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Spore on Mac 950 chip "will not run"

P

pcarolan

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 6, 2007
7
0
I got Spore today which I thought was gonna be sweet. I installed it on my Macbook and started playing for about 10 minutes only to experience crashes, missing graphics and really poor quality creatures. I looked on the box and realized that the system requirements stated clearly: "This game will not run on the GMA 950 class of integrated video cards." I thought "well that sucks, I've got a macbook just over a year old and already it's good game obsolete".

Out of curiousity, I looked across the aisle to the PC requirements and right there at the bottom under "Supported Video Cards" I saw the Intel Extreme Graphics GMA 950!!!

What's the deal? Are these two different cards? Does Leopard not know how to handle the graphics demands of recent software? Does EA not know how to write their code for this chip?

I'm guessing there are a decent number of people who bought the MB with the 950 chip who would love to know the answer to this.

Any clarity would be appreciated. I'm installing Spore on Vista in Bootcamp now as an experiment.
 
You should have read the system requirements before buying the game. I know that I did. I wouldn't recommend it in Windows unless you like running the game at very low settings.

It is the same integrated graphics solution but there's a bit more overhead running games in OS X then in Windows.
 
pcarolan said:
Out of curiousity, I looked across the aisle to the PC requirements and right there at the bottom under "Supported Video Cards" I saw the Intel Extreme Graphics GMA 950!!!

What's the deal? Are these two different cards? Does Leopard not know how to handle the graphics demands of recent software? Does EA not know how to write their code for this chip?
Click to expand...
Spore on the Mac doesn't run natively. Essentially it's just the Windows version but runs on a Mac via a compatibility layer called Cedega/Cider. The compatibility layer attempts to emulate Windows APIs. It's the compatibility layer that causes the additional hit on performance compared to running the game natively on Windows.

You could install Windows through bootcamp, that would allow you to run the game natively.

I would have bought the game had it been able to run natively on my Mac. I'm certainly not going to the trouble of installing Windows just to play this game. If Blizzard can manage cross platform releases, I don't see why EA can't.
 
Eidorian said:
You should have read the system requirements before buying the game. I know that I did. I wouldn't recommend it in Windows unless you like running the game at very low settings.

It is the same integrated graphics solution but there's a bit more overhead running games in OS X then in Windows.
Click to expand...

Seriously? This is your response? To browbeat someone who already admitted his mistake? My point was to further discussion in why the dichotomy between OSes exists.

Regardless, it runs rather beautifully in bootcamp Vista even at low settings.
 
stomer said:
Spore on the Mac doesn't run natively. Essentially it's just the Windows version but runs on a Mac via a compatibility layer called Cedega/Cider. The compatibility layer attempts to emulate Windows APIs. It's the compatibility layer that causes the additional hit on performance compared to running the game natively on Windows.

You could install Windows through bootcamp, that would allow you to run the game natively.

I would have bought the game had it been able to run natively on my Mac. I'm certainly not going to the trouble of installing Windows just to play this game. If Blizzard can manage cross platform releases, I don't see why EA can't.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I appreciate the explanation.
 
pcarolan said:
Seriously? This is your response? To browbeat someone who already admitted his mistake? My point was to further discussion in why the dichotomy between OSes exists.

Regardless, it runs rather beautifully in bootcamp Vista even at low settings.
Click to expand...
I did touch upon that.

There is an overhead running the game in OS X that doesn't exist in Windows.
 
I was able to play Spore on my Macbook 1,1 with 1 GB of RAM and GM 950 integrated graphics. I just increased the graphics cache to 2048 MB (2 gigs) and it runs perfectly fine in Leopard 10.5.5 with no choppy-ness at all.

I don't know why everyone is complaining about the poor performance. It's a Macbook so I don't expect much.
 
Ooops, after a while, it does slow down. There are periods of long fluid motion and then once in a while MDS will run or whatever and eat up CPU cycles and it slows down again. And there are some odd graphic glitches every so often.

Eh, I didn't expect much anyway.
 
pcarolan said:
Seriously? This is your response? To browbeat someone who already admitted his mistake? My point was to further discussion in why the dichotomy between OSes exists.

Regardless, it runs rather beautifully in bootcamp Vista even at low settings.
Click to expand...

Stating the truth cannot be attacked. This is the internet, i didnt percieve his remarks as offensive or delivered in a meant to hurt way.
 
zerofiftysix said:
I was able to play Spore on my Macbook 1,1 with 1 GB of RAM and GM 950 integrated graphics. I just increased the graphics cache to 2048 MB (2 gigs) and it runs perfectly fine in Leopard 10.5.5 with no choppy-ness at all.

I don't know why everyone is complaining about the poor performance. It's a Macbook so I don't expect much.
Click to expand...

Does the creature creator work now in 10.5.5? I've heard in at least 10.5.4 you get a black screen there.
 
Everything runs pretty good except the editor. On my MacBook the only problem I seem to be running into is the editor part. It's just a black screen... The funny things is the test mode and the mode to change the texture work and the free editor worked perfectly. Any suggestions?
 
I got screwed with the whole integrated graphics thing back in 2001 and swore I would never by anything without a real graphics card again.
 
The free creature editor works just fine without the hack that was posted. And the full version of the game works fine except the editor. It's just a black screen. The different sections of the editor work (change color, test mode) but not the actual edit part. I don't understand why the creature creator would work but this part of the full game will not.
 
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