Supreme Commander & MBP SR

[woodsea]

I am just starting the game, and it plays very well. Outputs a very high 1080i to my Westy 37 w3.
But, it gets hot and the fans start screaming. I would not be bothered by the sound, as I have it hooked to my HT 5.1. Just knowing that the GPU or CPU could get fried makes me a bit leary.
Anyone else have ideas on how best to play this game?
What are your settings?
Thanks

 

[emikshe]

What surface do you have the laptop on - hard/heat conductive or softer/heat insulator? Try to keep it on a harder, heat conducting (EX: plate of glass, plate of metal, even a wooden table) surface and see if you have the same problems.

Also, would you mind letting me know (reply to this, or PM me) what type of SR MBP you have, and what type of performance you get with supcom? I am really interested (see my other thread) in if I need the 2.4 or not, and if a MBP can replace my desktop gaming computer. Thanks!

 

[Freyqq]

if it gets hot enough to damage the computer..it should turn itself off automatically. Also, if things are running to hot there would be graphical errors or blue screens. I get routinely in the 80C range while gaming..its just how the laptop was designed.

Question though...can the macbook pro do surround sound with its audio port? 5.1? Thanks.

 

[emikshe]

does high heat affect battery more than cpu??

if it gets hot enough to damage the computer..it should turn itself off automatically. Also, if things are running to hot there would be graphical errors or blue screens. I get routinely in the 80C range while gaming..its just how the laptop was designed.

You know, I might be getting a bit off topic here but would running at those high temperatures significantly impact battery life, in a bad way? I believe you that the main laptop components - CPU, RAM, mobo, etc are designed to handle high heat, but isn't heat like that bad for a lithium ion battery? If so, does anyone know how bad it is?

 

[woodsea]

I have had it on a glass top and wooden tables. No graphic problems so far, but I have not had to many units in the battles I have played.
It automatically puts it into mid-hi settings, I have not tweaked anything yet in the game.
I let my Harman/Kardon put it to 5.1, which it can do from any 2.0 signal. I will have to research that option for natural 5.1.
I have the SantaRosa 2.4ghz with 256 video card and an extra gig of ram for a total of 3. I am a gamer, seriously, but I move alot, so this seemed the perfect fit. Only the heat makes worry.
I know the hard drive can also cause a lot of heat, but I will be waiting for the 2nd generation hard drives with flash memory. I would like a gig at least of flash memory..and 250 in platters, and 7200rpm.

 

[Freyqq]

I have had it on a glass top and wooden tables. No graphic problems so far, but I have not had to many units in the battles I have played.
It automatically puts it into mid-hi settings, I have not tweaked anything yet in the game.
I let my Harman/Kardon put it to 5.1, which it can do from any 2.0 signal. I will have to research that option for natural 5.1.
I have the SantaRosa 2.4ghz with 256 video card and an extra gig of ram for a total of 3. I am a gamer, seriously, but I move alot, so this seemed the perfect fit. Only the heat makes worry.
I know the hard drive can also cause a lot of heat, but I will be waiting for the 2nd generation hard drives with flash memory. I would like a gig at least of flash memory..and 250 in platters, and 7200rpm.

actually for games most everything it needs is already in the ram. I have an external hd with a 7200 RPM hd in NTFS for my bootcamp stuff. In tiberium wars, the hd light doesn't flash at all. HDs get hot, but i don't think hd will influence temps in games. Tiberium wars is a newish game..its not as intensive as supreme commander, but its pretty intense. On max settings i get around 15-20 fps on my SR MBP.

 

[emikshe]

I have had it on a glass top and wooden tables. No graphic problems so far, but I have not had to many units in the battles I have played. [...] I have the SantaRosa 2.4ghz with 256 video card and an extra gig of ram for a total of 3.

Thanks so much for the info! I guess i'll have to look into getting the 2.4 instead of the 2.2 then...

Also, I agree with Freygg, games run best when almost completely loaded into RAM, and with 3GB of RAM like you have, the hard drive shouldn't be too much of an issue.

 

[Freyqq]

Thanks so much for the info! I guess i'll have to look into getting the 2.4 instead of the 2.2 then...

Also, I agree with Freygg, games run best when almost completely loaded into RAM, and with 3GB of RAM like you have, the hard drive shouldn't be too much of an issue.

actually..i've got the 2.2 with 2 gigs of ram..and the games are still all in the ram

actually..the only thing i've ever done where I was lik...I need a faster harddrive...is working with 5+ gigs of HD video in imovie

 

[woodsea]

I went for a 2gig stick instead of 2x2 because
1. I am cheap
2. I plan on getting a 4gig stick for a 6gig rig (whenever cost effective)

This machine needs to last for 1.5years as my non-console gaming rig. So 256megs of video ram was a must. The extra .2 of go juice should be of no consequence, but I have been wrong once before.

Plus, the lappy looks cool.

 

[emikshe]

actually..i've got the 2.2 with 2 gigs of ram..and the games are still all in the ram

actually..the only thing i've ever done where I was lik...I need a faster harddrive...is working with 5+ gigs of HD video in imovie

Yeah, basically I was thinking of getting the 2.2 w/ 7200rpm HD and upgrading the RAM myself to 4GB.. and was wondering if SupCom will run on that well. Basically all i'd be missing from the 2.4 would be the extra 128vRAM... Haven't been able to find any concrete statistics with supcom about that.

There are those benchmarks comparing the 2.2 v 2.4 on that website (forgot the link) but they only compare with like quake, half life2, and other games that may not use the vRAM as much as SupCom.

 

[Freyqq]

Yeah, basically I was thinking of getting the 2.2 w/ 7200rpm HD and upgrading the RAM myself to 4GB.. and was wondering if SupCom will run on that well. Basically all i'd be missing from the 2.4 would be the extra 128vRAM... Haven't been able to find any concrete statistics with supcom about that.

There are those benchmarks comparing the 2.2 v 2.4 on that website (forgot the link) but they only compare with like quake, half life2, and other games that may not use the vRAM as much as SupCom.

i played the demo. I can't remember what settings I put it on or what FPS i got..but it looked fine and was playable.

I hear even medium looks pretty good..and I'm sure medium can run fine. Highest..maybe it can i can't remember what i had it on. I do know it was at least medium if not higher.

 

[woodsea]

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Microsoft® Windows® XP Service Pack 2, Vista
1.8 GHz processor
512 MB RAM
8 GB available hard drive space
128 MB video RAM or greater, with DirectX 9 Vertex Shader / Pixel Shader 2.0 support (Nvidia 6x00 or better)
Sound card, speakers or headphones
Broadband internet connection (DSL/Cable).

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
3.0 GHz Intel or equivalent AMD processor or better
1 GB RAM or better
8 GB available hard drive space
256 MB video RAM, with DirectX 9 Vertex Shader / Pixel Shader 2.0 support (Nvidia 6800 or better)
Internet connection with Cable/DSL speeds

Red items are the reason I went for the extra RAM

 

[Freyqq]

yeah that helps..but turbocache would fill in for the extra 128 ram if you went for the 2.2. 256 vram still helps though of course, but the improvement isn't as dramatic as it could be without turbocache.

 

[emikshe]

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

[...]

Red items are the reason I went for the extra RAM

Yeah, i've seen that and it worried me initially, but I was confused as people seem to be running it on 128mb. In fact I know a friend that has an older radeon-based MBP that I think has 128mb vRAM and he can run it fine at least on small-midsized games.

yeah that helps..but turbocache would fill in for the extra 128 ram if you went for the 2.2. 256 vram still helps though of course, but the improvement isn't as dramatic as it could be without turbocache.

huh, never heard of turbocache before - guess because I never was a laptop gamer.. so turbocache can really make a big difference? and supreme commander+MBP works well with it? OOH - if I had 4GB system RAM, could I set turbocache to make the 128mb 8600m emulate a 512mb vRAM card????

 

[Freyqq]

it allocates ram automatically but yeah

you don't necessarily need 4 gigs of ram though. You only need what the game requires...ram wise + extra vram. Unlike osx, any extra ram in vista won't really do much

 

[emikshe]

it allocates ram automatically but yeah

you don't necessarily need 4 gigs of ram though. You only need what the game requires...ram wise + extra vram. Unlike osx, any extra ram in vista won't really do much

First of all - thanks for all the information - it's really helpful!!

Now to reply - for the cost of getting the 2.4 256vRAM w 2gb RAM, I could pretty much get a 2.2 with 4gb RAM!

Also, last I heard, SupCom ran faster on XP than vista, I mean still fine on vista, but I read on the supcom forums some months ago that XP scored higher frame rates. That could have changed with a recent patch though...

 

[Freyqq]

having used xp and vista..i think vista is a better OS. It may not score as high for this one game..but hey.

 

[emikshe]

having used xp and vista..i think vista is a better OS. It may not score as high for this one game..but hey.

True, and looking at the long run we'll probably need vista for future games - crysis, spore, etc. Hopefully the current patch (or the Forged Alliance supcom expansion pack) will boost supcom vista speed to parity with XP.

I hate to get off topic, but as a side note, I hope hope hope that Spore will be able to be played on a current-gen MBP 2.2... otherwise i'll need to build a gaming pc just to play that game!