Warcraft III (3) on MBA -- low fps, why?

[malone]

Hullo all!

I'm a (mostly) happy owner of an MBA, but when I play Warcraft III, regardless of my settings, I seem to get low FPS (somewhere on the order of 10-20 fps). This really shouldn't be the case--the X3100 is (hopefully) more powerful than the GMA950, and my ThinkPad 1.2 ULV GHz w/ GMA900 performs in the upper 30s.

The set up (setup?):
- 1.8 GHz MBA w/ SSD
- OS X 10.5.2 (latest, as of March 4, 2008)
- Warcraft III 1.21B (latest, as of March 4, 2008; it's a Universal Binary)
- 1280x800x32, 1024x640x32, or 800x500x32 (I've tried all three)
- 'Medium' and 'On' for all detail settings; or 'Low' and 'Off' for all detail settings (I've tried both)
- No other applications running in the background, and a clean boot before running WC3

Anyone else experiencing this problem? Anyone have solutions? Theories?

I didn't try WC3 before the 10.5.2/drivers update, so I don't know if would've been the same before the update.

 

[Garemz]

The MBA is weak it still needs tunning, my 1.6/80 starts to stutter after playing the Chess game for more then 5 min, and the game comes with OS X

Go figure.

 

[ayeying]

i haven't lagged during my last LAN game which lasted for about 2 hours.. Im running at 1024x768 @ All Med

 

[Ryuukumori]

Hullo all!

I'm a (mostly) happy owner of an MBA, but when I play Warcraft III, regardless of my settings, I seem to get low FPS (somewhere on the order of 10-20 fps). This really shouldn't be the case--the X3100 is (hopefully) more powerful than the GMA950, and my ThinkPad 1.2 ULV GHz w/ GMA950 performs in the upper 30s.

The set up (setup?):
- 1.8 GHz MBA w/ SSD
- OS X 10.5.2 (latest, as of March 4, 2008)
- Warcraft III 1.21B (latest, as of March 4, 2008; it's a Universal Binary)
- 1280x800x32, 1024x640x32, or 800x500x32 (I've tried all three)
- 'Medium' and 'On' for all detail settings; or 'Low' and 'Off' for all detail settings (I've tried both)
- No other applications running in the background, and a clean boot before running WC3

Anyone else experiencing this problem? Anyone have solutions? Theories?

I didn't try WC3 before the 10.5.2/drivers update, so I don't know if would've been the same before the update.

Speaking of the guy's post above me he can play it with no problems at medium, I'd say take it to a Genius Bar and ask them what the matter is. I dunno much about MBAs, but it might be something in your comp that is causing the issue? Anything you added recently?

 

[EvryDayImShufln]

The guy above may have been playing in bootcamp given his chosen resolutions.

It probably has something to do not with the airs actual power, but maybe with how the air dissipates its heat. My test run of an air showed that it heats up like crazy and the fans spin at super high RPMs to cool down the computer long after intensive programs are closed. Maybe the computer is automatically scaling down the processor?

 

[Kalafut]

Hullo all!

I'm a (mostly) happy owner of an MBA, but when I play Warcraft III, regardless of my settings, I seem to get low FPS (somewhere on the order of 10-20 fps). This really shouldn't be the case--the X3100 is (hopefully) more powerful than the GMA950, and my ThinkPad 1.2 ULV GHz w/ GMA950 performs in the upper 30s.

The set up (setup?):
- 1.8 GHz MBA w/ SSD
- OS X 10.5.2 (latest, as of March 4, 2008)
- Warcraft III 1.21B (latest, as of March 4, 2008; it's a Universal Binary)
- 1280x800x32, 1024x640x32, or 800x500x32 (I've tried all three)
- 'Medium' and 'On' for all detail settings; or 'Low' and 'Off' for all detail settings (I've tried both)
- No other applications running in the background, and a clean boot before running WC3

Anyone else experiencing this problem? Anyone have solutions? Theories?

I didn't try WC3 before the 10.5.2/drivers update, so I don't know if would've been the same before the update.

does the air have dedicated ram or shared ram beacuse that could be the problem

 

[malone]

Thanks for all the replies!

@ayeying: as per f1400's comment, are you running it in Boot Camp? And what framerates have you been getting? (enter "/fps" to get the framerate)

@Ryuukumori: no unusual applications added to my system, and certainly nothing that could be doing anything in the background (especially on a clean boot, with only WC3 running). I'll probably bring it into the Genius Bar if I can't find a solution (the machine's been great to me otherwise!)

@f1400: CPU scaling down for heat reasons is something I've considered; it might be the reason why...

@Kalafut: no dedicated VRAM for the X3100 on the MBA, but I doubt that's the reason why; if my X41 1.2 ULV w/ GMA900 (w/out dedicated VRAM) can outperform my MBA's 1.8 w/ X3100, then something's amiss...

 

[ayeying]

Thanks for all the replies!

@ayeying: as per f1400's comment, are you running it in Boot Camp? And what framerates have you been getting? (enter "/fps" to get the framerate)

No, the Mac edition. You can choose resolutions in there also... I'm getting an average FPS of about 35, min of 25 (so far) and max of 54 (so far)