[scorpion8]

Hello, I wanted to ask about a problem I am having with my MacBook Air 11" ...it is equipped with an Intel HD 3000, problem is that I have horrible screen tearing in 3 of my games: Quake 4, Doom 3 and UT2004 ...those are the only games (from my 20+ games) where I cannot turn on vsync no matter what I do.

I am very new to the world of "Mac" and since there is no settings screen for the video card I wanted to ask how can I PERMANENTLY turn ON vsync in my system (since turning vsync through console in games does not work).

I kindly ask to help me out as a newbie ...in simple steps if possible

Thank you in advance

[andi*pandi]

Hi Scorpion,
I'm not sure how to fix your problem... it might be the vid card or perhaps our gamers can help.

[P]

I think that what you are looking for is an override in the driver to force games to turn certain features on - in your case vsync. This is common in nVidia and AMD drivers for Windows. There are no such overrides in Mac OS X - the games control which features they expose.

It may be possible to hack each game using the console or preference files. Try googling each game (e.g. force vsync Doom 3) to see how. My googling seems to indicate that vsync is supposed to be locked on in Doom 3 and Quake 4, but it can't hurt to check.

[sek929]

Actually having vsync enabled puts and extra amount of stress on your video card. If your integrated card can't reliably output the required frames per second to keep up with your monitors refresh rate then vsync on or off will make no difference.

Knowing what kind of FPS you are getting in a game like Doom 3 would be a good place to start, if you can't get the FPS up to what the refresh rate of your monitor is then you either have to lower settings or just deal with shearing.

Vsync is most useful when a machine is displaying a FPS much higher than the refresh rate, I have a sneaking suspicion the integrated graphics in your MBA simply aren't up to the task.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally Posted by sek929 

Actually having vsync enabled puts and extra amount of stress on your video card. If your integrated card can't reliably output the required frames per second to keep up with your monitors refresh rate then vsync on or off will make no difference.

Knowing what kind of FPS you are getting in a game like Doom 3 would be a good place to start, if you can't get the FPS up to what the refresh rate of your monitor is then you either have to lower settings or just deal with shearing.

Vsync is most useful when a machine is displaying a FPS much higher than the refresh rate, I have a sneaking suspicion the integrated graphics in your MBA simply aren't up to the task.

This is, unfortunately the case. One of the tradeoffs of getting a light, tiny computer is the horrid integrated video card. Maybe someday Apple will start including the PowerVR from the iPad in it's low end macs, but I wouldn't count on it.

[P]

Originally Posted by King Bob On The Cob 

This is, unfortunately the case. One of the tradeoffs of getting a light, tiny computer is the horrid integrated video card. Maybe someday Apple will start including the PowerVR from the iPad in it's low end macs, but I wouldn't count on it.

Apple can't integrate anything but what Intel delivers. They can obviously add any discrete graphics that they like, but a) that takes space that could be used for battery, and b) if they did so, there are much better options that PowerVR.

Apple's options are, pretty much:

1) Intel integrated graphics. They're pushing HARD to get Intel to update them. Ivy Bridge includes one rather big update (performance increase by about 50%) and Haswell more than doubles again in the top model. This is likely what they're doing.

2) Switch to AMD, Llano and soon Trinity. This gives better graphics but much worse CPU. Trinity seems to be a decent chip - 35W 2.3 GHz "quadcore" with 3 GHz turbo - but it's no Sandy bridge.

3) Discrete graphics. Which could be incredibly powerful, but as we said, eats space that could be used for battery

Personally I think that Ivy Bridge has secured Intel's space in the MBA, and that Haswell will make discrete graphics a BTO option all throughout the MBP series.