Slow graphics- more RAM?

[Snarf!]

I bought a new iBook g4 recently to use with Logic 6 on the go, and for this task it works fine. But i also bought a few games, and downloaded even more demos. The g4 800 and radeon 9600 with AGP4x is more than most of the games require to run at a reasonable rate. But the y all go really choppy and slowly. UT2003, Halo, MOH, JEDI 2, JEDI 3... I`m really bummed out about it. I`ve tried tunring the graphics down to 800x600 and even 640x480, but that runs even slower.. (which really puzzles me, i thought the whole idea of alowing resolution switches was to help players with crappy hardware enjoy the game too...)
I`ve been pondering about getting more RAM, but the 512MB RAM chip for the g4 iBook costs 2000NKR. Thats like 300++ US$.
Is it worth it? Does anybody know if game performance in panther will improve with more RAM? Or is it the processor or graphics card which is holding me down..

any help here would be great..

[iEric]

300+ US? Where do you get your ram?
You should either get it online via a message board or something. its a lot cheaper.

How much ram do you have now?

When you play games do you close some apps or all of them open?

[Snarf!]

I have 256megs of RAM.
When i play games, i usually close all other apps.

[invaLPsion]

I bought a new iBook g4 recently to use with Logic 6 on the go, and for this task it works fine. But i also bought a few games, and downloaded even more demos. The g4 800 and radeon 9600 with AGP4x is more than most of the games require to run at a reasonable rate. But the y all go really choppy and slowly. UT2003, Halo, MOH, JEDI 2, JEDI 3... I`m really bummed out about it. I`ve tried tunring the graphics down to 800x600 and even 640x480, but that runs even slower.. (which really puzzles me, i thought the whole idea of alowing resolution switches was to help players with crappy hardware enjoy the game too...)
I`ve been pondering about getting more RAM, but the 512MB RAM chip for the g4 iBook costs 2000NKR. Thats like 300++ US$.
Is it worth it? Does anybody know if game performance in panther will improve with more RAM? Or is it the processor or graphics card which is holding me down..

any help here would be great..

More ram will DEFINITELY help, especially with load times. And ram isn't that expensive, try MacSolutions...

Also, your iBook doesn't have a radeon 9600, it has a radeon 9200 mobility with 32mb of vram.

[Snarf!]

my bad.. don`t know where i got the 9600 from.. maybee my most weird dreams.. ;)

[Dont Hurt Me]

G4 is just not a gamers chip though I keep trying too. its Fsb holds it back and so does its very low clock cycles. the megahertz spin is still spin more work gets done with every clock and if a manufactor doesnt increase its clock then we have no progress. with G4 we have had almost no progress. some of those games iam playing with a 1.47 G4 in a powermac and geforce3 and iam not satisfied. G4 isnt a gamers chip at all. sure you can play some games but its just to slow. Apple has dragged its heals doing anything about this. ram will help a little but you really dont have the cpu. sorry but thats the G4 truth.

[benpatient]

G4 is just not a gamers chip though I keep trying too. its Fsb holds it back and so does its very low clock cycles. the megahertz spin is still spin more work gets done with every clock and if a manufactor doesnt increase its clock then we have no progress. with G4 we have had almost no progress. some of those games iam playing with a 1.47 G4 in a powermac and geforce3 and iam not satisfied. G4 isnt a gamers chip at all. sure you can play some games but its just to slow. Apple has dragged its heals doing anything about this. ram will help a little but you really dont have the cpu. sorry but thats the G4 truth.

mmmhmmm.

neither is the G5 from my experience!

anyway...spend 500 dollars and get a bargain basement PC, or have someone (like me) build you one to order.

If you already have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers, then I can make you a 500+ dollar machine that will play any game out there as well as the current fastest apple offerings...this is sad but true...all you need is:

Athlon 2500+ processor:80-90 dollars
ASUS fancy-ass mobo: 120 dollars
512 MB PC 3200: 70 dollars
120GB SATA drive: 110 dollars
52x CDRW: 35 dollars
Case w/power supply: 30-100 (you pay for what you get)
Radeon 9600 pro: 150 dollars

that comes up to 600 dollars...if you make some compromises, you'll be able to get that at or under 500 dollars. These prices are "standards" from a couple of months ago, the last time i built a machine. They are all lower now, in general. ANyway, that machine will run UT2004 with all the settings turned up to max and never skip a single beat. a solid 40-60 fps in all situations from personal experience...it's just not an issue. Other games that fly: SimCity4, Halo, Farcry, anything using the unreal engine, well...anything that's come out or is on the near horizon. I've never played a "slow" game on my PC at home except for the last tomb raider game, which ran slow on every computer in the world till they patched it to fix all the huge bugs...not that the game was any fun even when it worked well.

HL2 will not come out on Mac because it's DX-based, and extremely tied into that API...so that's reason enough to build/buy a PC...literally.

Use the G4 for audio and imaging software.

build a PC for games. OS X only gets the most popular PC games ported, anyway...and not even all of those. Some of my favorite games weren't ever "popular" enough to get on that level of radar. Anyone ever play Wheel of Time? That was a unique and fun game...but unfortunately it wasn't popular enough to land on a mac...so you guys will never know.

it'd probably run like crap on a G4 anyway.

[AppleMatt]

I`ve tried tunring the graphics down to 800x600 and even 640x480, but that runs even slower.. (which really puzzles me, i thought the whole idea of alowing resolution switches was to help players with crappy hardware enjoy the game too...)

Leave the resolution at the native screen setting, most Mac games work best like that.
Run OpenGL games in a window instead of full-screen for better performance (Command + M)
Install the latest updates using SoftwareUpdate
Install the latest game patches from their relavent sites
Quit all other programs, especially ones which rely on heavy disk access.
Consider downloading a "renice" program and increasing the priority of your games.

AppleMatt

[job]

Leave the resolution at the native screen setting, most Mac games work best like that.

Yep. Believe it or not, with newer, modern graphic cards, you will likely see the best performance at higher resolutions, such as 1024*768. Try bumping up the resolution in your games.

[keysersoze]

I bought a new iBook g4 recently to use with Logic 6 on the go, and for this task it works fine. But i also bought a few games, and downloaded even more demos. But the y all go really choppy and slowly. UT2003, Halo, MOH, JEDI 2, JEDI 3... I`m really bummed out about it.


I don't know about the other games, but UT2003 has an update that makes it run 25% faster on G4's. I have an ibook g4 800, with 640MB of RAM...after I ran the update, the game was MUCH faster. You can download the update at:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/games/demos_updates/unrealtournament2003.html

Hope that helps a bit.

[jxyama]

I`ve tried tunring the graphics down to 800x600 and even 640x480, but that runs even slower.. (which really puzzles me, i thought the whole idea of alowing resolution switches was to help players with crappy hardware enjoy the game too...)

on an LCD with definite native resolution, i don't think it matters what the resolution you run at it is. as others suggested, run at the native resolution. when you tone down your resolution in an LCD, the computer has to do extra work to blur the image so it will show up correctly on the screen, perhaps?

in CRT, toning down the resolution will lower the strain on the computer because you are requiring less details. but for LCD, i am not sure if such is the case because whatever the output resolution, computer still has to map that information to the native resolution screen anyway.

[job]

on an LCD with definite native resolution, i don't think it matters what the resolution you run at it is. as others suggested, run at the native resolution. when you tone down your resolution in an LCD, the computer has to do extra work to blur the image so it will show up correctly on the screen, perhaps?

It also has to do with the fact that modern graphic cards are made to perform at the higher resolutions (especially with the native resolutions found in laptops.) Lowering the screen resolution with a relatively modern graphic card (Radeon, nVidia FX/Ti) surprisingly affects the performance.

[Muskie]

Run OpenGL games in a window instead of full-screen for better performance (Command + M)
AppleMatt

Just so people know, in Moh:AA its command+h... "hide" don't know why its different...

Definitely keep it running at 1024x768. And I would agree with most people on here, RAM is probably the best thing you can do.

[Snarf!]

Thank you all for your input on this subject. I`ve now ordered the 512MB ram chip for the iBook G4. And i found a way to get it at a measly 30$ here in Norway. :)