Looking for reports on Civ IV and new MBP w/GeForce 8600

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Skippy_Kangaroo

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I am contemplating upgrading my existing MacBook Pro (original Core Duo 2.0GHz) to the new model just released by Apple.

One thing I am particularly interested in would be reports from anyone on any bugs in Civ IV caused by the new graphics card (NVidia GeForce 8600m GT rather than the ATI X1600) given that this program seems to be finicky on that front.

I don't expect that anyone has one in their hands at the moment but thought I'd post early and wait for the responses to trickle in.
 
I should know sometime next week, my wife happens to be getting a new MBP. I think the game runs better on nVidia cards than ATI, comparing my old first generation MBP with my 24" iMac. One thing that I have learned is that if I play full screen I can't command-tab to different programs without having the graphics start messing up on the iMac.
 
I await reports of "almost as good as the Windows version" and "absolutely smooth, with no stuttering in the late-game and when zooming out through the clouds" with baited breath.
 
I have one - just picked up today - and I pulled down the Civ IV demo. Alas, it CTDs as soon as it finishes loading (after clicking on "play the demo"). I can tell something's not right, because the map behind the opening scenario graphic (the mission overview info box, right before it crashes) is totally black.

:(
 
Update: I switched from default (Greeks) to Incans, just to see, and for some reason *that* worked. I'm still getting some weird glitches, like zooming all the way out making half the screen turn solid red, otherwise it's working.

And it *smokes*. Compared to my original MBP Core Duo, this feels like playing on my XP machine with a 7800 GTX. I bumped up to native resolution, turned all the detail settings up to high, then created a few cities and panned around - totally smooth, no frame rate jerk. On my Core Duo, even leaving the detail settings at low, it'd jerk as soon as I built a few cities.

60 second impressions are extremely good, though holy crap does the underside get hot. Upside? They seem to have found a way to channel the heat away from the palm rests more efficiently because those barely get warm, but the underside is scorching when the game's running.

Oh yeah...for the record, I get occasionally serious stuttering in the late game on a large map running a 3.3 GHz Core 2 Duo (overclocked) with XP, 2 GB of RAM, and a Geforce 8800 GTX. So no, I'm not expecting stuttering to go away in the late game on the new MBPs. ;-)
 
The demo doesn't work properly at all on my Mac Pro with GeForce 7300GT. It displays black terrain, while the full game works OK. So I'm not sure that the demo is a good indicator of compatibility with new video cards.
 
I expect that the demo was not patched along with the regular game updates. I could be wrong.

I'm still playing through my first full game on my 2.33 15" MBP C2D, so I've yet to experience the late-game issues. The may come up soon, as I'm just entering the 1800's. Since the MBP experience is a huge step up from the barely playable situation I had on my old PC desktop, there won't be many complaints from me about a little stuttering.

Congratulations and enjoy the new machines Welnic, Matt, and Skippy if you go that route.
 
This is exactly what I just did. I had a 2.16 core duo MacBook Pro and upgraded to the new 2.4 with the 256mb 8600 (15.4 inch screen). I never had too many problems with Civ4 and my other MacBook, but I am consistently getting "quit unexpectedly" with my new MacBook Pro. If I could fix this problem I would be completely stoked, because the speed difference between this and my only slightly older MacBook Pro (only 2 months old) is amazing. The new Pro with the Nvidia graphics is smoking. However, when I say I get consistent "quit unexpectedly" I mean it happens all the time. Sometimes making it unplayable as I will get the message several times in a row as soon as I start.

If anyone has suggestions, I would love to hear them.

BTW, I have installed the latest patch. I believe version C.
 
The new MBP with 8600 is going to be an awesome machine for sure. I'm waiting until all these "little" issues like crashes and the like get fixed before diving in. I would imagine that due to never having a GeForce 8600 available on the Mac platform before Asypr may need to patch a graphic library somewhere.
 
Civ4 seems to be excessively sensitive to every change of video card. I'm surprised how each card change seems to break it.
 
To anyone interested, I reported the problem I had with Civ IV on the new MBP and this is the response I received from Aspyr.


"Thank you for contacting us. Unfortunately at this time the GeForce 8600 video card is not supported for Civilization 4. I am sorry for the incovenience.

Have a nice day,
Aspyr Tech Support"

I'm not too surprised or really upset but thought I should at least let everyone know what Aspyr's current position is.
 
tjpyles said:
To anyone interested, I reported the problem I had with Civ IV on the new MBP and this is the response I received from Aspyr.


"Thank you for contacting us. Unfortunately at this time the GeForce 8600 video card is not supported for Civilization 4. I am sorry for the incovenience.

Have a nice day,
Aspyr Tech Support"

I'm not too surprised or really upset but thought I should at least let everyone know what Aspyr's current position is.
Click to expand...
May I suggest that you send a comment back to the effect that you hope they add support in the near future and that they should pass the crash log through to the people who do the actual coding rather than it just getting blocked by the support people. I have found Aspyr support to require a couple of emails before they get out of script monkey mode and actually engage with an issue.

It would be surprising to me if Aspyr decided that they would not support current models of Macs - it would be like refusing to support Intel chips really.
 
Skippy_Kangaroo said:
May I suggest that you send a comment back to the effect that you hope they add support in the near future and that they should pass the crash log through to the people who do the actual coding rather than it just getting blocked by the support people. I have found Aspyr support to require a couple of emails before they get out of script monkey mode and actually engage with an issue.

It would be surprising to me if Aspyr decided that they would not support current models of Macs - it would be like refusing to support Intel chips really.
Click to expand...

Ditto to all.

I don't believe we have any of the new MacBook Pros at Aspyr World HQ yet, but at the same time I'd fully expect we'll roll in any fixes necessary to support it when we do the next patch. But please(!!!) send in any and all info you have regarding crashes and other problems on these new Macs to our support team so we know about them, and the depth of the problem as a whole.
 
Brad Oliver said:
Ditto to all.

I don't believe we have any of the new MacBook Pros at Aspyr World HQ yet, but at the same time I'd fully expect we'll roll in any fixes necessary to support it when we do the next patch. But please(!!!) send in any and all info you have regarding crashes and other problems on these new Macs to our support team so we know about them, and the depth of the problem as a whole.
Click to expand...

Hi Brad,
Any word on the OOS [out of sync] problems that showed up with multiplayer on warlords?
And I'm talking 'intel mac-to intel mac'.
 
promethean_beta said:
Hi Brad,
Any word on the OOS [out of sync] problems that showed up with multiplayer on warlords?
And I'm talking 'intel mac-to intel mac'.
Click to expand...

You'll have to forgive me - I've been living a Civ4-free life for about the past year so I'm not fully up-to-speed on all the issues that have cropped up (I didn't do much direct work on our patches, aside from optimizations in our porting library for some other games that have trickled into Civ4).

Is this an issue that mainly affects Warlords?
 
Brad Oliver said:
You'll have to forgive me - I've been living a Civ4-free life for about the past year so I'm not fully up-to-speed on all the issues that have cropped up (I didn't do much direct work on our patches, aside from optimizations in our porting library for some other games that have trickled into Civ4).

Is this an issue that mainly affects Warlords?
Click to expand...

I never experienced the OOS problem until I patched to warlords rev B.
I would refer you to the thread 2.08 breaks mac vs pc LAN multiplay
 
I am a total newbie, and I'm not 100% sure, but I downloaded the MBP v 1.0 that came out today. It was supposed to update something to do with a video card...not sure it was the GeForce 8600M GT or not. Anyhoo, I installed the upgrade and CIV 4 seems to be working ;0) Hope it continues to!

Moderator Action: Moved to this thread, as it's more appropriate here.
 
I noticed that Apple has released an update to the graphics drivers (among other things) through Software Update for the new MacBook Pros.

Can anyone with one report on whether it helps with Civ IV crashing?
 
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