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New rMBP: Faulty 650M?

A

Alucardx03

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 10, 2008
580
3
Tonight, I purchased a brand new 15" rMBP. It's the 16gb, 1.7, 512 model. So far, I absolutely love it, but I'm having some problems with gaming under Boot Camp.

I installed Windows and immediately went to the Nvidia site and downloaded the newest 650m drivers. I started up SimCity and the performance was terrible.

On my 2011 iMac with 1GB graphics card, I can play at 2560x1440, lighting High, textures high, shadows medium, geometry high, animation detail high, AA off, and get a very consistent 30 fps.

On my new rMBP, I only get 15-20 fps with everything in medium at 1900x1080. Obviously, that performance is nowhere near the iMac. I'm not expecting the MBP to be a amazing gaming machine, but it seems weird that a three-year-old iMac with a 1GB graphics card can blow away a brand new computer by that wide a margin.

My questions are, shouldn't it be running better? Is there something wrong with my graphics card? Did installing the newest firmware screw something up?

I'd appreciate any insight!
 
Try a game in OS X first, also, you should have tried before installing new drivers.
But, who says the GPU is bad, try in OS X, if everything is OK there then it's the Windows drivers.
Might also be Bootcamp drivers, make sure all went well with that, you might have the wrong ones.
 
what are the specs of your imac? if its the one with the 6970m then your 650m is not really up to its lvl

resetting the smc may take some time to get it right, best idea is to go and play with a hwinfo64 logging things on the background, so that you can see whats happening, save it in a csv file
 
With 650M even farcry 3 still gets over 20 fps on medium settings..so something is not right
 
is that 2.7GHZ CPU did you check the temps ? if is running hot you may want to set the maximum processor state to 99% to disable turbo clocks

try resetting the SMC again, roll back to bootcamp drivers
 
people are reporting low fps on sim city 5, apparently its bad codded as they come
 
Mr MM said:
people are reporting low fps on sim city 5, apparently its bad codded as they come
Click to expand...

^^^ This !

SC5 is a server based game. Read all the reviews from any of the major gaming sites and you'll quickly learn that SC5 is a mess server side. It's so bad that EA had to DISABLE several features in order to lighten server loads. It's the same features in which they claimed required constant online connection. Yes they were lying it's primarily for DRM purposes.
 
Did you do the SMC reset correctly?

(turn computer off, hold shift-option-control, press power, release all buttons at the same time)

Because I had the same issues, and the reset fixed it.

I have the 2012 rMBP w/ the 2.6 GHz processor and I play Skyrim at 50-100 FPS smooth as butter... and SC5 on med/high/AA at 30 FPS (it needs optimization) but it plays very smoothly.
 
Yes, make sure you're resetting the SMC properly. 99% of the time the EFI bug causes low fps issues on the Windows side in the rMBP. Reset it multiple times. Some people are reporting that 4-5 times actually did the trick.

If you're not sure if you did you reset your SMC correctly unplug your Mac and let the battery run down 5% so when you plug it back in the MagSafe light displays an orange light. If you reset your SMC correctly the light on the MagSafe will briefly turn green and then back orange after the keys are pressed.
 
It's weird...

I downloaded and ran the Heaven benchmark program on both my rMBP and iMac. With the same resolution on both, the rMBP outperformed the iMac by about 3-4 fps. However, immediately after (without shutting down the computer or closing the lid), I jumped back into Sim City and observed the same issue.

So, that leads me to believe it's a problem with Sim City more than the rMBP...

I am playing a huge city at the moment with a massive population. Maybe that has something to do with the poor performance?

I tried resetting the SMC about 9 times with no noticeable effect on performance.
 
Alucardx03 said:
It's weird...

I downloaded and ran the Heaven benchmark program on both my rMBP and iMac. With the same resolution on both, the rMBP outperformed the iMac by about 3-4 fps. However, immediately after (without shutting down the computer or closing the lid), I jumped back into Sim City and observed the same issue.

So, that leads me to believe it's a problem with Sim City more than the rMBP...

I am playing a huge city at the moment with a massive population. Maybe that has something to do with the poor performance?

I tried resetting the SMC about 9 times with no noticeable effect on performance.
Click to expand...

Search for "Sim City" on Google and read the backlash. Consider yourself lucky you can play at all!
 
Brian Y said:
Search for "Sim City" on Google and read the backlash. Consider yourself lucky you can play at all!
Click to expand...

Trust me, I definitely know about the issues! I was one of those who pre-ordered the game and couldn't access it for four hours after release, even though those who didn't pre-order could download, install and start playing.

I was only able to logon sporadically over the last few days and got about five different errors. On Thursday, I finally managed to hop onto a server but the connection was disrupted seven hours in and I lost everything.

Then, the same thing happened this morning. Everything gone.

If I have to play through that damn tutorial again, my iMac is going through the window.

I'm going to give it some time before I dive in again. I've gone through twenty plus years of game launches and this ranks among the worst. Inexcusable.
 
I have never played Sim City before but I would never expect a simulation game this graphics intensive...
 

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