Hi, I just have some questions concerning drivers and game performance of some games.
I used to have a pc, and I had Omega Drivers installed. Is it worth it to install the drivers on my MBP? How much better performance should I expect.
Also, I would like to confirm how well Ghost Recon:Advanced Warfighter, and its sequel perform under my MBP specs with default drivers.
I haven't tried the Omega drivers, but I have tried the hacked 162.18 drivers via LaptopVideo2Go and haven't noticed a bit of difference in any way, shape, or form (I'm still having problems with Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, for example). It's possible that they're not doing anything other than giving me additional FSAA overrides. Anyway, I played GRAW about a month ago, and the best I could do was 1440x900 with medium texture settings. IMHO, Apple has a long way to go on their drivers.
Cheers for the info! I really appreciate it. I just want to know how well GRAW performs before buying it and finding out it it runs at 10 fps. I guess I'll stick with GRAW for the time being, and not venture anywhere near GRAW2.
Edit:According to the demo I am under recommended specs, which should mean good performance on medium settings and to make sure I'll try it on lower res.
Edit2:Its done now...stuffit is taking awfully long to unpack it.
Err...I need more help now.
I recently got Oblivion, which is great. I installed it on my Mac partition through Macdrive, and updated it to the latest patch and it crashes to desktop with the "Application has encountered an error" or something like that...is it because I installed it on my Mac partition?
That is a very likely explanation, I don't think Windows binaries can run from a HFS partion.
Hmmm but Rome Total War works fine when I installed it on my Mac partition.
Edit:OK, instead I moved DW4 to my Mac partition and it works...but Oblivion doesn't.
I had GRAW running on my iMac (2.0 core duo, 2 GB RAM, 256 MB ATi graphics card) with all the game updates and it didnt run to well. According to the specifications on the box i should be able to run the game with full graphics but mid graphics was all i could muster without severe lag, also i had a problem with the sound cracking. Now the good news, i bought one the new MBP with core 2 duo 2.4 GHZ, 4 GB RAM, 256 MB GeForce 8600M GT video card , default drivers. GRAW ran Flawless perfect sound, max'd graphics.
the GRAW2 demo is quite fun too... it takes some time to get back into the GR mood. and used to the rather appalling AI, buts its not too shabby.
I had GRAW running on my iMac (2.0 core duo, 2 GB RAM, 256 MB ATi graphics card) with all the game updates and it didnt run to well. According to the specifications on the box i should be able to run the game with full graphics but mid graphics was all i could muster without severe lag, also i had a problem with the sound cracking. Now the good news, i bought one the new MBP with core 2 duo 2.3 GHZ, 4 GB RAM, best GeForce card available, default drivers. GRAW ran Flawless biggrin.gif perfect sound, max'd graphics.
There are no "specifications on the box" that indicate whether or not you can run any game with everything maxed. By the way, the best MacBook Pro that you can buy is 2.4 GHz (you said 2.3 GHz, which sounds like the old model) and is equipped with a 256 MB GeForce 8600M GT--not the best GeForce card available by far (that honor belongs to the 8800 Ultra). You did not run the game with maxed graphics or perfect sound (unless you call not crackling "perfect") without driving your system into the ground--the 256 MB GeForce 8600M GT's limit in GRAW and GRAW 2 at the 15" MacBook Pro's native resolution of 1440x900 is medium texture quality, medium dynamic shadows, normal physics, no anti-aliasing, 4X anisotropic filtering, and everything else on high. Anything more, and your framerate will drop significantly below 30 fps. Snake, my guess is that you were probably running the game at 1024x768 or less, which should have looked stretched and extremely blurry. Apple's drivers are incorrectly reporting that the 8600M GT has 512 MB of VRAM in Windows, which is why you were even able to select high texture quality.
If you couldn't tell by what I wrote above, I just replayed both games. GRAW and GRAW 2's basic gameplay is a lot of fun. However, they're both extremely flawed games. Both GRAW and GRAW 2 feature the most abysmal AI I've ever seen--the pathfinding is downright horrendous, making the player constantly backtrack to "retrieve" his moronic team. Furthermore, enemy NPCs are unaware of people being shot right next to them, and friendly NPCs tend to loiter in front of deathtraps (like 50-cal machine gun emplacements--"Captain, I'm taking fire!"). Location-based damage is pathetic--you can kill a guy by shooting him once or twice in any non-lethal area (foot, arm, etc), or once in the head or torso. Despite this, the game can be very hard because of restrictive level boundaries, cheap enemy placement, and the fact that there's no way to replenish your health. When you combine that with incredibly sparse checkpoint saves, you'll be lucky if you don't experience the desire to chuck your monitor out the window at least two or three times throughout the course of the game. GRAW 2 makes things slightly easier by allowing you to duck behind solid cover (harder than it sounds) and quicksave by pressing the "K" key, but that doesn't help GRAW, where you'll wind up memorizing the locations of a couple dozen enemies as you mindlessly run through the same sections of the game over and over, ad nauseam.
That said, the game manages to be a lot of fun in many parts of the campaign. I'm a big tactical/scenario/milsim paintball player, and the feel of the weapons and the tactics that you need to use are pretty authentic. If they fix the damage modeling (making it SOF2-ish gruesome would be excellent), work a miracle with the AI, add quicksave/quickload, and write an exciting script for the singleplayer, this could be a strong contender for a "game of the year" title. They have the hard stuff down (the core mechanics)--once they nail the peripheral stuff, this'll be a series to remember fondly.
Except for the save system, I think that GRAW was slightly better overall. GRAW 2 . . . despite the better music (a nice surprise) feels like an expansion pack in that they didn't spend much time thinking about . . . well, anything. If you're a big GRAW fan, I think you'll enjoy it. Beware the last level, which suffers from moronic level design--they basically drop you down onto a skinny bridge, 150 yards away from three machine gun nests, an RPG guy, two snipers, and a couple of riflemen with only two school buses as (partial) cover. Yuuuck.
UPDATE:For some reason, GRAW and GRAW2 only work if installed in the XP partition. Pfffffftt....that means due to the bloody fact that I only made it 10 gigs, I can only play either GRAW or GRAW2.
So I settled on good ol' GRAW and I am actually proud of having a Macbook Pro...the graphics are amazing (well i prefer it with edge-blur or whatever you call it, not anti-aliasing). Looks so good...sniff...and I am getting really good frames-per-second as well. And I love the menu...I like listening to the music and watching the little movie.
So far I am still on the first mission (I am too scared of getting shot at) but I really enjoy the AI. Just tell them to follow you and they cover the right positions, warning me of rebels and doing a pretty good job.
Well, sometimes they do move to the worst positions, like in front of a building, rather than at the corner peeking out.
From the reviews, I hear GRAW has a better score than GRAW 2? And yes, the last mission of GRAW 2 sounds like something from a budget shooter.
Edit:I do like how when you load from a checkpoint, you get full-health again...but I wish they added a medic to make things easier for poor ol' me.
OH and another thing...does anyone else get the strange crackling sound that occur now and again, especially on the menu?
When i was saying my specifics for the MBP i was on my iMac and going by memory (i have updated my post to my real specifics), by best graphics card available i ment best card available to the macbook pro at time of purchase (about 1.5 months ago). The cracking sound was on the iMac not on the MBP i had 1440x900 resolution with high textures and shadows, obviously no physics card cause you cant get those in a MBP. i do admit not having antialiasing turned on or anistrophic filtering but that is because i haven't updated GRAW on my MBP, you cannot use those features until you update the game.
Err...sorry to bug you guys again, but is it just me or is anyone receiving really bad performance on Rainbow Six Vegas. I had everything on medium, lowest res, motion blur on and HDR on (because turning it off makes everything pixelated).
Can you format your HD so that you can run both the MacOS and Windows apps?- I assume not. In Disk Utility if you choose Master Boot Record (for Windows) could you install a MacOS on it?- I assume not.
When I was using Virtual PC I had Windows apps located on one of my Mac partitions. They were Flash programs and they seemed to run ok, but that was Virtual PC and Flash might be different than binaries.
What are the Omega Drivers for?
They're hacked-up versions of the official drivers that allegedly expose options for better quality or better performance.
Hmmm if I still got the drivers will it interfere with boot camp in general? I've heard of people getting Omega Drivers for boot camp.
Edit:Oh well I'm getting it anyway to see if performance for R6 improves.