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I have a 2.16 core 2 MacBook Pro with a 128mb ATI X1600 gpu. I lowered my res to 1280x800 and turned everything down in TF@ but still cannot get playable frame rates! I even have this issue in Day of Defeat Source and HL1 based games! HL1 games run almost well enough but HL2 forget it! If I boot into Windows XP then all of the games perform very well.

Is there a trick I am missing? A setting I forgot? Or is it just to cpu intensive for my book? When I had 10.5 and before tf2 was updated several times... It ran fine! If you have a MBP like mine and make this happen what did you do different? I would also like to hear from users with a newer MBP with the 9600! I plan a upgrade in February but if the difference isn't good enough I might wait.

Thanks for any help and responses!

P.S. on a MAC how do you get around the horrible mouse curve? I use steermouse at the moment but would prefer not to.

I'm hoping Stefan will weigh in on this issue, but I believe part of your problem is the 10.6 drivers for the ATI x1600. The Snow Leopard drivers for the ATI 1600's are still a bit buggy, and you won't get the same level of performance out of them as you did on 10.5. Hopefully future 10.6 updates will fix this.

Have you tried adding the "useGLSL=enabled" and "OffscreenRenderingMode=fbo" registry keys? How about playing in windowed mode (i.e. add "-windowed" to the launch options)?

The X1600 driver has a problem with offscreen rendering, the performance is fine.

What you describe sounds like there's some issue with your system. Team Fortress 2 might need either the resolution lowered to 640x480, or dxlevel 81 to run at good framerates(I recommend -dxlevel 81). However, Half Life 2 should be playable at pretty high settings, and Half Life 1 should run at 70+ fps at maxed out settings. (half life 1 by default stops at 70 fps, if you disable the cap in the console you'd probably get 150-200 fps)

I recommend to check if there are some other processes eating CPU time. To do that, open the Activity Monitor(A mac app), and run the games in a window, and see if there are any processes besides "wineloader"(The games) that consume CPU time. The games should get close to 100% CPU time of at least one CPU core.

I was worried that it would be bad Apple drivers... So if I understand you two correctly, I will have better performance running windowed? If so that is actually a good thing! Multitask during respawn timers!

"Have you tried adding the "useGLSL=enabled" and "OffscreenRenderingMode=fbo" registry keys? How about playing in windowed mode (i.e. add "-windowed" to the launch options" Would this be right clicking the game in steam and adding it somewhere in there? In all of my years with HL games I have always played them out of the box besides three or four commands i know. I would appreciate a little bit more guidance here. Specifically something to copy and paste in?

Day of Defeat will run normally around 99 (My fps cap) but during things like smoke or blast the fps drop well under 30. Is there any launch commands that would help that? Wineloader pretty much keeps one core pegged!

If it helps I need performance in importance of order:
Day of Defeat
TF2
DoD Source

Thanks for the help so far!

Damien

PS Do you Think Race or rFactor will ever work?

The registry key stuff is a little tricky.

In Crossover, go to Programs and select 'Run Command...'

Choose the bottle containing Steam and type 'regedit' for the command

Browse through the tree to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/Direct3D/

If Direct3D isn't there, you'll need to add it as a new key. Then, inside Direct3D, add following two items as String values:

useGLSL = "enabled"
OffscreenRenderingMode = "fbo"

Then close out of Regedit. For the -windowed thing, you'll need to go into Properties>Launch Options, which you'll find in My Games (with TF2 highlighted). Add "-windowed" in the Launch Options box, and then save. When you launch TF2, it will be in a window.

Thank you much for the information. I set windowed mode from the video options in tf2 as a test until I heard back but to no avail. Performance was the same. Next chance I get I will try the reg edits.

Thank you
Damien

I forgot do those settings apply to both hl1 and hl2 games?

DoD performance is horrible also. 59fps tops all the way down to 19. Its so bad the mouse is even jerky and laggy at times. If it is Apple drivers like you say then you should recommend that people with a x1600 and 10.6 that plan on using HL1 and 2 based games pass on CXG for now. Atleast untill Apple updates the drivers if ever. Performance was never perfect with 10.5 but mostly was playable with the exception of a noticeable lag from mouse click to firing in game. It would appear that running windows games on a MAC you will need double the recommended hardware... Rev up to a MAC pro a solution? Bootcamp just isn't a solution I am looking forward to! Hopefully there is a answer out there. Anyone else with a x1600? What is your experience? Is the 9600 that much better?

Tried this for TF2 " -novid -dxlevel 81 " the only thing it changed was I could not run in a window any longer! Strange... Also tried the registry change and saw no difference. Further trouble shooting looks like I am maybe also having a USB polling issue? I have a steelseries Ikari mouse and its real jittery and jerky. I tried a simple 400dpi mouse and it became much smoother. Lousy Apple USB implementation again? Same reason on boot it never finds my keyboard? Tried it plugged in directly instead of hub and no difference. For those keeping score at home I also use steermouse to try and escape the horrible Apple mouse curve.

Check the box that when booted in bootcamp that I had no choice doing... the games run fine. It would appear to NOT be a hardware issue.