SL on a MAC Pro

Hi,
I just ordered a Mac Pro with 3Ghz dual core Zeons and 3 gigs of ram and the ATI X1900 video card, Has anyone been running SL on this type of machine and if so how does it run. I run it on a Mac Book Pro fine but I heard Dual CPU's can be a problem.

Dual Cores/Dual CPUs aren't a problem, they just aren't recognised by SL. So while SL will run nicely on a machine like that, it won't run as well as it COULD since it'll only run on a single core of a single processor. Leopard (OS X.5) will hopefully improve this, but LL are going to have to do some actual work towards multi-core awareness to get SL to run as well as it should.

However, that machine will be just awesome for doing things WHILE playing SL. I have a dual-processor machine (2.5ghz G5) and SL eats up one of the processors, meaning if I want Photoshop or something open at the same time, the other processor gets quickly bogged down.

Right now I run SL on a Macbook Pro and I run SL with other programs all the time even photoshop and speed has never been a problem unlike with my PC. Can't wait to get this bad boy setup when it gets here.

/me drools at the thought of Ninja's new machine...

Yes, Leopard should have changes to graphics rendering which make better use of the dual cores--even with no changes from SL. Right now, each program and its graphics (open gl) are run in the same core-unless deliberately programmed otherwise. Leopard will apparently run the graphics in the second core--out of the box, no programming required. That should help a LOT of programs.

Although, with that ATI card, you may not see much net improvement anyway.! YOu'll be TDF* to care.

*Too Damned Fast.

The new system is waiting for me at home, right now im at work watching the clock tick away as I get closer and closer to running home to set this beast up, I will let everyone know how it runs when i get SL working on it. I have alot of data to move first.

I just returned from the local Apple center in Orlando Fl. where the Apple reps were very helpful.

All their computers were on a broadband network and I downloaded SL on to:

A 20" IMac, 1 gig memory, 1600 ATI card with 128meg. Sl loaded quickly and ran well (with a slight loss of texture detail and some minor jerkyness in avatar movement.

A 24" IMac , 2 gig memory, 7300 Nivida card. Sl loaded fast and ran great, wonderful textures and very smooth avatar movements. a very impressive performance!

A Mac pro, 3gig processor, 4 gig memory, ATi 1900 card with 512 meg memory. Sl loaded as fast as the broadbad would let it, and was really impressive loading textures and had a natural looking, smooth avatar movement.

No problems loading Sl or running it on any machine, no crashes or problems in over two hours of logging in and out of each machine.

That is my exact same setup, with the 23" Display. Runs smooth as silk.

I've been running SL on my 2.66 Mac Pro for a few months now. No major hiccups so far *touches wood*. Congrats on the new purchase Ninja.

Hi scruffy,

I assume you have a mac pro and aTI1900 can you enable bump map ?

Am having some difficulties with my mac pro and ati 1900

I have a Mac Pro 2.66ghz with both an ATI X1900 and a GeForce 7300, running with 5 gigs of ram. It's set up with three screens, upon which I do web application development, design, support, and whatever else needs doing-- The two main screens are LCD panels and the Nvidia card is driving an old monster-size CRT, and a fourth video port reserved for a projector/HMD/other visualization toy. Needless to say, I like a lot of space for my workspace.

Anyway, when I got the stock system with the 7300 and 1 gig of ram, SL ran great. After I installed another 4 gigs of ram in the machine, SL would throw a kernel panic and bring down the whole system whenever I tried to run it. After much frustration and research, I discovered that this is a known bug of the Nvidia Mac drivers. Apparently the drivers were written for Macs with a 32-bit address space, and don't play nice when you try to do things out beyond the 2-gigs-of-ram limit.

Here is a slashdot thread from a while back that details some of the inter-corporate drama at the heart of the issue:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/14/211242

The proper response I expected from Nvidia/Apple was to release a fix for the driver. However, inexplicably, this has not happened since I originally experienced the problem four months ago, despite this being a problem lots of people are having both in SL and in World of Warcraft. Instead, the prescribed solutions were to a) not have more than 2 gigs of ram, b) run bootcamp, or c) buy an ATI X1900.

Since I wanted more screen real-estate, I decided to get the ATI card. After I installed it, however, I discovered that the system would still kernel panic in SL, even if I was not running it on the Nvidia screen. Only when the system did not have to even THINK about the Nvidia card, by me physically unplugging the third screen and restarting, did Second Life work properly. Mercy, does it work properly. It works so properly all the sloppy windows-port work in the Mac SL client is pretty much glossed over.

Unfortunately, I actually have a use for a third screen, and though I hate to admit it, Second Life is so addictive that running the system with a configuration that will cause the CPUs to sieze up actually helps me get more work done. And, I think its pretty rotten that I am being advised to UNPLUG things from my $4000 workstation in order to get it to do everything it should be able to do.

I am looking forward to the release of either properly-written SL Mac client that does not tickle the uvula of my defective Nvidia driver, or a fixed Nvidia driver itself, or Mac OS 10.5 which will break out graphics functions into its own threads (and maybe have new video drivers also). In the mean time, I'm more productive because my big scary machine can't do this particular thing without blowing up.

This is what I have, and have nothing but problems....

crashes every 5 mintues, I have much better luck when I am not running anything else (hmmm, I can stay on perhaps 8 mintues without a crash)

I let a salesman talk me into an Apple when me, being a steadfast PC user since mid '80s. What a moment of weakness.... but he was cute. Oh well.

When I'm not in SL, I run XP through Bootcamp... much happier there... my poker site doesn't even recognize Mac... ok, jeez, off topic... sorry

Meggy

Ok, well .... I'm guessin' that's my issue as I do have more ram installed. Ah... in my next life I want to be a techie.

Meggy