9600M extremely low performance

[Advil]

I have a 15" uMBP with 4 gigs and every once in a while play a game and my performance is very poor. I'm talking single digit frames on medium and low settings. On cinebench I only get ~2k on the gpu test. When I reset my kernel caches it performs well for about a day then the performance starts to suck again.

Nothing else is running and I always have 2+ gigs free on my memory. What could be the problem?

I took it to the apple store and it passed all of their tests but that was fairly soon after i reset my kernel cache and it was working properly.

ps the game is sims 3 mostly, but also spore.

 

[Freyqq]

I have a 15" uMBP with 4 gigs and every once in a while play a game and my performance is very poor. I'm talking single digit frames on medium and low settings. On cinebench I only get ~2k on the gpu test. When I reset my kernel caches it performs well for about a day then the performance starts to suck again.

Nothing else is running and I always have 2+ gigs free on my memory. What could be the problem?

I took it to the apple store and it passed all of their tests but that was fairly soon after i reset my kernel cache and it was working properly.

ps the game is sims 3 mostly, but also spore.

is it set on 9600GT or 9400GT?

also, osx isn't the best gaming platform. If you ran it in bootcamp windows 7 RC (free for now), i bet you'll see much higher FPS anyways..

 

[kolax]

Spore is a Cider port. EA couldn't be bothered writing a Mac version so they just used the Windows version and put it in a Cider wrap, hence why it only runs on Intel Macs.

I have Windows 7 installed via Boot Camp. Simple: Windows for games, OS X for everything else.

 

[jgo78]

sims 3, red alert 3 all run pretty well under osx with the 9600gt.

and Warcraft III (although old) surprisingly runs at 60fps 1920x1200 all details max in osx with the 9400m.! don't even need to use the 9600 for this game.

 

[jejagua]

I have a 15" uMBP with 4 gigs and every once in a while play a game and my performance is very poor. I'm talking single digit frames on medium and low settings. On cinebench I only get ~2k on the gpu test. When I reset my kernel caches it performs well for about a day then the performance starts to suck again.

I've got similar problems. When I use the 9600 in WOW the framerate is very good initially, but after about 5-10 minutes it becomes inconsistent. It starts bouncing from 10-50 fps every several seconds. I've cranked the fans prior to launching the game and it seems to have no impact. The heat levels out between 75 - 79 deg. When I exit the game, desktop graphics performance is terrible, even after the heat subsides. Firefox stutters so much just scrolling pages that I have to restart the OS. Safari scrolls choppy too.

On the 9400, I never have a problem other than some consistently low framerates, which is to be expected. WOW is playable in a window but not full screen and definitely not on my 24" Cinema display. That's why I need the 9600 to work better...and it does until the speed degrades.

UBMP Manufactured Feb '09. 2.66GHZ, 4GB