[JustinD]

Buying Halo for my G5, I thought that I would be in for a real treat. I loved the version on Xbox, even though I was extremely ticked to see it exclusively available under the MS banner. I got home and threw it into my machine:

Dual 2.0 GHz G5
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
2GB RAM
2x250GB HD
17" Samsung widescreen LCD running at 1280x786

I was greeted with the worst frame rates ever! Sure, it looked beautiful with all the settings on and maxed out, but it was bordering on unplayable. I was really disappointed, since when running Unreal 2003 I get absolutely fantastic frame rates, with all graphical options maxed out AND 2x FSAA!

Bungie includes a Read Me detailing the various graphics options, but following that, I really wasn't getting anywhere - if I changed the shader type for example, the frame rate would be great, but the game just lost a lot visual appeal.

After around 2 hours of testing, I found that the following settings changes make the game great, at least on my machine. These changes are made at the initial startup screen, before the actual program starts up:

- Leave shaders on Pixel + Vertex, but UNCHECK Detail Objects
- Set FSAA to 2x Sampling
- Set Lens Flare to Low
- Set Model Detail to Medium

Then once the game loads up, in the Video options:

- Set Frame Rate to VSYNC
- Turn the rest of the graphic options to the max

And in the Audio settings:

- Max out any Audio options you want

Those settings allow for using the Pixel & Vertex shaders available via the Radeon 9800 Pro, but keep the frame rate up there.

The key setting turned out to be the one that Bungie recommends you DO NOT change: the Model Detail. By kicking this down a single level from High to Medium, the frame rate soars even with every graphical option turned on and up including Shadows and Specular effects. Bungie says that changing the Model Detail can result in graphical glitches in the onscreen characters, but I haven't seen a single glitch yet.

For a bigger boost in just frame rate, leave the 2x FSAA sampling off. You can also max out the Audio options with no visible hit to frame rate.

Hope that helps anyone with a high-end machine getting crappy performance from this fabulous game.

[bimmerphile]

sweet man! You just saved me hours of time!

Much appreciated!

-Kris

[THE MAC GOD]

On my friends PC, I've found that switching to 640x480 boosts framerates a LOT even with using the -use20 command (absolute max detail). The higher the resolution, the crappier the FR. And FR is king.

[RevEvs]

FYI: On a Dual G5, but with the Radeon 9600, you can max out the detail and audio, but turn it to Pixel Shaders only, FSAA off, lens flare to low, and model detail to medium. That will give a very nice playable FPS.
BTW, this is with the max resolution (1280*whatever), everything set to high.

revs

[RevEvs]

Just for kicks i ran it on my iBook 500/66 (320MB RAM).

Unfortunately it crashed as it was writing the results to the text file. But seemed like it was getting around 2fps max. This was with everything set as low as possible and none of the textures were able to load

yep, i had time to waste

revs

[Luca Rescigno]

Look at the performance reports at XLR8 Your Mac. It looks like nVidia cards are kicking the ATI cards in the ass! A dual G5 w/ Radeon 9600 lost (by a LOT) to an 800 MHz G4 with a GeForce 4 Titanium. In many cases the nVidia cards are better than the ATI cards.

My brother's 867 MHz Quicksilver w/ Radeon 9000 was slower than a friend's 933 MHz Quicksilver w/ GeForce 4MX, despite the fact that the Radeon 9000 is a better video card than the GeForce 4MX.

[macenthusiast]

isn't that because the Nvidia cards don't support some of the shaders and things that halo offers. So less to put do, better framerates?

[oranjdisc]

Hell yeah! Thanks for the tip. I have an identical config to yours, and setting Halo to the specs you posted resulted in a noticeable improvement in game play. I had FSAA turned off when I first got Halo, but it looks perfect now (could be due to the new ATI drivers in 10.3.2). At any rate, thanks for taking the time to post that.

[jango]

I have both the pc version and mac and on my g5 turning of vsync increases framerates dramatically. It is the same on the pc..vsync kills framerates.

[THE MAC GOD]

Keep it at 30.

[a2daj]

You can keep the model detail on high. Detail Objects doesn't affect framerates that much either. However, Lens Flare is a huge performance hit due to how OpenGL deals with them. I also turn off Shadows and Specular. Shadows are always a big performance hit no matter what the game and rarely do you ever notice them in the thick of battle. Specular just makes shiny things a little more shiny. No loss there. I have a dual 1.2 G4 (Quicksilver) with a Radeon 9800 Pro and I can crank everything else up.

Oh, Westlake Interactive and MacSoft did the readme. Not Bungie. They basically just gave the Mac port a stamp of approval.

[Macnerd]

Thanks for the info guys - My mac is same spec (almost) and I was disappointed with the performance of Halo. Time to set it up!

[JustinD]

Just to update this thread... lots of good info from everyone. I'm going to play with that lens flare amount to try and squeeze more out of it. I had posted those settings stating that they were optimal, since they seem to give the best frame rate while keeping the game looking as Bungie 'intended', specular and all.

Also, remember to update your system! When I updated using the included ATI patch on the Halo CD, then upped to OS X 10.3.2, the game played even better.

[dennis88]

Originally posted by JustinD:
Just to update this thread... lots of good info from everyone. I'm going to play with that lens flare amount to try and squeeze more out of it. I had posted those settings stating that they were optimal, since they seem to give the best frame rate while keeping the game looking as Bungie 'intended', specular and all.

Also, remember to update your system! When I updated using the included ATI patch on the Halo CD, then upped to OS X 10.3.2, the game played even better.

I have upgraded to 10.3.2, but I didn't install the ati drivers from the halo cd before the update to 10.3.2.
The new ati drivers in 10.3.2 is not "older" or less good than the ati drivers on the halo cd, right?

[Hydra]

I have a dual 2.0 G5/OEM9800 and a funny thing I noticed is that when I put AA to 2x's I get a drop in fps then if I put it up to 5x's it goes back up to nearly identical fps w/o any AA. Go figure. I can see the improvement with 2x's and 5x's is much prettier so I know they are working. I ran the demo at 1280x800 (widescreen) and w/o any AA at all it was something like 27 fps, 2x's was 24.7 and 5x's it went back up to 26.8 (these numbers are approximations as I don't have my G5 in front of me now but they are very close and I did them a few times and got the same results).

-Jerry C.

[AlphaQuam]

What's the console command to get the framerate display on and off? Are there any other useful console commands?

Thanks for all the tips... I'll try this out later tonight.

[Hydra]

Originally posted by AlphaQuam:
What's the console command to get the framerate display on and off? Are there any other useful console commands?

Thanks for all the tips... I'll try this out later tonight.

~ to get console and then type "rasterizer_fps 1" to get a running fps counter.

-Jerry C.

[tumblemonster]

I'm interested in console commands too. The game is too slow. I'm used to playing quake at a custom speed, and the old Duke 3d. Halo feels like pong. It's painful. Are there any other commands? And why the hell isn't there a run modifier!?

-tm

[jedi1yoda1]

Quote:

I have a dual 2.0 G5/OEM9800 and a funny thing I noticed is that when I put AA to 2x's I get a drop in fps then if I put it up to 5x's it goes back up to nearly identical fps w/o any AA. Go figure. I can see the improvement with 2x's and 5x's is much prettier so I know they are working. I ran the demo at 1280x800 (widescreen) and w/o any AA at all it was something like 27 fps, 2x's was 24.7 and 5x's it went back up to 26.8 (these numbers are approximations as I don't have my G5 in front of me now but they are very close and I did them a few times and got the same results).

-Jerry C.

___

The ATI9800 pro only supports up to 4x FSAA (i think, not entirely sure). If so, turning FSAA up to 5x would be the equivalent of turning it off.

Anyone with a 23" Cinema Display able to run it at 1600x1200? I was very disappointed when I turned all the options up all the way with this resolution and my DPG52.0 and 9800 that I was only getting 1fps. I can't turn the resolution above 1280x800 or else the graphics go terrible bad (i get big white artifacts around every moving object.)

[mac freak]

The Radeon 9800 Pro supports up to 6X FSAA (at least on the PC).
I've never seen 5X, though

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

God this is what I HATE about computer games, I just want to stick the game in and go and not have to worry that I am not getting the most frames for my system.

[Hydra]

Originally posted by mac freak:
The Radeon 9800 Pro supports up to 6X FSAA (at least on the PC).
I've never seen 5X, though

The choices I get in the Halo Start-up dialog for FSAA are OFF,2x,4x,5x,6x, and 9x's. And yes each successive one of them looks better and better. I thought I might be imagining things so I showed my brother who is an MIT grad and does work in 3-D engine programing and he notes the AA is working as well. He's not sure why the 5x would be faster than 2x except there might be a driver bug.

-Jerry C.

[ScotHamedia]

Originally posted by Hydra:
~ to get console and then type "rasterizer_fps 1" to get a running fps counter.

-Jerry C.

Call me a dolt, but how do you get to the console, I have told it to use it in the startup of the game, but all I get is normal play, I see no special window.??

[bkendig]

The graphics system in PC Halo is completely different from the graphics system in Mac Halo. My understanding (from my own experience and from a video interview with the Mac Halo developers on insidemacgames.com) is that the PC Halo uses much of the same graphics code as Xbox Halo; since the Xbox runs at 640x480, the PC graphics aren't optimized for higher resolutions and therefore look and perform worse. The Mac Halo graphics system was entirely rewritten, and therefore looks and runs a whole lot better.

Keep in mind that the G5/2.0 has a different graphics card (ATI Radeon 9800 Pro) in it than the 1.6 and 1.8 G5's (which have an nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra). Therefore, the optimal settings for a G5/2.0 will be different from the optimal settings on the other two G5's.

Me, I hit a problem with Halo crashing as soon as it tried to load the second level on my G5/1.8 (Mac OS 10.3.2). I figured out that the problem was the Rendering Pipeline setting in the game's initial dialog; things ran fine with it set to 'Vertex Shaders Only', but crashed every time with it set to 'Pixel + Vertex Shaders'. I asked about this on the insidemacgames.com board and indications are that the GeForce FX 5200 doesn't handle pixel shaders properly yet; it's a driver issue.

[roders]

I think ones Multisampling and ones uses Supersampling, one is more more GPU intensive and the other less so.

[Hydra]

Originally posted by ScottHaneda:
Call me a dolt, but how do you get to the console, I have told it to use it in the startup of the game, but all I get is normal play, I see no special window.??

You just get a line at the bottom that says HALO > or something liker it. Not special window.

-Jerry C.

[starman]

Originally posted by Disgruntled Head of C-3PO:
God this is what I HATE about computer games, I just want to stick the game in and go and not have to worry that I am not getting the most frames for my system.

Then stick to consoles.

Mike

[unihead]

OK, I'm jealous. You all seem to have Dual G5s with Radeon cards. I've got a dual 1Ghz G4 with a GeForce4MX and I was surprised when I loaded up Haalo and the much-praised spectacular graphics didn't eventuate. Sure, I can play, and it's a great game, but here was I thinking I still had a pretty good machine - unfortunately I get a game which looks about three years old in graphic quality --- sniff ...

[a2daj]

One good way to see which type of FSAA your card is using is to look at trees from a distance. If the leaves and branches are getting AA treatment, then your drivers are most likely using supersampling. If they are not affected, then it's multisampling.

Supersampling is much more bandwidth intensive so I believe it's limited to 1280x1024. Multisampling is limited to 1600x1200. It looks pretty nice at 6x, although it's a slide show with pixel shaders on.

[ColdPack]

I can't get past the first "chapter".... boom it dies. The whole game.
Anyone else having this issue?
CP

[bkendig]

Originally posted by ColdPack:
I can't get past the first "chapter".... boom it dies. The whole game.

You probably have a GeForce 5200 card. In the dialog which appears when you start the game, select Vertex Shading Only, not Pixel Shaders.

I hit this problem too, researched it, figured it out, and reported it and the solution to MacSoft, and they put it as the first question on their FAQ at http://www.macsoftgames.com/products...o-Support.html.

[CIA]

The kicker to this whole thread:
Bungie first showed Halo off at Macworld a few years back, before the Xbox was out, WAY before M$ bought bungie.
It ran great on a G4 using the old graphics cards.
It was supposed to be the game that brought back Mac Gaming!

[bkendig]

Originally posted by CIA:
Bungie first showed Halo off at Macworld a few years back,

Anyone know where I can find a copy of that old video? I'm curious whether the final product turned out to look anything like the initial vision.