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Portal 2 & MBA
- Thread starter mattpreston11
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Played for about 3 hours this morning on my MBA ultra! All settings on high at native resolution, 2xMSAA, trilinear filtering. Turned sound down to medium quality as I had some jumping in the computers voice, but I think that may have been intentional!
Worked a treat - loved it!
Worked a treat - loved it!
It looked great on my MBA 13" Ultimate. I noted the same audio stuttering a couple of times and will change the audio settings. I ran subtitles during the parts where the audio was choppy and I think it was a computer problem rather than intentional design.
Runs perfect on my ultimate 11" MBA w/ 10.6.7 installed via non-combo update straight from the website, NOT Software Update.app.
All settings on high, 1366x768 native res, trilinear filtering with 2x AA gives me ~40fps average. It even runs smooth on "Laptop power savings" mode which reduces load on the CPU/GPU and shoots for a 30fps average, giving pretty decent battery life as well.
So happy with this machine.
All settings on high, 1366x768 native res, trilinear filtering with 2x AA gives me ~40fps average. It even runs smooth on "Laptop power savings" mode which reduces load on the CPU/GPU and shoots for a 30fps average, giving pretty decent battery life as well.
So happy with this machine.
No go!
I am unable to play at all. I set the resolution down 1280x720 with no AA and still not playable at all. Extremely choppy and unresponsive around 10 FPS. Using native resolution is ridiculous at 1-3 FPS with AA on lowest setting.
I am running on a 1 month old MBA 11 Ultimate - bought refurb. Running OS X 10.6.7. Rebooted and still played just as horrible. VERY DISAPPOINTED!!!
How is it that you guys are showing such different numbers? Is my unit defective? I also have issues playing Netflix full screen but figured that was just Silverlight being coded poorly.
Advice?
I am unable to play at all. I set the resolution down 1280x720 with no AA and still not playable at all. Extremely choppy and unresponsive around 10 FPS. Using native resolution is ridiculous at 1-3 FPS with AA on lowest setting.
I am running on a 1 month old MBA 11 Ultimate - bought refurb. Running OS X 10.6.7. Rebooted and still played just as horrible. VERY DISAPPOINTED!!!
How is it that you guys are showing such different numbers? Is my unit defective? I also have issues playing Netflix full screen but figured that was just Silverlight being coded poorly.
Advice?
I think you're the victim of the 10.6.7 issues plaguing the 2010 MBAs. Unfortunately I think you need to wait until Apple releases a fix, restore from a backup before you installed 10.6.7, or reinstall the OS from the USB restore drive and do incremental(not combo) updates from the Apple support/downloads site, instead of from software update.
Really stupid issue and Apple needs to get on this ASAP. It helps if you report this issue to them, to get on their backs about fixing it or releasing 10.6.8 faster.
I'm willing to bet the base model will run it at near-similar settings to mine, maybe medium-high. My CPU doesn't seem to be maxed out during play.
ohh..so theres an issue with 10.6.7? That makes me feel better knowing its not (hopefully) a hardware issue. Will backup and re-install to see if that fixes things...thx!
Make sure you don't use the combo update. Install each update separately and you won't encounter the issue with decreased gaming performance.
how hot does it make your computer run? I want Portal 2 but I don't want my macbook air to melt..the CPU goes up to 80 degrees celsius when I play youtube videos according to iStat..
These computers were built to withstand the thermal limitations of their CPU/GPU. Apple would not have used these components if they went beyond their max operating temps by simply putting them under load.
You could technically play Portal 2 and leave it running for weeks with no issue, and if there were any issues, there's something wrong with your MBA and Apple should fix it.
I just got done with a 3-hour session of maxed out Portal 2 on my 11" laying in bed. Runs great.
this is not directly pertaining to portal 2 but i figured id ask here has anyone with an 11" ultimate tried gaming on an external monitor? something with 1600x900 or 1900x1200 resoluton like a 20-23" monitor.
ive seen the 11"ultimate has proven very capable but im curious on how it performs while driving the monitor.
ive seen the 11"ultimate has proven very capable but im curious on how it performs while driving the monitor.
portal 2 runs decent on my mba 13 inch base. i have aa off, shaders on low, while everything else is medium. the game runs find, just some areas there is a quick stutter to load the level. gameplay wise, no hiccups or slow downs. i also play on a 24 inch external monitor at 1920x1200.
Two more things to add:
Played a few hours of co-op today on FULL settings on my 13" ultimate - and it coped absolutely fine. Just ensure nothing in the background, and expect a stutter on first loading of textures, but after that - fine!
On another note - on co-op in the last chamber before the end of the game, there appears to be a bug that crashed my MBA no less than 5 times (regardless of settings, tried alsorts!), without crashing my companions laptop. Be warned! The game is still completable though without doing that. You'll find out when you get there
Played a few hours of co-op today on FULL settings on my 13" ultimate - and it coped absolutely fine. Just ensure nothing in the background, and expect a stutter on first loading of textures, but after that - fine!
On another note - on co-op in the last chamber before the end of the game, there appears to be a bug that crashed my MBA no less than 5 times (regardless of settings, tried alsorts!), without crashing my companions laptop. Be warned! The game is still completable though without doing that. You'll find out when you get there
How do I know which update to install? I'm on Apples download site now and I see they have the combo update 10.6.7 along with some older 2008 updates as well. How do I install these updates seperately? I'm a new MAC convert noob, so any assistance getting to 10.6.7 WITHOUT the offending update thats causing my issue would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1363 I used this one. You have to be on 10.6.6 to use it. If you're not, search the website for each version respectively, instead of using one that says "combo".
Just beat the singleplayer of Portal 2, such a good game. Now for coop!
Thanks for the info!
So this update gets me to 10.6.7 but its not the combo update, right? What exactly does the "combo" exactly do that screws things up?
Is it ok that I installed the 10.6.6 combo update and NOT the 10.6.7 combo update? In other words, is it just the 10.6.7 combo update that screws things up? So I can safely now install the non-combo update to 10.6.7?