Running EQ2 on Mac hardware/OSX - Page 2

Gunthar · 02-21-2008, 12:06 AM

I love how people are still sitting here and pushing their ideology on people based on OLD information. Last I checked people aren't faulting Sony or Lenovo or Dell for selling a thicker, heavier, slower laptop for more money. Can we get off the don't buy it because it's overpriced or etc and get back to the real question at hand. Also I don't use my laptop for gaming all that often maybe one or two weeks a year when on vacation. I have a desktop for a reason. All of this being said, EQ2 is 3 years old (written like shit though) and it doesn't take a top of the line system to run. I am running EQ2 on my main system on a 6800 GT and had been running it on a 3 year old dell laptop with a discrete vid card. I'm going to commandeer my moms mac book and see how it runs and then take the plunge based on the findings. I can deal with turning everything off, it's just for emergencies anyway.

mrcqm · 02-22-2008, 06:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gunthar

Can you tell me a little more on the specs of your macbook pro mainly processor, ram and graphics chipset. This is highly reassuring, just wondering as I don't want to buy the pro but the macbook or macbook air.

Also what settings do you play on?

Definitely stick with the Macbook Pro or a Mac Pro. Do not try to play games on a regular Macbook or Macbook Air.

If you do not need it to be portable, you simply can't beat the Mac Pro. I do not need XP or Vista but one day I figured why not just see how Vista looks so I installed and saw a "hardware score" of 5.8 which my Windows user friends have been pretty impressed with.

I have a quad 2.4 GHz with space for 16 GB of very high quality FB-DIMM memory (server spec) but only need / use 3 GB today. My card is an X1900 which is plenty good enough. The newer machines have the 8800 gpu.

If / when EQ2 releases a native Mac client or works well with VMware Fusion, I'll probably try it out. For now I play WoW because it's fun and it runs natively on my computer.

For folks who are comfortable with Windows, Boot Camp works very well and your computer becomes just a very well built Windows box that can also boot into Mac OS.

mrcqm · 02-22-2008, 06:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iryssinia

Because people buy (and have since the Mac years) for design and "cool factor" instead of functionality, unless they're in the graphics design or video editing fields.

The real question is...why would you buy a Macbook Pro for $1800 or a Macbook Air for $1700 when you can get a laptop from a PC OEM with the same or better performance specs for $1200 or less, or get a really -nice- one that will stay current for a much longer time for a few hundred more?

It's for the design (and Apple really does rock product design).

Respectfully, this is not even remotely true. Granted there's probably some silly little teenager who has everything and "really really wants a brand new Macbook Air oh please Daddy please please?" but that's not Apple's target market.

People buy the computer they need. I'm on the fence with the Macbook Air. For work, I would love its light weight, portability, instant on, clear OLED screen, etc. For those evenings when I'm on a business trip and want to play a game, I would prefer the Macbook Pro but that's maybe 2-3 nights per year versus countless meetings. It's a trade-off: ultra light weight vs. ultra performance. Which is more important? My guess is anyone on this forum looking for a single do it all computer shouldn't even consider a standard Macbook or Macbook Air. The Macbook Pro or a Mac Pro are solid computers that stand up to anything the Windows-only manufacturers come out with.

mrcqm · 02-22-2008, 06:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gunthar

I love how people are still sitting here and pushing their ideology on people based on OLD information. Last I checked people aren't faulting Sony or Lenovo or Dell for selling a thicker, heavier, slower laptop for more money. Can we get off the don't buy it because it's overpriced or etc and get back to the real question at hand. Also I don't use my laptop for gaming all that often maybe one or two weeks a year when on vacation. I have a desktop for a reason. All of this being said, EQ2 is 3 years old (written like shit though) and it doesn't take a top of the line system to run. I am running EQ2 on my main system on a 6800 GT and had been running it on a 3 year old dell laptop with a discrete vid card. I'm going to commandeer my moms mac book and see how it runs and then take the plunge based on the findings. I can deal with turning everything off, it's just for emergencies anyway.

Facts are facts: Since switching my home computers to Mac one by one, my performance has gone way up; my ease of use has gone way up (after an early brief learning curve); and my total cost of ownership is dramatically lower.

Macs make far more possible with the same hardware compared to a Windows box. I've gone through the exercise many times. I would not own a single Mac if there was not a cost justification to it but there is one, and it is very compelling.

Don't expect much in terms of performance from that Macbook. I don't think it'd even handle WoW for OS X very well, let alone a native Windows game. Seriously -- if you want to consider a Mac, get a MBP 15" at least and step up to a Mac Pro tower if you can.

Arsenius · 02-23-2008, 08:21 AM

I ran EQ2 on my MBP with Vista and it was fine. XP kept locking up, because of some issue with the C2D. Even with EQ2 on an external hdd, there is no problem.
However, I would wait until the new MBP with 45nm C2Ds are released or get a Lenovo ThinkPad.

Yobor · 02-23-2008, 09:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pinski

Sadly, Apple makes great laptops, design, functionality, everything. They can run just about any X86/X64 OS you want.

Couldn't agree more here. Plus OS X is wonderful, it's amazing how much having a sane build environment and a solid, well thought out UI increases productivity and ease of use.
I used to clown Mac users till I actually installed OS X, now I don't think I could ever go back to windows as my primary os.
(disclaimer: My day job consists of working on a mix of unix-based systems, windows servers, and a fair amount of high-end networking gear.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pinski

It's too bad their X11 implementation is lacking Shader support tho

Just need to find a way to get WineX to actually fucking work, specially since I think it uses the Native Display, instead of X11.

The maturity of the wine OS X port definitely leaves some to be desired. Fortunately there is a ton of active development on this front. Wine is actually good news for Apple and visa versa, so there's some good work being done. You're correct, it is possible to leverage the Quartz driver in wine. It's also worth mentioning that the Quartz driver is currently not included in the mainline distribution of wine. It's being maintained in a separate tree until the driver is more mature (mostly because it contains a fair amount of objective-c code and has a few stability issues). I haven't rebuilt wine lately on my box nor kept up with the Quartz driver changelog, it may be worth re-looking into.

I'll also go ahead and echo the other advice given, stay clear of the Macbook, and Macbook Air lines if you want a chance at gaming. The integrated video chipsets found on those platforms simply won't perform to your expectations, MacBook Pros are a much safer bet.

Morara · 02-23-2008, 09:36 AM

Why not just use Boot Camp and run XP natively?

Yobor · 02-23-2008, 09:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morara

Why not just use Boot Camp and run XP natively?

Most peoples os x machines have over 60 days of uptime, rebooting requires you to close out of everything you are doing.

I assume the OP's desire is to be able to run eq2 without having to stop everything first.

If the performance tradeoff was minimal this would obviously be the preferred method.

Morara · 02-23-2008, 09:51 AM

Well, since the OP was discussing Macbooks, I assumed he turned it off every once in a while.

Yobor · 02-23-2008, 09:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Morara

Well, since the OP was discussing Macbooks, I assumed he turned it off every once in a while.

Think most macbook owners utilize the sleep/hibernate functions which allow you to close the lid/unplug and then resume everything when you turn it back on (all the same apps are still open because the system state is paged out to disk prior to powering down)