Forums » MacOS X
Notes on updated Macbook Pro
I recently upgraded to a new Macbook Pro 15", and noticed the following odd behavior:
1. Texture Compression causes some weird glitches with the skybox at any detail level, but causes no visible problems with textures on objects. Screenshot
2. mpengine (Multi-threaded OpenGL) enabled causes poor performance. I'll get some concrete numbers later, but with vsync on, the game was having problems maintaining 60fps with mpengine enabled. With mpengine off, performance is mostly smooth and consistent with all settings maxed, though glow does slow things down a bit around the bigger stations or lots of capships.
I suspect that both issues are due to the new nVidia 8600M GT graphics card in these laptops. General reports seem to indicate that the drivers provided for it by Apple are not yet up to par. I'll have to test while running under Boot Camp.
System specs:
Mac OS X 10.4.10, all current updates
Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz
2GB RAM
nVidia 8600M GT 256MB
1. Texture Compression causes some weird glitches with the skybox at any detail level, but causes no visible problems with textures on objects. Screenshot
2. mpengine (Multi-threaded OpenGL) enabled causes poor performance. I'll get some concrete numbers later, but with vsync on, the game was having problems maintaining 60fps with mpengine enabled. With mpengine off, performance is mostly smooth and consistent with all settings maxed, though glow does slow things down a bit around the bigger stations or lots of capships.
I suspect that both issues are due to the new nVidia 8600M GT graphics card in these laptops. General reports seem to indicate that the drivers provided for it by Apple are not yet up to par. I'll have to test while running under Boot Camp.
System specs:
Mac OS X 10.4.10, all current updates
Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz
2GB RAM
nVidia 8600M GT 256MB
I think the drivers are probably not yet fully optimized. This is a problem that I think will be more and more prevalent because video cards are getting more complicated and new cards seem to come out sooner, thereby having less time to optimize/stabilize drivers.
The MPEngine setting can be faster for some situations and slower for others. I think VO straddles that line and with different hardware falls either one way or the other. It's complicated.
The MPEngine setting can be faster for some situations and slower for others. I think VO straddles that line and with different hardware falls either one way or the other. It's complicated.
The Macbook Pro update released yesterday corrects the performance problems which were caused by an update released earlier this summer. The nVidia drivers for the 8600m GT are updated. MPEngine is still better left disabled, but otherwise performance is back where it should be (based on about 5 minutes of testing last night).