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keysersoze · Nov 24, 2002, 01:47 AM

Hi guys.

I have a favor to ask. For those of you with new 1GHz Tibooks who also own Return to Castle Wolfenstein, I was hoping to get some frames per second(fps) benchmarks from you.

You see, I have noticed a ridiculous difference in frame rate between the OS X and OS 9 version of the game. Such a vast difference it's making me wonder whether my system is "normal."

For continuity's sake, just set the video settings to the defaults that were in place when you installed the game. Also make sure to install it in both OS X and OS 9. Then, play the first level of single player mode. To look at the fps you are getting, bring down the console with the "~" key, and type "/cg_drawfps 1" without the quotation marks.

For OS X, I am only getting about 20-30 fps. But for OS 9, I'm getting almost 80! Is anyone else getting the same results??? On my Powermac 867 Quicksilver, the numbers are very very close across the two operating systems... Strange.

Thanks to all who reply!

caseygittings · Nov 24, 2002, 02:49 AM

I have a 1ghz powerbook I seem to be getting 15 average fps and I have 1gig of ram and I have it on the highest settings. With a resolution of 800x600. This doesnt seem to great.

seanyepez · Nov 24, 2002, 03:44 AM

Not to sound hostile, but until someone's able to come up with a standardized benchmark for Wolfenstein, all these numbers mean nothing.

Lightmap lighting severely limits framerate. 32-bit color also puts additional load onto the GPU. Run the game with the "Normal" settings and execute a "timedemo" or something like that.

dvd · Nov 24, 2002, 04:48 AM

yo sean, how man fps do you get in q3? got some "l337" settings that'll make it fast and look ok?

claughery · Nov 24, 2002, 06:38 AM

1024x768 32bit I am getting like 40-60 fps...

photoeditor · Nov 24, 2002, 10:27 AM

If there's such a huge difference between OS X and OS 9 on the new Powerbook, and not on anything else, might we not infer that someone up at ATI hasn't gotten around to finishing the OS X drivers for the Mobility Radeon 9000?

CheesePuff · Nov 24, 2002, 12:27 PM

Originally posted by photoeditor:
If there's such a huge difference between OS X and OS 9 on the new Powerbook, and not on anything else, might we not infer that someone up at ATI hasn't gotten around to finishing the OS X drivers for the Mobility Radeon 9000?

They havn't. Both the Radeon 9000 on the Power Mac G4 and the Radeon 9000 Mobility on the PowerBook G4 use the old 8500 driver.

MacRooster · Nov 24, 2002, 01:45 PM

Hi CheesePuff,

Any idea where we can find more out about this? Do you know if they're available for OS 9, but not for X, or is it that OS X is very picky about its drivers and underperforms without 'em?

How do we get hold of OS X video driver updates for TiBooks - are they supposed to be intelligently downloaded as part of the software updates?

ATI's site suggests that laptop manufacturers will make drivers suited to their own models available when ready. But how does Apple handle this nowadays? It doesn't look like display drivers can be downloaded on their own, so does Apple make it known when such drivers are included for specific cards in general system updates?

Thanks