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taeclee99

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 4, 2002
826
2
Anywhere but here
I was gonna get a tibook but alas I cannot afford to shell out 3 grand. I have settled for the ibook 700 12 in. model. I am wondering if the 16 meg radeon mobility is able to cut the mustard when it comes to playing games like warcraft 3 and medal of honor. If the ibook is suitable for these games, should i take the plunge now or wait six months til i can afford the tibook?
 

alex_ant

macrumors 68020
Feb 5, 2002
2,473
0
All up in your bidness
I'm not familiar with Medal of Honor, but I've heard that WCIII runs on a 400MHz iMac DV w/ Rage 128 graphics just fine. The minimum system requirements are even lower than that. If that's the case, then I think it will run very well on the 700MHz iBook, considering that particular iBook is, for non-AltiVec tasks, faster than the fastest PowerBooks were a few months ago.
 

jadam

macrumors 6502a
Jan 23, 2002
699
2
well, most games run really nicely on my ibook. Giants can run at 30fps at 1024x768x32 lots of times, but ... i only have 128mb ram, and it stutters some times, and i know its from the ram :p . UT runs very nicely also, 30-60fps at 1024x768x16. I run most of my games at 16bit color because, remember, LCDs can only display 24bits anyways, so you just waste 8bits and get worse performance. Everything else runs like a dream though, i just need more RAM. Everything is SOOOOOOOOOOO Smooth under OSX. I have yet to try out War III. and I get 25-40fps in RTCW 800x600x32. for some reason, 16bit color under RTCW looks VERY wierd....
 

taeclee99

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 4, 2002
826
2
Anywhere but here
Originally posted by jadam
well, most games run really nicely on my ibook. Giants can run at 30fps at 1024x768x32 lots of times, but ... i only have 128mb ram, and it stutters some times, and i know its from the ram :p . UT runs very nicely also, 30-60fps at 1024x768x16. I run most of my games at 16bit color because, remember, LCDs can only display 24bits anyways, so you just waste 8bits and get worse performance. Everything else runs like a dream though, i just need more RAM. Everything is SOOOOOOOOOOO Smooth under OSX. I have yet to try out War III. and I get 25-40fps in RTCW 800x600x32. for some reason, 16bit color under RTCW looks VERY wierd....

Thanks for the reply.

Have you tried Mac Mame on the ibook? How does it run?
What about vpc 5.0?
 

taeclee99

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 4, 2002
826
2
Anywhere but here
Do you guys think 384 megs is enough in the ibook or should I go all out and get 640 megs? Will getting the extra memory make that much difference?
 

cb911

macrumors 601
Mar 12, 2002
4,127
4
BrisVegas, Australia
well you really need to go into a store and get them to load WC III onto an iBook so you can test it out. thats the best way to see if it is what you expected. and if you want to see how it runs with more RAM, then just get them to put more RAM into the test iBook. simple as that!:D
 

jadam

macrumors 6502a
Jan 23, 2002
699
2
VPC 5.0.4 is wierd, it draws everything wierd, but, when i allowed more memory for windows 98, it ran faster, i think i need more ram. But, hehe, my ibook looks like a WindowsPC when running VPC 5.0.4 in full screen :p
You should definetly get more memory, i will soon.

I havent tried Mac MAME, but i did try SixtyForce, and that emu just sucks... The only game it runs is SuperMario64... all my other games just crash, and zelda and MarioKart 64 just look wierd... ohh well, an update should come along soon, plus its opensource if you want to work on it, i might... But, SuperMario64 did run VERY nicely. Very Fast, i had to limit the fps because it was too fast, but then again, his rendering engine just plain sucks. so, with a better renderer, it would run MUCH faster... All games run nicely on the ibook though, the only one i have had problems with is realMyst which... guess what? the same guy ported it :p hehe, i probally need more ram though, same for sixtyforce. 128mb ram just doesnt cut it for serious uber high res gaming.
 

macfreek57

macrumors 6502
Jan 1, 2002
379
0
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
i think mac mame will run fine
it does on my 500 mhz iMac with 16 mb video

one thing you should consider is that jaguar will need 32 mb to fully take advantage of the new display enhancements


BUY LOTS OF RAM!!!!

cause ram is cool
 

jadam

macrumors 6502a
Jan 23, 2002
699
2
it will need 32mb ram to FULLY take advantage, but remember, it works on any Radeon(*hint* not Rage *hint*) and Nvidia Geforce 2mx + card. there are 16mb radeons also :p its just that, it wont run as fast as a 32mb radeon, plus, the 32mb models are a different chipset, and remember, apple isnt going to leave out old TiBook 667 users who just bought a $2999 laptop that has teh same video card as a 700mhz ibook. All the new Systems can run Quartz Extreme Nicely. Just get MORE RAM. Dammit, i was so pissed off when i found out i couldnt run Maya PLE because it requires 256mb ram...
 

taeclee99

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 4, 2002
826
2
Anywhere but here
Do you guys think that Apple will release a 32 meg video ibook to fully take advantage of QEany time soon? And what's with this minor ibook update rumor at MWNY that I heard about? I think I should ait until after MWNY to make my pirchase.
 

jadam

macrumors 6502a
Jan 23, 2002
699
2
OHHH BOY!! THE 16MB VRAM IBOOKS CAN RUN QE!! GOD!!! GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEAD, and NO there wont be any updates MWNY, they just released the ibooks 3 weeks ago. They are not going to update them that fast, next time they will be updated is like september.
 

jadam

macrumors 6502a
Jan 23, 2002
699
2
yeah, ingame it doesnt look so bad, but the menus in the main screen look VERY screwy... plus, they should put in a 24bit color mode for LCD users... but, all in all, love my ibook, and was very happy when i found ibook:Applications:Installers and found the developer tools there, no need to download :p
 

job

macrumors 68040
Jan 25, 2002
3,794
3
in transit
Originally posted by jadam
but, all in all, love my ibook, and was very happy when i found ibook:Applications:Installers and found the developer tools there, no need to download :p

The dev tools came on a CD when I bought OS X retail. I have not really messed with them, have you?
 

jadam

macrumors 6502a
Jan 23, 2002
699
2
i know they come with the CD, but, i didnt think they came with the actual machines, i though it was only the retail version. I was about to download them, when i found out they were on my harddrive, just not installed :) so happy :), and yes, im messing with them right now.
 

DannyZR2

macrumors 6502
Sep 18, 2001
331
0
Texas
Do all you guys not find it disheartening that all the ibooks and tibooks are very skimpy on video cards compared to PCbooks? I HATE PCs! so don't start that, but I just wonder if Apple has just been able to get the same performance out of a 16MB card that is in the ibook with like a 32 MB card that is in the pcbooks...

top line dell notebooks have 64megs and GF4Go cards! why are we still running 16 meg cards? er. does the tibook have a 32 meg now? but still, what's up with that?

Does the main CPU just do more of the graphics in a mac than on a PC to keep performance up or what?
 

jadam

macrumors 6502a
Jan 23, 2002
699
2
its because the nvidia cards have horrible power managament.

Im actually thinking of porting the playstation emulator pcsx 1.3 to macs, and maybe doing some work on sixtyforce. But for now, i need to use Virtual PC and embeddedVisual C++ for my PocketPC port of PCSX 1.3 :p
 
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