New MacBook with Nvidia 9400M

Has anyone tried to run SL on the new MacBook with the 9400 graphics card? I see folks trying the new MacBookPro but was hoping the MacBook would run SL. Please post feedback!

A great test would be to run on a MBP and MB side by side in the same sims, and compare the FPS.

lee

I have just replied to a similar thread
/164/c5/287347/1.html

I bought a 15" 2.4 yesterday after trying in the shop. I loaded the standard viewer and just did a quick 2 minutes test. I was getting between 30 and 35 fps. This was in a mall where I had previously parked my character. I thought initially I was using the 9600M GT but it was actually in powersave mode which uses the 9400M. I then tried same test after switching to the 9600M GT and was suprised to see very little increase in FPS. Unfortunately didnt have the chance to look deeper as it was in a busy store. Will try my own tonight and see what the results are like.

Did you sign off after switching? You have to sign off to switch graphics cards.

Yes I did. The only thought I had was that although it was set to power save mode it still had power connected to it so that may of over ridden the powersave mode and had in fact been using the 9600 all the time. Will do more tests on my own machine tonight.

I got the new macbook, not the pro, SL works fine on it, really quite surprised! I get between 12 and 30fps.

Is everyone with the new MacBooks seeing the same results?

hey!

@AndySquirrel Sawchuk

viewerversion?
qualitysettings and screensize?
sl fullscreen or sl in a window?

questions bout questions

my 2 years old imac 17" intel c2d 2Gzh/1GbRam/ATIx1600-128MbVram runs sl fine too
osx 10.4.11
viewer: 1.20.17 in windowmode ~ 800x600 -> drawd istance 256 meters
med.quality(custom) -> 25-30 fps / up to 50 fps / all shaders off up to 100 fps

1280x720 windowed, seems to work best between medium and high settings, for example I can enable bi-linear filtering and it makes no difference to the frame rate.

I went into the Apple Store yesterday and tried out the $1299 version. Set it to High graphics settings and get FPS in the 20s, running the viewer in a maximized window with a few avatars around. I didn't test it in any seriously crowded areas, as many of them would contain NSFS (not safe for shopping content. It's MUCH better than the previous MacBook, and right up with the best of the competition in its size class. (Mostly you have to move up to the 17" behemoths to get serious gamer-class graphics; I've seen one or two 15" ones but they're still up near 7 pounds.) Now if only they had included a FireWire port for video work...

I did notice one annoyance. There doesn't seem to be any way to type PageUp or PageDown on the keyboard, not even with the help of the Function key. Makes flying more of a pain than it ought to be... yes, E and C still work if you don't have the chat window open but I usually do.

do the new macbook or macbook pros exhibit system freezes? thats my biggest fear...

I'm a bit gunshy: In Nov. 2007 I bought one of the 3100 macbooks, prior to knowledge of the occlusion workaround or any updated releases. Because SL froze, I reluctantly returned it to the store on day 9.

So I've been delighted to read the good reports on the 9400 version. I'm itchin to pull the trigger, so let me ask once more, has anyone seen any freezes while running SL on the new macbooks?

Thanks,
Danaeah

Hi I have had the new macbook for a week now and spent at least one hour on sl dily without chrashes.. or freezes. ive keep my settings low but will increase eventually when i get a full feel of the performance ( my wy of working lol )

I also posted this on the other similar thread, but since a mbp running in powersaver mode is using a 9400 chip, it hought it might be helpful.

I plunged straight into SL on my MBP 2.8 with 4gb RAM when it arrived and was pretty stunned at the improvement over my old 2.16 MBP with ATI X1600.

Even on the lower spec graphic chip it rocks... 22 - 25 fps with settings on "High" and there is a noticeable improvement, especially with settings on "Ultra" when switched to the discrete graphics card.

I had a number of crashes when using flycam with the spacenavigator with all settings maxed out... I don't know if this is because I was running ishowu at the same time or what, they are not the old style system-wide freezes, but just "unexpected quits".

Not tested the windows client under bootcamp yet.

Any other experiences welcomed.

I couldn't wait, & ordered one, the basic off the shelf model, with 2gh processor & 2 gig ram. Was on SL for 3 hours last night with no hint of a freeze up. 15-30 fps in most places. Slower this morning. Was gonna plug in my Dell for comparison, but overall, I'm really happy with it.

Danaeah

Good god Apple, what are you smoking?

The arrow keys on the bottom right corner of the keyboard don't work for you? They seem to work fine for me, and exactly as they did on my ages-old PowerBook that I used to use.

Up, down, left, right. Hold the fn key on the bottom left of the keyboard, and the keys become PgUp, PgDn, Home, End. Should be the same on all MacBooks and MacBook Pro's.

Granted, if you're goofing around in the retail store's computer there's no telling what you might experience. They have their own custom software running (demos, kiosks, etc), and may have an override on certain function keys.

It's possible that they work. They're certainly unmarked. I'd much rather have dedicated PageUp and PageDown keys for SL in any case; I like to fly, and having to use the Fn key to do it is inconvenient. (I'd also much rather have them for web surfing; I like to use them to scroll web pages.)

It's possible that they work? Have you actually experienced it NOT working for yourself? Or heard from anyone out there who has not been able to page up and page down in exactly the same fashion on the new machines as they have on all the previous models?

Seriously... it's not like Apple removed keys here... it's exactly the same keystroke combo that it was in the past, and the keys are in exactly the same places they were on previous keyboards.