Jaguar to improve gaming?

[Catfish]

I am a recent apple convert with a new Powerbook DVI 667. I was playing both Civilization III and Tropico this weekend under OS X, and in both of them when the scenarios became reasonably complex the games bogged down tremendously, becoming almost unplayable. Even with "Hardware acceleration" in Tropico it was too slow to play. This is really frustrating on a new machine; on a whim I booted into OS 9 and tried Tropico from there - the game was great - it really zoomed.

Has anyone else had this experience? If the slowdown is OS X, does anyone know if Jaguar will improve gameplay? I've ordered another 512 meg DIMM, I suppose that will help to some extent.

[Catfish_Man]

...will definitely help. Jaguar will also help. Aside from the general optimizations, you'll have QuartzGL. Also, OpenGL runs much faster in Jaguar.

<edit> dang, now we've got two catfish on the macrumors forums...</edit>

[Nipsy]

Tropico under X just sucks!

Very sad, as it looks like a good game, but I can't be bothered to boot into 9. I have 1.5GB of RAM, and it is still slow as molasses. I think it is just a weak port....

[Beej]

Originally posted by Nipsy
I think it is just a weak port....

I agree... very weak. Unplayable.

[mac15]

I can't wait for the GM version of jaguar
the beta is ok but it sucks also.....in a way......10.1 changed gaming so will 10.2 have the same impact?

[kiwi_the_iwik]

As long as game companies continue to write/port games in Carbon and not in Cocoa, then you're just better off playing in OS9.

Carbon is to Cocoa what Classic is to X. Just some poor form of emulation.

If I want to play games on the Mac, I still have to switch to OS9 as very few PLAYABLE games are available on X. The odd thing is, though, that games like Wolfenstein and Medal of Honour demand such powerful CPU's and graphics cards - perfect environments for OSX - yet they are only ported in Carbon. Why not make them exclusively X, so the masses can make the switch quicker?

Just a thought...

[Falleron]

Originally posted by Catfish
I am a recent apple convert with a new Powerbook DVI 667. I was playing both Civilization III and Tropico this weekend under OS X, and in both of them when the scenarios became reasonably complex the games bogged down tremendously, becoming almost unplayable. Even with "Hardware acceleration" in Tropico it was too slow to play. This is really frustrating on a new machine; on a whim I booted into OS 9 and tried Tropico from there - the game was great - it really zoomed.

Has anyone else had this experience? If the slowdown is OS X, does anyone know if Jaguar will improve gameplay? I've ordered another 512 meg DIMM, I suppose that will help to some extent.

For Civ 3, have you updated to v.1.2.1f (its new)? If you have not the update should help.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by Falleron

For Civ 3, have you updated to v.1.2.1f (its new)? If you have not the update should help.

Yep.

On a tip from a friend I checked the 'don't use quartz for text' box on startup, and the game was much much much faster. Zippy even. So in this sense, I suppose Jaguar will improve the speed for quartz and therefore games that use it.