This is what I am referring to: https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/14826536/
People seemed to ignore to check this particular option that improve performance.
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NVIDIA GeForce 9400m good enough to run Diablo III?
- Thread starter ViolentHero
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This is what I am referring to: https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/14826536/
People seemed to ignore to check this particular option that improve performance.
Unfortunately I never bothered to check that option when playing the game during the open beta weekend as I didn't know what it did exactly. I should have tried it. I guess when I get the full retail game I can give it a go. I think I may need to on my 2011 Mini to boost the performance. Out of interest does it have a big impact on the overall graphical quality of the game.
Check this thread for the answer:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5051695263?page=3
To sum it up, the final retail game runs like ass on a 9400M. Several users are reporting framerates varying from 8-20, even when running at low settings and lower than native resolution.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5051695263?page=3
To sum it up, the final retail game runs like ass on a 9400M. Several users are reporting framerates varying from 8-20, even when running at low settings and lower than native resolution.
Well, that pretty much seals it for me. I was on the fence about D3, but now for sure I won't get it. Not because I don't want to, but because I can't. Ah well, it's probably for the best.
I played D3 for some time tonight, and it's "tolerable" (I'm not sure I would call it "fine"...), at least under boot camp. I played the beta on OS X, and it was laughable to say the least. A friend and I went through almost all of Act 1 together, but we got booted out just as we were getting to the Skeleton King...
I haven't tested the final version under OS X yet, but if you're not willing to boot camp D3 on your 9400m, it probably won't be worth it. Honestly, it's hard to say what I'm experiencing is "worth it" even under boot camp...
...those new MBPs can't come any sooner...
I haven't tested the final version under OS X yet, but if you're not willing to boot camp D3 on your 9400m, it probably won't be worth it. Honestly, it's hard to say what I'm experiencing is "worth it" even under boot camp...
...those new MBPs can't come any sooner...
Playing on a 2009 Mac Mini with a 9400m w/512 running latest release of Lion earlier tonight. The text is blurry. I'm playing at 1024 x 640 with all settings to "low" or "off. Speed is fine. My character can run, fight, etc. without any problems.
You will not see details such as grass, no shadowing, etc. Really basic graphics, but game play is fine.
You will not see details such as grass, no shadowing, etc. Really basic graphics, but game play is fine.
This is one of the reasons I replaced my 2009 Mini with the 9400M with a 2011 Mini with the ATI Radeon HD 6630M. It's obviously still not as good as a Mac with a higher end GPU but it does make a significant difference I believe. It will do for now. I don't really want to get a MacBook Pro or iMac.
I still have an older (2007?) Mac Mini that still runs great, plus my late 2009. I really love it, but since they will run forever I can't see myself buying another. I will probably buy an iMac, but still use my Mac Mini for non-gaming apps.
Text being blurry is not fine in my book. Also, you shouldn't be able to maintain a consistent frame rate at that resolution, with noticeable frame drops when things start to get hectic. I take it you aren't very far in the game either, I assume things will only get significantly worse as the game progresses, if it's anything like D2.
When I played on the beta, I had to play at 800x600 with worse performance than what I'm getting now on boot camp at 1024, so I find it a little hard to believe that things are "fine" for you, unless:
-They have optimized the code since then (which doesn't correlate with what I've been reading on blizzard's forums).
-The OpenGL drivers on Lion are really making that much of a difference (I'm on Snow Leopard).
I know on some games the 10.7.4 NV drivers give us almost double the performance in the same game compared to Snow Leopard (that is purely the gfx card not the rest of the game code). It will vary game to game but Lion's drivers (for Feral games at least) are usually faster and more stable.
And that is before we get on with the newer OpenGL and other APIs in Lion that Snow Leopard cannot use that also speed up gameplay.
Not saying it is the case for Diablo 3 as the difference can vary a lot between games depending on what features they use but I do know Snow Leopard graphics drivers have less features and are less optimised. With a new game like Diablo that likely uses new features I would not be surprised if Snow Leopard is a lot slower in some cases.
Edwin
Put it this way:
There are never going to be new graphics drivers for Snow Leopard. If a new game comes out, there is simply no way that your performance will improve. Sometimes the latest drivers for the latest OS will have optimizations for this new game, sometimes it'll take a release or two for the optimizations to be delivered. However, no matter what, the only way you're going to get improved performance is to be on the latest OS. That's simply the way the Apple software ecosystem works.
There's a lot about Lion that I didn't like at first, but I basically configure it to be as close to Snow Leopard as possible, or just don't use the new stuff like LaunchPad etc. In my experience the driver quality on Mac has been steadily improving, a lot of games run at around the same FPS as they do on Windows. However, if you're running a driver from several years ago (which is basically what Snow Leopard will have) then there's no way you'll benefit from all the improvements. This is why I personally always just suck it up and move to each new OS as it comes out, for no reason other than I want to be running the most recent graphics drivers available.
Exactly 10.7.4 and 10.7.5 will bring a big old boost to BioShock 2 on Nvidia cards due to some performance optimisations in the graphics drivers for the Nvidia cards.
We worked with them throughout development to optimise the game to the drivers but also at the same time Nvidia work with us to make sure the drivers allow us (and other companies) to take advantage of all the power the hardware has to offer. With a dead OS (one without updates) you are boxed in as you have to work with what you have as no bugs (no matter how serious) will be fixed and no performance improvements will happen. As Snow Leopard has an older OpenGL version and has not had any driver updates for a year it is falling behind Lion and every day the gap will get that little bit wider.
Edwin
It depends if you have 2GB or less it will make a noticeable difference, if you already have 4GB then upgrading to 8GB will make an improvement but it will be less noticeable. Stutters especially will be improved more so than overall frame rate.
The 9400M is not that powerful so one of the major limiting factors when playing will be your graphics card.
This is all in theory I do NOT have a 9400 and Diablo 3. It's just based off my experience with other games.
Edwin
It depends on how much RAM you have now, and how much you're thinking of upgrading to. If you have 2GB now, then yes, upgrading to 4 or 8GB will help tremendously. I don't know if it'll change the amount of memory set aside from the 9400M but giving the OS and game more memory to work with will avoid paging which can slow your system to a crawl. Most 9400Ms have 256MB of "video memory" but the driver can use much more than that from what I've seen.
Just wanted to add my experience since I have a MBP 13 9400M (8gb ram). As has been said a few times: Diablo 3 is unplayable. Even at 800x600 and everything off/low, FPS are around 8-20. It's bearable in Act I, but not even remotely playable from Act II on. I dragged my monk to Level 20 but it wasn't fun, really, so I stopped.
Haven't waited for this game over a decade to ruin my gameplay experience now over a crappy GPU.
I'm gonna get some crappy cheap-o PC (i5, radeon 6770, 4gb ram), and enjoy full detail.
Haven't waited for this game over a decade to ruin my gameplay experience now over a crappy GPU.
I'm gonna get some crappy cheap-o PC (i5, radeon 6770, 4gb ram), and enjoy full detail.
The new ASUS laptops look sweet. Not cheap though. I used an ASUS gaming laptop until last year when my husband and my nephew were fighting over it and snapped it in two. And it was mine.
Act 1 is bearable, not the best, but once I hit act 2 this thing started ******** the bed big time.
I want to provide a slight update on my experiences. I agree with what people are saying on the blizzard forums and here: the game starts off tolerably, and progressively becomes worse until it's literally unplayable. I'm pretty confident that the people who claim the game runs fine are not very far in the game at all. If you haven't fought the skeleton king at the very minimum, you probably don't understand what we're saying. If you've made it to act 2, things become even clearer...
That being said, although I haven't tested it personally, I've read that you can get 20-40 fps with beta drivers on the boot camp side. I'll be trying that tonight, and if it's true, boot camp looks like it's the only way to go if you have a 9400m, for the time being that is.
If you're planning on staying on the mac side, in its current state, I can only say the game is not worth your money. The mac side seems to be having universal frame rate issues anyway, regardless of gpu, if the blizzard forums are to be believed.
EDIT: The beta drivers that I tested make a world of difference. Even in Act 2, the game is playable (which is a step above tolerable for me), assuming you play the lowest settings and 800x600 resolution. More importantly, the frame rate seems stable, which has been my biggest issue so far.
EDIT 2: Alright, I beat the game on normal. Believe it or not, Acts 3 and 4 (generally) run smoother than Act 2. There are some slight pockets in Act 3 that are a problem, but Act 2 is by far the most problematic Act, and even then, it's only in certain locations (this is all under bootcamp). Generally speaking, the game is playable...on bootcamp, so if you're willing to do that, and don't mind playing at the absolute lowest settings, it's fine. I personally don't recommend buying it otherwise, because even if you can get through normal, Nightmare will just make you frustrated and mad at the game.
That being said, although I haven't tested it personally, I've read that you can get 20-40 fps with beta drivers on the boot camp side. I'll be trying that tonight, and if it's true, boot camp looks like it's the only way to go if you have a 9400m, for the time being that is.
If you're planning on staying on the mac side, in its current state, I can only say the game is not worth your money. The mac side seems to be having universal frame rate issues anyway, regardless of gpu, if the blizzard forums are to be believed.
EDIT: The beta drivers that I tested make a world of difference. Even in Act 2, the game is playable (which is a step above tolerable for me), assuming you play the lowest settings and 800x600 resolution. More importantly, the frame rate seems stable, which has been my biggest issue so far.
EDIT 2: Alright, I beat the game on normal. Believe it or not, Acts 3 and 4 (generally) run smoother than Act 2. There are some slight pockets in Act 3 that are a problem, but Act 2 is by far the most problematic Act, and even then, it's only in certain locations (this is all under bootcamp). Generally speaking, the game is playable...on bootcamp, so if you're willing to do that, and don't mind playing at the absolute lowest settings, it's fine. I personally don't recommend buying it otherwise, because even if you can get through normal, Nightmare will just make you frustrated and mad at the game.
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You have to have the beta drivers of bootcamp to get decent FPS? Snow Leopard's drivers = lacking?
I'm running D3 on a 2009 MBP13 with the 9400M and a 2.53GHz C2D. It has 4GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. After my testing, I am concluding that the only viable way to play D3 on a 9400M is to use boot camp, but it can actually give you a decent experience.
I'm actually getting pretty decent performance (quite playable) in boot camp (Win7 x64), after I overclocked the 9400M GPU a bit. I'm actually able to run the game at native res (1280x800) with every graphic option turned down as low as it goes. However, the game still looks decent enough, the difference between ultra low (on this laptop) and ultra high (on my gaming PC) isn't that huge actually. Actually I think one of my biggest annoyances of playing on the laptop is that the laptop keyboard is noticeably inferior to my desktop keyboard for gaming. The alt, control, and shift keys get a little cramped on the MBP layout.
Seems like this 9400M overclocks pretty good, the default clock speed was 450MHz, I'm currently running it at 540MHz and played for a few hours with no problems. That's a 20% increase in clock speed. GPU temps only got to about 70C max, with the fan running between 4000 and 5000 rpm.
I think overclocking the GPU really helped with performance, since the GPU is definitely the major bottleneck here. Before, it was very marginal playing in 1280x800, but after overclocking it the gameplay seemed to get a bit smoother, moving it from the "marginally unplayable" space and into the "mostly playable" space. That said however, I just got to Act 2, so we'll see if it starts to bog down beyond that. I will say that the very beginning (the non-combat portions) still seemed to run fine. But just about all of Act 1 was totally fine about 95% of the time. If I see big performance drops I can start backing the resolution off, but I really like the crispness of running at native res.
Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for you frying your laptops by OCing, but for me it seems to be working quite good. Do your own research before you try this stuff.
I'm actually getting pretty decent performance (quite playable) in boot camp (Win7 x64), after I overclocked the 9400M GPU a bit. I'm actually able to run the game at native res (1280x800) with every graphic option turned down as low as it goes. However, the game still looks decent enough, the difference between ultra low (on this laptop) and ultra high (on my gaming PC) isn't that huge actually. Actually I think one of my biggest annoyances of playing on the laptop is that the laptop keyboard is noticeably inferior to my desktop keyboard for gaming. The alt, control, and shift keys get a little cramped on the MBP layout.
Seems like this 9400M overclocks pretty good, the default clock speed was 450MHz, I'm currently running it at 540MHz and played for a few hours with no problems. That's a 20% increase in clock speed. GPU temps only got to about 70C max, with the fan running between 4000 and 5000 rpm.
I think overclocking the GPU really helped with performance, since the GPU is definitely the major bottleneck here. Before, it was very marginal playing in 1280x800, but after overclocking it the gameplay seemed to get a bit smoother, moving it from the "marginally unplayable" space and into the "mostly playable" space. That said however, I just got to Act 2, so we'll see if it starts to bog down beyond that. I will say that the very beginning (the non-combat portions) still seemed to run fine. But just about all of Act 1 was totally fine about 95% of the time. If I see big performance drops I can start backing the resolution off, but I really like the crispness of running at native res.
Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for you frying your laptops by OCing, but for me it seems to be working quite good. Do your own research before you try this stuff.
I beat act 4 with my 9400m, and I an in act 3 in nightmare mode. Sometimes the lag can be killer (the oasis in act 2), but boss fights were easy, and I have been able to play the game. I have a 15" 2.53ghz 4 gb mbp.
I wish I had a more capable card, but c'est la vie. I need to wait a year or two to get the full value out of this machine.
I wish I had a more capable card, but c'est la vie. I need to wait a year or two to get the full value out of this machine.