Welcome to the Second Life Forums Archive

These forums are CLOSED. Please visit the new forums HERE

For those of you thinking Mac or PC

Christi Maeterlinck
Registered User
Join date: 25 Jan 2006
Posts: 126
08-19-2009 06:24
Your thoughts please on three rather techie questions.
I can afford to replace my MacBook Pro laptop with a stonking great MacPro desktop (though I don't intend to pay more than I need to). I'm wondering about SL performance.

a) The SL knowledge base has reservations about the ATI Radeon graphics cards, yet Apple show twice the performance ratings for graphics-intensive games from the ATI Radeon HD4870 compared to the NVIDIA GeForce GT120, both of which are available with the MacPro desktop machine. Has anyone experience of either card with SL please?

b) Will an 8-core machine give me appreciably better performance than a Quad-core, bearing in mind the possible bottleneck caused by my ISP's 10Mbps claimed download speed? (Actual performance on my old MacBook Pro is 8.88 Mbps down and 0.46 Mbps up.) In other words, is it more sensible to pay Virgin Media for a faster internet service and get the Quad-core, than lashing out the £600 extra for an 8-core machine?

c) I run SL on both Mac OS10.5.7 and (when I want to use Second Inventory to shift my builds to other grids) also on MSVista under Boot Camp, both in my MacBook Pro. (And for people who have asked which is better, PC or Mac, for SL, may I say that I don't see much difference between either except, for some reason, the picture I get under Vista seems brighter somehow.) Can I assume that MSVista behaves itself on a Quad-core Mac, so that the experience will be much the same?

Many thanks for anyone who might shed some light on these: thank you in advance.

Christi Maeterlinck
Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid
Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 20,263
08-19-2009 07:18
From: Christi Maeterlinck

a) The SL knowledge base has reservations about the ATI Radeon graphics cards, yet Apple show twice the performance ratings for graphics-intensive games from the ATI Radeon HD4870 compared to the NVIDIA GeForce GT120, both of which are available with the MacPro desktop machine. Has anyone experience of either card with SL please?
OS X involves itself a lot more in the graphics card, including filling in missing OpenGL features and adjusting to driver and firmware quirks. That's why you could do T&L on the original Intel Mac Mini even though the GMA950 didn't do it... it did that part ofthe OpenGL in software.

So on the Mac it's not so much a matter of "nVidia/ATI is better/worse", it's "these specific cards are better handled by OS X".
_____________________
Argent Stonecutter - http://globalcausalityviolation.blogspot.com/

"And now I'm going to show you something really cool."

Skyhook Station - http://xrl.us/skyhook23
Coonspiracy Store - http://xrl.us/coonstore
Christi Maeterlinck
Registered User
Join date: 25 Jan 2006
Posts: 126
08-19-2009 15:27
From: Argent Stonecutter
OS X involves itself a lot more in the graphics card, including filling in missing OpenGL features and adjusting to driver and firmware quirks. That's why you could do T&L on the original Intel Mac Mini even though the GMA950 didn't do it... it did that part ofthe OpenGL in software.

So on the Mac it's not so much a matter of "nVidia/ATI is better/worse", it's "these specific cards are better handled by OS X".


Okay, Argent, thank you: we need to talk specifics. Trouble is, neither the NVidia GeForce GT120 nor the the ATI Radeon HD4870 offered as alternatives for the MacPro desktop Quad machine currently on sale is listed in any of the SL lists of specific cards.

See, for example, the SL knowledge base articles 'Detailed Info about SL-compatible Systems' and 'NVIDIA drivers appear to be causing problems with the SL viewer' (I dunno... that's just the title of the Knowledge Base article, don't blame me for starting a hare...).

So: is there any kind soul out there who has experience, specifically, with the NVidia GeForce GT120 or the RadeonHD4870?

And any thoughts about my other 2 queries? Does improving internet speeds as described in my query give better gains than choosing an 8-core Mac over a Quad? I've utterly no way of comparing these two improvement options, but to a techie maybe the answer is sort of blindingly obvious? Me, I'm just a blonde Neko on a backwoods island sim, what do I know?

And Argent said that the choice of Nvidia versus ATIcard depends on the specific card, _in the case of a Mac_. What's the experience with SL run in Vista under boot camp, i.e., basically, on a PC? Are you implying, Ardent, that the choice of Nvidia versus ATI _is_ obvious with a PC?

Byee!
Christi
Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid
Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 20,263
08-19-2009 15:36
From: Christi Maeterlinck
Are you implying, Ardent, that the choice of Nvidia versus ATI _is_ obvious with a PC?
With Windows, yes, go with nVidia.

Can you go into an Apple store and try out SL on the computers there?
_____________________
Argent Stonecutter - http://globalcausalityviolation.blogspot.com/

"And now I'm going to show you something really cool."

Skyhook Station - http://xrl.us/skyhook23
Coonspiracy Store - http://xrl.us/coonstore
Milla Janick
Empress Of The Universe
Join date: 2 Jan 2008
Posts: 3,075
08-19-2009 15:52
From: Christi Maeterlinck
So: is there any kind soul out there who has experience, specifically, with the NVidia GeForce GT120 or the RadeonHD4870?

I've run SL on an 8-core Mac Pro with the GT120, and it was remarkably fast. That CPU must go a long way to making up for the GT120's deficiencies.

As for 8-core vs. faster internet connection, I'd say neither one. I'd get a 4-core Mac Pro and add an Nvidia GTX285 to it. That should be eye blistering fast. I'm not sure why that card isn't a built to order option, but that is by faqr the best graphics adapter available for the Mac Pro.
_____________________


http://www.avatarsunited.com/avatars/milla-janick
All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain...
Sassy Dirval
Registered User
Join date: 4 Sep 2008
Posts: 5
08-21-2009 10:40
The SL viewer can be laggy at times on my MacBook Pro -- but SNOWGLOBE runs wonderful.

If you're on a mac and having issues, try the other viewer.
Danaeah Ballinger
Registered User
Join date: 7 May 2007
Posts: 22
Snowglobe - thumbs up
08-27-2009 16:14
Got the tip from a post here and haven't looked back! I'vehave been running Snowglobe in preference to the standard viewer since mid-July, on both a mac and a dell. Notably better frame rate across a variety of sims & sim conditons. The other tip that seemed counter-intuitive at first but greatly speeds up rezzing gray prims, is to turn off multi-threading.
Erick Gundersen
Registered User
Join date: 16 Dec 2006
Posts: 2
Second Life with Mac
09-15-2009 22:23
Any new mac today ie. Intel core duo cpu but not intel graphics will work very nicely with Second Life. If you are going to try and run it on an old g4 or something without the newer NVIDIA GeForce 9400M you probably wont be happy.

I've been running SL on my macbook pro I bought nearly 3 years ago just to run SL. Aside from buggy SL viewer versions (im still using 1.22) and other not-mac specific SL issues its run quite well for me, especially after I bumped up the RAM this year. After upgrading to snow leopard recently I've encountered no issues. The last generation MAC mini without the nvidia graphics didnt handle it so well so that machine was replaced with a new iMac last year which also runs SL quite well.

I got the mac after having used PC's for many years and having got sick and tired of fighting with anti-virus software and all the other crap vulnerabilities windows forces you to deal with and after finding that SL wouldn't run decently on my PC gaming system from a year earlier that I built from scratch using high quality parts. Getting the Mac was money well spent and it just makes everything I use the computer for far less annoying than the windows machines I've had to use at work.
Haven't tried SL on LINUX but would like to hear how that is.
Missy Malaprop
♥Diaper Girl♥
Join date: 28 Oct 2005
Posts: 544
09-20-2009 07:10
From: Erick Gundersen

Haven't tried SL on LINUX but would like to hear how that is.


more or less its gotten pretty good on Linux.. depending on the persons machines, driver support and distro they are using.... sometimes it can be a pain to get things to work, like Voice Chat... so its still not as easy as OSX or Windows.
Bee Mizser
Registered User
Join date: 22 Apr 2007
Posts: 329
10-13-2009 07:58
From: Missy Malaprop
surprised it runs at all... you need a new computer....



That is a bit cruel. The text client can run on an iPhone.
Brett Allardyce
Registered User
Join date: 28 Jul 2009
Posts: 1
re: new macbook and macbook pro
10-14-2009 08:15
Hi there

Sorry if this has been posted elsewhere but I can't find it!

I'm considering a new Macbook or Macbook Pro - how are people who are using either of these finding their SL experience?

Or what is recommended as a laptop in a similar price range (i.e up to about £900)?

Thanks
1 2