[macgeek2005]

Originally Posted by Hydra

You might want to create a new thread because people with similar problems might bypass this one. As to the tearing issues I think we may need to get 10.4.8 under our belts before anything definitive about graphics issues as the Mac Pro ships with a bit of a frankenstein OpenGL implementation. I don't necessarily mean this in a bad way as if what Apple has in store with multithreaded GL could reap huge performance dividends. I have Doom 3 and Quake 4 on my Mac Pro but have played around with them only a little at this point. I do seem to remember some tearing but nothing horrible whereas UT2k4 and COD2 seem to not have as much.

-Jerry C.

Do you have the X1900XT video card? Because if you do, then I have no more questions. It is just a bit of tearing, just as you described.

[Hydra]

Yes I have the 1900XT. I have played much more COD2 and UT2k4 than Doom3 or Quake 4 at this point but I do play on playing much more Quake 4.

-Jerry C.

[macgeek2005]

Originally Posted by Hydra

Yes I have the 1900XT. I have played much more COD2 and UT2k4 than Doom3 or Quake 4 at this point but I do play on playing much more Quake 4.

-Jerry C.

Call of Duty 2 works like a dream on my machine. No problems what so ever. It's just Quake 4 and Doom 3 that have the tearing issue.

Also Quake 4 doesn't like Ultra Quality very much. When I set it to Ultra Quality occasionally, when I walk through a door it starts loading "Non pre-cached files", and the game goes to like 3 frames per second. I guess it's cause it uses 500mb of texure memory, and it can't pre-load everything, but stilll.. it should be able to play on ultra... don't you think? At High Quality it load non pre-cached files too, but it doesn't slow the game down, and it doesn't load as many of them.

Can you do one thing for me, please? Start a new game of quake 4. Right at the very beginning of the intro when the dead guy floats out into space, watch him and tell me whether a ripple goes over him from top to bottom, a tearing line.

Thanks.

[Hydra]

The Q4 intro seems to play fine until about 1/2 through then i gets all choppy. Just after you crash on the surface the fps is crazy low at under 10fps and then indoors it goes up to 60 stays there and occasionally bottoms out again. This is at 1920x1200 Ultra quality. I also see that Quake 4 does not seem to be reporting back 512MB of VRAM, only says it sees 256MB. This could be the problem with using Ultra quality. I am not seeing so much in the way of tearing as I am very inconsistent frame-rates.

-Jerry C.

[macgeek2005]

Originally Posted by Hydra

The Q4 intro seems to play fine until about 1/2 through then i gets all choppy. Just after you crash on the surface the fps is crazy low at under 10fps and then indoors it goes up to 60 stays there and occasionally bottoms out again. This is at 1920x1200 Ultra quality. I also see that Quake 4 does not seem to be reporting back 512MB of VRAM, only says it sees 256MB. This could be the problem with using Ultra quality. I am not seeing so much in the way of tearing as I am very inconsistent frame-rates.

-Jerry C.

Yes, same here. Extremely inconsistent. However, I am worried about the fact that you didn't report any tearing. Are you sure theres none at all? When that guy floated out into space he was completely smooth, no ripple???

[stml]

New Mac Pro 2x2.66 Xeon, 1GB, 20" Cinema...

Four hours out of the box, and I've had three power cuts.

Additionally, any kind of heavy processing drives the fans into airplane take-off mode.

From what I've been reading about how quiet this thing is meant to be, and other people's shutdown problems, I'm very worried.

I'm going to give it twelve hours to settle down, then I'm calling Apple. Gah. Sound familiar?

[derekn]

Yeah that doesn't sound normal. The other night, I was exporting 3 movies in H.264 out of QT while importing a .DV clip into iMovie (total processor use was about 300% at that poing). For the hour or so it was doing all that, the fans didn't kick in once above their normal level.

The power cut outs sound the most worrisome, have you tried different outlets or power strips? Or a UPS? You may have to have Apple send you a new one, it may be a bad power supply.

[wr11]

Yes not normal indeed. Try your system on another outlet first, the mac pro does take a lot of power, but it should be limited to boot times only. It does sound like a HW issue, but it would be worth checking out activity monitor for any out of control processes. I had the new suffit eating up one of my cores (100+%) the other day, didn't even notice it, many hours later I thought my fans were a little louder... not by much, but on a hunch I check out activity monitor and found the process unresponsive and using more than 100%.

Funny on any other machine you'd fell that right away, but on a mac pro you could go days without noticing something like that.

[stml]

This loks interesting... anyone? Installing now..,

Mac Pro SMC Firmware Update 1.0 - MacUpdate

[stml]

Ach, still sounds like a plane taking off. Have spoken to Apple, and they'll say they'll change it. I don't have a car though and it cost me £20 ($40) to get it home in a cab yesterday from the Apple Store in Central London, so it's going to be a really fun bus journey this evening.

My advice to anyone purchasing one of these: get it from a store, not online, and get them to open up the box and run it for twenty minutes before you take it...

[Hydra]

Originally Posted by stml

My advice to anyone purchasing one of these: get it from a store, not online, and get them to open up the box and run it for twenty minutes before you take it...

Maybe you should return the Mac Pro and buy something else instead of living in fear of it failing again if you are so convinced of their unreliability? My advice is to buy it wherever you are comfortable and feel you get a good price.

[stml]

I take it all back. Admittedly I had to go 40 minutes each way with a huge box on the bus, but the Apple Store swapped it, no problem, and I now have an utterly gorgeous fully-functional machine and all is well.

This is the finest computer I've ever owned. God I love this thing. Buy a Mac Pro!

[Athens]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

I agree, a bad drive would not cause a system to fail to boot completely. Bad RAM, yes. Not a bad drive.

Yes it can, if the harddrive had a short in its power system. Super rare but possible. Which would also cause a total hardware fail. I doubt that is the case but any part added to a computer can technically cause damage if the part is defective. Most of the time the part wont work causing the computer just not to boot until removed. But once in a while the defect is so bad it results in damage.

Im pretty sure Apple asked him a bunch of questions, figured out it was a problem they have had on other machines which is why they replaced it so easy.

[derekn]

Originally Posted by stml

I take it all back. Admittedly I had to go 40 minutes each way with a huge box on the bus, but the Apple Store swapped it, no problem, and I now have an utterly gorgeous fully-functional machine and all is well.

Good to hear!

[macgeek2005]

Originally Posted by Athens

Yes it can, if the harddrive had a short in its power system. Super rare but possible. Which would also cause a total hardware fail. I doubt that is the case but any part added to a computer can technically cause damage if the part is defective. Most of the time the part wont work causing the computer just not to boot until removed. But once in a while the defect is so bad it results in damage.

Im pretty sure Apple asked him a bunch of questions, figured out it was a problem they have had on other machines which is why they replaced it so easy.

Wow. If the DOA Hard drive is what killed the machine, then i'm glad they swapped it.

I think what promted them to swap so easily was the fact that my machine shipped with a "Apple test disc" in the lower optical drive bay. They knew something was fishy. I now have the replacement computer and replacement hard drive from newegg, all in there and working perfectly!

The only thing I wonder about is the noise. I thought that maybe because my other computer died, that's why it was a little noisy, but this one makes the exact same amount of noise. I guess most people consider it nearly silent because they live in nosier areas, or they're in an office that has fans blowing, or something. My computer is situated in the back end of a room in a house miles away from any street, up on a mountain. If my Mac Pro goes from On to Off, the noise difference is heard at least 20 feet away. It's not a "blow" sort of noise, like my G4 was, just the hum of a computer.

[g3_tool]

Originally Posted by macgeek2005

If I sound a little bit annoyed in this post, it's probably because I am a little bit annoyed.

For the last 3 days i've been trying to find out about this tearing issue i'm having in Doom 3 and Quake 4. It really doesn't take brain surgery to answer my questions, just a bit of knowledge in the area.

My questions are, 1. Is it known that the X1900XT has the same tearing issues with Doom 3 and Quake 4, as the 7300GT does? I know for a fact that the 7300GT DOES HAVE these problems, but I never read about the X1900XT. If someone can confirm that it does have the problems, then that's all I need to know.

2. If it's not supposed to have the problems, can someone simply tell me what might be the cause, or what I could do?

Thank you!

have u turned vsync off?. the one thing than can slow down the game or any game is vsync & aa/af

[g3_tool]

Originally Posted by macgeek2005

Call of Duty 2 works like a dream on my machine. No problems what so ever. It's just Quake 4 and Doom 3 that have the tearing issue.

Also Quake 4 doesn't like Ultra Quality very much. When I set it to Ultra Quality occasionally, when I walk through a door it starts loading "Non pre-cached files", and the game goes to like 3 frames per second. I guess it's cause it uses 500mb of texure memory, and it can't pre-load everything, but stilll.. it should be able to play on ultra... don't you think? At High Quality it load non pre-cached files too, but it doesn't slow the game down, and it doesn't load as many of them.

Can you do one thing for me, please? Start a new game of quake 4. Right at the very beginning of the intro when the dead guy floats out into space, watch him and tell me whether a ripple goes over him from top to bottom, a tearing line.

Thanks.

ultra quality is meant for gfx cards that have 512mb or more ram onboard [ that is on the pc side that is. maybee the same on the mac ]

[macgeek2005]

Originally Posted by g3_tool

ultra quality is meant for gfx cards that have 512mb or more ram onboard [ that is on the pc side that is. maybee the same on the mac ]

My gfx card has 512mb of ram onboard. If gfx is short for Graphics, that is.....

One guy reported that Quake 4 said he had 256mb of vram on his 512mb card. Maybe Quake 4 is reading the card wrong, and playing wrong cause of that.

I can play on ultra qualtiy most of the time. I'm playing it on Ultra Quality right now with everything maxed out at 1920x1200, 4x FSAA. It's just that once in a while, it'll go down to 3fps for no reason at all, and I have to go down to high quality to continue. Then I can set it back to ultra quality and go on just fine. The computer has no problem playing it at ultra quality in terms of the graphics and stuff. When I come to a door, it might jerk for a second before opening, but then continue flawlessly. When I look in the console it DOES show loading non pre-cached files, but it doesn't slow down the game to 3fps like it did that other time. It doesn't get in the way, and it does it at high quality as well. I think that's a normal thing. But there is still no explanation to the "once in a blue moon" death of the framerate in the game.

[macgeek2005]

You know, I just remembered, I forgot to tell you guys a rather interesting and annoying thing about my replacement Mac Pro. It had a loose screw inside when I got it. I shook it around, and then it stopped moving, so I ignored it.

Then the upper optical drive wouldn't open. When the piece of metal moved down, it hit something, not allowing the drive to open. I knew it had to be the screw.

I unplugged the computer and took it out to the middle of the room, and shined a bright light to the front. I saw this tiny tiny screw sitting there, trapped in an area which was unaccesable from anywhere. Using a toothpick, I could move it around throught the holes in the front, but because I couldn't take off the drive door piece, I couldn't get at it from the inside.

At this point the optical drives were both out and unplugged of course, to give myself full access to the area.

I decided to take my chances and push the screw backward, away from the front. I heard it bounce and land somewhere else. Now I couldn't find it. 10 minutes later I finally found it, and it was now in another unaccessable area not far from it's previous location. It was still in the drive door area, just lower down, and in a tube like area. This place had holes in it, big enough for the screw to get through, but not nearly big enough for fingers, or even a screwdriver, to get in there and take it out.

This is the part that's gonna freak some of you out, but I swear, theres is nothing wrong with my computer, nothing is damaged, so it obviously did no harm.

I took a magnet.

I used the magnet thing from my iSight, you know, the magnet holder, that I use to put it on top of my ACD.

I removed the hard drives from the computer, and laid them on the floor a few feet away from the computer.

I took the magnet, and lunged it toward the screw as fast as I could. The screw flew out of the one of the holes, and I pulled out as quickly as possible. The whole time the magnet was inside the computer was probably less than a second.

I took a look at the screw, and found that it belonged on the inside of one of the drive flaps. The piece that moves up and down when the drive opens has 2 screws on the inside. Theres a total of 4 screws in there, 2 on each drive flap. I got a screwdriver that worked with that screw, laid the tower down on it's face so I would have gravity's help, and screwed it back in.

I was gonna call apple and complain, but I never did....

[jcee]

Originally Posted by macgeek2005

You know, I just remembered, I forgot to tell you guys a rather interesting and annoying thing about my replacement Mac Pro. It had a loose screw inside when I got it. I shook it around, and then it stopped moving, so I ignored it.

Then the upper optical drive wouldn't open. When the piece of metal moved down, it hit something, not allowing the drive to open. I knew it had to be the screw.

I unplugged the computer and took it out to the middle of the room, and shined a bright light to the front. I saw this tiny tiny screw sitting there, trapped in an area which was unaccesable from anywhere. Using a toothpick, I could move it around throught the holes in the front, but because I couldn't take off the drive door piece, I couldn't get at it from the inside.

At this point the optical drives were both out and unplugged of course, to give myself full access to the area.

I decided to take my chances and push the screw backward, away from the front. I heard it bounce and land somewhere else. Now I couldn't find it. 10 minutes later I finally found it, and it was now in another unaccessable area not far from it's previous location. It was still in the drive door area, just lower down, and in a tube like area. This place had holes in it, big enough for the screw to get through, but not nearly big enough for fingers, or even a screwdriver, to get in there and take it out.

This is the part that's gonna freak some of you out, but I swear, theres is nothing wrong with my computer, nothing is damaged, so it obviously did no harm.

I took a magnet.

I used the magnet thing from my iSight, you know, the magnet holder, that I use to put it on top of my ACD.

I removed the hard drives from the computer, and laid them on the floor a few feet away from the computer.

I took the magnet, and lunged it toward the screw as fast as I could. The screw flew out of the one of the holes, and I pulled out as quickly as possible. The whole time the magnet was inside the computer was probably less than a second.

I took a look at the screw, and found that it belonged on the inside of one of the drive flaps. The piece that moves up and down when the drive opens has 2 screws on the inside. Theres a total of 4 screws in there, 2 on each drive flap. I got a screwdriver that worked with that screw, laid the tower down on it's face so I would have gravity's help, and screwed it back in.

I was gonna call apple and complain, but I never did....

it's as if I was there :o

[derekn]

Originally Posted by macgeek2005

It had a loose screw inside when I got it.

Has it shown any other signs of mental instability?

[macgeek2005]

Originally Posted by derekn

Has it shown any other signs of mental instability?

[jamil5454]

macgeek, Doom 3 and Quake 4 run on the same engine, so it is likely a problem with the game itself, not the Mac Pro. It wouldn't be the first time a port of a highly successful PC game has a few problems.

[macgeek2005]

Originally Posted by jamil5454

macgeek, Doom 3 and Quake 4 run on the same engine, so it is likely a problem with the game itself, not the Mac Pro. It wouldn't be the first time a port of a highly successful PC game has a few problems.

It didn't have the problem on my G4 tower. I think it's a Mac Pro thing that will be fixed in the future by either Leopard, or some other update of sorts.

[taogo]

Just let you know I received a new mac last monday and it works great so far.

[macgeek2005]

Originally Posted by taogo

Just let you know I received a new mac last monday and it works great so far.

You got a new Mac Pro last monday, and it playes Doom 3 and Quake 4 great? Or did you mean it works in general?

[taogo]

Sorry, I have no answer. I use the machine as my own workstation, mainly for developing softwares (including testing) and scientific visulization, not for game or graphic designing.