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Minecraft on PPC (20-30FPS : PowerBook G4)

W

Wildy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 25, 2011
323
1
The most effective way I have found to speed up Minecraft on PowerPC is to host a local server on a separate machine. I believe that the majority of the slowdown is caused by the server generating/updating chunks, rather than the client rendering the scene (as shown by the debug profiler).

I get around a 100% increase in FPS on the same map - YMMV

Hopefully I will get round to doing a proper write-up and video soon - in the meantime - enjoy!
 
N

NameTheUser

macrumors newbie
Aug 31, 2010
26
0
Europe, Estonia
There is also a mod called ''OptiFine'' for Minecraft. I am using it with my PowerMac G5 and I'm getting incredible results. The FPS is about 40-50 with OptiFine if you use the correct settings.

Anyway, I'm just curious if you also experience the same ''Lightning bug'' when its night time?
 
W

Wildy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 25, 2011
323
1
I have made quite a few tweaks to my install, including Optifine - it boosts the frames a bit, but the main issue for me was the tick as opposed to the rendering (my G4 is a bit more CPU limited!). That said, I love how Optifine gives you full control over all the little details.
 
spyguy10709

spyguy10709

macrumors 65816
Apr 5, 2010
1,007
659
One Infinite Loop, Cupertino CA
Wildy said:
I have made quite a few tweaks to my install, including Optifine - it boosts the frames a bit, but the main issue for me was the tick as opposed to the rendering (my G4 is a bit more CPU limited!). That said, I love how Optifine gives you full control over all the little details.
Click to expand...

Also, tick "advanced openGL" settings - that will offload some CPU usage onto your GPU - I'm not sure if it would help on a G4 but on older intels with good GPU's it helps a lot.
 
faroZ06

faroZ06

macrumors 68040
Apr 3, 2009
3,387
1
spyguy10709 said:
Also, tick "advanced openGL" settings - that will offload some CPU usage onto your GPU - I'm not sure if it would help on a G4 but on older intels with good GPU's it helps a lot.
Click to expand...

Advanced OpenGL makes a really big difference. It increases performance by a lot.

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Wildy said:
The most effective way I have found to speed up Minecraft on PowerPC is to host a local server on a separate machine. I believe that the majority of the slowdown is caused by the server generating/updating chunks, rather than the client rendering the scene (as shown by the debug profiler).

I get around a 100% increase in FPS on the same map - YMMV

Hopefully I will get round to doing a proper write-up and video soon - in the meantime - enjoy!
Click to expand...

Well duh, that's like saying that Google's search engine runs faster when you divide the processes and give parts of them to different machines. Of course it's faster when you're playing on a server hosted by a different machine.

My brother used to host a server AND play on his iMac G5, and it wasn't bad.
 
W

Wildy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 25, 2011
323
1
spyguy10709 said:
Also, tick "advanced openGL" settings - that will offload some CPU usage onto your GPU - I'm not sure if it would help on a G4 but on older intels with good GPU's it helps a lot.
Click to expand...
The Advanced OpenGL setting is to turn off Occlusion culling - this works great with newer cards, but makes practically no difference or even a inhibits older cards unfortunately.

Well duh, that's like saying that Google's search engine runs faster when you divide the processes and give parts of them to different machines. Of course it's faster when you're playing on a server hosted by a different machine.

My brother used to host a server AND play on his iMac G5, and it wasn't bad.
Click to expand...
That wasn't my point - my point is that the tic (server) task takes a lot longer to complete than the render task, which wouldn't be obvious to everyone. If you have a spare machine lying around, what do you have to lose if you run a server on it? Minecraft has increased in complexity dramatically in the past year or two - it used to run flawlessly on my PowerBook, but this is no longer the case.
 
B

Botcrusher

macrumors newbie
Jan 10, 2013
3
0
The issue with single player is that mojang decided that single player now runs its own server causing mass lag compared to previous versions also with each update there are more blocks and more code

I have and old dual 500mhz g4 tower lukly it was a professional photo editing compiter and the ati raedon card offloads alot of the data
I have one gb in it
 
W

Wildy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 25, 2011
323
1
At the end of the day, if you are running the server (whether it is in single player, or multiplayer), you are having to process a hell of a lot of stuff. I believe that you are right in that the last few updates have brought on a lot of complexity which perhaps wasn't there before.
 
B

Botcrusher

macrumors newbie
Jan 10, 2013
3
0
And thats why i always play multiplayer lol

I also get 20-30 fps on mine oddly back on beta 1.7.3 i was fully able to play offline buuuut now i get 1-2 fps if i even try offline

Edit : in minecraft there are normaly 20 ticks. Per second aka tps
 
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R

R-T-B

macrumors newbie
Jan 17, 2013
20
0
Sadly, minecraft is moving to Java 1.6, which leaves us high and dry pretty soon unless someone updates Java. I hope to get some work done on that, but no idea how fast...
 
MisterKeeks

MisterKeeks

macrumors 68000
Nov 15, 2012
1,833
28
R-T-B said:
Sadly, minecraft is moving to Java 1.6, which leaves us high and dry pretty soon unless someone updates Java. I hope to get some work done on that, but no idea how fast...
Click to expand...

I'm not into Minecraft, but maybe something like SoyLatte would work?
 
W

Wildy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 25, 2011
323
1
Oh noes - I did not know this! Unfortunately SoyLatte is built around OpenJDK, which is lacking a few things which Minecraft needs to work (I've tried it before, I seem to remember it was something to do with fonts or UI elements - don't quote me on this though). Perhaps with a little perseverance it might be possible to add these into OpenJDK, or at least provide wrapper functions.
 
W

Wildy

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 25, 2011
323
1
I had the same problem - you need to use the Ultra version of Optifine. I'm not sure what the purpose was of the different versions, but ultra has all of possible options available.
 
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