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Baldur's Gate II OS X Speedups
9:49 AM | Eddie Park | Comment on this story
Mac gamers disappointed by the loss of speed when attempting to run Baldur's Gate II under Mac OS X will be happy to hear that several remedies have been posted to the forums at MacBaldur.net. The main workaround simply suggests that users change the graphics settings to run in 16-bit mode, as the OS X 10.1/10.1.1 speed issue seems to be related to the 32-bit mode.
Chris Jacobson, who posted the workaround, also gives the reason why the bug exists:
This bug is related to a Mac OS Toolbox call I use for drawing to the screen, CopyBits. If a 32 bit buffer is the source or destination for the copy, it takes 3-4x longer than it should to copy the data. (This appears to happen all around.)
On OS 9, CopyBits is highly optimized - it takes advantage of AltiVec if it is present, even. However, it appears that on OS X 10.1/10.1.1, it is improperly optimized. Also, reports are the game crashes less in 10.1.1, which leads me to believe bugs were introduced into Carbon in 10.1, and some fixed in 10.1.1.
Jacobson also suggests another tweak that involves editing the Baldur.ini file, though this tweak is as yet unconfirmed. For the full details, be sure to check out the posting at MacBaldur.net.
 MacPlay: Baldur's Gate II
 IMG Review: Baldur's Gate II
 MacBaldur Forum: OS X 10.1/10.1.1 Speed Fix - Confirmed
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