FYI: HL2 is playable on an Intel Mini

Just for kicks I loaded up Half-Life 2 on my Mini...to my surprise it runs pretty well! It's decently smooth at 1680x1050 on low settings (and looks good too!). I'll post a video sometime if anyone is interested. Just an FYI if you want to play an occasional game

Really? Strange... HL 2 at that high of resolution, I don't really see how it'd run good with 64mb of vid ram..

Logan said:

Really? Strange... HL 2 at that high of resolution, I don't really see how it'd run good with 64mb of vid ram..

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That is because, while VRAM is important, it is not nearly as crucial in Mac gaming as it is in Windows gaming.

But if he's playing Half-life 2, then he IS "Windows gaming". (It's windows only, so he must be using boot camp).

Interesting, I might give the demo a try later...
I was suprised at how well GTA: San Andreas runs on my macbook - even with only 512 MB RAM.

Aptmunich said:

But if he's playing Half-life 2, then he IS "Windows gaming". (It's windows only, so he must be using boot camp).

Interesting, I might give the demo a try later...
I was suprised at how well GTA: San Andreas runs on my macbook - even with only 512 MB RAM.

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Ahhh, didn't catch that part, my bad.
Still, my statement stands for Mac gaming.
:black:

San Andreas runs piece of **** on my PC laptop with 512 ram as did Vice City on my old pc with 256 ram

Glad to hear HL2 runs good on the minis. Along with that, it should run good on a MacBook. My cousin wants a PC that can run CS: Source, and I keep on telling him to get a mac. He wants a laptop, so Im telling him to get a MacBook.

Logan said:

Really? Strange... HL 2 at that high of resolution, I don't really see how it'd run good with 64mb of vid ram..

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I don't either, especially with the GMA950.

mynameis said:

I don't either, especially with the GMA950.

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It's not silky smooth at 1680x1050, but it's definately playable. I'll take a short vid if you want And yes, it's under Boot Camp. Parallels gives you an 8mb video card, which probably isn't even enough to play Pong lol.

Someone was telling me the other day that HL2 was designed to run on just about everything; I did some digging and apparently Valve released some sort of scaling system that allows that game to run even on somewhat lower-end PCs. I just looked up the basic specs for running and here's all it requires:

-700mhz processor (2ghz Core Duo anyone?)
-128mb ram (I think I've got that covered with 2 gigs)
-64mb DirectX 6.0 video card

The official minimum specs are:

-1.2ghz processor
-256mb ram
-DirectX 7.0 video card

Again, it's definately playable on a Mini. It's not going to be super-super detailed, but it looks good enough to play and is fairly smooth.

This does not belong in a hardware forum. Please be sure to read stickies, etc so you post in the correct place.

Moving...

Logan said:

Really? Strange... HL 2 at that high of resolution, I don't really see how it'd run good with 64mb of vid ram..

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that's because, if i'm remembering this correctly, windows makes better use of the mini's onboard vram and actually uses 128mb of the system memory. windows is just light years ahead of mac os on gaming.

yeah, I got Elder Scrolls IV: Oblvion and Rome: Total War running GREAT at high graphic settings, and I got 1.83 core duo Intel, 512 RAM and 128 vRAM. They run smoothly. I guess gaming on a mac is not as intensive and won't use as many resources as PCs do. Now how it works that way is a mystery to me, but it just works.

dohidied said:

that's because, if i'm remembering this correctly, windows makes better use of the mini's onboard vram and actually uses 128mb of the system memory. windows is just light years ahead of mac os on gaming.

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Well, OS X could use the 128MB of VRAM, but apple decided that System RAM is more important for most users and set it to 64MB instead.

But generally speaking: Windows is better for gaming, simply because most games are better optimized for windows.

kaidomac said:

Just for kicks I loaded up Half-Life 2 on my Mini...to my surprise it runs pretty well! It's decently smooth at 1680x1050 on low settings (and looks good too!). I'll post a video sometime if anyone is interested. Just an FYI if you want to play an occasional game

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Of course it is. I used to play CS:Source on a 550MHz P3 with a 32MB ATI Rage 128 Video card and 64MB of RAM.

'Course now it is a 1.2GHz AMD Athlon with 384MB of RAM and a 128MB nVidia Geforce MX 4000. Nothing special, but it gives me my gaming fix.

So, does this mean HL2 would run well on my Macbook Pro 1.83GHZ with 1GB RAM? sorry for the stupid question, i am a noob and i havent even got my Macbook Pro yet. It's coming this Friday

vandal31593 said:

So, does this mean HL2 would run well on my Macbook Pro 1.83GHZ with 1GB RAM? sorry for the stupid question, i am a noob and i havent even got my Macbook Pro yet. It's coming this Friday

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It will run faster than on the Mini but not THAT great. It's playable though.

DCraver said:

It will run faster than on the Mini but not THAT great. It's playable though.

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Totally wrong, performance is excellent on a MacBook Pro. My brother has the 2ghz model with the 128mb video card. Half-Life 2 FLIES on that machine - runs at the native resolution of 1440x900 at medium resolution with no lag or stutter. I'm sure upgrading the ram to 1.5 or 2 gigs will help a bit, but 1 gig is fine.

kaidomac said:

Totally wrong, performance is excellent on a MacBook Pro. My brother has the 2ghz model with the 128mb video card. Half-Life 2 FLIES on that machine - runs at the native resolution of 1440x900 at medium resolution with no lag or stutter. I'm sure upgrading the ram to 1.5 or 2 gigs will help a bit, but 1 gig is fine.

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Really? I wouldn't have imagined it. I know 2.0GHz and 128MB V-Ram, etc. is the minimum requirements for HL2, but I always found it too slow on the minimum requirements.

DCraver said:

Really? I wouldn't have imagined it. I know 2.0GHz and 128MB V-Ram, etc. is the minimum requirements for HL2, but I always found it too slow on the minimum requirements.

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2ghz P4. The new Intel Core Duo is not the same as a P4. That is why the AMD's at 2.0Ghz run like 3Ghz P4's. You can not compaire Ghz when the CPU is of a different design.

dtravis7 said:

2ghz P4. The new Intel Core Duo is not the same as a P4. That is why the AMD's at 2.0Ghz run like 3Ghz P4's. You can not compaire Ghz when the CPU is of a different design.

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Exactly. My 2ghz Athlon 64 plays HL2 pretty well. Also, the requirements are actually lower now that the Valve developers put in the code to make it run on older machines. If my Mini can play it with a few stutters at 1680x1050 the MacBook Pro will smoke it (and does, because I've tested it personally!)