Dragon Age: Origins on MBP 2011 (OSX)

[Killery96]

I saw a video recently that showed Dragon Age Origins on a Macbook Pro 2.2 i7 2011. Pretty impressed, with perfecto FPS on all high settings, hi-res, and 8x AA. But... ...THIS WAS IN BOOTCAMP! Anyone out there running DA:O on a 2011 MBP on... ...OSX? If so, I would love a response including your:

FPS/playability
Settings
Res
Computer specs...


Thanks a lot lads, the forums help me sooo much!

 

[jbyun04]

I saw a video recently that showed Dragon Age Origins on a Macbook Pro 2.2 i7 2011. Pretty impressed, with perfecto FPS on all high settings, hi-res, and 8x AA. But... ...THIS WAS IN BOOTCAMP! Anyone out there running DA:O on a 2011 MBP on... ...OSX? If so, I would love a response including your:

FPS/playability
Settings
Res
Computer specs...


Thanks a lot lads, the forums help me sooo much!

Don't know FPS but it was definitely choppy. Not choppy enough to make me not want to play though; some slowdowns when there were lots of enemies but sometimes I got smooth FPS in some areas.

1440x900 on Low with all settings low/off

See sig for specs. Didn't play it on external monitor.

 

[Killery96]

Don't know FPS but it was definitely choppy. Not choppy enough to make me not want to play though; some slowdowns when there were lots of enemies but sometimes I got smooth FPS in some areas.

1440x900 on Low with all settings low/off

See sig for specs. Didn't play it on external monitor.

how can this be? I'm on a 2009 13" and i get pretty much those results except on lower res... the port for mac is just the worst in the world then?

 

[jegbook]

how can this be? I'm on a 2009 13" and i get pretty much those results except on lower res... the port for mac is just the worst in the world then?

If you do some searching on this thread and in google, you'll find that it seems to be generally accepted that the DA:O Mac port was pretty awful.

 

[Hansr]

how can this be? I'm on a 2009 13" and i get pretty much those results except on lower res... the port for mac is just the worst in the world then?

Wouldn't say worst. But it's pretty bad. The DA2 cider wrapper is considerably better.

I finished it on a 2,2GHz 2011 MBP at 1280x800 on medium settings and it ran okay. Much better then at 1440x900 at least.

 

[cluthz]

I only played DA:O in windows, but it ran great on my 2010 MBP.
I played DA2 in Mac OSX, and it ran pretty decent at high.

I've also heard that DA:O is a crappy port

 

[Killery96]

I only played DA:O in windows, but it ran great on my 2010 MBP.
I played DA2 in Mac OSX, and it ran pretty decent at high.

I've also heard that DA:O is a crappy port

So, I will probably end up buying the PC edition and windows... ...just to play this game (and other windows games). Bogus that Bioware or whoever ported that game would make that sort of a port. And sell the DX edition for $70.00. Upsetting.

 

[nasabaer]

You could just purchase the PC Version of the game. Both versions are on the DVD. Windows AND OS X Version.
So you can play in whatever plays it best.

 

[Hansr]

You could just purchase the PC Version of the game. Both versions are on the DVD. Windows AND OS X Version.
So you can play in whatever plays it best.

That only applies to DA2 not DAO.

 

[jbyun04]

how can this be? I'm on a 2009 13" and i get pretty much those results except on lower res... the port for mac is just the worst in the world then?

oops!!! my bad haha
I misread the thread title; my post was for Dragon Age 2.

 

[cluthz]

DA:O is a much better game than DA2 in my opinion, just a shame the DAO mac version is so bad.

DAO Ultimate (all expansions) is €29 on steam (guess its $29 in us)

 

[Killery96]

DA:O is a much better game than DA2 in my opinion, just a shame the DAO mac version is so bad.

DAO Ultimate (all expansions) is €29 on steam (guess its $29 in us)

I dislike Steam very much.

So, can people answer the original question? I believe a few of you may have, but can I get exact numbers on how well the MBP 2.2 is handling DA:O on OSX?

 

[SuperMatt]

I play DA:O under OS X on my macbook pro 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo which is 2 years old now. It runs quite good from my perspective. I am not a hardcore FPS fiend, so I honestly don't even know how to check the FPS on the game. It runs pretty smooth on the recommended settings, but could be slow if I tried to crank them up. I just went with the recommended settings at 1920x1200. I'd imagine the new Macbook Pro would do a far better job than my laptop, and I was quite impressed with the visuals on my laptop.

My only complaint is that the computer spins up the fans pretty fast once I start playing. Turning on vertical sync moderated this a bit as it capped the framerate.

Also, you can get pretty much every mod to run under OS X, but it takes some doing for some of them.

 

[Killery96]

I play DA:O under OS X on my macbook pro 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo which is 2 years old now. It runs quite good from my perspective. I am not a hardcore FPS fiend, so I honestly don't even know how to check the FPS on the game. It runs pretty smooth on the recommended settings, but could be slow if I tried to crank them up. I just went with the recommended settings at 1920x1200. I'd imagine the new Macbook Pro would do a far better job than my laptop, and I was quite impressed with the visuals on my laptop.

My only complaint is that the computer spins up the fans pretty fast once I start playing. Turning on vertical sync moderated this a bit as it capped the framerate.

Also, you can get pretty much every mod to run under OS X, but it takes some doing for some of them.

Can I ask you two questions: what is the FPS like, as in, CHOPPY, slightly CHOPPY, steady, or smooth?

And what are the settings? medium, low, high?

Thanks!

 

[Hansr]

Can I ask you two questions: what is the FPS like, as in, CHOPPY, slightly CHOPPY, steady, or smooth?

And what are the settings? medium, low, high?

Thanks!

As I mentioned above 2.2Ghz 2011 MBP: 1280, medium, smooth. On 1440 had to keep it at low to get smooth. Under Windows it would play smooth on 1440 and high so the Mac port is not good but easily more enjoyable that having to reboot into Windows plus I got it for $14 on offer.

 

[Killery96]

As I mentioned above 2.2Ghz 2011 MBP: 1280, medium, smooth. On 1440 had to keep it at low to get smooth. Under Windows it would play smooth on 1440 and high so the Mac port is not good but easily more enjoyable that having to reboot into Windows plus I got it for $14 on offer.

Thanks a lot then lads, I suppose I'll just go with the Windows 7 version, I like the idea of getting all I can out of my hardware (without an OC), and it sounds like the Mac port is pretty demeaning.

 

[Nightarchaon]

For dragon age , bootcamp is the way to go , dont waste your money on the craptacular shovel ware cider port that was released , it's awful and doesnt even properly support DLC , crossover games does a better job , and crossover games + dragon age is cheaper than dragon age mac .

Basically , bootcamp is the way to go unless there is a native mac version of the game , check before you buy any mac game to see if it's a crummy cider port , if it is , expect low frame rate , crummy support and plenty of glitches.

Porting companies like tea shaming (thats transgaming.. Beware ipad autocorrect feature) are making a ton of cash from people's ignorance for very little work , don't support them !

 

[SuperMatt]

Can I ask you two questions: what is the FPS like, as in, CHOPPY, slightly CHOPPY, steady, or smooth?

And what are the settings? medium, low, high?

Thanks!

Medium settings, usually steady, with occasional choppiness when there's a ton of stuff on the screen. Of course, I usually pause all the time during combat, and I don't want to reboot my Mac each time I want to play a game, so the level of performance is good enough for me. If you don't mind rebooting to play, then bootcamp would be better. I was willing to reboot to play Dead Space because it wasn't so long of a game, so I finished it pretty quick. Since DA:O has so many hours of playtime, I really appreciate not having to reboot.

 

[bkap16]

For dragon age , bootcamp is the way to go , dont waste your money on the craptacular shovel ware cider port that was released , it's awful and doesnt even properly support DLC , crossover games does a better job , and crossover games + dragon age is cheaper than dragon age mac .

Basically , bootcamp is the way to go unless there is a native mac version of the game , check before you buy any mac game to see if it's a crummy cider port , if it is , expect low frame rate , crummy support and plenty of glitches.

Porting companies like tea shaming (thats transgaming.. Beware ipad autocorrect feature) are making a ton of cash from people's ignorance for very little work , don't support them !

Just to clarify on this for the people who don't know what he's talking about:

EA DID NOT MAKE A MAC PORT OF DRAGON AGE (or any of their games really)

A "port" implies that they rewrote parts of the game and recompiled it for Mac. They didn't. They took the Windows version and sell you that along with a program called Cider.

Cider is a proprietary fork of Wine, an open-source project that some people have been working on for 15 years that allows you to run Windows programs on non-Windows platforms (they basically have to rewrite Windows from scratch which is why it takes so long). When the Wine developers found out what Transgaming (the company that makes Cider) was doing, they changed the license on Wine so that Transgaming wouldn't be able to make massive profits off of their work unless they gave their own changes back to the community. So Cider is still using a rather old version of the program, although they have made their own tweaks over the last few years.

The other company Nightarchaon mentioned, Codeweavers, makes another commercial version of Wine. Unlike Transgaming, they actively contribute to the Wine project and they also employ all of the original Wine developers so they use the most up-to-date version of the program. And it only costs $40 for the program, which allows to run all of your Windows programs (as opposed to Cider which has to be bundled individually with each game)

 

[Nightarchaon]

Thank you bkap16 for turning my ramble into English