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Lousy gameplay Bf 2142 on Nehamen MacPro…

A

Arizona

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 7, 2009
16
0
Nethrelands
Bought the game when it came out and finally have the machine to play it on. I have the view-quality settings on low (with an 800*600 resolution) and the overall gameplay is acceptable, but once entering rooms with lots happening (mines, auto-firing bots, several dudes fighting) I might as well kill myself. Low to no frame rate at all. I face a wall, all good. I pan to the door next to the wall and if there's some serious action in that room, my view 'skips' to the next wall on the other side of the door…
Also when I'm on the deck of a Titan, I can see my framerate slow down when I pan from let's say watching the air towards watching the floor under/behind where there's action that needs to be updated in my screen (see through items etc.)

I have an ADSL connection which can be quite fast. Is it the graphics card that is not sufficient? I thought with buying the newest Mac, the standard card in there should be able to handle this game… See my signature for machine and monitor specs.

I also have a PC DVD. Will I have substantially better game play if I play it with the PC Disc froom Bootcamp? (and if so, what Windows should I install best, since I would only do it to play this game…)

Any feedback on this would help me a lot. I guess I might as well wait for now with trying the widescreen version explained in this link: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/353651/
 
Are you running it in OS X or under Boot Camp? Also, the GT 120 isn't a very powerful card. It's just slightly more powerful than my notebook's 8600M GT.
 
cathyy said:
Are you running it in OS X or under Boot Camp?
Click to expand...

OSX. I am considering installing windows through bootcamp and install the game in there which was part of the question I posted. But for now, I have only played on OSX, the latest, 10.5.6 or something (not at my home cpu now).
 
I have same experience with nvidia 8800 on older mac pro but ATI card works super fast. It's not your computer, it's either the video driver or some problem with cider and nvidia.

Flying a chopper up to a titan is frame rate of about 5-10 on ATI 8800 but super smooth with ATI.
 
pprior said:
… is frame rate of about 5-10 on ATI 8800 but super smooth with ATI.
Click to expand...

You lost me there, slow on ATI 8800 but super smooth with ATI. I presume you mean slow on nvidia8800? What ATI exactly made it supersmooth?

I'm a supernovice when it comes to videocards. Is there a basic for not to much money that will give a sufficient gameplay? Any recommends?
 
Arizona said:
You lost me there, slow on ATI 8800 but super smooth with ATI. I presume you mean slow on nvidia8800? What ATI exactly made it supersmooth?

I'm a supernovice when it comes to videocards. Is there a basic for not to much money that will give a sufficient gameplay? Any recommends?
Click to expand...

There is something VERY wrong with the nvidia (at least the 8800) drivers and cider.

I've posted my experience elsewhere, but basically I had a x1900 ATI card on my early 2007 mac pro. It played BF2142 very well on highest settings at 1600x1200. I then "upgraded" to the 8800 nvidia card which has much higher performance on a hardware level, but the game was TREMENDOUSLY slower, to the point of being unplayable. I returned the card and got the ATI 3870 when it came out and speed was back up to fabulous again.

I then got a new 2008 mac pro (faster machine, 16GB ram) but it came with the crappy 8800 card again, and so I'm back to very slow performance. I'm waiting on the 4870 to be released because I didn't want to spend money on the 3870 at this point.

In short, apple/Nvidia/EA games (I don't know who the problem is) have major problems as it relates to drivers. I would suggest given the money you've got in that machine you get the 4870 and never look back.
 
Thanks so much for explaining this to me pprior.

I will probably try installing the bootcamp version first since I already have the pc version of the game as well and it won't cost me any more money, but will investigate a little more on which videocard I should get if that still gives lousy gameplay. Knowing your recommend, I have a start, a bases to continue searching from, which is very welcomed by this novice on videocards :)

Again, very appreciated.
 
Just use Bootcamp, the 8800GT Drivers are really good now, nVidia have ironed out all the bugs in them, and an 8800GT will have no problem running BF2142.

Not sure about the GT120 however, my 8600GT Can play most games at medium - high settings at 1440x900 (Well, Valve games, including L4D)
 
EA's attempt to port this game to the Mac has been catastrophic in terms of performance and various issues ranging from frequent crashing to unfathomable network lag. I wouldn't get my hopes up for anything that involves this port - personally I now think twice before buying a Mac port of any EA game.
 
JGorset said:
EA's attempt to port this game to the Mac has been catastrophic in terms of performance and various issues ranging from frequent crashing to unfathomable network lag. I wouldn't get my hopes up for anything that involves this port - personally I now think twice before buying a Mac port of any EA game.
Click to expand...

I must admit yeah that usually after a game when a new map gets loaded, I crash one out of two times. I'm lucky enough to mostly only have these crashes in between games and not in the middle of them :(
Agreed that ES support is really no support…*Can't even choose Mac OSX as platform on the home page…
 
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