Minecraft + Mid-2009 MacBook Pro 17" Tips?

[ideal.dreams]

To elaborate, I have a 17" Mid-2009 MacBook Pro. I've recently become addicted to Minecraft and noticed that whenever I play my CPU spikes to the roof. Is there any way to keep the game running smoothly? It IS smooth for the most part but there's a few times per play where it'll just slow down and become laggy for no apparent reason at all.

I heard somewhere that having the game files on an external hard drive will give a little more power to the CPU but I don't think that's entirely true. Can anyone shine some light on this?

Any tips/suggestions are appreciated!

 

[malman89]

I have no issues running it on an old white 2006 MacBook. It uses about 90-100 CPU for me (maybe 105 max), but runs smoothly. Everything is on Normal/On/Auto/Balanced/Fast. The only things off are Advanced OpenGL and clouds. It is written in Java, which doesn't seem to always be the kindest in terms of performance (at least for my MacBook).

It rarely stutters, sometimes just in the midst of a block smashing frenzy, but that's about it.

 

[ideal.dreams]

Do you play windowed or full screen? I have everything set to high performance - it's a $2500 machine, it should have no problems running this...

 

[The Economist]

Do you play windowed or full screen? I have everything set to high performance - it's a $2500 machine, it should have no problems running this...

Don't be silly. It's Minecraft, not your machine.

 

[ideal.dreams]

Don't be silly. It's Minecraft, not your machine.

Then there's a few CPU leaks in the programming because I can't even use Safari with it running without Safari lagging something fierce.

 

[EvryDayImShufln]

Lowering the draw distance worked for me. That's what my mid-2k9 MBP has the most trouble with anyhow.