Warcraft 3 and Mac Laptops.

[invaLPsion]

How do you think Warcraft 3 would run on LAN multiplayer on a 14 inch 1GHz iBook? 1GHz 12in powerbook? 1GHz 15 in powerbook?

Would there be a significant increase in and wualityframe rates on the 15 inch because of the 9600 mobility?

[CubeHacker]

I don't have an iBook or Powerbook, but I do have a 1.4ghz eMac and just recently finished Warcraft 3. Performance with all options set to medium is very good and 100% playable. However, as soon as I patch the game to the latest version, performance drops by like 25-50%! I really don't understand whats going on, but I was forced to complete the game using version 1.00 or else it ran rather choppy. Has anyone else noticed this?

Performance on either the iBook or Powerbook should be fine, as long as you don't patch.

[applekid]

Both machines are way above system requirements. I don't think any of them will have a problem.

I don't know about the patch problem. I know in the very early release and patches, there was a speed problem in OS X only. I think it was fixed a patch or two later.

[haiggy]

The iBooks are perfect :) I play TFT and it runs perfectly. It can get slow during fight scenes, but that is expected. Not anything serious enough to affect your game play.

[Rincewind42]

I don't have an iBook or Powerbook, but I do have a 1.4ghz eMac and just recently finished Warcraft 3. Performance with all options set to medium is very good and 100% playable. However, as soon as I patch the game to the latest version, performance drops by like 25-50%! I really don't understand whats going on, but I was forced to complete the game using version 1.00 or else it ran rather choppy. Has anyone else noticed this?

Performance on either the iBook or Powerbook should be fine, as long as you don't patch.

Dunno what's going wrong for you, but I'm running a 1Ghz TiBook with Radeon Mobility 9000/64MB and run with everything set on highest without issues.

I would imagine any recent PowerBook or iBook would run War3 great.

[invaLPsion]

Dunno what's going wrong for you, but I'm running a 1Ghz TiBook with Radeon Mobility 9000/64MB and run with everything set on highest without issues.

I would imagine any recent PowerBook or iBook would run War3 great.

That's what I thought until I played tower defense on an 800MHz iBook. It was only fluent when the graphics were set to 640 by 480 with everything at medium.

I had little doubts that the 15 inch Albook would play everything well, but I wasn't so sure about the 12 inch powerbook or the 14 inch iBook...

[Versello]

Running on a 12" PowerBook with 768 megs of RAM, the game chugs if you scroll around.

[CubeHacker]

Dunno what's going wrong for you, but I'm running a 1Ghz TiBook with Radeon Mobility 9000/64MB and run with everything set on highest without issues.

I would imagine any recent PowerBook or iBook would run War3 great.


I've noticed that on Mac forums, most people have very varied views of a game running "great". For some people, a steady 10fps is excellent, and for others, nothing below 30fps will do. I'm in the 2nd group - I like my gameplay silky smooth before I start turning options up. But not everyone is like that. For example, there were people who said that Halo runs "excellent" on their 800mhz G3 iBook. However, even on my 1.4ghz processor, Halo runs like a dog, even with all options at low - its nearly unplayable. Were those people lying about performance? Maybe. Or perhaps they just felt that the 10fps they got was stellar performance.

What am I getting at here? I'm just trying to say that its difficult to ask people how well a game runs, since its such a subjective opinion. When I say that War3 ran well on my comp, i mean it ran silky smooth, at 1024x768 with all options set to medium. Will it run just as well on a 1GHz iBook? Probably, but you will most likely have to lower the settings a bit. Unless of course you don't mind lower framerates.

As for the patching issue, I really wish I knew what was wrong. I first tried the demo on this computer, and it ran very well. When I went and purchased the full game, I installed it and patched it, and performance was noticeably worse. I didn't know what was wrong, but I was very upset. So I decided to reinstall the game, however this time I didn't patch, and guess what? It ran as smooth as the demo did. So i've held off patching the game until I can find out whats wrong. If anyone else is feeling brave, you can try reinstalling the game and not patching it, and see if performance is better.

[haiggy]

What am I getting at here? I'm just trying to say that its difficult to ask people how well a game runs, since its such a subjective opinion. When I say that War3 ran well on my comp, i mean it ran silky smooth, at 1024x768 with all options set to medium. Will it run just as well on a 1GHz iBook? Probably, but you will most likely have to lower the settings a bit. Unless of course you don't mind lower framerates.


You are exactly right. It is hard because everyone has different opinions.

[camobag]

I have a 15 alu with 768 ram and 1.25 processor and it runs...hmmm...well...BEAUTIFULLY!

[hob]

the last patch is several months old - i'm not sure they're gonna be releasing v. 1.15... EVER!

I'm running a PB 12" 1GHz, with only 256MB RAM (i will upgrade soon, student budget=tight!!) and likewise, the demo ran fine - then i bought it and i thought it was a little choppier than the demo, but until I read this post it hadnt really occurred to me to be a major problem...

The main thing to remember - laptops are rubbish for gaming...! (IMHO) Why? Because everything is smaller - the same spec desktop vs laptop is going to run very differently. E.g. - the eMacs they have at my college are the EXACT same spec - same graphics, ram etc. and they run much smoother than my pb does...

Hope that clears something up? :P

[QCassidy352]

Running on a 12" PowerBook with 768 megs of RAM, the game chugs if you scroll around.

:confused:
I have the same setup and it runs flawlessly unless it's a huge multiway battle (6+ players with large armies), and even then it just gets a bit choppy but is still very playable.

[crazzyeddie]

Warcraft 3 will run better on a faster machine. The 15" AlBook will smoke the iBook or 12" Powerbook because it has 64MB of VRAM and the card is faster. IMO, the iBook would be the next fastest machine because the 9200M is a better card than the 5200 2 Go in the 12" Powerbook.

So in order of speed just for Warcraft 3: 15" Powerbook, iBook, 12" Powerbook.

[Arkillion]

Heres how I would look at it since I bought my new computer mostly for this game and the future world of warcraft game. I used to play war3 on a dual 500mhz g4 with a radeon 8500, it was certainly playable and deffinitly fun. All the machines you have mentioned should do just as good and better. But if you want to get online and start playing with the big serious players you have to have mad control of whats going on in battles constantly. Micro-ing on my computer was impossible, I would really just watch the battle, I could use key commands to micro as best as I could but really nothing, being able to click on a unit, yeah right.... So I got my g5 and even still I have trouble microing like I mean it when the battles get big. So do you want to play for fun, or do you want to play to win?

[Versello]

:confused:
I have the same setup and it runs flawlessly unless it's a huge multiway battle (6+ players with large armies), and even then it just gets a bit choppy but is still very playable.

Hmmmm, yes I guess you could say it's *playable* but not very enjoyable to have it jitter around. Even with low settings and screen res it's very smooth.

[Chaszmyr]

I don't have an iBook or Powerbook, but I do have a 1.4ghz eMac and just recently finished Warcraft 3.

1.4ghz eMac? 3rd party processor upgrade?

[Urdam]

I agree

[invaLPsion]

I agree

What is up with you saying that on every single thing you post? :mad:

[QCassidy352]

Hmmmm, yes I guess you could say it's *playable* but not very enjoyable to have it jitter around. Even with low settings and screen res it's very smooth.

it's just not that bad! There's hardly any lag at all in big battles!

[sethypoo]

Warcraft 3 works great on my 12" PowerBook G4 rev. A (867Mhz, 640MB RAM).

[Anticipat3]

Here's a list of the machines I've played War3 on:

12" 867 Powerbook (geforce 4 go)
12" 800 iBook (radeon 7500)
15" 1Ghz iMac (15", Geforce4 MX)
1.8 G5, Radeon 9600

And my PC, 3Ghz, Radeon 9800 Pro.

The G5 and the PC both play it at full eye-candy with zero slowdowns, period. The other Macs... are not so good. The 12" iBook was hardly tolerable at all except at the lowest detail settings and 640x480, the 12" Powerbook wasn't much better... It would chop on all but the low settings, and was unusable in battles, the iMac was a little better... it ran "OK" under medium settings at 800x600.

Hate to say it, but Mac Laptops are poor for playing games. Get used to it, get over it. Get a PC Brick if you want to play games on a laptop... or, the better option, get a Mac laptop for computing, and either get a cheap PC or an Xbox for gaming. A modded Xbox is quite a sweet machine, and nearly every good PC title has been coming to Xbox recently.

[macboi1981]

the last patch is several months old - i'm not sure they're gonna be releasing v. 1.15... EVER!

I'm running a PB 12" 1GHz, with only 256MB RAM (i will upgrade soon, student budget=tight!!) and likewise, the demo ran fine - then i bought it and i thought it was a little choppier than the demo, but until I read this post it hadnt really occurred to me to be a major problem...

The main thing to remember - laptops are rubbish for gaming...! (IMHO) Why? Because everything is smaller - the same spec desktop vs laptop is going to run very differently. E.g. - the eMacs they have at my college are the EXACT same spec - same graphics, ram etc. and they run much smoother than my pb does...

Hope that clears something up? :P

One thing to remember is that the powerbooks will have slower harddrives than other macs including emacs. The typical harddrive speed in a powerbook is 4200 rpm while the desktops have 7200.

[virividox]

slows down about 6 players for me my specs in my sig

but its not unbearable

[benpatient]

yeah, what is up with the powerbook HD speeds?

PC laptops have offered 7200rpm drives for a good while now...on a 17" PB 5400 is the UPGRADE! what's up with that?

[Earendil]

yeah, what is up with the powerbook HD speeds?

PC laptops have offered 7200rpm drives for a good while now...on a 17" PB 5400 is the UPGRADE! what's up with that?

I don't know about 7200 being out "forever", but definitely large 7200's have not been out very long. The very first 60gig 7200 was only just released last month or so. Personally I went for the 4200rpm 80gig HD and that was 7 months ago...

And yeah, WC3 plays great on my system(see below) unless you get 8 players in it. And I have all details and textures maxed. Sometimes I get a bit of consistent lag, but logging out/in resets the ram and seems to fix that. I have a laptop so I never shut my baby down :D

[ZildjianKX]

Anyone tried it with the new 12" 1.33 GHz PBs yet? Just curious if it can run "smoothly" at 1024x768 with all the goodies maxed.

(It's a 2 year old game!)

[oingoboingo]

What am I getting at here? I'm just trying to say that its difficult to ask people how well a game runs, since its such a subjective opinion.

Exactly. Subjective opinions on game performance are hardly worth the pixels they're displayed on. Where ever possible, people should post FPS counts or timedemos, together with their system specs and game settings. It's the only way any type of meaningful statement on gaming performance can be made.

Of course not all games have a benchmarking or FPS-display mode. Does anyone know if WCIII can run a timedemo or benchmark?

[Other.au]

Would warcraft run faster on a new 120 gig 7200 rpm external firewire harddrive that on an old internal 30 gig laptop 667mhz harddrive?

[oingoboingo]

Anyone tried it with the new 12" 1.33 GHz PBs yet? Just curious if it can run "smoothly" at 1024x768 with all the goodies maxed.

(It's a 2 year old game!)

OK, I'm just about to disregard my own advice about posting subjective game performance comments. I can't find an easy way to benchmark WarCraft 3, so I resorted to just cranking all the detail settings on my 1.33GHz 12" PowerBook (see sig for specs) up to high, any optional features turned on, and the resolution at 1024x768, 32 bit colour. I started playing the single-player human campaign. The version of WCIII is 1.0 (ie: no patches, straight off the CD-ROM). My PowerBook is running OS X 10.3.4 with all the latest patches applied. Energy Settings were at 'Maximum CPU Performance', the system was running from AC power, and there were no other programs running apart from Finder.

Basically in the limited battles that you experience in the first few missions of the game (probably never more than 20 units visible at once fighting), the game ran smoothly and was very playable. I really didn't notice any problems with lagging or jerkiness. However, the cutscenes done with the in-game graphics engine are relatively jerky. They look like they're not being displayed at much more than about 10fps, if that. I guess the more zoomed in level of detail uses in the cutscenes is more taxing on the graphics system than the actual game itself.

Well, this probably isn't all that helpful. All I'm giving is yet another subjective opinion of game performance. If anyone has any good ideas on how to benchmark WCIII, please let me know and I'll do the test on my 1.33GHz 12" PowerBook.

[ZildjianKX]

OK, I'm just about to disregard my own advice about posting subjective game performance comments. I can't find an easy way to benchmark WarCraft 3, so I resorted to just cranking all the detail settings on my 1.33GHz 12" PowerBook (see sig for specs) up to high, any optional features turned on, and the resolution at 1024x768, 32 bit colour. I started playing the single-player human campaign. The version of WCIII is 1.0 (ie: no patches, straight off the CD-ROM). My PowerBook is running OS X 10.3.4 with all the latest patches applied. Energy Settings were at 'Maximum CPU Performance', the system was running from AC power, and there were no other programs running apart from Finder.

Basically in the limited battles that you experience in the first few missions of the game (probably never more than 20 units visible at once fighting), the game ran smoothly and was very playable. I really didn't notice any problems with lagging or jerkiness. However, the cutscenes done with the in-game graphics engine are relatively jerky. They look like they're not being displayed at much more than about 10fps, if that. I guess the more zoomed in level of detail uses in the cutscenes is more taxing on the graphics system than the actual game itself.

Well, this probably isn't all that helpful. All I'm giving is yet another subjective opinion of game performance. If anyone has any good ideas on how to benchmark WCIII, please let me know and I'll do the test on my 1.33GHz 12" PowerBook.

Hey thanks. That is exactly what I wanted to know :)

[osprey76]

You'll run well. I first played WC3 on my Gigabit Power Mac (2x450MHz) with a Radeon 8500 and is it was fine. Though, there were appreciable slow downs with a large group of units. Since I got my Dual 1300 MHz upgrade, I run it with nary a slow down at high resolution (800x600 or 1024x768, I forget which) with all of the options turned up to high. I didn't realize many of the animations I'd been missing. Also, now I can play the game with high framerates and listen to iTunes. Before it was one or the other. Interestingly, iTunes caused a fairly small performance hit after the 10.3 upgrade on the 450. Maybe they tweaked the processor tasking a bit.

[rbarris]

Warcraft III should definitely be patched to the most current version for best results, it wasn't until the 1.05 version that it was optimized to use the vertex_array_range OpenGL extension which is a major improvement in speed.

Further, OSX 10.3.4 has some texture download optimization that was done that may improve scrolling smoothness depending on which hardware you have. Specifically the game downloads a new version of the minimap's image periodically, this was causing a "hiccup" in scrolling prior to 10.3.3, that particular texture format handling has been AltiVec-optimized in 10.3.4.

[Ja Di ksw]

I have the new 1.5 GHz 15" with the upgraded memory card. Runs perfect, no problems

[Aciddan]

The very first 60gig 7200 was only just released last month or so.

Hmm, I think you are mistaken (though it might depend on your region's availability of those kinds of drives). The Dell M60 (mobile workstation with Quadra etc.) has had 7200 RPM drives for at least since the 1.7 Pentium Ms have been around: probably 6-9 months (probably more, but the guy that sits across from me got his about then).

I haven't posted in a while, methinks I need to start a new thread (I have a few gripes and need to vent - having a quote to fix an iBook 600 for $435 today doesn't help either...)

-- Dan

[MentalFabric]

It'll run fine, though for larger online games you may want to turn down a few settings... I used to run on an 800Mhz TiBook.

www.teamG5.com - mac W3 clan division, we'll help with all your mac-Warcrafting needs ;-)

[heaven]

Has anyone tried it with the 1.15 Patch? Did you notice some FPS improvements?

http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=mwr0642p

[benpatient]

7200 RPM laptop hard drives have been available for more than a year...and they have stayed a consistent 10-20% behind slower drives where capacity is concerned...in other words, if the biggest 5400rpm drive was 80gb, then the biggest 7200rpm drive was 60.

you'll have a hard time finding a 7200 rpm laptop HD that is less than 40gb, because they are only intended for hihg-end machines, and those users usually need the higher storage space anyway.

dell and hp already have previous generation laptops with 7200rpm spindle speeds...apple just did a revamp of the PowerBook line and 5400 is an upgrade.

[Anticipat3]

In case you haven't noticed, Powerbooks are already very small and run quite toasty on the bottom -- putting in faster hard drives isn't going to help that, and slightly faster rotation speeds aren't going to help performance significantly.

[jsw]

In case you haven't noticed, Powerbooks are already very small and run quite toasty on the bottom -- putting in faster hard drives isn't going to help that, and slightly faster rotation speeds aren't going to help performance significantly.

This article (http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/laptops/story/0,10801,90487,00.html?f=x595) disagrees.

[Anticipat3]

Humbug. I've used both 5400 and 7200 RPM hard drives in desktop machines and in laptop machines, and there really is no significant difference in performance.

It's really not worthwhile in my mind to have the drive run hotter and use more battery life for a marginal speed increase.

Then again, if you want the speed, go buy an aftermarket drive :).

[Espionage]

i have a ibook 800Mhz (640 RAM) and sadly it does not run that well...
i play on Battlenet and i am struggling to cope with speed. I play over LAN with friends and its ****, you people should try and use WC3 on a PC it is infinately better, i love MACs and i try to tell myself; i didnt get my MAC for games, so why does it matter that PCs rape my ibook for games that i care about.

Well i dont use the bull**** sopossed awesome programs that MACs are awesome for (iMovie etc) so i am questioning why MACs are better for me.

Talking to friends, everyone says get a PC, games suck on MACs but i still stick with them, but it seems that now i am fighting a losing battle....
well i decided to do some reading and it just got me depressed with the situation facing MACs. are we ever going to get the market share back...