C&C Red Alert 3 via Boot camp sluggish

[Optimus]

Hi to all.

I recently got the new Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 in my hands and installed on the Windows side of my mac.

I have a mid 2007 Macbook Pro 2.2GHz, 4Gb RAM, 120Gb HD, Nvidia 8600GT 128Mb VRAM, aka the entry level Santa Rosa MBP.

I partitioned a 16Gb section for Windows XP Pro SP2 with a FAT32 file system with over 4Gb free space on it still.

But the game is extremely sluggish!

I don't get it. I have setting on medium on the graphical side. Pre-Leopard I had boot camp beta installed and it worked great with games. I could play Bioshock, Doom3, C&C 3 Tiberium Wars all with the highest possible setting. But now I can't do nothing with it. With Boot camp beta I had a 20Gb partition and it was with a NTFS file system.

Anyone had similar problems and found a solution maybe?

 

[Consultant]

Your partition doesn't have enough free space.

NTFS is preferred for boot camp.

Latest games are usually more demanding.

 

[Optimus]

Your partition doesn't have enough free space.

NTFS is preferred for boot camp.

Latest games are usually more demanding.

That is what I was afraid of. How much free space would be enough? I'll do a new partition with more space and NTFS. Bugger.

 

[Consultant]

You might also want to consider upgrading that harddrive to something larger and faster.

I find that anything less than 5gb free in XP results in slow downs such as slow app launching, very slow shut downs, etc. Ideally you want to keep at least 10gb free I think.

I can't believe I have >5gb of custom maps/content by playing TF2 online...

 

[Optimus]

You might also want to consider upgrading that harddrive to something larger and faster.

I find that anything less than 5gb free in XP results in slow downs such as slow app launching, very slow shut downs, etc. Ideally you want to keep at least 10gb free I think.

I can't believe I have >5gb of custom maps/content by playing TF2 online...

I'll try a 30Gb partition with NTFS for starters and see what that does. Should give me over 15Gb of free space after RA3 install and I'll also have room for a few older games that don't take so much HD space.

 

[Optimus]

Thanks for the tips. I have a 30Gb NTFS partition and it made all the difference. Red Alert 3 is running smooth with 1440x900 resolution.