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Anyone still having problems with the x3100 and 10.5.3?

N

North Pacific

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 14, 2007
9
0
I use my MacBook with the x3100 to run X-Plane. The previous driver created several graphics issues (weird shadows, maps and trees), and the new driver in 10.5.3 fixed a couple of them but I'm still getting major flickering when the sim draws trees. It's like flashes of green lightning shooting across the screen from all directions.

Just wondering if the new driver fixed everyone else's graphics problems, whatever they might have been, or whether there are others still experiencing problems with the x3100 and 10.5.3 update.

I won't bother Apple if it's just me and my trees of green lightning, but if there are others still having issues it might be worth letting them know.

thanks
 
No problems here with either 10.5.2 or 10.5.3. The GMA X 3100 graphic chipset by Intel is one of their best and, as far as I know there have been no problems with the driver supplied by Apple.
 
chscag said:
No problems here with either 10.5.2 or 10.5.3. The GMA X 3100 graphic chipset by Intel is one of their best and, as far as I know there have been no problems with the driver supplied by Apple.
Click to expand...

I find that it frequently incorrectly colors objects in relatively GPU intensive games. But hey, at least I can play some games at all on my MB. It's expected lol.
 
chscag said:
No problems here with either 10.5.2 or 10.5.3. The GMA X 3100 graphic chipset by Intel is one of their best and, as far as I know there have been no problems with the driver supplied by Apple.
Click to expand...

I've heard that a much better driver is in the works by Intel. It is supposed to enable real hardware acceleration support for OpenGL 2.0 for the X3100 and the new X4500 coming with the Montevina platform. Montevina is delayed though.

Remains to be seen if/when the new driver comes, and if Apple will improve their driver as well. Apple writes their own driver, if I am not mistaken. That's not always good...
 
Mackan said:
I've heard that a much better driver is in the works by Intel. It is supposed to enable real hardware acceleration support for OpenGL 2.0 for the X3100 and the new X4500 coming with the Montevina platform. Montevina is delayed though.

Remains to be seen if/when the new driver comes, and if Apple will improve their driver as well. Apple writes their own driver, if I am not mistaken. That's not always good...
Click to expand...

Interesting. I didn't know Apple wrote the driver for the X3100. I would have thought Intel wrote it for Unix use (on Apple hardware).

Actually the Apple driver for the X3100 is fairly good but the one supplied by Intel for Win XP and Vista is better. When I boot into my XP Boot Camp partition, and, after having installed the new Intel driver for the X3100, it runs circles around the Apple driver. I would suggest anyone who runs XP or Vista in a Boot Camp partition to upgrade the Leopard disk driver to the latest supplied by Intel. You can download it from the Intel web site.

Regards.
 
chscag said:
Interesting. I didn't know Apple wrote the driver for the X3100. I would have thought Intel wrote it for Unix use (on Apple hardware).

Actually the Apple driver for the X3100 is fairly good but the one supplied by Intel for Win XP and Vista is better. When I boot into my XP Boot Camp partition, and, after having installed the new Intel driver for the X3100, it runs circles around the Apple driver. I would suggest anyone who runs XP or Vista in a Boot Camp partition to upgrade the Leopard disk driver to the latest supplied by Intel. You can download it from the Intel web site.

Regards.
Click to expand...

This is definitely the truth. When playing games in Windows Bootcamp style, the MacBook heats up less significantly and also displays better than OS X. Drivers! :(
 
chscag said:
Interesting. I didn't know Apple wrote the driver for the X3100. I would have thought Intel wrote it for Unix use (on Apple hardware).
Click to expand...

It is the same for all the other video cards they use. You'll never see a direct download of a Mac OS X driver on Nvidia or Intel sites. Unfortunately, if Apple thinks the X3100 driver today is good enough to run Leopard, they might not have any interest in releasing another improved driver. It is depressing to see the performance of the card being so much better when you boot into Windows. We all want to take advantage of the card's full potential, that's what we are paying for when we buy the hardware I hope...
 
Yes!!!

North Pacific said:
I use my MacBook with the x3100 to run X-Plane. The previous driver created several graphics issues (weird shadows, maps and trees), and the new driver in 10.5.3 fixed a couple of them but I'm still getting major flickering when the sim draws trees. It's like flashes of green lightning shooting across the screen from all directions.

Just wondering if the new driver fixed everyone else's graphics problems, whatever they might have been, or whether there are others still experiencing problems with the x3100 and 10.5.3 update.

I won't bother Apple if it's just me and my trees of green lightning, but if there are others still having issues it might be worth letting them know.

thanks
Click to expand...

I AM INDEED GETTING THIS.. AND I JUST BOUGHT A NEW MACBOOK BLACK (WHICH IS PRETTY MUCH THE SAME AS THE MACBOOK PRO EXCEPT THE VIDEO CARD, AND THE BLACK HAS A LARGER HD)
SO I STARTED PLAYING WOW ON IT AND I GET SHADOWS, LAZER BEAN GREEN LITE **** ALL AROUND, I WAS LIKE, WTF? I NEVER EVEN GOT THIS ON MY OLD IBOOK, SO WHY SHOULD IT BE LIKE THIS ON A NEW MAC???
I'M THINKING ABOUT RETURNING IT, AND SUWING APPLE IF THEY DON'T EXCHANGE IT FOR ME FOR A MACBOOK PRO, I AM SO MAD AT THEM!!
 
ecoj said:
I AM INDEED GETTING THIS.. AND I JUST BOUGHT A NEW MACBOOK BLACK (WHICH IS PRETTY MUCH THE SAME AS THE MACBOOK PRO EXCEPT THE VIDEO CARD, AND THE BLACK HAS A LARGER HD)
SO I STARTED PLAYING WOW ON IT AND I GET SHADOWS, LAZER BEAN GREEN LITE **** ALL AROUND, I WAS LIKE, WTF? I NEVER EVEN GOT THIS ON MY OLD IBOOK, SO WHY SHOULD IT BE LIKE THIS ON A NEW MAC???
I'M THINKING ABOUT RETURNING IT, AND SUWING APPLE IF THEY DON'T EXCHANGE IT FOR ME FOR A MACBOOK PRO, I AM SO MAD AT THEM!!
Click to expand...

Yeah, something tells me you would not have a case. In no way is apple entitled to giving you a $500 upgrade because somebody else's software does not work on your mac.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

suing? For that? Not only would you not win, you're being ridiculous. Try finding a constructive solution instead of ranting.
 
Luigi239 said:
Yeah, something tells me you would not have a case. In no way is apple entitled to giving you a $500 upgrade because somebody else's software does not work on your mac.
Click to expand...

I'm not trying to get an upgrade for FREE, I will pay the difference ofcourse. but the laws here in Holland is way better then in America (I've lived in cali) so I'm sure if I go on with this I will win.
if anybody knows why this is happening or have another solution I am willing to hear it, I don't like taking dramatic decisions :p
THANK YOU!!!
 
ecoj said:
I AM INDEED GETTING THIS.. AND I JUST BOUGHT A NEW MACBOOK BLACK (WHICH IS PRETTY MUCH THE SAME AS THE MACBOOK PRO EXCEPT THE VIDEO CARD, AND THE BLACK HAS A LARGER HD)
SO I STARTED PLAYING WOW ON IT AND I GET SHADOWS, LAZER BEAN GREEN LITE **** ALL AROUND, I WAS LIKE, WTF? I NEVER EVEN GOT THIS ON MY OLD IBOOK, SO WHY SHOULD IT BE LIKE THIS ON A NEW MAC???
I'M THINKING ABOUT RETURNING IT, AND SUWING APPLE IF THEY DON'T EXCHANGE IT FOR ME FOR A MACBOOK PRO, I AM SO MAD AT THEM!!
Click to expand...

Looks like your caps lock key is faulty too.
 
QCassidy352 said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

suing? For that? Not only would you not win, you're being ridiculous. Try finding a constructive solution instead of ranting.
Click to expand...

it's an expression, gosh what is wrong with you people? are you all american retards or something?!
 
I'm with you guys who said you get better X3100 performance under Windows.

Rather than wait for Apple to make a driver that may or may not solve my X-Plane problem, I decided to install Boot Camp for the first time. First I tried Vista 64, with Intel's latest driver. Performance was good (better than under Leopard) and fixed the trees problem, but there was a whole new kind of flickering problem going on, worse than just trees. Turns out it's just the way that X-Plane reacts to the graphics subsystem on Vista and has nothing to do with Intel's driver.

I wanted to stay with a 64 bit OS so I then installed XP Pro 64 and manually installed the necessary drivers since Boot Camp won't. Voila, everything
now works correctly and like Vista, performance is better than under Leopard (I also saw some benchmarks posted by an X-Plane coder that show that the program does significantly better under Windows (and Linux) than under Mac, especially with a dedicated video card).

I'm not certain but performance under Vista 64 might have been slightly better than XP 64. Their different architectures and how they run 32 bit programs might account for this. After installing XP 64 I came across a post from that same coder who offered a possible workaround for running X-Plane under Vista, by using the command line option to launch the program with a few directives that tell it not to utilize certain aspects of the video card. Being a masochist, I may re-install Vista on another drive and see if this works and how performance compares between the two 64 bit systems. Either way, running it under Windows seems to be the better choice for me in terms of stability and speed. I have come over to the Dark Side and I like it. :)
 
I'm sure they will let you return it if you purchased it within 14 days, just pay the 10% restocking fee and the difference in price, you dont have to threaten lawsuit for that.
 
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