mostly black screen and ZERO FPS...help!

[romzburg]

If I spawn in anywhere I see a bit of the game texture, but mostly black. Except for the rendering of my rifle in front of me, that is fine.

If I move the mouse, it takes FOREVER for that movement to occur, like rotating or looking up or down. Framerates are 0 then 1 then 0, etc.

Once I am looking almost straight up or down, however, framerates over 50 & up to 80s, and I can see the sky perfectly, or the ground. If I gradually try to move to looking ahead horizontally, I can't get very far before suddenly zero frames again and most of the screen goes black.

When the screen is mostly black I can tell that there are a bunch of intersecting triangles that are black, the border between the black and textured areas is all big poiny bits.

Also, when I go from standing to crouch to prone, the camera doesn't move at all. My icon indicator changes, and when I make a clone, they are in the correct position, but my view never changes.

2 x 2.66 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon

3 GB 667 MHz DDR2 DIMM RAM

NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT 256 MB VRAM (internet says Shader 3.0 on that card, but I can't find out if my drivers are latest...I've had this computer for 14 months...)

Also, when installed it defauklted to thousands of colors and the startup screen would freeze black, I had to change it to millions of colors to get the game to launch.

Also, rifle wouln't fire, switched to grenade, but it wouldn't throw, etc.

Edited January 7, 2010 by romzburg

[AHWULF]

What OS version? The 7300 is fine but this sounds like a really weird problem. Can you take a screenie of the black triangular pointy weirdness?

I am removing the thousands of colors option, it never was supported. Not sure why RickB even put it in.

Someone else reported the view change issue. If your FPS is 0 or 1, then nothing much works.

Post this in the bug forum please.

[romzburg]

What OS version? The 7300 is fine but this sounds like a really weird problem. Can you take a screenie of the black triangular pointy weirdness?

I am removing the thousands of colors option, it never was supported. Not sure why RickB even put it in.

Someone else reported the view change issue. If your FPS is 0 or 1, then nothing much works.

Post this in the bug forum please.

10.5.8

I'll try for the screenshot

[romzburg]

One looking down at the same spot I spawned into barracks.

Several at that same spot looking more horizontal and rotating a bit. If I looked a little higher, getting close to horizontal I'd get a complete black screen, or almost complete, and FPS drop to 3 or or lower.

[romzburg]

One outside looking mostly up. Straight up would be perfect sky. Also high FPS, same as looking straight down.

Several outside looking more horizontal.

[AHWULF]

Possibly a driver problem. Anyone have this 7300 card on a PC?

[zaltor]

looks like drivers, need to be updated, might need a directx update as well, had similer issue on an ati card was Directx.

[AHWULF]

looks like drivers' date=' need to be updated, might need a directx update as well, had similer issue on an ati card was Directx.[/quote']

Of course its a Mac :-)

But yes, updating to snow leopard might get you better drivers.

[romzburg]

Is that them only way to get updated Mac drivers for this card?

I have tried finding updated drivers but have had no luck so far.

This is from the "About This Mac" screen:

NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT:

Name: NVDA,Display-B

Type: display

Driver Installed: Yes

Bus: PCI

Slot: Slot-1

Vendor ID: 0x10de

Device ID: 0x0393

Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x0000

Subsystem ID: 0x0010

ROM Revision: 3011

Revision ID: 0x00a1

Link Width: x16

Link Speed: 2.5 GT/s

NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT

Type: Display

Bus: PCIe

Slot: Slot-1

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 256 MB

Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)

Device ID: 0x0393

Revision ID: 0x00a1

ROM Revision: 3011

Displays:

SyncMaster:

Resolution: 2560 x 1600

Depth: 32-Bit Color

Core Image: Hardware Accelerated

Main Display: Yes

Mirror: Off

Online: Yes

Quartz Extreme: Supported

Rotation: Supported

Display Connector:

Status: No Display Connected

[AHWULF]

Generally Apple maintains any drivers for cards they ship. If you bought it yourself, you might be able to find a newer driver at the NVidia site. Did you try: (1) running with best performance (2) lower resolution? The 7300 is a pretty pathetically slow card but it shouldn't toss odd vertexes around. That's more likely a driver bug.

[romzburg]

I bought this computer two Novembers ago, I didn't add the card myself, and I haven't found any mac drivers on the NVIDIA website. And any drivers I do find are pretty old.

I did try a lower resolution once and the problems were the same in nature, but seemed to be slightly less in abundance. Let me try again, at an even lower one.

And I tried on best performance to begin with. I tried best graphics (or whatever its called) and it didn't help.

(But my monitor is 30 inches, 2560 x 1600 so I don't want to go too low or I'll have a really blocky appearance.)

Ok, did a bunch of re-tests.

The lower the resolution, the higher the framerates, even when the screen is showing all those black polygons. At low resolutions I can look horizontal, the screen will be almost completely black, but I can still run around, fire weapon, etc., unlike when at high resolutions and horizontal view makes 0 or 1 fps and it freezes for a long time.

So if I am ready to drop up to $200 on a video card, which one should I get?

Edited January 12, 2010 by romzburg

[GOPHUR]

I thought we were only supporting 10.6 with this release?

BTW, the 7300 is NOT ok. I mean technically it is min spec but YEESH. It is only really good for playing video, not gaming. i think that is where I would look to make a change, everything else should be OK.

Next time I see someone from Apple games I'm gonna punch them in the mouth. If you put the videocards they pass off in one of my rigs I'd seriously have to think about how much jail time I can actually do.

[romzburg]

I thought we were only supporting 10.6 with this release?

BTW, the 7300 is NOT ok. I mean technically it is min spec but YEESH. It is only really good for playing video, not gaming. i think that is where I would look to make a change, everything else should be OK.

Next time I see someone from Apple games I'm gonna punch them in the mouth. If you put the videocards they pass off in one of my rigs I'd seriously have to think about how much jail time I can actually do.

Is that right about 10.6? I'll upgrade if needed, but that means I'll be forced to upgrade Parallels, where I run Windows to VPN to the head office down in Miami. And I'm always reluctant to mess with anything that affects Windows, because if I screw that up, and if I can't get it unscrewed-up, I can't work, and that is very bad.

Any recommendations for a Vid Card?

I am completely ignorant of everything having to do with Vid Card specs and gaming.

There are so many different series and different models of the same series, I just haven't a clue.

Anyone can tell me what to do here?

Edited January 12, 2010 by romzburg

[peegee77]

Is that right about 10.6? I'll upgrade if needed, but that means I'll be forced to upgrade Parallels, where I run Windows to VPN to the head office down in Miami. And I'm always reluctant to mess with anything that affects Windows, because if I screw that up, and if I can't get it unscrewed-up, I can't work, and that is very bad.

Any recommendations for a Vid Card?

I am completely ignorant of everything having to do with Vid Card specs and gaming.

There are so many different series and different models of the same series, I just haven't a clue.

Anyone can tell me what to do here?

I hate doing the preaching thing, but having one machine running games, and also being a remotely connected work machine is not a great idea. They have different requirements, the security issues need considering... and your work machine needs to be stable and reliable, whereas your gaming machine needs to be configured "closer to the edge". Building a dedicated gaming rig (on the Windows platform to save a load of trouble) would be a really good idea.

[romzburg]

I hate doing the preaching thing' date=' but having one machine running games, and also being a remotely connected work machine is not a great idea. They have different requirements, the security issues need considering... and your work machine needs to be stable and reliable, whereas your gaming machine needs to be configured "closer to the edge". Building a dedicated gaming rig (on the Windows platform to save a load of trouble) would be a really good idea.[/quote']

I don't agree with this at all.

I play one game, WWIIOL.

When I VPN to work, I am also remote desktopping to a computer down there. My computer is nothing butu a keyboard, mouse and monitor. The actual computer doing 100% of my work is in Miami. If I am in the middle of doing something, and lightning hits my house and fries my computer in a millisecond, my computer in Miami would simply think I stopped typing in the middle of a word.

There is no reason at all that I would need to have two different computers.

Edited January 12, 2010 by romzburg

[peegee77]

OK, accept my apologies. You know your setup and your requirements better than I do. If that works for what you need then fair enough.

[romzburg]

OK' date=' accept my apologies. You know your setup and your requirements better than I do. If that works for what you need then fair enough.[/quote']

I do need someone to tell me what video card to get. I'd prefer not to spend more than $200-ish.

[elegance]

You should really aim for the Radeon 4850 nothing less but also nothing more.

[peegee77]

You should really aim for the Radeon 4850 nothing less but also nothing more.

Except that if you buy an ATI card for WWIIOL and get issues, everyone will tell you that they don't get on together, and you should have bought nVidia ...

[zaltor]

Except that if you buy an ATI card for WWIIOL and get issues' date=' everyone will tell you that they don't get on together, and you should have bought nVidia ...[/quote']

This is not true.

My last 3 cards have been Ati cards and aside from one rushed driver, last year I have had 0 issues.

That being said the Rats have a better working relationship with Nvidia.

[AHWULF]

Romz I assume thats a Mac Pro not an iMac.

Not all video cards are available for Mac although people take PC cards and update the firmware. Not my bag.

Given that you have a 1st (or 2nd) Gen macpro, not everything fits. I think a GeForce 8800 GT would work, and is around $200 if you shop carefully. For $350 you can get a nice ATI 4870, which I am getting soon, though I'm not 100% sure if it fits in a Gen 1.

Whatever you get, make sure its got 512MB VRAM.

Getting video cards for Macs is more costly than for PCs. Why, I have no idea.

Oh and we support 10.5 and 10.6.

[romzburg]

Yeah, it's a tower, quad-core 2.6 GHz Xeon. 3 GB RAM.

I lowered the resolution from 2560 x 1600 to 1600 x 1000 to see if framerates improved in 1.30. It looks yucky, but I'm getting great framerates in 1.30 now. Before it was onl;y ok, dropping to single digits sometimes in big battles. But at 1600 x 1000 it's great. It's just that teh monitor is so big that 1600 x 1000 is low resolution.

I'll start trying to learn more about these cards, and what fits. Thanks.

Good to hear about 10.5, too.

[AHWULF]

Your card is fillrate limited, ie it couldn't fill all those huge triangles with textures fast enough. Anytime you reduce the resolution and the fps goes up, its usually the card that is too slow.

[peegee77]

This is not true.

My last 3 cards have been Ati cards and aside from one rushed driver, last year I have had 0 issues.

That being said the Rats have a better working relationship with Nvidia.

I have run WWIIOL on three graphics cards - two ATI and one nVidia. I was happy with all of them. I never said nVidia was better, I didn't even say nVidia was better for WWIIOL. I just said that if you get problems in the game while using an ATI card, 90% of the people who post here will tell you that you should be using nVidia, rather than helping you with your problem. I was just telling it like it is.

[GOPHUR]

Yeah, it's a tower, quad-core 2.6 GHz Xeon. 3 GB RAM.

I lowered the resolution from 2560 x 1600 to 1600 x 1000 to see if framerates improved in 1.30. It looks yucky, but I'm getting great framerates in 1.30 now. Before it was onl;y ok, dropping to single digits sometimes in big battles. But at 1600 x 1000 it's great. It's just that teh monitor is so big that 1600 x 1000 is low resolution.

I'll start trying to learn more about these cards, and what fits. Thanks.

Good to hear about 10.5, too.

Let's look at this:

NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT

VRAM (Total): 256 MB

Resolution: 2560 x 1600

Now let's look at where this card sits in comparison to other video cards:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2521-8.html

This card is on par with an X1600 Pro. That's a card I bought 4 years ago for $40. This is also similar to their last generation 4550.

The lowest card they measure is several steps up from that and is the ATi 4650 which is considered "OK" not "Great" for resolutions up to 1650. you're running exponentially higher than that.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2521-8.html

To get "OK" performance at the resolution you WANT to run, 2560, you'll need to look in the range of an ATi 5850. That's $300 bucks. Yeouch.

but WWIIOL doesn't really tax the graphics so much, not even in 1.31 and you have a pretty decent processor in the Xeon, though it is really more oriented toward workstation applications than gaming. Still we should be able to find something for you that is servicable. On to NEWEGG!

Oh wait...

I don't know crap about upgrading Mac video cards. From what I remember you can;t just slap a regular card in withour flashing the cards BIOS? That seems utterly ignorant since they work on Linux but I don;t know for certain.

What I do know for certain is that an nVidia 7300 will not poewr a resolution of 2560 for a video game.

Who knows about upgrading vid cards on these things?

Apple has some listed but the only thing I can say when I look at them is HIGHWAY ROBBERY!!!1!!.

The ATi 4870 is a decent card and would serve you well but I can never recommend a $350 price on a card that regularly sells for half that.

The nVidia 120 is roughly the same as an nVidia 9500 but it's only $150. looking at Tom;s hardware that compares with a $50 card that'll give you great performance in 1280 or ok in 1650 with lowered detail. This might be acceptable if you can run at those resolutions. It will tank at 2560.

The nVidia 285 is everything you could ever want and more but it's $450 DOLLARS!!!

God my head just melted. Still, if you can shell out for a 30' Cinema display you're probably comfortable in this area. The PC versions of this card sell in the $400 range.

The only real choices here are the 4870 or the 285 and both of them suffer huge from the Apple tax. But for a 30" monitor I would not go with anything lower. For $50 difference the 285 blows the other card away.

I'll be honest that the 4870 is what Apple has on their high end Mac's but with only 512MB of Ram... for a 30" monitor... well, I just can't imagine WTF they are thinking.

I would temper all my suggestions with some thoughts from some Mac heads.

Edited January 13, 2010 by GOPHUR