Powerbook frame rate question

[quigley0]

I am a PC gamer, and wont pretend to know a lot about Macs. ( I do love our powerbook though)

I bought my wife Knights of the Old Republic for her powerbook, and even at 800x600/noAA/low textures the frame rate is really poor. Everything is very jumpy in game.

Now, when I bought the powerbook, i was greedy and intended to play some games on it. So here are the system specs:

1GB DDR333 SDRAM - 2 SO-DIMMs

1.5GHz PowerPC G4 with 128MB Graphics Memory

80GB Ultra ATA drive @ 5400rpm

SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)

AirPort Extreme Card

Backlit Keyboard/Mac OS - U.S. English

As you can see, i opted for the gig of RAM and the extra 64MB of graphics memory. So, I think the game should be running fine. She does play in stretched-mode (17in widescreen), so, that is the next thing i am checking.

I know Macs and PCs are far distant cousins, but this rig seems like it should be able to play games fine

[evo0o]

Is the Graphics Memory on-board or an ATI\nVidia card?

[quigley0]

I believe it is a radeon 9700 128 MB. I'll check to make sure. That is what we ordered, but I guess I never checked to make sure it was installed. <feels stupid>

Oh, also, the stretched had no impact on performance.

[quigley0]

On the invoice it says 128MB Graphics Memory. Surely that isn't onboard? Isn't most onboard memory like 32MB?

<EDIT> On apple's website, the base comes with a 64MB radeon 9700. I upgraded to 128 MB. The upgrade wouldn't be to on board memory would it? </EDIT>

[imtoomuch]

I'm pretty sure it's a separate card. It's really sad that you can't even play a game with desirable settings with computer stats like that.

[quigley0]

Ok, just checked on the laptop. It says it is a 128MB ATI graphics. I am assuming this is the ati 9700 mobility.

As a PC user, troubleshooting a Mac is hard for me. On PC's there is DirectX and everything. Is there something like that for mac that I need to download? The game really looks like at times it is getting about 2-4 frames per second.

[quigley0]

Ok. After a complete system update, and tweaking some settings, the game seems to be running a little better.

For powerbooks, i guess there is a battery saving setting, which was on, so i set it to performance, and that helped a lot.

It still isn't as well as I would like. Maybe there are more tweaks?

[Etc.]

That seems VERY strange that the game would run so poorly. The specs are pretty awesome. I don't know... my best guess would be maybe other programs are running in the background, but even that shouldn't have a huge effect if you've got a gig of RAM. I just don't know, heh.

[quigley0]

Hmm, I am starting to wonder if the game is poorly coded. I downloaded the mac version of America's Army, and that runs fine with no problems.

On PC games there is a way to choose software or hardware rendering. I just want to make sure that the game is actually using the 3d card and not just the processor w/ software rendering. :(

[Vice]

if its a port, then there is a chance the mac version was poorly coded. UT2003 is a good game on the Mac for testing if your hardware is bad or not, since it runs good on even the rubbishy Macs like iBooks. (rubbish hardware spec wise lol) download the Demo online, search google for it.