L4D and Gears of War

[Chad H]

Hey guys,
I just got my iMac all setup. I installed Windows Vista 32bit premium using bootcamp. I am fixing to run left 4 dead and gears of war and was wondering what settings some of you were running. I have the 2.93Ghz model, 4GB Ram, and 256MB Nvidia GPU. Also, gears of war seems to keep crashing when I set the resolution to 1900x1200. Any ideas on why this is happening?

Thanks,
Chad

 

[thechicken]

Gears of War

Have you tried running GoW (gears of war) on a smaller resolution? Have you gotten any patches for GoW?

 

[Chad H]

Thank you for your response. I have tried other display settings and it keeps crashing. I need to see if it runs just default. Also all the settings are on medium. I figured this iMac could run it on high settings.

 

[madog]

Download video drivers directly from Nvidia's website. Check their desktop driver for supported video cards (it's one app for all their cards, and should support yours as well) and install their software. Unfortunatly Apple's video drivers are at least a year old.

I have done this on my MBP, as well as installing REALtek audio drivers over the original Apple drivers, and haven't had a problem yet with any of my games (I play fallout 3 on "high" for the most part right now).

While this isn't supported by Apple, I and many others have done it.

I would also search for updates/patches to your games, and would probably suggest turning the resolution down a bit. While your video card isn't bad, I think VRAM has a huge influence on resolution in games, and I don't think 256mb is enough to run it that high, without lowering other settings quite a bit. You should be able to get a good standard resolution (around 1024x768, or a bit higher depending on whatever is standard for the iMac) with other graphic settings turned higher.

 

[Chad H]

Well, Im actually fixing to install an RC version of Windows 7. I've researched the problem for gears of war and that game has tons of problems. Also, what is your suggestion on Left 4 Dead with my video card? Thanks so much for the advice.

 

[madog]

Well, Im actually fixing to install an RC version of Windows 7. I've researched the problem for gears of war and that game has tons of problems. Also, what is your suggestion on Left 4 Dead with my video card? Thanks so much for the advice.

Left 4 Dead is going to be free to download and try this Friday..... pretty much a 24 hour demo of the full game. I'm going to test it out on my MBP then.

My MBP has 512mb and so far I try first running games at the native resolution of 1440x900 in a widescreen format. After that I will try to make the other settings priority over resolution. So if having antialiasing enabled means I have to run it at a lower native resolution I'll do that. I don't know if it's technically better, but I enjoy it.

For example, Fallout 3 auto detected my settings and picked "high" (just below "ultra"), and it played well enough, but I lowered the resolution 2 steps lower than what it was, turned up some other options, and it plays that much better when in intense situations now. While Left4Dead is a newer game, I would suggest starting off with a lower resolution (something near 1024x768) with most of the other settings at "high" (maybe shadows on low/medium if that's an option, only in some games do I care about them, like Fable), with 2x AA, 4x anis if that's a setting.

Those arent extreme settings, but I typically start with something similar like that, and then constantly tweak them through the first 30 min or hour of game play (I hate games that have to be restarted when applying certain graphic updates!!!).

 

[Chad H]

Well, I am currently fixing to run it on Windows 7. Vista was just terrible. But I did check the FPS in left 4 dead on Vista. With all the settings on medium at the highest resolution is hung around 50fps. But it bounced around so much up to 100fps and back down to 35fps. When I turned everything up though it wouldn't hardly reach 35fps.

 

[cathyy]

Well, I am currently fixing to run it on Windows 7. Vista was just terrible. But I did check the FPS in left 4 dead on Vista. With all the settings on medium at the highest resolution is hung around 50fps. But it bounced around so much up to 100fps and back down to 35fps. When I turned everything up though it wouldn't hardly reach 35fps.

That pretty much sounds normal to me. You can keep all the settings on high but you might wanna bump the shaders down to medium. I seriously doubt you're going to get better fps using Windows 7 or XP.

 

[MVApple]

Download video drivers directly from Nvidia's website. Check their desktop driver for supported video cards (it's one app for all their cards, and should support yours as well) and install their software. Unfortunatly Apple's video drivers are at least a year old.

I have done this on my MBP, as well as installing REALtek audio drivers over the original Apple drivers, and haven't had a problem yet with any of my games (I play fallout 3 on "high" for the most part right now).

While this isn't supported by Apple, I and many others have done it.

I would also search for updates/patches to your games, and would probably suggest turning the resolution down a bit. While your video card isn't bad, I think VRAM has a huge influence on resolution in games, and I don't think 256mb is enough to run it that high, without lowering other settings quite a bit. You should be able to get a good standard resolution (around 1024x768, or a bit higher depending on whatever is standard for the iMac) with other graphic settings turned higher.

Hey madog,

I'm curious, why would you install new audio drivers? What problems did you find with the bootcamp ones?