i all, i'm new as you can see...
I recently bought a Macbook Pro Santa Rosa 15'' with 256MB of VRAM upgraded to 4GB of RAM (the 2.4GHz edition). there are a couple of questions i have... i hope someone can answer them, at least partly.
1. I was wondering why my xbench results were so low. My average score is about 70, and everything is generally slower, although in particular the quartz graphics test and openGL tests fared very poorly, in the 60s. i have tried a number of benchmarking tests and they all come up much lower than comparison scores for the same type of laptop. in fact, macbook pros with less ram and the lower processor clock speed seem to score higher, in general than mine does. e.g. geekbench. i am wondering why this is the case - is there something about macs that i have to do to optimise my machine?
2. I also tried downloading the Call of Duty 2 demo off the apple website and tried running it to see how it runs. It runs acceptably but with a fairly low framerate (definitely not smooth at all), when I put most settings up to max. However, I regularly get some kind of fs_ error... such as fs_none free or something along those lines. additionally, the game at the highest settings (i think it is something to do with the resolution, which was maxed out) gave a glitch so that when i died the graphics stuttered and looked strange before going back to normal. sometimes the game would also lock up when i died and i would have to restart. the reason i mention this is because i think it's strange that such a supposedly powerful new laptop would have low fps/graphical issues with a reasonable recent but not new game. is it a driver thing?
3. about macs and drivers -being a windows user, i don't know anything about macs. do you need a driver to install for the graphics card? i thought for a laptop, everything should be done anyway?
4. i notice someone else in this forum posted a topic about kernel panics related to airport extreme. i also had a few of those. they started 1 day after i got the laptop and happened three times in three days. i called up the store i got the computer from and they suggested i erase and install osx again. i did that and it hasn't kernel panicked since, at least. is it likely that it was a software issue, that has been fixed? it is very strange, since others have had the same problem and were not able to resolve it with either an erase and reinstall or a replacement!
5. some other problems with certain programs sometimes crashing eg pages and safari. i was unable to reproduce these things, and the problems have not reappeared after the erase and install.
6. finally, there is a strange thing happening with my dock. i don't really understnad why it would happen... i usually have the magnification setting turned on, so that when i run my mouse over the top of the icons in the dock, they magnify. sometimes when i run a few programs, or do some things, the magnification effect stops working, and the names, which usually appear above the icons when my mouse goes over them, stop appearing. i was baffled by this initially, thinking it was my inexperience with osx. however i have discovered that restarting fixed this problem. what could be causing this problem? is it perhaps a symptom of another problem with my computer?
i'm sorry if this sounds like a complaint - it's not a complaint so much as a lengthily worded question to anyone who can give me a clue as to what i could be doing wrong, or what could be wrong, with my brand new macbook pro! (you can tell i was very disappointed when these things started going wrong... -_-)
i did contact apple about my worries, and they told me there was nothing wrong with my computer, but i am sure otherwise! it is really driving me crazy... i would be very grateful if someone here could give me some help with my questions!
Thanks!
Jonathan
I recently bought a Macbook Pro Santa Rosa 15'' with 256MB of VRAM upgraded to 4GB of RAM (the 2.4GHz edition). there are a couple of questions i have... i hope someone can answer them, at least partly.
1. I was wondering why my xbench results were so low. My average score is about 70, and everything is generally slower, although in particular the quartz graphics test and openGL tests fared very poorly, in the 60s. i have tried a number of benchmarking tests and they all come up much lower than comparison scores for the same type of laptop. in fact, macbook pros with less ram and the lower processor clock speed seem to score higher, in general than mine does. e.g. geekbench. i am wondering why this is the case - is there something about macs that i have to do to optimise my machine?
2. I also tried downloading the Call of Duty 2 demo off the apple website and tried running it to see how it runs. It runs acceptably but with a fairly low framerate (definitely not smooth at all), when I put most settings up to max. However, I regularly get some kind of fs_ error... such as fs_none free or something along those lines. additionally, the game at the highest settings (i think it is something to do with the resolution, which was maxed out) gave a glitch so that when i died the graphics stuttered and looked strange before going back to normal. sometimes the game would also lock up when i died and i would have to restart. the reason i mention this is because i think it's strange that such a supposedly powerful new laptop would have low fps/graphical issues with a reasonable recent but not new game. is it a driver thing?
3. about macs and drivers -being a windows user, i don't know anything about macs. do you need a driver to install for the graphics card? i thought for a laptop, everything should be done anyway?
4. i notice someone else in this forum posted a topic about kernel panics related to airport extreme. i also had a few of those. they started 1 day after i got the laptop and happened three times in three days. i called up the store i got the computer from and they suggested i erase and install osx again. i did that and it hasn't kernel panicked since, at least. is it likely that it was a software issue, that has been fixed? it is very strange, since others have had the same problem and were not able to resolve it with either an erase and reinstall or a replacement!
5. some other problems with certain programs sometimes crashing eg pages and safari. i was unable to reproduce these things, and the problems have not reappeared after the erase and install.
6. finally, there is a strange thing happening with my dock. i don't really understnad why it would happen... i usually have the magnification setting turned on, so that when i run my mouse over the top of the icons in the dock, they magnify. sometimes when i run a few programs, or do some things, the magnification effect stops working, and the names, which usually appear above the icons when my mouse goes over them, stop appearing. i was baffled by this initially, thinking it was my inexperience with osx. however i have discovered that restarting fixed this problem. what could be causing this problem? is it perhaps a symptom of another problem with my computer?
i'm sorry if this sounds like a complaint - it's not a complaint so much as a lengthily worded question to anyone who can give me a clue as to what i could be doing wrong, or what could be wrong, with my brand new macbook pro! (you can tell i was very disappointed when these things started going wrong... -_-)
i did contact apple about my worries, and they told me there was nothing wrong with my computer, but i am sure otherwise! it is really driving me crazy... i would be very grateful if someone here could give me some help with my questions!
Thanks!
Jonathan
