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gaara · Mar 19, 2006, 04:45 AM

What kind of framerates are you guys getting on your macbooks? I've got a 2ghz, with 1Gig of ram model and I'm only getting 25-30ish..However, I've been reading online people with equivalent imac's getting anywhere from 40-80fps per second. I wouldn't think there would be such a huge gap. Anyone else getting better performance?

explosivpotato · Mar 19, 2006, 05:11 AM

have you updated to the universal binary? if not, that would explain the gap. Try updating it to the latest version. You'll get MUCH better framerates. that is, unless you're running all full. even the mighty mbp might not be able to deal with 512 mb of textures and fsaa/aa. what settings are you running?

gaara · Mar 19, 2006, 12:03 PM

Yeah, I am using the universal version--at least it says (Universal) on the get info of the application icon!

I've got the shaders stuff turned off and the terrain distance set to 50% and everything else set to max. The odd thing is even if I turn everything down except the resolution(lowest fsaa and 1440x900--I havn't even tried turning this down, because scaling down on LCD's looks awful) it doesn't make much of a difference. Oh, and this is the same whether i'm plugged in or not.

gaara · Mar 19, 2006, 12:33 PM

Actually, I just scaled the resolution down to 800x600 just for the heck of it, and there were no improvements in the FPS. So odd...Isn't this ussually a sign of a CPU limitation?

jamil5454 · Mar 19, 2006, 12:39 PM

Sounds like the video card isn't the bottleneck. What's your V-sync set to?

gaara · Mar 19, 2006, 12:50 PM

The vsync was turned on--I just turned it off and wow...much higher frame rates. Why was that making it slowdown so much?

JKT · Mar 19, 2006, 01:33 PM

V-sync caps the frame rate to the refresh rate of the screen which gives smoother looking playback. If there is a discrepancy between the fps and the rate at which the screen is filled, you can get "tearing" of the image.

jamil5454 · Mar 20, 2006, 12:55 AM

Originally Posted by gaara

The vsync was turned on--I just turned it off and wow...much higher frame rates. Why was that making it slowdown so much?

Keep V-Sync on while you're playing for real. If you want to brag about your framerate and such then turn it off but you'll get tearing.

SShoot3r · Mar 20, 2006, 02:23 AM

how do u determine ur framerates in wow?

littlegreenspud · Mar 20, 2006, 03:06 PM

Control-r

SShoot3r · Mar 21, 2006, 02:37 AM

with vsync on im gettin 30 average fps max with a 1.9ghz imac G5. With it off i get around 40 average. Although i believe i need more ram.

Tuoder · Mar 21, 2006, 02:59 AM

More RAM is always good. On MBPs you get diminishing returns on your investment starting at 1GB-1.256GB, but if you multitask alot, you may even want to go higher than that.

Fusion · Mar 21, 2006, 12:27 PM

If the idea of VSync is to lock the framerate to that of the refresh rate of the monitor, why do people only get 30fps? Shouldn't it be 60 then? Or is the MBP just not able to handle that amount?

JKT · Mar 21, 2006, 01:24 PM

If you think about it, 60fps might not be achievable at all times, thus you would have the same problem of less than ideal visuals. 30fps is probably more achievable at all times and (most likely) is half the refresh rate. It would therefore still be in sync with the display (only it skips every other fill) and therefore still looks smooth.