New Mac Book

Hi,

I just got a new MacBook pro and it will not run SL. Has anyone else had this issue and what did you do to over come it?

what does it do when you try? Need a lot more info to troubleshoot.

You sure it's a MB /Pro/ - is it an aluminum case?
If it's just a MacBook (White or black) they don't have "real" 3d cards built in - SL can kind of run but not well on those.

You also don't say whether you're trying to use the Mac OSX client or the Windows client and whether you are running OSX or XP at the time.

I can even run SL (not well, but it works) on my old Powerbook G4, so it seems like there's something you're leaving out here. I do know Dolmere Talemesca has had trouble recently on his new MBP - pulling all the sliders in most of the graphics areas of preferences seems to have got his machine stable (but not a pleasant experience).

Its a brand new MacBook pro running 10.4.9

here are the spec's

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro3,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz

Chipset Model: GeForce 8600M GT
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

SL should run sweet on your MBP...
what happens when you try to start up the SL program?
How far do you get?

It bounces in the dock a few seconds and then just stops and the crash report comes up.

I would suggest a uninstall of SL, not only of the program in the application folder but the cache folder as well which I think is located in the User/library/applicationsupport folder, once that is done reinstall SL and see if it helps, also I recommend you install the first look version of SL it seems to have fixed many crashing problems with the Macbook Pro.

Same specs, working OK for me on a quick test.

Yes I just got one of these new MacBook Pro's as well. SL seems to run fine, although the frame-rates were not as high as I had expected. Maybe it's because the 8600M GT uses a universal shader architecture that's not supported by SL yet, or the current drivers for OS X are in need of a fix? I noticed that the Avatar Vertex Program remains grayed out no matter what I do.

Enabling OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects does boost my FPS by about 5-10. Still with a 128 draw distance in a typical Linden Land sim 15-25 FPS, with 128 Draw distance, Vertex Shaders on, Bumpmap & Shiny on, Ripple off, Normal Avatar Rendering (no other options are available!), Local lighting on, Low terrain detail, and detail sliders like this:
[------[]------]
[--[]----------]
[[]------------]
[---[]---------]

g

From what I've been reading on the newest MacBook Pros (hope mine gets here soon ) Nvidia is still tweaking the drivers to support the new unified architecture of the 8600M GT GPU.

The 8600M does not use separate pixel and vertex shaders, but instead combines these into a series of flexible processing units that can be switched on the fly. (This may explain why the avatar vertex option isn't available)

In theory this is a good thing and can be used to greatly enhance performance. In practical terms Nvidia is still learning the ins and outs of this new chip and having a hard time writing proper drivers for it. This may get sorted out in future updates to OS X and/or SL.

vertex shader option is not available because the Mac client has it disabled. The Lindens do not know why but it always caused major problems, so instead of spending time to figure out why, they just hard disabled it in the client for all configs, no matter what.

Yeah well... I installed Boot Camp and Vista on my new MacBook Pro w/NVIDIA 8600M GT.

On the Windows client, I get nearly *double* if not *tripple* the frame rates as on the Mac client! What's more, the Avatar Vertex Program is not grayed out, either. In other words, the Windows side not only performs better, but has all the best graphics features as well, whereas the Mac side often gets very choppy and laggy at the same (or lesser) settings.

What does this tell us? Well, we know that the 8600M GT is one of those cards which is specifically designed to support DirectX 10 and all of Vista's features. Perhaps the drivers for Vista are just that much more advanced.

Or, the SL version for Mac is a piece of crap!

Or, OS X has something about it which inhibits the performance of games as opposed to Windows. Which I highly doubt, since why would that be the case?

So which one is it, guys? Anyway I sent a bug-report to the Lindens about it. Hopefully it's just a driver issue, which will be fixed in the near future. Because I do NOT want to have to run Windblows just to play SL in a manner that is not 1/2-1/4th the speed it should be.

Any Lindens care to comment?

-Gistya

My SL experience on my Mac Book Pro (i've been a Mac user since 1991) has been VERY bad, and has gotten steadily worse shortly after SL hit 1 million people last year. I'm talking about LAG! When my PC pals are getting 27 fps, I'm getting 8! I have a 17" 2.16 GHz Intel dual-core Mac Book Pro with 2 GB of RAM, and SL runs HORRIBLY these days! It's not unusual for me to get 3-6 fps in most regions lately! I was in an unbelievably laggy region earlier, and was getting 0.4 fps at one point! HELP!!!

Furthermore, i have been told that the Mac version is nothing more than the PC version running under some minimal "Windows simulator," which might explain a few things. Why would the Lindens alienate Mac users that way?

Any Lindens care to comment?

The Mac version of SL is not a PC program running under some sort of simulation or emulation. It is a "native" Macintosh universal binary, written in cross-platform C++ and compiled with XCode.

I have a feeling that this has more to do with Open GL vs. DirectX, and/or graphics card drivers for the PC side performing better. But I would like to hear from a Linden about why the performance ON THE SAME COMPUTER would be faster on the Windows Vista as opposed to OS X client version. I mean, on the same hardware, there should not be a significant performance gap between the two clients. There really, really shouldn't.

-=GE=-