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9400m game performance improved since 10.6.2!!!!

H

Helmigurt

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 15, 2009
96
15
Austria
Hi guys!

After installing 10.6.2 and playing cod4 I noticed a significant boost in framerate on my al macbook (sig). I can now play in the native resolution of 1280x800 compared to the 1024x768 before the update with the same framerate. I only played 30 min or so. This is not a detailed analysis! Can anybody confirm/deny my observations? I will test Bioshock later!
 
The Nvidia drivers were updated in 10.6.2. Shadows can now be enabled on WoW with mostly max settings and Bioshock demo is much more fluid.
 
I just downloaded the Bioshock demo, and had to set the rez to 1024 to play it smoothly under my MBP's Nvidia 9600.

I'm still on 10.5.8 though.
 
I can confirm that a specific optimisation introduced in 10.6.0 (and existing in 10.6.1) was causing massive slowdown in BioShock due to the way it uses shaders. I suspect the other games like WoW had the same issue as us.

We obviously were only focusing BioShock but it looks like most games have got a boost. Glad to know it speeds up more games that just BioShock :)

I suspect this will speed up affected games on all Nvidia cards in 10.6 not just the 9400/9600 series. I have noticed a boost in BioShock on all NV cards in 10.6.2 although I have not tested none Feral games like WoW.

Edwin

Feral
 
Cool ... I have a Snow Leopard package unopened - my concern is whether there is any issue with maintaining my current Bootcamp setup as I update?
 
Does this improve performance in bootcamp if I installed the drivers from Nvidia's website when I set it up a couple of weeks ago?
 
You can download the latest Windows drivers (including beta drivers at times) from the nvidea website.
 
MindBrain said:
Why don't 10.5 users get an update for the Nvidia drivers ?
Click to expand...

A few reasons really.

Firstly the performance issue mentioned in this thread does not effect the 10.5.8 drivers as the change that caused the slowdown was introduced near the end of the 10.6 development just before 10.6.0 was released so no need to fix a problem that does not exist. :)

Secondly unlike on the PC, driver updates are released through Apple not by Nvidia or ATI. As 10.5 is not the current OS any more (10.6 is), new drivers and features will only be released for the current OS not the previous one.

10.5.8 is most likely the final version of 10.5 and the only updates for 10.5 from now on are likely to be security patches. If you have an Intel Mac you have no reason not to upgrade to 10.6 as it is a much better optimised solution and nearly all tasks should run faster in 10.6 than 10.5.

Edwin
 
great more reasons for me to upgrade soon!

i always like to wait because like you said things become more optimized in later versions ;)
 
I can confirm that at least WoW runs better now, I have more FPS and certain areas that used to lag for some reason, maybe some lightning effects I dunno, work much better now. I hope this helps with all the other games as well.
 
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