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Spore froze MBP after sluggish performance, impending hardware failure?

mikes70mustang

mikes70mustang

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 14, 2008
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So my friend bought spore and couldn't use it because he didn't have an intel mac. So being the good friend that i am...i put it on mine and let him play a few times:D Anyway, i played it for about a total of like 8 hours or so. Then when i got to civilization stage and the game play slowed. Scrolling around was choppy sometimes, then i guess i tried to move to fast across the "world" or whatever its called on there, after that i just moved super slow and froze. I have not played it since. I just got a lil nervous reading about the gpu failures of my model of mbp. So the question is, should a non-unibody MBP 15", 2.4, 4gb ram, intel core 2, 256 GeForce 8600M GT, get slow and sluggish during a game like spore. And not just that, but freeze up so bad you have to pull the battery b/c nothing else works? Also, does this foreshadow any graphics failure Any help would be appreciated, i just think a computer of this caliber shouldn't be freezing that easily.
 
mikes70mustang said:
So my friend bought spore and couldn't use it because he didn't have an intel mac. So being the good friend that i am...i put it on mine and let him play a few times:D Anyway, i played it for about a total of like 8 hours or so. Then when i got to civilization stage and the game play slowed. Scrolling around was choppy sometimes, then i guess i tried to move to fast across the "world" or whatever its called on there, after that i just moved super slow and froze. I have not played it since. I just got a lil nervous reading about the gpu failures of my model of mbp. So the question is, should a non-unibody MBP 15", 2.4, 4gb ram, intel core 2, 256 GeForce 8600M GT, get slow and sluggish during a game like spore. And not just that, but freeze up so bad you have to pull the battery b/c nothing else works? Also, does this foreshadow any graphics failure Any help would be appreciated, i just think a computer of this caliber shouldn't be freezing that easily.
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Im pretty sure those graphics cards are the ones that are faulty. I could be wrong.
 
Next Tuesday said:
Im pretty sure those graphics cards are the ones that are faulty. I could be wrong.
Click to expand...

Yah your right, but i was wondering if this is a symptom, if i should try and play again and see if it will still run slow and maybe freeze again. And still, im just wondering if it should be lagging during a game like spore. Just trying to figure if i have a problem or not.
 
mikes70mustang said:
Yah your right, but i was wondering if this is a symptom, if i should try and play again and see if it will still run slow and maybe freeze again. And still, im just wondering if it should be lagging during a game like spore. Just trying to figure if i have a problem or not.
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Im sure u can search google or whatnot to find out what the symmtoms are. Good luck with it. Im getting a late2008 MBP for xmas and hope i can play spoer as its one of my main games i play.
 
Do you have issues with other games? There are some reported issues with the relatively recent patch of Spore for Macs, there was some discussion on the EA forums I think too.

Spore-Patch-Giving-Headaches-to-Mac-Users-
 
Semiopaque said:
Do you have issues with other games? There are some reported issues with the relatively recent patch of Spore for Macs, there was some discussion on the EA forums I think too.

Spore-Patch-Giving-Headaches-to-Mac-Users-
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Idk, i dont really know of many mac compatible games, guess i could look. I just think somethings wrong if a 3 month old computer cant run a fairly simple game.
 
I have the exact same MBP except i've got 2.5GB of RAM. I play spore and it runs perfect. No slow downs or freezes at all. Are you shutting everything else down when you play?
 
Also, the gpu was running at 80c when i was playing spore, ive seen so many normal temp quotes by people i dont know which is right
 
If the GPU is faulty, it will only be a matter of time before it fails. It can fail even on machines that arent used for gaming
As for the new 9600 cards, well the first widespread cases of GPU failures with the 8 series didnt occur until about 12 months after release, so time will tell if they fixed the problem

Symptoms of GPU failure includes display corruption, unexplained reboots and crashes
 
mikes70mustang said:
Also, the gpu was running at 80c when i was playing spore, ive seen so many normal temp quotes by people i dont know which is right
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It is really difficult to identify what may have caused the freeze with only one occurrence and the details you have provided.

80C is fine for gaming.

If you had bootcamp, you can run some benchmarks in XP to check, or check minidumps if you get a BSOD, but I'm not as familiar with those types of apps in OS X.

From what it sounds like, it very well may be that the GPU is failing - but there is just too little information for anybody to give you a definitive answer.
 
MowingDevil said:
Ya were you running Spore in Bootcamp or OSX?
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I was using OSX, i played it some more and it didnt happen, but i also installed the patch so that could have been the problem. The only time it sort of hesitated now was when i zoomed in or out of a planet on space stage. I also had the graphics high as it will go. But the only thing that happened was it got a little toasty, 80c was about as hot as it got, but that was also with an incase hard case on.
 
So is it a fun game on the Mac or what? I've heard it really dumbed down. One thing that was mentioned was the 'evolution' aspect is just for cosmedic reasons and has no impact on improving your character like the PC version. For example if you go for 6 legs, on the PC you're faster than you were with 2 - on the Mac version you're the same speed. Is this true?
 
MowingDevil said:
So is it a fun game on the Mac or what? I've heard it really dumbed down. One thing that was mentioned was the 'evolution' aspect is just for cosmedic reasons and has no impact on improving your character like the PC version. For example if you go for 6 legs, on the PC you're faster than you were with 2 - on the Mac version you're the same speed. Is this true?
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Yah, im pretty sure that adding more legs didnt make you faster. But adding more body armor like bone pads upped the protection the more i piled on. Honestly, i wouldnt go out and buy this game. Its not amazing in any aspect. Its a neat game, has some cool parts to it. Its a good game to kill time, or if your eccentric and like to have super customized characters. But in all, cool game, but for me its not so amazing that id recommend it for everybody. Just use a friends copy and dont register it:D
 
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