Buying a Mac

bakechad · Post by **bakechad** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 6:35 pm

I have been debating between an Ubuntu machine and a Mac. At this point I am pretty sure I am buying an imac with Leopard.

Has anyone had any problems running the current version of Oolite on Leopard?

Any idea how it will perform on a 2.0 ghz imac?

Thanks

Chad

Post by **Cmdr James** » Wed Jan 02, 2008 8:03 pm

it runs fin on my macbook pro 2.33 with 2gb ram, and ran fine on the old one 2.16ghz with 1gb ram.

Both on tiger and leopard.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Thu Jan 03, 2008 8:44 am

On a 2GHz MacBook Pro (~~Leopard~~ Tiger, stupid me!

) with 512MB Ram the framerate rarely drops below 99.

So you should just be fine.

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Fri Jan 04, 2008 5:20 pm

Oolite on a 2.4 GHz iMac performs admirably at HDTV resolution with full shaders. It’s quite nice. :-) I doubt it would be noticeably worse on the 20" with the lower graphics chip option… but I can test it at work next week.

I also run Ubuntu on the iMac, but currently only under Parallels. There’s no hardware support for OpenGL under Linux in Parallels, so the performance there is less than stellar.

bakechad · Post by **bakechad** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 5:07 pm

Okay – I changed gears. I was all set to get an iMac. Due to space constraints and portability needs, I have decided to get a Macbook 2.2GHz with 4Gb of RAM.

How will Oolite run on this machine? Oolite is the only game I plan on playing and my decision is hinging on this.

Thanks

Chad

Post by **Cmdr James** » Wed Jan 16, 2008 8:15 pm

Um, it will run pretty much perfectly. That is a slightly higher spec that the machine I am on right now, and I can run oolite with debug and all sort on at a pretty much perfect speed. I dont know about framerate, it looks good enough, and thats all that matters to me. The proper build, without xcode and stuff running will be faster, and more stable.

Commander McLane · Post by **Commander McLane** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 1:11 pm

As I mentioned above, my MacBook Pro with "only" 2GHz and only 512MB in enough for a framerate of almost constantly 99 fps.

With a little more processor-power and eight times more RAM I really don't see how you could ever run into problems. So just do it!

bakechad · Post by **bakechad** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 2:49 pm

I figured the processor and RAM were more than adequate.

My concern was the lower end on-board graphics in the Macbooks. I keep reading how bad Macbooks are for gaming.

Post by **Cmdr James** » Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:28 pm

It will not be an issue.

nijineko · Post by **nijineko** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 12:00 pm

i've been able to play a surprising number of games on the macbook. of course, i'm mostly interested in older games, not the cutting edge. i've been playing with descent:freespace 2 for a while now with few issues. and that's fairly graphics hungry. oolite should run great!

mark_au · Post by **mark_au** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:38 am

The only problem you will have if you are migrating from pc to mac is that there is no joystick support.. most annoying

nijineko · Post by **nijineko** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 11:45 am

that's what usboverdrive is for!!! ^^

harry747 · Post by **harry747** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 10:49 pm

if you get an analogue joystick to work using USB overdrive, please let me know how.

Zbond-Zbond · Post by **Zbond-Zbond** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 4:38 am

I have run Oolite on Leopard (10.5.1) and it was visually very crisp
I liked it -- no probs at all
....although I junked Leopard for work-related reasons: yes, I know, very poor prioritising!

& an almost, but not quite, unrelated Q., what's MacMini like?

ovvldc · Post by **ovvldc** » Fri Apr 24, 2009 2:03 pm

bakechad wrote:
My concern was the lower end on-board graphics in the Macbooks. I keep reading how bad Macbooks are for gaming.

That used to be very much the case. Nowadays, all new MacBooks have nVidia 9400M units integrated, and they manage reasonably. A lot more than the previous Intel GMA units, anyway.

Best wishes,
Oscar