TIM's DA MAN Posted August 24, 2001 Share Posted August 24, 2001 Hi all, I'm looking for a video card for my mac that is good for CM. I have a g4-400 with 1 gig of ram and an ATI rage 128 pro (16mb) card. Takes the computer a long time to make the play movies (the blue bar on the menu between turns). Anyone have any ideas how to make this go faster? Dr.T. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted August 24, 2001 Share Posted August 24, 2001 The blue progress bar is the 'number crunching' that the CPU/FPU has to do. To speed it up with your current hardware you would want to: 1) Increase CM's memory partition. Since you have a couple of hundred megabytes free, that should be sufficient. I'm not aware of any particular amount where the opposite effect may occur (slowdown) due to the amount of memory to be managed (but that may be a system-wide thing rather than the memory partition for a single program). 2) Reduce the number of extensions and control panels you load up to the ones that are truly useful while playing CM. 3) You may want to reduce the number of devices that are hooked up to your Mac, such as joysticks, certain USB devices and possibly any very slow SCSI devices. 4) Update device drivers for any hardware you have including video and third-party hardware. You may also want to check out any updates to third-party partitioning software you may be using. 5) You may want to turn off all Power Saving features on your computer while playing CM. 6) You may want to turn off virtual memory. With the amount of memory you have it should surely be unnecessary (and I believe that OS 9.x may require a good chunk of hard disk space for the required virtual memory for 1Gb of RAM). I've heard mixed results with virtual memory, where some people preferred it on. Basically we want to reduce the number of 'interruptions' that the CPU may get from any software/hardware/drivers that is loaded up in memory to allow the CPU to give its full attention to CM. Admittedly most of these suggestions may do little to improve your calculation time and all efforts may appear for naught. If none of this does it for you (and you don't have any malfunctioning or bad-performing hardware) it may be time for a CPU upgrade (though I wouldn't know if your particular Mac could take one, if they are even available). As far as I'm aware a G4 400 should be able to rip through most CM scenarios at a pretty good clip, with the exception of some high-volume gunfights (plenty of AFVs/AT guns shooting at each other, etc.). As far as I'm aware a new video card wouldn't help at all with your current dilemma (but it could be faster at scrolling around the screen, etc.). The ATI Radeon family should be a good bet for the Mac (and there are newer models coming out soon). GeForces are now available too, but there are some problems with the drivers in CM at the moment where the sky textures get screwed up (there may be some other issues too, but I don't know the details). You could also get a Voodoo 5500 for a pretty good price (they do pretty well with CM), but you would have to do without any future driver support, which may be a big problem moving to OS X and later or with new games. [ 08-24-2001: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarmo Posted August 24, 2001 Share Posted August 24, 2001 Increasing the memory allocation for CM helps if CM is running with too little, but I doubt upping it from say, 100MB's to 500MB's would give a noticeable benefit. Enough is enough. The biggest performance increase would come from a processor upgrade. I checked from Sonnett and the fastest they have currently availlable is dual 500Mhz. I'd assume dual 800Mhz is in the making and availlable shortly. For pure CM fun a dual processor wouldn't benefit you much, so a cheaper single processor option would suffice. The dual 500 is $1000, I expect the pricing to remain about the same for 2x800Mhz model once it's availlable.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben Galanti Posted August 24, 2001 Share Posted August 24, 2001 The Rage 128 should be fine for CM. As the others have said, the blue-bar is the numebr crunching, which depends on your CPU (though, I'd think a G4-400 would be fine, my G3-300 isn't bad at all...) If you're really itching for a new video card, an ATI Radeon would be the way to go. The nVidia RAVE support is pretty wishy-washy... This would just would jsut speed up moving around the map and such. Though, the more video memory would give you better luck with lots of hi-res textures. Ben Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TIM's DA MAN Posted August 24, 2001 Author Share Posted August 24, 2001 Thanks for the replies guys. I will try to increase the memory partition and turn of VM and some extensions. I may even make a specific boot for CM. Thanks again for the advice! tim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colonel FLW Posted August 24, 2001 Share Posted August 24, 2001 <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by TIM's DA MAN: Thanks for the replies guys. I will try to increase the memory partition and turn of VM and some extensions. I may even make a specific boot for CM. Thanks again for the advice! tim<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Don't know if this helps at all, but on my 9600/350 with 448 MB RAM, with 100 MB given to CM, the games works just fine. And yes, I have one of those IxMicro (??) cards in it, not even truly 3D, I believe. Anyway, what I noticed that helped speed (apart from what the others already mentioned) is to make sure that you set your Monitor depth to, say 800x600 (in my case) *before* starting CM. For some reason, all at once the game got much faster, graphics are much more detailed (I can now even see grenades fly, Yay!! ), and a great time was had by all HTH (at least a lttle ) Kolonel FLW Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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