New Mac buyer, what kind of framerates can I expect in UT2004?

[rareflares]

....on a 12" 1.33 Ghz 768 MB RAM PB in Onslaught?

I've done multiple searches but I keep seeing one of two things:

A.) one guy says ut2004 runs perfect, everything maxed
B.) the next guy says it chugs on 640x480, everything off and low detail


wtf does that mean?

Thus, comes this post. I'm interested in hearing framerates on any similar G4 configurations with all the OS/game updates and then i'll make my own judgement on whether that is decent enough for me. From past experience, I've felt that if the game stays above 25 FPS for the most part, I have absolutely ZERO complaints. I dont care if you find that unplayable, if you can get 20-25+ fps in Onslaught mode, that's all I personally need to know.

I really don't give a damn about detail levels either(yeah, i know you guys are gonna say "the experience will be horrible"), all i care about is playability. As far as I'm concerned I'll find more enjoyment blasting a guy's head off than having a nerdgasm over the vector-shaded-32-bit-dynamic-shadows on that purple mountain in the distance.

UT2004 (Onslaught mode) is the only intensive game I will play (i'm fully satisfied with Warcraft 3, Starcraft, Civ 3, and those older FPS like RtCW, MOH, CoD), which is why I'm not gonna break the bank on an expensive gaming laptop or performance king just for UT2004. As for a PC or a desktop....HELL NO, i need a portable laptop for my situation (and a Mac because they are better). I just simply want to know what framerates i can expect to get with this laptop when I buy it sometime in the coming weeks.

Thanks you for your help (if you have framerates/impressions on any other games, than pretty please with a cherry on top post them as well)

[comictimes]

I really don't know the exact framerate, but it seems to run quite well on my 1.25ghz PB.
However, does anyone know of a program I can download (preferably freeware or shareware) which will count framerates? Cause I get curious about them, but I'm never able to actually count how well I'm doing...

[vraxtus]

Originally Posted by comictimes

I really don't know the exact framerate, but it seems to run quite well on my 1.25ghz PB.
However, does anyone know of a program I can download (preferably freeware or shareware) which will count framerates? Cause I get curious about them, but I'm never able to actually count how well I'm doing...

Open the console and type "stat fps"

And I would help the poster but I really don't feel like transferring 10GB just to benchmark a game...

Though on my G5 at 1280x1024 res, hi detail, I get 16 avg FPS on ONS-Primevil
40 avg FPS on ONS-ArcticStronghold
42 avg FPS on ONS-Crossfire
28 avg FPS on ONS-Dria

Keep in mind that these are not botmatches, I'm just walking through the map to adjust the avg FPS readout. I'd expect these rates to drop about 5 or so when bots are added.

[oingoboingo]

Originally Posted by rareflares

....on a 12" 1.33 Ghz 768 MB RAM PB in Onslaught?

I've done multiple searches but I keep seeing one of two things:

A.) one guy says ut2004 runs perfect, everything maxed
B.) the next guy says it chugs on 640x480, everything off and low detail

I know this isn't Onslaught mode, but I ran some Botmatch and Flyby tests a little while ago on exactly the configuration of PowerBook you have. The results are here:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...012#post875012

As you can see even just on the Antalus flyby, 800x600, minimum details, the 1.33GHz 12" PowerBook only scored an average FPS of 23, and it's all down hill from there. I personally don't consider 640x480 resolution gaming to be acceptable these days outside of a console connected to a TV, so I didn't test them. Your opinion may vary.

I will mess around with Onslaught on my 12" PB when I get home tonight and get some more relevant figures, but from memory, it's not a pretty experience. You'll be struggling to see an average FPS of 24 or above at just about any resolution or detail setting. I don't play UT2004 on the PB generally...the G5 gets all the action in that department.

Will post more in a few hours when I get home...

[comictimes]

first of all- thanks for the info vraxtus. secondly, I never really realised how low my standards are. I played on frostbite for a while, with most of the settings on high, and got an average framerate of 13-14 fps. Of course to me this looks fine, and my comp is slightly slower than yours would be, but this could definitely be a turnoff for some people...

[oingoboingo]

Originally Posted by comictimes

first of all- thanks for the info vraxtus. secondly, I never really realised how low my standards are. I played on frostbite for a while, with most of the settings on high, and got an average framerate of 13-14 fps. Of course to me this looks fine, and my comp is slightly slower than yours would be, but this could definitely be a turnoff for some people...

This is why the original poster's request for raw FPS scores was a good one. I've lost count of the number of people I've seen on these discussion boards who claim that they get 'silky smooth' performance out of UT2004 or Halo on their 800MHz G4 / Radeon 7000 with "everything maxed out!!!". People's standards are completely different...what is 'great' to one person may be 'utter crap' to another.

That said, I personally think you can get an acceptable game of UT2004 out of a system pumping only 13-14fps. Not pleasant, but acceptable. For me though, it's right on the edge of playability.

[Nermal]

I can't give any specific numbers, but it runs 'fine' on a G4/1.25 with a 64 MB Radeon 9000 Pro, with OS 10.3.5. It was terrible under 10.3.4.

[oingoboingo]

Originally Posted by rareflares

....on a 12" 1.33 Ghz 768 MB RAM PB in Onslaught?

OK, I've just had a bit of a game of Onslaught on the Torlan map on my 1.33GHz 12" PowerBook (see signature). I'm running OS X 10.3.5, with the latest patches applied to UT2004. UT2004 settings were 100% default...nothing was changed from the settings which were automatically determined by the game after a fresh install. In my case, these were 800x600 resolution, 32 bit colour, 'Normal' settings for all details, and all other options like trilinear filtering enabled. On a sparsely populated server (only 6 people playing, including myself), I was getting frame rates of around 25-30 FPS when just running around the map by myself, and frame rates dropping into the 15-25 FPS range when the fighting started, or when I was doing something (like charging up a power node and dodging long distance enemy fire at the same time).

Overall, the game played a bit better than I remember it playing on the 12" PowerBook (were the nVidia drivers updated in OS X 10.3.5?), but judge for yourself from the FPS figures.

I'll get around to running some other configurations later on tonight.

[AssassinOfGates]

Originally Posted by oingoboingo

(were the nVidia drivers updated in OS X 10.3.5?)

Yes. Apart from speedups the shader issues were also fixed. Problems like the zoom bug in Halo are fixed now.

[vraxtus]

In response to Oingoboingo and comictimes, I agree that 15 or so FPS is a playable #, however it does detract from 1) the game experience, and I've found that in some games, in particular Jedi Academy 2) the game playability is limited by it, as some moves can't be performed unless you have a 30 FPS rate (and yes I've tested this many times).

In all honesty, for the amount we pay for our computers, this kind of performance is abhorrent. Halo, IMO is the worst example. 22 avg FPS at native res, in my mind, is ridiculous. UT2K4 benches better than Halo, but it still isn't always great. I have a new 3rd party Onslaught map and it brings my computer to a crawl... EVERYWHERE... about 13 FPS avg just walking through the map!

So sad...

If you need any more benches I can probably do them when I get home.

[rareflares]

wow, thanks to everyone in this thread for responding, it really helps me out a lot. It looks like the 10.3.5 update really fixed some things judging from what oingoboingo is saying.


If you're able to get anymore detailed benchmarks, that would just be fantastic.

[vraxtus]

Originally Posted by rareflares

wow, thanks to everyone in this thread for responding, it really helps me out a lot. It looks like the 10.3.5 update really fixed some things judging from what oingoboingo is saying.


If you're able to get anymore detailed benchmarks, that would just be fantastic.

10.3.5 actually resulted in a 5% drop in Halo framerates for me.

[James L]

Originally Posted by rareflares

....on a 12" 1.33 Ghz 768 MB RAM PB in Onslaught?

I've done multiple searches but I keep seeing one of two things:

A.) one guy says ut2004 runs perfect, everything maxed
B.) the next guy says it chugs on 640x480, everything off and low detail


wtf does that mean?

Thus, comes this post. I'm interested in hearing framerates on any similar G4 configurations with all the OS/game updates and then i'll make my own judgement on whether that is decent enough for me. From past experience, I've felt that if the game stays above 25 FPS for the most part, I have absolutely ZERO complaints. I dont care if you find that unplayable, if you can get 20-25+ fps in Onslaught mode, that's all I personally need to know.

I really don't give a damn about detail levels either(yeah, i know you guys are gonna say "the experience will be horrible"), all i care about is playability. As far as I'm concerned I'll find more enjoyment blasting a guy's head off than having a nerdgasm over the vector-shaded-32-bit-dynamic-shadows on that purple mountain in the distance.

UT2004 (Onslaught mode) is the only intensive game I will play (i'm fully satisfied with Warcraft 3, Starcraft, Civ 3, and those older FPS like RtCW, MOH, CoD), which is why I'm not gonna break the bank on an expensive gaming laptop or performance king just for UT2004. As for a PC or a desktop....HELL NO, i need a portable laptop for my situation (and a Mac because they are better). I just simply want to know what framerates i can expect to get with this laptop when I buy it sometime in the coming weeks.

Thanks you for your help (if you have framerates/impressions on any other games, than pretty please with a cherry on top post them as well)

Hey!

I don't play that game, so I can't help with your original question, but a few comments:

1) Make sure people are benchmarking the FULL game for you. As many people, and maybe yourself, know, the demo of UT2004 had a bug in the audio code that caused HORRIBLE framerate drops. The demo, to the best of my knowledge, was never updated.

2) In the list you mentioned you listed CoD as an older game. I am not sure, but I actually think it came out at the same time, or even after, UT 2004. It is a great game, for sure!

3) hehe.... you said nerdgasm.

[rareflares]

"
2) In the list you mentioned you listed CoD as an older game"






Call of Duty is a year old game on the PC so it's requirements aren't as bad (and i was told it was a very well done port over to the Mac side), that's why I'm not too worried about how that performs. UT2004 came out this year and is pretty cpu-intensive in certain modes, i think.

[vraxtus]

Originally Posted by rareflares

Call of Duty is a year old game on the PC so it's requirements aren't as bad (and i was told it was a very well done port over to the Mac side), that's why I'm not too worried about how that performs. UT2004 came out this year and is pretty cpu-intensive in certain modes, i think.

You are correct. Specifics: CoD is running on a heavily modded Q3 engine... not so intense as UT2K4 but certainly nothing simple. UT2K4 has serious CPU bottlenecks as many tests have shown. However, on that computer, both CPU and GPU will be heavy bottlenecks.

[rareflares]

it sounds like UT2004 will be play somewhat decently in Onslaught if oingoboingo's numbers are accurate. i can deal with 15-30 FPS so that sounds alright. Anyone else have any benchmarks on this configuration?

would i be correct in assuming modes like deathmatch and capture the flag should have much better framerates?

[vraxtus]

Originally Posted by rareflares

it sounds like UT2004 will be play somewhat decently in Onslaught if oingoboingo's numbers are accurate. i can deal with 15-30 FPS so that sounds alright. Anyone else have any benchmarks on this configuration?

would i be correct in assuming modes like deathmatch and capture the flag should have much better framerates?

Typically yes, but there are larger CTF maps that don't run so well. Honestly I wouldn't expect too much in terms of good performance. After all he was running it at 800x600. Trust me, even with a stronger comp, like my G5, it still lags quite heavily in some maps.


My recommendation: if you're a true/heavy gamer, stay AWAY from Powerbooks for gaming.