Why is Halo Running Real Slow!
- Thread starter bkaron
- Start date
On Macs, always play with Light Flares on Low or Medium. When set to High or Extreme, the game will lag heavily, particularly in areas where there's a lot of lights. Right now, apparently the Light Flares are done in software because Apple doesn't have the necessary extension(s) available in OpenGL.
Technically, Vertex Shaders should be much faster than No Shaders when the option is available and you have the bandwidth to keep the card filled. In Halo, The Vertex Shaders Only option will only show up if a card that supports it is detected, so you don' t have to worry about the sw emulated VS being used. But for whatever reason, the Radeon 8500 and 9000 cards seem to be performing much slower than expected on the few systems I've seen performance numbers for. My brother has a Radeon 8500 in his 1.4 GHz upgraded Sawtooth and he has to play with No Shaders. This may be due to the 2xAGP port and the 100 MHz system bus. Since Halo is so much more GPU dependant, it's important to keep the card filled, so for once, the AGP bandwidth actually matters a bit.
There are plenty of good games for the Mac. Most of the big name games get ported. Sure, we miss out on some of the big ones, but we still have our fare share of big name ports. More than enough to fill my free time.
Technically, Vertex Shaders should be much faster than No Shaders when the option is available and you have the bandwidth to keep the card filled. In Halo, The Vertex Shaders Only option will only show up if a card that supports it is detected, so you don' t have to worry about the sw emulated VS being used. But for whatever reason, the Radeon 8500 and 9000 cards seem to be performing much slower than expected on the few systems I've seen performance numbers for. My brother has a Radeon 8500 in his 1.4 GHz upgraded Sawtooth and he has to play with No Shaders. This may be due to the 2xAGP port and the 100 MHz system bus. Since Halo is so much more GPU dependant, it's important to keep the card filled, so for once, the AGP bandwidth actually matters a bit.
There are plenty of good games for the Mac. Most of the big name games get ported. Sure, we miss out on some of the big ones, but we still have our fare share of big name ports. More than enough to fill my free time.
Someone in another forum mentioned that it fixes the zoom bug when using NV Shaders, a GF3 or GF4Ti, and OS 10.3.2.
BTW, since I've seen so many people ask the same questions over and over again in various forums, I put together a quick Halo performance info page. It's not close to done, but currently provides some information about the graphics options.
http://homepage.mac.com/a2daj/HaloPerfInfo.html
BTW, since I've seen so many people ask the same questions over and over again in various forums, I put together a quick Halo performance info page. It's not close to done, but currently provides some information about the graphics options.
http://homepage.mac.com/a2daj/HaloPerfInfo.html
Ricky
Registered
The story behind Halo as I've been told...
Halo was originally being developed for Mac, by Bungie, before anything else. Microsoft bought Bungie and used an ActiveX(?) engine to run the game on the Xbox. The game was converted so that it would play beautifully on a home-console system.
When Microsoft released the game for Windows, PC users complained just like we did here that the game was barely playable. It lagged like crazy, and PC users with even the highest end graphics cards found themselves with 640x480 resolutions, barely reaching 30 fps.
Then we got the port, just as crappy as the PC users got (if not crappier, as the machines are faster than they were one or two years ago). The reason is that the graphics engine is largely unoptimized for anything other than a home gaming console. The very same machines that are getting 15 fps in Halo are getting 200+ fps in other [comparable] first person shooters.
Just my opinion, but I think they crippled the engine to sell more Xboxes. :\
Halo was originally being developed for Mac, by Bungie, before anything else. Microsoft bought Bungie and used an ActiveX(?) engine to run the game on the Xbox. The game was converted so that it would play beautifully on a home-console system.
When Microsoft released the game for Windows, PC users complained just like we did here that the game was barely playable. It lagged like crazy, and PC users with even the highest end graphics cards found themselves with 640x480 resolutions, barely reaching 30 fps.
Then we got the port, just as crappy as the PC users got (if not crappier, as the machines are faster than they were one or two years ago). The reason is that the graphics engine is largely unoptimized for anything other than a home gaming console. The very same machines that are getting 15 fps in Halo are getting 200+ fps in other [comparable] first person shooters.
Just my opinion, but I think they crippled the engine to sell more Xboxes. :\
Halo isn't that bad on a highend PC/Mac. Just don't bother playing it on the machines like what I got.
Arden
Where mah "any" keys at?
Yeah, no kidding. Halo = t3h 0wn1j on a G5 (from experience), and crap on most G4's from what I hear. Though it plays well on the 1.7 Ghz computers at Nexus.
The Mac version of Halo is a port of a port of a port of what was originally intended to be a Mac/PC native hybrid. Stupid Microsoft.
The Mac version of Halo is a port of a port of a port of what was originally intended to be a Mac/PC native hybrid. Stupid Microsoft.
Pippin
Sys***** slave.
Hrmm directed to wards you
... What makes you so special? Oh you have a 9000 so in turn I must have meant you. Good Logic. And I am not a gaming nerd as you so eloquently put it, I dont point anyone out in the forms cause thats just lame thing to do. The fact of the matter is that no matter how much you can debate over halo, its crap on most graphics cards.