[PilotCrabby]

I would like to get Modern Warfare for my mac so I can play while I am away on trips. I have seen a few people having issues with Modern Warfare and Snow Leopard. Mainly the complaint is a drop in performance when using snow leopard compared to leopard. I would be using it for the multiplayer aspect, and I am wondering if I should just get it for Windows and use boot-camp. I would rather not since I am trying to rid myself of Windows. Could anyone shed some light or point me in some directions so I can do more research?

crabby

[Sneaky Snake]

PilotCrabby, on November 1st 2009, 09:48 PM, said:

I would like to get Modern Warfare for my mac so I can play while I am away on trips. I have seen a few people having issues with Modern Warfare and Snow Leopard. Mainly the complaint is a drop in performance when using snow leopard compared to leopard. I would be using it for the multiplayer aspect, and I am wondering if I should just get it for Windows and use boot-camp. I would rather not since I am trying to rid myself of Windows. Could anyone shed some light or point me in some directions so I can do more research?

crabby

What's the specs of your computer, particularly your video card?

[PilotCrabby]

Sneaky Snake, on November 1st 2009, 09:25 PM, said:

What's the specs of your computer, particularly your video card?

Crap... I totally forgot to post what I am using. I have a 2008 MBP 2.4 GhZ 4GB ram with 250GB HDD. It has the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256MB video Card. I am seeing claims of slower frame rates and slow load up times and jitterness. Everyone seems to claim it worked fine before they upgraded to snow leopard. I guess my real questions are... Is anyone playing this with Snow Leopard installed

[UmarOMC1]

Well my setup is in my sig... CoD4 FLIES on my comp!

[PilotCrabby]

UmarOMC1, on November 1st 2009, 09:49 PM, said:

Well my setup is in my sig... CoD4 FLIES on my comp!

you are running the mac version, or the PC version. You don't experience any startup lag on the game?

[UmarOMC1]

PilotCrabby, on November 1st 2009, 10:01 PM, said:

you are running the mac version, or the PC version. You don't experience any startup lag on the game?

No PC version on my Mac- no Windowz. Startup lag? What's that? I see the CoD4 splash screen, the interface appears, click Join Game, choose a server, connect, map loads QUICKLY, I'm playing. Period.

[PilotCrabby]

UmarOMC1, on November 1st 2009, 10:53 PM, said:

No PC version on my Mac- no Windowz. Startup lag? What's that? I see the CoD4 splash screen, the interface appears, click Join Game, choose a server, connect, map loads QUICKLY, I'm playing. Period.

I read somewhere that people were having issues with the startup. They noticed it took significantly longer to start the game, both multiplayer and single player after they upgraded to Snow Leopard. I was given a list of programs for the mac and it states that COD4 has no known issues with snow leopard. After reading that and from what you are telling me I think I am going to get it for mac and not bother with Windows. I really like this game on my xbox, but money is tight, so I want to make sure it works before I drop $50 dollars on it.

Since you seem to be the only one posting... Did you run the patch? People over in macforums.com are having difficulty finding it.

[UmarOMC1]

PilotCrabby, on November 2nd 2009, 02:06 PM, said:

I read somewhere that people were having issues with the startup. They noticed it took significantly longer to start the game, both multiplayer and single player after they upgraded to Snow Leopard. I was given a list of programs for the mac and it states that COD4 has no known issues with snow leopard. After reading that and from what you are telling me I think I am going to get it for mac and not bother with Windows. I really like this game on my xbox, but money is tight, so I want to make sure it works before I drop $50 dollars on it.

Since you seem to be the only one posting... Did you run the patch? People over in macforums.com are having difficulty finding it.

I downloaded/installed the patch as soon as I finished installing it. Here's the link for the patch for the boxed/retail version (apparently there's another patch for the digital download version): Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 1.7.1 Update and the direct download link.

If people aren't finding it it's because they're not good at searching– I just found it in under 20 seconds.

[UmarOMC1]

Just updated to Mac OS X 10.6.2

...still works.

[iomatic]

I updated and it still lags after awhile on my 13" MBP. Just odd. I don't think it's a supported card, or maybe I should just stick to gaming on the xbl. — but no CoD:UO there.

[UmarOMC1]

iomatic, on November 20th 2009, 04:16 PM, said:

I updated and it still lags after awhile on my 13" MBP. Just odd. I don't think it's a supported card, or maybe I should just stick to gaming on the xbl. — but no CoD:UO there.

Lags? This is like a n00b MacFixit post.

Lags on start up? Lags during gameplay? Lags online (the usual definition for lagging)? What card is in your system? What are it's specs? It could be paltry RAM, a slow video card or a sluggish laptop 5400rpm hard drive... and are you talking about CoD4 Modern Warfare, the subject of this thread, or CoD:UO?

[iomatic]

UmarOMC1, on November 20th 2009, 07:32 PM, said:

Lags? This is like a n00b MacFixit post.

Lags on start up? Lags during gameplay? Lags online (the usual definition for lagging)? What card is in your system? What are it's specs? It could be paltry RAM, a slow video card or a sluggish laptop 5400rpm hard drive... and are you talking about CoD4 Modern Warfare, the subject of this thread, or CoD:UO?

heh, yeah that was admittedly very noobish, but I'm so cynical at this point I doubt what I can offer in terms of information will assist in anyone fix anything.

Lags in terms of FPS. So not 'lag' per se, but perhaps horrible performance.

This is CoD MW 1.7.1 on the current 13" MBP, Snow Leopard with the nVidia 9400M, 4GB RAM, Intel SSD. External 24" ACD LED (probably the source of the issue).

[UmarOMC1]

iomatic, on November 22nd 2009, 05:05 PM, said:

heh, yeah that was admittedly very noobish, but I'm so cynical at this point I doubt what I can offer in terms of information will assist in anyone fix anything.

Lags in terms of FPS. So not 'lag' per se, but perhaps horrible performance.

This is CoD MW 1.7.1 on the current 13" MBP, Snow Leopard with the nVidia 9400M, 4GB RAM, Intel SSD. External 24" ACD LED (probably the source of the issue).

...and the resolution/graphics settings you're attempting to run this game at? Have you attempted editing the CFG file to maybe reduce (read; halve) the number of, say, sound channels, etc.?

[iomatic]

UmarOMC1, on November 23rd 2009, 12:37 AM, said:

...and the resolution/graphics settings you're attempting to run this game at? Have you attempted editing the CFG file to maybe reduce (read; halve) the number of, say, sound channels, etc.?

1024x768
No, I've not attempted to run at lower resolution, considering my specs. surpass the requirements. Nor would I have thought that sound would lag the game.

Though, thanks for the suggestions.

[UmarOMC1]

iomatic, on November 22nd 2009, 05:05 PM, said:

...External 24" ACD LED (probably the source of the issue).

And have you attempted playing the game without this monitor hooked up, eating precious video memory that could be utilized to run CoD4 a little better for you?

[iomatic]

UmarOMC1, on November 25th 2009, 12:20 AM, said:

And have you attempted playing the game without this monitor hooked up, eating precious video memory that could be utilized to run CoD4 a little better for you?

I think so, maybe awhile back. I don't know how it could be considered precious though, since the video card already has 256MB of VRAM, in addition to whatever GBs of RAM I have left to used by the video card (i.e., it's a pretty huge backup of VRAM). Probably taxing though. Who knows; I probably pushed it too hard with my hardware... I'll give it a shot again sometime and report.

[Janichsan]

iomatic, on December 1st 2009, 08:30 PM, said:

I don't know how it could be considered precious though, since the video card already has 256MB of VRAM,...

1 diplay: 256 MB VRAM used for the screen content of that single display.
2 displays: only 128 MB VRAM used for each display.

256 MB VRAM for a single display: better.

Quote

...in addition to whatever GBs of RAM I have left to used by the video card (i.e., it's a pretty huge backup of VRAM).

Um... no. That does not work like this. It's 256 MB VRAM maximum and nothing more. Your main memory is not used as VRAM extension.

[ltcommander.data]

Janichsan, on December 1st 2009, 04:23 PM, said:

256 MB VRAM for a single display: better.
Um... no. That does not work like this. It's 256 MB VRAM maximum and nothing more. Your main memory is not used as VRAM extension.

I think video memory in OS X is actually virtualized and extended by system memory. Everything should be rendered to windows handled by the Quartz Compositor, which puts everything together, adds fancy effects, and outputs the final image to the display. The individual windows are all stored in system memory and are transferred to the GPU and video memory for hardware accelerated output.

Apple's own promotional materials for 10.2 Jaguar describes this:

http://sysdoc.doors....E/Quartz_TB.pdf

Quote

Implementing Quartz Extreme requires a robust OpenGL implementation. Rendering the desktop can require sustained periods of uploading hundreds of megabytes per second of dynamically changing textures traveling from main system memory to the memory on the graphics card. Working closely with graphics card vendors, Apple has tuned these code paths to minimize CPU overhead and maximize throughput.

Running the windowing system requires careful virtualization of texture memory resources. At times the desktop may contain more windows than can actually fit in video memory. Apple OpenGL implements a sophisticated demand-paged texture memory scheme that pages video memory on and off the card as needed, with minimal CPU overhead and maximum throughput.

Virtualizing video memory in system RAM and to the hard drive if necessary prevents applications or games from crashing when they exceed physical video RAM although performance will drop if VRAM is exceeded of course. In Windows XP, ATI and nVidia handle video memory virtualization themselves through HyperMemory and TurboCache. Video memory virtualization was also a big new feature of Vista where it's handled by the OS itself like in OS X, which is why there was such a fuss in the beginning with GPU makers having to rewrite their drivers to be WDDM compliant.

[Janichsan]

ltcommander.data, on December 2nd 2009, 03:45 AM, said:

I think video memory in OS X is actually virtualized and extended by system memory. Everything should be rendered to windows handled by the Quartz Compositor, which puts everything together, adds fancy effects, and outputs the final image to the display. The individual windows are all stored in system memory and are transferred to the GPU and video memory for hardware accelerated output.

Okay, probably correct, but answer me one simply question: do you think CoD 4 uses Quartz Extreme? Or any Windows game uses WDDM? (Let me quote Wikipedia here: "WDDM provides the functionality required to render the desktop and applications using Desktop Window Manager,...".)

And HyperMemory and TurboCache are both solutions for low-end graphic cards and only supported in certain GPU models. The NVidia 9400M does not belong to these. In fact, the only GPU that has been used in Macs and that might support one of those technologies is the NV 8600M GT.

Or - to cut a long story short: 256 MB is all he got, 256 MB is all he'll ever get.

[Eric5h5]

OS X does virtualize VRAM in general, not limited to Quartz Extreme. However, swapping stuff in and out of VRAM if you run out is going to lag (but at least you can keep going).

--Eric