How to Be a Happy Mac User in SL

The FACTS are that MANY PowerPC machines will be running well into 2010. THAT is the REAL bottom line......what Linden Labs better listen to, rather than the opinions of end users that are more "bleeding edge" than the great majority of Mac end users. (AS well as their consciences also)

Question is...are they? I have noticed a steady framerate GAIN in the latest Universal Binary version of the Mac SL client on PowerPC G4 use. Which validates that at least Linden Labs is TRYING to do the right thing now FINALLY. CHEERS!!!!

Just keep object vectors being written by the altivec velocity engine and the cpu and relegate texture rendering to the gpu and it'll fly.

Hope this trend continues.

I run SL on an imac almost exactly 1 year old, and also, surprisingly, a 12 inch ibook from the last run before they were removed from the online store in favour of macbooks. The ibook runs SL as well as the imac does. SO Powerbooks and up aren't the only things that will play SL in a manageable way. You just, GASP, can't try doing SL and Photoshop at the same time.

For some of the SL Mac community, happiness is fine tuning our machines, and selecting hardware based on performance. For others, happiness elsewhere. I'd wager the largest part of this thread is attending the smallest part of the Macintosh community.

I'd like to address the apparent focus of the thread starter. The original page of this thread had great tips for tuning the SL Client. I'll offer some hardware tips.

The following list displays common video cards in order of performance, worst to best, in my first-hand experience.

• GeForce2 AGP (<5 FPS)
• GeForce4 MX AGP (<5 FPS)
• GeForce3 AGP (<5 FPS)
• GeForce FX 5200 AGP 32MB (<5 FPS)
• Radeon 9200 AGP (<5 FPS)
• GeForce FX 5200 AGP 64MB (<10 FPS)

• GeForce4 Ti4600 AGP (<15 FPS)
• Radeon 9600 AGP (<20 FPS)
• Radeon 9700 AGP (<20 FPS)
• Radeon 9800 AGP (<20 FPS)
• GeForce 6600 PCI-E (<30 FPS)

• GeForce 6800 GT AGP (<40 FPS)
• GeForce 6800 Ultra AGP (<50 FPS)
• GeForce 7800 PCI-E (<50 FPS)

Obviously the PCI-E and AGP frame rates are not calculated on the same Macintosh unit, but I've tried to express a meaningful baseline for comparison.

Performance isn’t the same as image quality, but I assume most of us are happier with a higher frame rate than better texture quality.

VIDEO CARD RAM
Improvements to textures of clothing and skin are the only enhancements offered by increased video card RAM. While video performance increases are significant moving from 32MB to 64, or 64MB to 128, I've found that the RAM on the video card isn't as significant above 128MB as an upgrade of system RAM. (However, Contrary to my expectations, a Radeon 9600 256MB RAM can offer superior frame rate to a Radeon 9700 128 MB RAM. YMMV. This was a subjective assessment. )

SYSTEM RAM
System RAM on MacOS X is more significant below 512MB RAM than your video card. If your Macintosh doesn't have 512MB RAM, consider a RAM upgrade before a graphics card upgrade.

INTEGRATED GRAPHICS SUCKS
Consider that new MacBooks with integrated Intel Graphics (sharing system RAM with graphics RAM) do not perform very well against a discrete graphics chip with dedicated RAM. This holds true for Macintosh as well as Windows Platforms.

YMMV. Enjoy SL as FL.

After reading through the flamewar, the question that I *still* have is whether the recommendations posted in the earlier pages of the thread are still relevant for the Universal Binary running on an Intel-based iMac.

This doesn't appear to have been addressed since the release of the Intel-based Macs.

Thanks.

SL runs wonderfully on the iMac. I bumped up the VRam and Ram.

The laptop version doesn't seem to run SL well from what I've read.

While its true that they suck, just to point out, the shared RAM with system memory is NOT the main reason why they suck, even though most everyone seems to try to base their video cards on amount of memory and if shared or not. Thats basically like comparing your whole computer on amount of memory. The shared dual channel memory access is slow than having GDDR3 onboard the card on a dedicated bus, but Intel's actual 'GPU' made in the chipset doesnt support everything most current cards do, and calculates things very slowly.
This is supposed to change with the G965 chipset out within months. It adds all features that SL requires, that older integrated graphics cant do, and is supposed to be slightly faster as well.

Could you be more specific? I have a 17" iMac and would like to improve performance if possible.

I run an 'old' G4 1.25Mhz (single) dualboot, twin 17" CRTs (64Mb ATI [rated 9000] main, 16Mb ? 2nd), 1.25Gb ram, 7200 80Gb Hd (3 partitions), OSX.3.9 on 2Mb BT broadband - and am an absolute Newbie (since 02/08/06) to all of this SL malarkey...

1st off, let me say that this whole SL thing is truly, gobsmackingly, amazing, I've never seen anything like it - but then again, I'd banned all games from my 'puters for life after spending 6hrs playing solitaire on a 386 back in '91 (but have happily spent over 10hrs solid on consecutive days in SL - it sure beats the hell out of solitaire!)...

Anyways, I have surprisingly few probs with SL in full screen at millions 1024x768, sure it ain't so quick at times, but really, it's at least acceptable afaI'm concerned (so far!). I studied lots of the Mac fora and some of the PC fora at length before tentatively signing up, and was fully expecting horrendous performance on my machine - maybe the latest version has been sorted? I dunno, but it's fine for me with most of the previously posted settings (tho' I prefer more terrain detail myself) and vary the Draw distance according to my needs...

Thing is, a lot of the settings posted aren't there in my version of SL prefs, also some bod in the PC fora suggested reducing 'Particle Count' (Adv. Graphics) from 4096 down to 256 - ? doesn't seem to make any diff to me tho'... And these days, why not allow up to a 5Gb cache (or even more), surely that would help?

My conclusion is: just throw shedloads of ram at it and even older Macs will be happy. Just wish I could bung the im, chat history, Inventory etc panels on my 2nd monitor - now that really is a pita... (VERY BIG HINT TO THE LINDENS!)

I've got loads of other queries about SL, but I'm a great believer in trying to work things out for myself 1st, so won't bother y'all unless I'm really stumped.

Hope to meet some of you peeps in SL, but please be gentle with me!!

Pri

Do you have any evidence that the PPC client contained any code that the UB client doesn't? There's no reason on earth that there should be any detectible difference between the code for the last version of the PPC-only version of the Mac client and the corresponding UB version of the Mac client.

I just acquired a 12" iBook G4 as part of a payment deal I cut for a client because my 7 year old Dell laptop's keyboard and monitor have basically died and it is now operating as a poor version of a desktop, hooked up to a full-size monitor, keyboard and mouse. I also have to run SL on the minimal settings anyway... so I naively thought "a relatively new Mac has got to be better than this?"

So I brought it home, all excited to finally start whizzing around SL once again, only to find I have to set my graphics and all settings to the minimums to just chug along in an ugly world. What happened?

I've got only 256 MB of memory built in, but another 1 GB DDR SDRAM. Do I need adjust settings to make sure all that extra RAM is used efficiently?
Can I upgrade my ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 graphics card, or am I stuck with it?

I haven't used a Mac since... a long time. Can anyone tell me what I can do to "pimp my mac" for SL use? Is that even possible?

once upon a time i was on a 14" iBook 1.33Ghz with the 32MB ATI 9200 card, it is not upgradeable. It will run the latest version of the viewer but it runs like a slideshow .1-5fps. not fun. :-[

iBook is not exactly 'pimpable' other than maxing out the RAM as you've done already. you can pimp out a Powermac or a MacPro and those will run SL well but your stuck with the iBook.