rescigno]

How new a computer is has nothing to do with how well it'll run games. While I understand your frustration, there's no reason to gripe about Apple advertising this or that. It's merely a function of your hardware and software configuration.

The GeForce FX5200 is not a fast card. It's not high end. It's a bargain-basement video card, both in mobile and desktop computers. So you can't expect too much from it. My PowerMac G4 is 1.33 GHz (like your PowerBook) and has a 64 MB GeForce 3, which is probably a little faster than your 5200. Since my computer is a desktop, it'll be faster than your laptop, but not by too large a margin.

My computer runs UT 2004 like crap unless I set it to the minimum settings for everything. Then it'll run decently, but I'm never really happy with the performance. This is the full version. Call Of Duty, on the other hand, runs absolutely smoothly. I can't set it to the highest settings, but on most levels I can get by with moderately high ones. The most demanding level is not the one you do for the demo, though... it is, by far, the first part of the Stalingrad mission. After achieving some detail settings that were a good compromise of detail and framerate, I played the game again, and most of the time it was great until I hit Stalingrad. Framerate dropped to probably 5-10 fps. But that's the only one where you'll have problems, most likely.

C&C runs like crap on my machine.

[mjankor]

Actually the Demo for Call of Duty was a shock to me as well. I am running a DP 2.0 G5 with 1.5GB ram and the 9600 and I had to turn off the dynamic lights on everything and leave it on models only. This is IMHO the real killer for framerate in the demo with all those fires and tracers everywhere.

Interesting though is that the demo level is not in the game. Well it is but it's now daytime and there's far fewer dynamic light effects.

Anyway the point is, the game runs a heap faster than the demo on my system and in the game I can leave everything up.

[roders]

I've heard a rumour that the Geforce 5200 drivers in 10.3.4 are Knackered, only thing I can think of is reinstalling 10.3.3 or exratcting just the vid card drivers from 10.3.3 maybe?
Could something else be the cause of your lower FPS, maybe check your energy saver settings?
All the games mentioned, I think, should run quite acceptably at normal settings on your machine.
P.S As I understand it the 5200 has much more advanced tech than the 4MX (pixel shaders etc) but has not really got the horsepower/raw grunt to use this tech properly, plus the 5200Go has a lower clock speed than the 5200Ultra.

[rag on a muffin]

Originally posted by roders:
I've heard a rumour that the Geforce 5200 drivers in 10.3.4 are Knackered, only thing I can think of is reinstalling 10.3.3 or exratctin just the vid card drivers from 10.3.3 maybe?)Could soemthing else be the cause of your lower FPS, maybe check your energy saver settings?
All the games mentioned I think should run quite acceptably at normal settings on your machine.
P.S As I understand it the 5200 has much more advanced tech than the 4MX (pixel shaders etc) but has not really got the horsepower/raw grunt to use this tech properly.

the drivers for the 5200 in 10.3.4 are totally EVIL. i reverted to 10.3.3 for the soul purpose of that.

[tekno_geek911]

Originally posted by rag on a muffin:
the drivers for the 5200 in 10.3.4 are totally EVIL. i reverted to 10.3.3 for the soul purpose of that.

Same here....I hope new drivers are released soon.

[Frumpy]

I would LOVE to get back to 10.3.3. Can anyone tell me HOW, without losing any of my information? I do have a FW 80gig WD external, and I GUESS I could just back up my user folder to that, but is there an easier way? AND, where would I find an updater to just get to 10.3.3 instead of the combo update that brings me to 10.3.4? Thanks!

[rag on a muffin]

Originally posted by Frumpy:
I would LOVE to get back to 10.3.3. Can anyone tell me HOW, without losing any of my information? I do have a FW 80gig WD external, and I GUESS I could just back up my user folder to that, but is there an easier way? AND, where would I find an updater to just get to 10.3.3 instead of the combo update that brings me to 10.3.4? Thanks!

sure. just do an archive and install, and check the box "save user settings" these are install options on the CD.

as for updating to 10.3.3, the combo updater to 10.3.3 is corrupted. so you are stuck going through 10.3.2, then 10.3.3 you can get them here:

10.3.3

and 10.3.2

[Frumpy]

Houston, we have a problem. Tried to re-install 10.3, but when I restart with the disc I get a broken up Apple logo in the beginning. Everything starts just fine, but then the Apple logo breaks in two like it overlapped the wrong way (looks like a weird graphic glitch). Any ideas?

[rag on a muffin]

never heard of that happening. have you looked for scratches on the bottom?

[sniffer]

Originally posted by Frumpy:
Houston, we have a problem. Tried to re-install 10.3, but when I restart with the disc I get a broken up Apple logo in the beginning. Everything starts just fine, but then the Apple logo breaks in two like it overlapped the wrong way (looks like a weird graphic glitch). Any ideas?

Try using your restore cds instead. Rev. C. came after 10.3 aka Panther you know.

[Frumpy]

Holy cow. Used the restore cd's, got back to 10.3.3, and UT 2004 runs perfect. All default settings, all run amazingly. For me, it's official...10.3.4 is the beast that devours all Mac games on PowerBooks. GO 10.3.3!!!

[a2daj]

Originally posted by Frumpy:
Holy cow. Used the restore cd's, got back to 10.3.3, and UT 2004 runs perfect. All default settings, all run amazingly. For me, it's official...10.3.4 is the beast that devours all Mac games on PowerBooks. GO 10.3.3!!!

Only to 12" PowerBook owners It's the NVIDIA drivers.

[arekkusu]

Yes, 10.3.4 works fine here on Radeon 9600. And you need 10.3.4 for VBO.

Hopefully 10.3.5 will fix whatever problems GeForce FX machines are having.

[Frumpy]

What's this VBO that you need 10.3.4 for? Just had 6 apps open, then opened UT 2004 (demo), and everything ran smooth as hell. Amazing stuff for someone who previously owned an iMac 800 G4.

[Holigen]

I just bought my first laptop - a 15" PowerBook G4 1.5 ghz 512 RAM 128 VRAM and 5200 RPM hard drive. The only game that I have played on it is Halo. All I have to say is that its amazing. Coming from playing Halo with all settings toned to lowerst on an outdated iMac to this awesome thing, all I have to say is I couldnt be happier. I have both Pixel + Vertex shaders on, all video options are up to their highest, and the res is at the native res of the screen on the PowerBook. With all of that going on, it runs like butter in Single Player and only incurs a slight drop in framerate on Multiplayer when my crappy dsl gets laggy. I havent really read many of the other posts so this may have been said before.

[MilkmanDan]

Having the 128 VRAM on a 15in would be kinda helpful for games.

My 1.33 12in plays things just fine. I mean seriously though, laptops are name for serious gamers. Buy a laptop for functionality, build a $400 PC for games. Or buy and mod an xBox. Honestly.

I've played most all new games on my 12in.... tested them... yeah. Anyhow, they run fine enough for me.

[sniffer]

Only "big" game I've tested on my new PB 12" so far is UT 2004 Demo w/performance patch (or whatever they call it). It runned kind of skippy. I doubt the graphic card is the problem here, as the game runs almost equal good-bad on any graphical settings I've tried. Found 1024x768/32bits to be most appealing (but performs the same as 640x480 with everything on low). It's playable by all means, but it looks like a software issue.

Tech: 768 mb ram, 10.3.3.

I'll try to disabling the sound and see if that helps.

[a2daj]

Originally posted by sniffer:
Only "big" game I've tested on my new PB 12" so far is UT 2004 Demo w/performance patch (or whatever they call it). It runned kind of skippy. I doubt the graphic card is the problem here, as the game runs almost equal good-bad on any graphical settings I've tried. Found 1024x768/32bits to be most appealing (but performs the same as 640x480 with everything on low). It's playable by all means, but it looks like a software issue.

Tech: 768 mb ram, 10.3.3.

I'll try to disabling the sound and see if that helps.

There is no performance patch for UT 2004 Demo. The only patch I know of is one that fixed the crash that happened when iSights or USB mics were plugged in. Unless there was a new patch recently, the demo still has the same performance problem it had before with sound.

[sniffer]

Originally posted by a2daj:
There is no performance patch for UT 2004 Demo. The only patch I know of is one that fixed the crash that happened when iSights or USB mics were plugged in. Unless there was a new patch recently, the demo still has the same performance problem it had before with sound.

You're right. ( I just got confused about the link at apple.com/games which says "Download the performance patch". )
Anyway, the demo is really waste of bandwidth.

[Macpilot]

So you guys out there with the 128 vidRam Powerbooks:

How is the gaming on those machines?

I have the 64 card in my Powerbook and Command and Conquer is pretty cool, but gets bogged down once in a while.

Will I notice an improvement with the 128 card machines?

I am thinking of selling my 17" rev a powerbook because I have a few fun games that I think would be much better on those machines.

Thanks!

[Holigen]

After having never played any game on a 64 bit GPU on any computer I cannot say. I can say, however, that Halo runs like a track star poppin' some serious 'roids. All graphics at their highest, audio could be higher (but who the heck cares?!?) and this machine is as smooth as a baby's bottom.

[DBvader]

"I have the 64 card in my Powerbook and Command and Conquer is pretty cool, but gets bogged down once in a while."

An interesting thing happened a while back when I was messing around with Command and Conquer to try to get the best performance settings. The game was a bit laggy at 1024x768 on my Dual 867/1GB/9600, so I upped the resolution to 1152x864 and turned on 2X antialiasing. Surprisingly the game ran much better, I must have forced a faster Pipeline. Maybe it will work for others.

[bma_mat99]

I have no idea what you people are talking about unreal tournament 2004 running slow. It runs super on my mac with everyting turned up to max. and im playing the demo..too cheap to buy thefull game. Im using a powermac dual 2.5ghz with 8gigabytes ram and a 128megabyte video card. Runs perfect for me...

[Luca Rescigno]

Haha. I bet even the dual 2.5 would suck compared to one of the $500 PCs that my brother and his friends all own (yes, he owns a Mac too, but he games on the PC). And only a 128 MB graphics card? WEAK. You need 256 MB if you want to be high end these days. 128 MB is run-of-the-mill, $50 from any respectable reseller.

Although I do believe a 128 MB Radeon 9800 would do better than a 256 MB Radeon 9200...

[sniffer]

Originally posted by bma_mat99:
I have no idea what you people are talking about unreal tournament 2004 running slow. It runs super on my mac with everyting turned up to max. and im playing the demo..too cheap to buy thefull game. Im using a powermac dual 2.5ghz with 8gigabytes ram and a 128megabyte video card. Runs perfect for me...

I don't think anyone have said Unreal Tournament 2004 runs "slow", just that the UT04Demo has serious issues, and it has. It hasn't been prioritized after the full game hit the shelves. The developers have had their hands full patching the full version.
By the way, somehow your statement doesn't comfort me one bit.

[kentuckyfried]

I tried Neverwinter Nights a little bit on my 15" 1.25 ghz powerbook, and I didn't like it very much. Performance was really sluggish in moving my character back in forth across the screen. It was especially noticeable in the opening movie for this game.

No problems on a 1.8 ghz G5....runs like butter.

[Lateralus]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
Haha. I bet even the dual 2.5 would suck compared to one of the $500 PCs that my brother and his friends all own (yes, he owns a Mac too, but he games on the PC). And only a 128 MB graphics card? WEAK. You need 256 MB if you want to be high end these days. 128 MB is run-of-the-mill, $50 from any respectable reseller.

Although I do believe a 128 MB Radeon 9800 would do better than a 256 MB Radeon 9200...

Actually, pretty much every benchmark I have seen has shown little to no performance difference between 128MB and 256MB cards. There is simply nothing capable of saturating more than 128MBs right now.

So 128MBs provides as good of a level of performance as can be had right now.

[U n i o n 0015]

I find that my 1Ghz TiBook (64MB Radeon 9000, I think) with 512mb is actually pretty good for gaming. Now, I don't think Doom 3 will run fantastic, but Quake-based games run pretty darn good (40 fps-ish with the detail jacked up).

I came from a P3 866 with a GeForce 3 and my game experience is just about the same on the PowerBook. If games run over 30fps consisently at 1280 x 854, I'm happy as a clam. And most games have, except for Halo, which bogs down and gets choppy when multiple enemies are on-screen (especially the beach assault level). It's a shame, but the XBOX version runs sooo much better.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to run Doom 3 with medium to good detail at 1280 x 854. I can't stand to run games at less than the native resolution. But I'm happy to say that most games DO run quite well. Granted, they're not the newest, coolest PC games, but they're fun games nonetheless. And for someone who only plays games rarely, it's no biggie. If I played games all the time, to be honest, I'd just get a PC.

[iomatic]

wanted to relay that using energy saver with highest performance on my 12" noticeably improved gameplay. oao


speedfreak also helped my imac too (1GHz)

[- - e r i k - -]

Call of Duty (the game, not the demo) runs fantastic on my 17" PowerBook with the Nvidia 440 card. I was surprised to see it not running not much better on a G5 with the GeForce FX5200.

[djohnson]

I will see how UT2004 works on my 1.5Ghz 15" PowerBook w/ 5400HD and 128MB vram as soon as I buy UT2004...

[wuzup101]

Originally posted by djohnson:
I will see how UT2004 works on my 1.5Ghz 15" PowerBook w/ 5400HD and 128MB vram as soon as I buy UT2004...

lol please let me know !