SC4 on a Mac Pro

[jjakucyk 0]

So I finally had to retire my 1st-Generation dual-processor Power Mac G5 due to repeated video card failures (3 ATI Radeon X800 XT's have failed, and the OEM ATI Radeon 9600 Pro just plain sucks for processing RAW photos in Aperture). Just a note, the X800 XT didn't change much in SC4. Performance was maybe marginally better, but not noticeable. There were several graphics glitches in OS X 10.4 (Tiger) that actually went away in OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Anyway, my new computer is a 2.8 ghz 8-core Mac Pro with the Nvidia GeForce 8800GT. A very nice machine to be sure. At work I have the quad-core version with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT. Both computers are running OS X 10.5.2. I have tested SC4 RH with both the PPC version and the Universal Binary beta on both machines, albeit not too extensively on my work computer, for obvious reasons. Here's my observations though. 8-core vs. 4-core doesn't make any difference for SC4, which shouldn't be any surprise. Video performance is somewhat better with the Nvidia card than with the ATI card, but it's pretty lousy with both. For example, on my home computer, I get about 10 FPS. Needless to say, U-drive-it is next to unplayable. Terrible scrolling performance seems to be the norm, regardless of video card. On both computers, using the PPC version of the game yielded worse FPS than the Universal Binary, and with the ATI card there were a lot of graphics artifacts. Thus, I haven't pursued running the PPC version on Intel machines. Before I continue with the problems, I will say that game/city loading, and the progression of game time is much faster. Navigating menus is also a little snappier. It also reduces the problem the NAM pathfinding engine has finding jobs for newly built buildings in large cities. I've noticed fewer of those newly built buildings become abandoned before finding jobs, but it hasn't stopped completely. As with my G5, the look of the game is generally ok, although there are a few problems. One is that the color of pathfinding queries is totally wrong. Cars paths are purple, pedestrians are yellow, trains are red, etc., even though the key window is still correct. Also, when querying a small house (which thus has few trips), the path is so faint that it's nearly impossible to see. That's not a huge issue, just kind of annoying. One thing that is a big issue is that dilapidated or abandoned buildings no longer show as darkened on my home computer (I can't remember if this happened on my work computer or not). As much as I hate the look of those abandoned/dilapidated buildings, it's very annoying to have to query a building to find out if it's in trouble. If I demolish a distressed building, I can see it turn black as the model is "shattered", but that's not much help. So the issues, all graphics related, are poor scrolling and FPS, incorrect pathfinding colors, and dilapidated buildings that look normal. I've tried every edit I can think of to the Graphics Rules.sgr file (and yes, I added my cards to the Video Cards.sgr file). The Radeon HD 2600 XT can be added to the list of cards without a backing store, and it will enable that "low-impact" scrolling mode, but that doesn't really help much. I even found out how to add rules to change parameters that show up in the SC4 config-log, but which aren't in the Graphics Rules file. Unfortunately, nothing changed. The only thing I've been able to find that makes any difference in SC4 is to use the Quartz Debug app that's part of the Apple Developer Tools to disable Beam Synchronization. However, the benefit is miniscule, improving the game's FPS from 10 to about 12 at best. It seems that the crux of the issue is with OpenGL, as it's the intermediary between SC4 and the video card. I don't really see any way to futz with the OpenGL drivers though. I'll see if I can get anywhere with Darwine or Crossover, but I'm not getting my hopes up on that front. Boot Camp, Parallels,