First of all, neither IBM or Delphi make the Powerbook. Apple does. The delay is from IBM but only because of the processor. Second, if you want to game, get a desktop machine. Simple as that. Why complain about a machine that was not designed for high-end gaming?

Steve

just buy a nintendo for crisakes.

I'm getting a little fed up with the standard, "get a console", or "get a desktop" responses to questions like SassyPant's. Why not tell him to get a PC? Why shoud Mac users who want to game on their PowerBooks be to told to also carry around an XBox or PS2 or PSP? PC users don't have to pack a console along with their laptop PC's just so they can play a game.

Playing games is a reasonable expectation of a $2500+ laptop. A computer at that price should do most any task well, and one very popular task is games. That's partly why the PowerBook was one of the first laptops to get the Radeon 9700 Mobility. Apple used to brag about how well the PowerBook played games, until PC laptop performance has surpassed the PowerBooks. Most high end PC laptops come with a faster CPU and more importantly, up to date GPU's such as ATi x300, x700, 9800, or nVidia GeForce6800GO.
If the GPU had been upgraded significantly, I'd consider upgrading to a new PowerBook, just so when I game it would be less frustrating.

I would like to say that my PowerBook plays most games well, just not the newer games. Good thing I still like Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy.

>. Why not tell him to get a PC?

He should if he wants to play games.

Face it. The mac game market 'ain't' there.

A g5 in a powerbook will not change things.

Its about market share. Potential customers. dev costs. Direct X 9.

maybe the mini will change this. But it will not change it in the next 12 months.

a g5 in a powerbook will not change the true market factors of the mac gaming market overnight.

Playing games is a reasonable expectation of a $2500+ PC laptop because the market is already there.

I'm hoping the Core Video additions to Tiger will help improve gaming on the Mac.

I know the Mac game market is limited, but there is a market. Otherwise, why would Blizzard be making PC/Mac compatible games? Why is Aspyr in business? Doom3 was out on Mac before it was out on consoles, and it was out on Mac the same day as it debuted for PC. There are enough new Mac games released per year to keep any gamer too busy playing and most of the titles are good ones.

SassyPants was complaining about the PowerBook's game performance. If Apple had upgraded the GPU, even as a BTO, there would be less to complain about. They could have at least included the 9700 Mobility Radeon 256 MB as a BTO. Twice the vram would be a boon for gamers and help Tiger's display performance all around.

>9700 Mobility Radeon 256 MB a

As long as it fits in a powerbook (height) I'm all for it. That way i will be able to drive the next monster size LCD coming down the pike.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_con...lity9700&page=2

Or how aboutMobility Radeon 9800 ? Maybe in the next PowerBook?

Here's something I found:



Welp. until they get those cards in the PB.

PSP. mobile. rent the games you want. smaller than the pb. here today.

My housemate has a PSP. It's cool. It's like a portable Playstation. Very much a portable console. One more thing to carry with my PowerBook. But then again, I could buy a notebook with today's GPU and not carry around an extra gaming platform.
Or keep the PowerBook and buy an Alienware PC. Either way, a PC company ends up getting my money instead of Apple. Is this a common scenario?

The system bus is another bottleneck in the Powerbooks that keep them from performing better in games. You can throw the fastest GPU you want in the current PowerBook architecture and it won't be pushed nearly as hard as it could be since it can only be fed so much data at a time.

So it's the G4 with it's bus limitation that's the problem? But wouldn't more vram help? How can Apple get a faster bus into the PowerBook? Isn't the G4 already on its max bus speed (167MHz)?

IF you look at it, 167 MHz bus, in today's PC notebooks is laughable. The G4 has all these limitations that somehow limit its performance, which is why i'm complaining because performance wise, i'll have to admit that powerbooks can't compare to PC notebooks. Frustrates me because this is the reason why i'm not switching over to mac from the pc world...:-\

More VRAM won't help a whole lot. That's just going to be helpful for storing texture and vertex data among other things. The video card still has to be told what to process and those instructions are going to come from the CPU across the system bus. Technically, one could write a demo that would run alright, even with a limited bus, but when you start adding in game logic, physics, audio, etc, then things start getting a little cramped on the bus even with games off loading more work to the GPUs.

If you want to see how much the system bus can affect game performance, OWC has a bunch of benchmarks in systems with 100 MHz and 133 MHz system busses.

If the G4 and the PowerBooks could handle DDR on the system bus, that would help easy the bottleneck. Yes, some PBs can use DDR RAM, but the system bus with G4s cannot, so much of the advantages of DDR are lost in G4s.

This has been my experience as well. I play Neverwinter Nights on my 15" PowerBook and it works great (once you tweak the settings a bit). World of Warcraft on the otherhand is pretty choppy, even though it plays fine on PCs that are actually much slower than my PowerBook.

Halo played surprisingly well, even with high settings. Sure, there's some stammering in outdoor scenes, but for those I turn down the vid settings a little.

By the sound of it, Apple really needs to ditch the G4. I always wondered why the bus speeds were so slow, but now I see it's because Motorola didn't see the need for bus speeds to scale much higher than they are. But now, the newer generation GPU's require a much faster bus? So as long as the PowerBook is stuck on the G4, it's also stuck with previous generation GPU's? Do I have that right?

No, you don't. The CPU and main bus speed have absolutely nothing to do with which GPU you can use. The main chipset is what determines this. The current chipset in the Powerbooks only supports up to 4x AGP. Wait until a chipset supports PCI Express (differential signalled PCI bus) to see speed gains between the system and the GPU. As games advance, there is much more reliance on the GPU than the CPU, so a fast interface to the GPU will work wonders. Going to G5 really won't have that much affect on games. It will have some affect but not as much as you would think. The GPU is the key.

Steve

well, from how i see it, even if you hvae a fast GPU, the information is still being bottlenecked by the Bus speed. IMO, the Bus has got to be improved.

Why hasn't Apple even implemented an 8x AGP bus on the PowerBook. I can almost understand them not using PCIe as PCIe PC notebooks are only starting to ship in volume. Does Apple have to wait until it's old technology before they implement it into a PowerBook? Or is it CPU dependent and are Apple's hands tied. Personally, I think Apple has figured that since the PowerBooks are selling, why put any more expense into them than they have to.

I unerstand that, but when it's time for me to upgrade, I'll buy a PC if the PowerBook's performance isn't competitive.

Actually yes, (s)he have it right in some sense. With the limited G4 bus, it makes little sense to use a faster interface, just because the CPU cannot saturate the GPU. It is not impossible, but it is impractical. I don't think Apple will change this without a better CPU in place (at least a 7448, or better a 8641D variant).

Well, if you want to play games get a PC, if you want productivity, stick with a powerbook. I have a gaming PC, and it plays games greatly and I got a powerbook, because I wanted the great functionality of editing videos and presentations that Mac's have long been reknowned for. So when I got my powerbook, I wasn't expecting to play games, that's why I got a PC, because the software library of games for Mac's suck... it's like a ratio of 1/100 for every game out on a Mac, there's 100 of them out for the PC... so if you're going to play games, get a freakin PC laptop, Desktop, console whatever. And you look at the economics of the distributers of Graphics cards and games. The market share of Apple computer though it has gained in recent years, still pales in comparison to windows no matter how "much better APPLE is." So drivers and support for Mac's are less for their graphics cards because their R and D budgets are going to the PC side since more money is to be gained. I wish there was a better/higher graphics card for the Powerbooks, because they are so capable but Apple likes to do go through development alone or with a few partners where as the PC world has many partners for distribution with a faster rate of producing new CPU's and graphics card.

If only i had enough money to have both a good PC notebook and a powerbook...

*sigh*

So the cost of Apple ownership, for those who want to game on their laptop computer, must include a PC? So the PowerBook is only a "productivity" machine. Only for cog in the wheel types? How dull. Powerbooks should be good for both work and entertainment, given their cost. Nearly 3 grand for a productivity laptop, and another 2 grand for a PC for the fun stuff? What's that, $5,000? You can do both on just the PC. Maybe not effortlessly as on the Mac, but the PC can do both. If Apple really wants to increase market share, it's products will have to do both at least as well as PC's. There are plenty of games out for Mac, more than I can buy, sitting on the shelves at the Apple Store. The PowerBook should be able to run all of those games well. It can't, due to its outdated hardware. I shouldn't have to buy two computers, just so I can use OS X and play games.

> It can't, due to its outdated hardware.

Direct X being the defacto standard in pc game making is probably more of a factor then anything else.

the HW would come after that IMO.

the state of game performance is not a binary -> if G5 weeee or if 256vram weeee its alot more multi faceted than that.

I don't see a humongus difference of the 128 VRAM over the 64 MB GPU, although it is better to get the 128 because there can be noticible differences in games like HALO.

http://www.barefeats.com/pb12.html

Can't help but wonder if the bus is choking the 128; seems like it should have done better.

For now I have a little 10.6" screen Sony T250 with a 400 Mhz serial bus. With only shared memory and a 1.2 Ghz Centrino I was pleased it played the first part of the Half Life 2 demo as smooth as butter, though part 2 was choppy. I game with it usually with the kids, downloading tons of free nastalgic Sega ROMs like Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Streets of Rage, Road Rash, even Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. Very amusing. I can even use two Gravis Gamepads so two can play at the same time in co-op games like Streets of Rage.


http://www.romnation.net/srv/roms/genesis/m.html

Like someone said, my 17" seems to lonely these days waiting for the real work.

I am using my 1.67 Ultimate to play World of Warcraft. It works fine. But this isn't a Sager super-duper $3,600 + built-for-gaming laptop, so I'm not expecting miracles. It does what I want it to do as far as WoW is concerned. I use my desktop for high-end gaming (HL2, CS:Source, Doom3, etc.)

Sounds like there's a lot of whining about not being able to play games? Instead of sitting around and crying about it, why don't we start a petition? I'm sure apple would take a serious look at the situation.

20 - 45 year old men whining about not being able to play games on their professional-level laptop.

Not to say that you shouldn't. But seriously. Xbox / PS2 are all out gaming machines. On my system, I don't want a one stop shop. I want a computer for doing real work and a gaming machine to play games. Simple as that.