Until the Teradons came out, I was doing really well on my 32mb Rage M7 card with textures on the second to highest, scene detail to the highest, background highest and distance level of detail at half. Now, it's a completely different story. I run into a Teradon, (on REALLY low graphics settings, mind you) and my video card overheats or something after a couple minutes with it in view.

Is there ANYTHING I could do to squeeze magic out of my old, outdated crappy videocard? Better drivers? Hacks to allow it to use RAM somehow? Anything? Personally, I'm clueless when it comes to the world of memory management and videocards and video drivers and processors and... yeah.

I'm running 10.2.8 on an 800mhz G4 Powerbook with 512 Mb of ram and plenty of HD space.

So, help if it ever comes will be much appreciated...
-Calder

[EDIT] If there's absolutely NOTHING, then what's the cheapest videocard that would actually HELP?

Did you set the texture res down to the lowest value in the Video settings?

Try changing the LOD settings (in Graphics) to 1.

Don't use 10.2.x?

Yeah, get yourself to 10.3.9

So far the best version I've had, if you can do without Tiger's little handy-bits, which I would assume you could, considering you're still on 10.2.x

Ok, I'll try that now Ray, thanks. I was trying to find a solution without killing, raping and then burning my graphics settings, but oh well... at least I'll be able to RUN VO properly...

Rogue and Gavan, I've explained multiple times why getting a new OS is out of the picture... Trust me, there's nothing I'd like more in the world!

-Calder

Another suggestions to prevent overheating for a laptop:

Lift the laptop up off the desk to get airflow to the underside. Works even better if you can have an open window or a fan blowing (gently) across your desk.

May not change much, but it could be enough to keep things from wigging out when you run into the more graphically intensive ships in-game. The Griffin iCurve (if you don't mind spending some $ for a well-made product) is great for this if you use a separate keyboard/mouse. Puts the screen at a nicer eye level, and if you also use an external monitor, it tends to line things up nicely for multiple screen use.

Thanks for the advice Nerde, I often use things to prop up my laptop and get flow underneath it. I don't have an external keyboard or mouse. I know it's old-school, but I play VO with just a keyboard. No mouse, no trackpad. Just the keyboard.

-Calder

I play on a 12" PowerBook G4, 1.33 GHz , 768MB RAM, 64MB Nvidia GeForce FX Go5200. It works well enough but when she heats up the little fan sounds like a small turbine. I bought a large clay tile to set underneath of it and that seems to have dealt with the worst of it. The tile has excellent heat absorption and dissipation and keeps the machine cool enough to where the fan doesn't become an unbearable presence.

Hey Calder-Nemesis! I have 10.4.6 now! HA!

In all seriousness, do whatever you have to to get your "powers that be" to upgrade you to the new system. If they're sufficiently non-technical, make up technical-sounding arguments to convince them, like:

"Yeah, the new system 10.4 prevents that nasty G4 Powerbook battery-melting bug that was so prevalent under 10.2.8..."

or

"The new 10.4 system has the built-in motion sensors that prevent theft, along with an audio-visual alarm system."

or

"If I had system 10.4.6 none of the other kids would make fun of me." <begin act of holding back tears>

Let your imagaination run wild! (Seriously, upgrade though.)

"If Leber mac did not get 10.4.6...he might have been lost with the other OS 9 noobs"

:p

*cough* ananzi *cough*

Thanks Leber, but my dad is technically literate and VERY skeptical of anything, especially computers. I'm lucky I'm not trying to play VO on a typewriter still. His attitude is: "Does it work, son?"
"uh... I guess, if you can call 10.2.8 working..."
"Can it wordprocess?"
"...yes"
"Can you do school work on it?"
"uh... yeah... but I can't-"
"There you go. We don't need 10.4.6"

-Calder

Heh.

Well, then you've found his flaw. Tell him School has a new way to login to their servers & submit homework- School needs all homework to be submitted over LDAP servers.

I dunno, whatever your excuse is, tie it into schoolwork! Bribe a teacher to help you - they're always complaining about how they are underpaid!

lol Leber, I wish it were that easy. My school uses windows. :C

-Calder

I thought LDAP was possible under 2.8?

Possible, but extremely painful.

(I have to administer a large OpenDirectory/LDAP-based network. It gets ugly under 10.2.x, and even 10.3.x was no picnic)

i dont know about your specifics but your dad is right to ask 'why' before any technology purchase. there are plenty of people walking around with $20,000 in debt, a house full of obsolete technology they barely use, and a lot of their paycheck going to pay interest to rich bankers and credit card companies.

as for you 'needing it to learn', you dont need it to learn. you need it to play games, which is not a 'need', its a 'want'.

if you 'want' to buy the upgrade, the educational discounted version is about $79.