[iREZ]

Just wondering if anybody has used Halo on a G4 iBook, and if so how many fps did you get, basically what I want to know is if its worth buyin for my iBook? I have a 800MHz 640MB.

[bleee]

Originally posted by iREZ:
Just wondering if anybody has used Halo on a G4 iBook, and if so how many fps did you get, basically what I want to know is if its worth buyin for my iBook? I have a 800MHz 640MB.

Your Kidding right?

[dracoleb]

well it has been reported that Halo runs much faster than expected and the machines even below the min have had good experiences

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by dracoleb:
well it has been reported that Halo runs much faster than expected and the machines even below the min have had good experiences

I think you mean much SLOWER than expected. I have a dual 2GHz G5/radeon 9800 and the performance is unimpressive even on it. See the Halo thread in the Games forum for details.

[Zoc]

Originally posted by Arkham_c:
I think you mean much SLOWER than expected. I have a dual 2GHz G5/radeon 9800 and the performance is unimpressive even on it. See the Halo thread in the Games forum for details.

Didn't I read that Halo was slower than expected on high-spec machines, but faster than expected on low-spec machines? The devs have said that the game is heavily gpu-bound and that the speed of the cpu is largely irrelevant. The difference between a G5 and G4 is therefore largely irrelevant, it's all down to the video card.

However, with a newer gpu, such as the 9600 and 9800 in the G5's, Halso kicks in vertex and pixel shaders. Problem being that even the latest cards are still quite slow with shaders enabled. The upshot is that Halo without shaders, on an old card, can often be faster than on a new card, with shaders.

In any case, I've already bought the game, and my G4 iBook 640mb should be here in four or so business days. I'll let you know.

[jinubob81]

choppy during loading points (as opposed to say an xbox) on a 933mhz G4. Like you said, it's all about the video card.

I'm hoping that the extra ram will help you though. i have yet to load more ram.

let us know how it goes.

[iREZ]

It's not like I'm using my iBook as a pure gaming machine, I really love playing Halo on x-box and I dont plan on playing with the highest settings and such, just wanted to know if I could run the game on my iBook. It's not all about eye candy, fun factor has alot to do with games too.

[bimmerphile]

check out the halo timedemos on xlr8yourmac.com. I sent my iBook G4 timedemos to Mike.

ibook G4 + Halo = the suck

[iREZ]

So what you're saying is dont buy Halo or my iBook. Anybody else have anything to add before I cry myself to sleep tonite.

[dracoleb]

If you really want to play halo get an XBox. The PC version sux compared to it, even on a machine that does run it well, I don't think it will be much better on the Mac. Mac for work, XBox for play

[Lateralus]

As the xlr8yourmac benchmarks show, Halo has a serious problem with Radeon cards under OS X. My system, at a mere 933MHz but with a GF4MX runs Halo incredibly well at 1024x768. Yet my friends 867MHz machine with a Radeon 9000 runs the game terribly even though the Radeon 9000 is more powerful than my GF4MX.

[smic]

ok well i got a 700mhz g3 with 32mb radeon
and halo runs decently enough for me, im not a big gamer, and before i had an imac with a crap video card
but i was amazed halo ran at all on it, to me it ran better then ghost recon on the ibook

thats my take on it, its fun to play, some slowdown when there was alot of stuff happening in the game, not to noticable to me

[iREZ]

Well I was thinkin bout buyin the 12 inch pb, and after hearing this I'm wanting one more and more, maybe a trade up is in order but only after I hear what Mr. Jobs has in store for us on Jan 6.

Thanks ya guys

[Luca Rescigno]

Given that nVidia cards are currently spanking ATI cards in Halo, a 12" PowerBook would probably be pretty good since it has the nVidia GeForce FX5200 Mobility. Not a very fast card, a bit better than a GeForce 4MX, but it should still run Halo well. I hope that ATI will eventually come out with a driver update (perhaps it'll be included with 10.3.3 or later) to rectify this situation, but don't count on it.

[Lateralus]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
I hope that ATI will eventually come out with a driver update (perhaps it'll be included with 10.3.3 or later) to rectify this situation, but don't count on it.

I'd expect a patch from Bungie before I would expect a driver release from ATI. Because frankly, this is Bungies/MacSofts fault. It's up to the game developers to make sure that their engines run well on supplied drivers, not the other way around.

More over, ATIs OS X drivers are already excellent and far better than nVidias, IMO. Expecting ATI to go even further to fix a problem that is not even their fault when they have already worked as hard on our drivers as they have is... eh.

[HotSoup]

When I updated to 10.3.2. I saw some graphic performance boost on my 867 (and now dated, GeForce 3 64 MB). Love Halo all you want, I think Gearbox did a horrible port of it to PC and Mac. Hopefully an update will fix this.

[bleee]

Originally posted by HotSoup:
When I updated to 10.3.2. I saw some graphic performance boost on my 867 (and now dated, GeForce 3 64 MB). Love Halo all you want, I think Gearbox did a horrible port of it to PC and Mac. Hopefully an update will fix this.

I couldn't agree more, the game requires a 3.0Ghz P4 and Radeon 9800 to run flawlessly, I tried it on a Athlon 2600XP 512MB RAM with an Nvidia GeForce4 4200 and a Dual P3 733 with a Radeon 9000 both ran like ass. All this for an old game. Microsoft seems to some how bastardize anything that they touch.

[antisonne]

Um... what are you guys talking about? I have a g3 800 mhz iBook with 640 ram, It runs Halo fine, wether in a mulitplayer game or not, all at highest settings...

I think the 512 l2 cache is paying off. Sucks for all you guys, cause it runs fine for me!

[ebolla]

quote
"Um... what are you guys talking about? I have a g3 800 mhz iBook with 640 ram, It runs Halo fine, wether in a mulitplayer game or not"

i second that-
i run halo on my G3 800mhz iBook 640MB with no complaints
i even use airport when playing multiplayer
i do set all the eye candy settings to the lowest

it plays fine

[antisonne]

Yeah, and the funny thing is I just read that it needs a g4 to run, and I still run it at all the highest settings (texture wise, I keep resolution down)...