Alright, so I got xp installed and got a chance to download some game demos etc. to test performance. I am not a gamer, and I did not buy this machine for its gaming ability....although I have dabbled in some first person shooters in the past. Yixian, this one's for you bro.
I started a thread earlier today stating that in OSX I couldn't tell much difference between the 9600GT and the 9400. This is true, but only with the call of duty pre-release demo which really broke my heart with how slow it ran. It was similar to my AMD athalon 2800, 1 gigabyte of ram, and Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb ran the demo. Should a brand new laptop (with a decent graphics card) really perform as poorly as a has been state of the art gaming machine (from 2003)?
Luckily 1) OSX is bad for gaming. 2) COD2 demo , and others tested in OSX are not at all optimized for intel processors or new machines. Enjoy my initial thoughts.
In OSX:
COD2 demo - clearly not optimized. Runs the same with the 9400 and 9600. Very slow and unplayable on high settings. Again. this is just the pre-release demo bull. I'd throw this out but it would contradict my previous thread.
UT2004 demo - Ran fast, but not blazing fast. Averaged 40-60 frames on deathmatch dm_Rankin with everything on high in 1152 resolution. Not super impressive. ** this is also not optimized for intel machines so poor framerates are expected.
Halo demo - This was the first demo that actually ran extremely smooth in 1440x900 and highest everything. This is a game that didn't exactly run perfectly on my old gaming rig so it was the first glimpse of hope for the 9600GT.
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In windows XP pro:
Half Life 2 stress test- Averaged 170 frames per second with highest settings, 1152 resolution (this was the highest available), 4x AA, 8x AF
CS Source- Same settings as stress test. Played Dust 2 with HDR lighting and it ran without a hiccup at well over 100 frames. Simply the smoothest gameplay I've ever experienced (although I haven't gamed in some time).
Here's the kicker...
Crysis demo: 1024 resolution, all settings high, ~20 frames, playable and VERY impressive looking. I turned a few of the settings to medium (shadows and physics) and the framerate shot up. Everything looked just as good as it had before, but at a very playable 40-50 frames per second. I will try some other resolutions and post more results later as well as some screenshots.
Conclusion: Gaming performance in OSX is not very impressive, but in windows this thing really flies. I can't imagine what a little overclocking might do....but I'll leave that to someone else as I am very happy with the gaming performance of this machine. Will be trying UT3 sometime tomorrow.
Enjoy!
I started a thread earlier today stating that in OSX I couldn't tell much difference between the 9600GT and the 9400. This is true, but only with the call of duty pre-release demo which really broke my heart with how slow it ran. It was similar to my AMD athalon 2800, 1 gigabyte of ram, and Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb ran the demo. Should a brand new laptop (with a decent graphics card) really perform as poorly as a has been state of the art gaming machine (from 2003)?
Luckily 1) OSX is bad for gaming. 2) COD2 demo , and others tested in OSX are not at all optimized for intel processors or new machines. Enjoy my initial thoughts.
In OSX:
COD2 demo - clearly not optimized. Runs the same with the 9400 and 9600. Very slow and unplayable on high settings. Again. this is just the pre-release demo bull. I'd throw this out but it would contradict my previous thread.
UT2004 demo - Ran fast, but not blazing fast. Averaged 40-60 frames on deathmatch dm_Rankin with everything on high in 1152 resolution. Not super impressive. ** this is also not optimized for intel machines so poor framerates are expected.
Halo demo - This was the first demo that actually ran extremely smooth in 1440x900 and highest everything. This is a game that didn't exactly run perfectly on my old gaming rig so it was the first glimpse of hope for the 9600GT.
-------------------------------------------------------------
In windows XP pro:
Half Life 2 stress test- Averaged 170 frames per second with highest settings, 1152 resolution (this was the highest available), 4x AA, 8x AF
CS Source- Same settings as stress test. Played Dust 2 with HDR lighting and it ran without a hiccup at well over 100 frames. Simply the smoothest gameplay I've ever experienced (although I haven't gamed in some time).
Here's the kicker...
Crysis demo: 1024 resolution, all settings high, ~20 frames, playable and VERY impressive looking. I turned a few of the settings to medium (shadows and physics) and the framerate shot up. Everything looked just as good as it had before, but at a very playable 40-50 frames per second. I will try some other resolutions and post more results later as well as some screenshots.
Conclusion: Gaming performance in OSX is not very impressive, but in windows this thing really flies. I can't imagine what a little overclocking might do....but I'll leave that to someone else as I am very happy with the gaming performance of this machine. Will be trying UT3 sometime tomorrow.
Enjoy!
