# Warcraft III: improve graphics/speed?



## kainjow (Mar 17, 2003)

Hi I have Warcraft III running on a 733MHz G4 with 640 MB of ram. I don't know what my graphics card is but it's probably decent. Anyways, when I play Warcraft, I notice that the animation isn't nearly as good as some of my PC friends who have normal PC's (most of them are older then my G4 - a Quicksilver).

Should I get a new graphics card? Or is it just the processor? I mean, it's playable, but when I play 2v2's - 4v4's on battle.net it gets slow in battles.

Could somebody help me out here?


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## a2daj (Mar 17, 2003)

The Quicksilver 733s are lacking the L3 cache, which usually offers a big boost to game performance.  The default card in that system I believe was a 32 MB GeForce2MX, which is not really that great of a card these days.  But I'm not sure what graphical settings you're trying to use so I'm not sure where your bottleneck is showing up.

The game performs better in OS 9 than in OS X (as do most games which run in both OSes) although 10.2.4 seems to have helped out performance a bit.  

Don't buy Apple's hype that a G4 733 will be twice as fast as a PC running at 1.4 GHz because when it comes to games, that's not going to be the case.  Typically, a G4 will run games with about the same performance as an equivalent PC (in terms of MHz and other hardware.. vidcards, system bus type, etc).  More often than not, a game will run slightly better on a PC than a Mac due to the nature of ported games.  With WCIII, it seems the performance delta between PCs and Macs is a bit more but I'm sure Blizzard is still working on optimizing the Mac version.


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## Trip (Mar 17, 2003)

> _Originally posted by kainjow _
> *I mean, it's playable, but when I play 2v2's - 4v4's on battle.net it gets slow in battles. *



Maybe it's your modem?


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## kainjow (Mar 19, 2003)

No I have Cable modem so I know it's the computer hardware or the Mac port is jacked up.

Thanks a2daj for your comments. It helps me understand better.


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## Perseus (Mar 22, 2003)

My theory is that its the graphics card. I only have 16 megs (not much at all!) and WCIII played very choppy. (I am on dual 500 mhz). My friends with PCs had 96 megs and even 128 megs of memory on their cards and it ran very smoothly.

-Perseus


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## wiz (Mar 23, 2003)

ya WC3 works fine on my [P4 2Ghz, nVidia GForce 3 Ti 200, 500 Mb ram] heh some gamming machine....

I use my PC for games.. My mac for everything else. (don't ask me about buying those consoles, ai already have a one, PS2, hate it, can't play any complex games on them)


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## Zanneth (May 23, 2003)

I have that same stupid problem. It is so annoying!!! I have an 800mhz flat panel iMac with 768 MB of RAM and a GeForce 4MX graphics card, and the game still runs horribly!!  

At first I thought that the problem was the RAM, but I upgraded to 768 and nothing happened! Of course applications open and run faster but thats pretty much it.

Than I thought it was the bus speed. The iMac only comes with only 100mhz, that is also perhaps the reason that window resizing sucks on it. 

Can anyone please help?!?!? I am so deperate I considered overclocking, which I am really afraid of doing.


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## wyvern (May 23, 2003)

It's the GF4MX. It's basically a GF2+crap, not a GF4. In other words, it uses the NV10 core, not the NV20 (geforce3 and 4). FYI, NV30 is the new GeForce FX.


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## hulkaros (May 24, 2003)

> _Originally posted by kainjow _
> *Hi I have Warcraft III running on a 733MHz G4 with 640 MB of ram. I don't know what my graphics card is but it's probably decent. Anyways, when I play Warcraft, I notice that the animation isn't nearly as good as some of my PC friends who have normal PC's (most of them are older then my G4 - a Quicksilver).
> 
> Should I get a new graphics card? Or is it just the processor? I mean, it's playable, but when I play 2v2's - 4v4's on battle.net it gets slow in battles.
> ...



A better graphics card will give you a major boost...

Go for anything equal or above to ATI RADEON 9000 PRO  Mac Edition of course  

For a quick fix run the game under OS 9 or reduce graphics details or both


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## bbc58206 (May 29, 2003)

can i used old tv tuner card to latest mac?(mac OSX 10.2)
tv turner = Turbo TV card,...how to do?


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## Bluetick (May 31, 2003)

I have the same machine.  Geforce 2 MX, 733 Quicksilver w/ 640 megs.  Yeah, a better video card would probably help.  But honestly, I never had any problems with it on my machine.  Never got too choppy, and the graphics were quite crisp.

Also, I know most people won't agree with me, but I found the game to run much better on OSX than OS9.


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## jimbo61 (Jun 4, 2003)

on my comp the game runs decent in OS9 with the graphics turned up at 800- 600, but under OSX it sucks, very choppy and makes the game hard to play, so i guess if you have a slower mac, it might be better to play in OS9...


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## Mat (Jun 5, 2003)

This will probably sound a pretty obvious fix, but have you set the video options to the highest settings within WC?

If not go Options -> Video

Mat


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## AkulaIX (Jun 11, 2003)

It's all about the video card. I have a Dell with a ATI Radeon 9700 128MB and it smokes compared to my Dual G4 with an Nvidia GeForce 32MB.


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## HECTORdaBIZATCH (Jun 11, 2003)

I have a dual 867 G4 with a GeForce 3 (flashed PC geforce) and 768 mb of RAM.

I've got a friend who has a 1.7ghz AMD and the same exact geforce 3 card with only 512 mb of ram running WinXP. His computer destroys mine in terms of WC3 performance. He can play high quality, 1024+ resolution with no lagging or choppiness, but I have to switch over to OS 9 and bring most of the video settings down to a mininum to get it smooth.


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## Greystroke (Jun 11, 2003)

I'm thinking the guys over at Blizzard really haven't quite got OSX down yet...

I really can think of no other explanation


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## chevy (Jun 12, 2003)

It's ok on my iMac 1GHz with GeForce4MX 64MB.


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## Trip (Jun 12, 2003)

lol...that...ha...was a joke right? 

Blizzard has so many different console projects going right now I wouldn't be suprised if on Ghost it asks you to locate your Mac OS control panels.


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## SoulCollector (Jul 10, 2003)

hmmm weird on my Dual 1ghz Geforce4MX 1.2gig or ram
Warcraft 3 plays fine....smooth and i boosted it  to 1600x1200 res on high still  running good...and Im playing Frozen Throne right nowww..wohoooo


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## Zanneth (Jul 11, 2003)

Well, think about the less forunate who have fairly good macs but are having this problem.


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## madscientist (Jul 16, 2003)

um, im running warcraft III on a g3 450 imac and aside from when you have a battle more than about 20 units it runs fine.
everything is set to its lowest graphics settings though.
(running 10.2 with 196mb ram)


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## Eckhart (Jul 20, 2003)

I  bought WC3 along with the new iMac (700Mhz,768Mbyte RAM, GF2MX) and I was so dissapointed, when I first played it. I could barely believe it. Why had Apple equipped that machine with a GeForce 2MX which was doubtlessly junk already by that time? Why didn't I consider that deeply enough not to buy the iMac. I ran slow with all settings switched to the minimum. After rebooting to OS9 it went better, but it sucked to reboot all the time. I did not really get into the game because of that. 

I never player a major game again, although I now consider the purchase of Sim City 4. Ironically, I see exactly the same problems coming along...


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## mpbnl8182 (Jul 28, 2003)

I've played it a bit on my iBook and it seems to run fine, no choppiness whatsoever.  Considering that this is a < 1000 dollar computer, i'm impressed.  It also runs decently on my G4 400 (an upgraded B&W), but then again I have 32 MB video cards in both of these computers.


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## Perseus (Aug 2, 2003)

I am thinking of upgrading my G4's video memory. It currently has 16 megs. I dont want to spend $400 for 128 megs. Would 64 megs of video memory make my WC3 run completely smooth on my G4? (Dual 500 Mhz, 384 ram) I had gone to CompUSA and observed a G4 running only 64 megs of video memory and it was as clear and as smooth as my friend's PC that has 128 megs of video memory. I asked him why. He said the driver's are different or something. So, technically, would I be safe upgrading to 64 megs given my specs?


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## danskinnyman (Aug 7, 2003)

I have a 400 Mhz G4 peice of junk, but it has 704mb of RAM and a Radeon 9000 Pro. WcIII runs semi-choppy no matter what i set my graphics settings at. Thats the weird thing, it runs the same in os 9 at minimum graphics and in os x at maximum... anyone have an explanation?

Side note: Anyone know of a good website explaning how to overclock a AGP G4 "Sawtooth"?


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