Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

BF2142 and Mac Pro with 8800 Nvidia card (stock) - VERY POOR performance

P

pprior

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 1, 2007
1,448
9
I bought the 8800 upgrade for my old mac pro when it first came out. It was WAY slower than the stock ATIx1900 card (!) in 2142 so I returned it. I subsequently bought the ATI3970 upgrade and it worked fine.

Fast forward to today and i just received my new octocore 3ghz mac pro which came with (you guessed it) the 8800 card from Apple (replacment machine, long story).

I'm flabbergasted to see that performance is still SO bad it's unplayable.

Is there anyone on this forum playing BF2142 with this card that gets acceptable frame rates? I'm only running 1024x768 and a machine of this caliber with that video card should EASILY be able to run 1600x1200!
 
pprior said:
I bought the 8800 upgrade for my old mac pro when it first came out. It was WAY slower than the stock ATIx1900 card (!) in 2142 so I returned it. I subsequently bought the ATI3970 upgrade and it worked fine.

Fast forward to today and i just received my new octocore 3ghz mac pro which came with (you guessed it) the 8800 card from Apple (replacment machine, long story).

I'm flabbergasted to see that performance is still SO bad it's unplayable.

Is there anyone on this forum playing BF2142 with this card that gets acceptable frame rates? I'm only running 1024x768 and a machine of this caliber with that video card should EASILY be able to run 1600x1200!
Click to expand...

What detail settings are you using? Resolution isn't the only thing that could cause it to be choppy. Plus I seem to remember the 8800 being a GT and not a GTX...
 
My NVIDIA 8800GS Gets Poor Performance Too!

I am playing COD2 (Probably a little harder on machine than BF2142, but still) on my NVIDIA 8800GS iMac, and I only get around 12 frames per second regardless of settings!!! I am sick of the poor effort that is put into Mac ports... I mean, with your hardware (not to mention mine) on a Windows machine, we would be getting around 100 FPS. (Not that I would buy a PC; I would just install Windows for gaming.) If anyone has any tips to get better frame rates, then please post them! I have already addressed this issue in multiple post, my latest being "Does Anybody Get High Frame Rates With Call of Duty 2 On An NVIDIA iMac?" If you have any suggestions, then please post here or there. Thanks!
 
i dont think it's the card as much as the poor programing by EA. i have COD4 and it runs great with my 8800. but battlefield 2142 sucks. especially when someone nukes a spot. feels like a slideshow sometimes.
 
I don't know of any way to "update drivers" on the mac.

I've run system update and there are no updates available.

System settings are all at medium with no antialiasing. With the ATI card I can max out settings at 1024x768 with no problems.

It's probably EA games fault, they really suck. However I play this game a lot, and really want to get it working again, but do not want to pay for another video card given the 8800 should be WAY more than enough horsepower.
 
Kaos Theory said:
Guess we should all just buy COD4, huh?
Click to expand...

Yes, but buy the Xbox 360 version. Forget computers, especially Macs, for gaming. PCs are simply too expensive and Macs are too expensive and too under-powered in their graphics performance for games. Consoles have become the only option that makes real sense.
 
Bah, the console game controllers bite.

Give me a keyboard and mouse any day.

There has to be a fix to this - it's obviously a driver problem.
 
Is this a 128 or a 256 card?

128 and you'll have to have most settings on lowest, depending on ram.

256 there should be little problem.
 
Less Exciting said:
Is this a 128 or a 256 card?

128 and you'll have to have most settings on lowest, depending on ram.

256 there should be little problem.
Click to expand...


It's -512- but trust me, there is a BIG problem.






NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0602
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: 3233
Displays:
 
i should remind you bf 2142 was a very glitchy and buggy game with unreliable internet source that kept crashing..

everyone who had the pc version vowed never to buy EA games because of that.
 
Maybe, but the point is that it runs splendidly with the ATI card, but horrifically with the Nvidia card which is reportedly faster for games.
 
You're not really getting good frame rates either way if you're playing the Mac version. Under Windows my 8800 GT performs beautifully, but that has the disadvantage of me having to reboot. I think it's more an issue of how they used Cider to port it over, instead of making a native Mac port of the game.
 
With the 3870 (and even the x1900) ATI cards my frame rates were butter smooth, again it's only the nvidia that pukes on itself.
 
8800GT and GS Have Poor Support In Games

I was so mad today... I was playing COD2 online, and getting only 12 frames per second again. :mad: What's the point of having this awesome graphics card if older games don't support it? I had some guy on the server telling me how iMacs can't have discreet graphics, and then how the 8800GS wasn't an under-clocked 8800GT... Thanks goodness for forums that are Mac-exclusive ;). Anyway, if there is anybody who plays COD2 on a 2.8 GHz iMac with NVIDIA graphics, then please give me some tips :D.
Oh, and you're absolutely right, pprior, I would never play an FPS on a console; there's little skill involved. (Well, FPSs are good on Wii, but that's a different story.)
 
Aspyr is working on a CoD 2 patch for 8xxx support... It could be in a long time, it seems the problem is related to OSX too, and they are waiting for Apple to fix the bug....
 
COD 2 on Mac

FWIW Try running COD 2 under Rosetta. On 3.06gHz iMac w/8800GS video card, it runs quite adequately and the game is playable. Not how it's meant to be, though. Natively, it is slightly better looking graphically but has an annoying glitch that means any movement v. briefly freezes every second or two, making combat/running/aiming difficult. Hope this helps. Perhaps BF2142 (don't own) can be used similarly (?).
 
pprior said:
With the 3870 (and even the x1900) ATI cards my frame rates were butter smooth, again it's only the nvidia that pukes on itself.
Click to expand...

That is more likely due to ATI writing it's own drivers and Nvidia letting Apple write it's drivers than the actual card performance. The big hint that it isn't the card is the results being opposite when gaming under Windows.
 
I've noted besides the slow frame rate that this nvidia card also demonstrates tearing, which the ATI never did.

I hate to dump this card and buy another 3870, which is pretty out of date as it stands. I thought ATI had announced another mac card coming out.

It's absurd that such an expensive computer can be bested by a PC that costs 1/5 as much.
 
pprior said:
I thought ATI had announced another mac card coming out.
Click to expand...
They announced plans for the 4850/4870, but nothing since. Maybe when the next Mac Pro model comes out.

Look at Barefeats and other places and you'll see that the 8800GT does perform marginally worse compared to the 3870 because of the drivers in OS X, though usually not that much worse. But since the game is a Cider port as well, it's going to run worse just because of that, so that's probably amplifying the issue.

It's absurd that such an expensive computer can be bested by a PC that costs 1/5 as much.
Click to expand...
Well, unfortunately Apple doesn't really care about gaming. That doesn't make the Mac Pro worse for other tasks. Fortunately, you can install Windows for a much better gaming experience, turing "such an expensive computer" into a competent gaming machine (albeit with limited video card choices ;)).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back