Metro 2033 Redux Mac problems.

[necrophagist]

Hi. I hava a MacBook Air 2013 Late. I run the game on medium setting. The game is playable, but have some problems. Very slow on upload map, and during the game, I don't see the cursor sight of arms. I see the options, but I don't visualize crosshair and hit markers option. I not can change. You have my same problems?

[DirtyHarry]

Originally posted by moose:

Originally posted by Funk Dracula:

Guys, I would not attempt to install GPU drivers onto your Mac machines unless they are Mac Pro Towers that you are attempting to install and hack new GPU cards into, or have built a Hackintosh yourself.

GPU drivers are automatically handled by OS X updates. So if Nvidia creates a new driver that is applicable towards the card that is present in any given Mac line, it will be included in an OS X update. Your asking for trouble. Ask anyone who builds Hackintoshes, and they will tell you the GPU is one of the most finicky things to get right and compatible with DIY OS X machine builds.

I could be mistaken, but pretty sure I'm not.

You're absolutely mistaken. Do your homework.

I can't speak to anything related to Hackintoshes but Apple does release GPU driver updates in OS X updates. I have seen one not long ago that fixed some bug(s). I forget what the issues it addressed were now, probably something to do with retina or whatever. In any event, I don't think it is common from what I've seen but I have seen them do it in Yosemite.

[DirtyHarry]

Originally posted by Funk Dracula:

Guys, I would not attempt to install GPU drivers onto your Mac machines unless they are Mac Pro Towers that you are attempting to install and hack new GPU cards into, or have built a Hackintosh yourself.

GPU drivers are automatically handled by OS X updates. So if Nvidia creates a new driver that is applicable towards the card that is present in any given Mac line, it will be included in an OS X update. Your asking for trouble.

If you read the particulars here on the web driver download page you can also see that while the driver is specifically released for certain Mac Pros it is also noted to provide beta driver support for a limited list of of other Mac models with instructions to verify specific model and OS version installed before installing this. Here's the list:

Release Notes Archive:
This driver update is for Mac Pro 5,1 (2010), Mac Pro 4,1 (2009) and Mac Pro 3,1 (2008) users.

BETA support is for iMac 14,2 / 14,3 (2013), iMac 13,1 / 13,2 (2012) and MacBook Pro 11,3 (2013), MacBook Pro 10,1 (2012), and MacBook Pro 9,1 (2012) users.

So I can see from this my late-2013 27" iMac is supported.

I'd say it's relatively safe to install a beta driver from Nvida. People do it all the time, generally without any major issues. Obviously, running a Time Machine backup just prior to installing it is wise.

Here is quite a nice feature of this install:

This driver includes the new NVIDIA Driver Manager preference pane, as well as an optional menu bar item for quick access to the preference pane and basic functions. The preference pane can be accessed normally through the System Preferences. It requires the user to click on the padlock icon and enter an Administrator password to make changes, and contains the following functionality:

GRAPHICS DRIVER TAB: Within this tab, the user can switch between the NVIDIA Web Driver and the default NVIDIA graphics driver that is included with OS X v10.10.5 (14F27). If the user switches between drivers, they must click the Restart button for changes to take effect.

So, you can go back and forth as desired from the original driver and the web driver. You can also get updates as they become available.

Personally, I think this is great and I'm glad Nvidia is doing it. I was hesistant earlier until reading more here, particularly about having the option to revert as desired.

Anyway, what is the worst possible thing that could happen? It's only software. With a full Time Machine backup, even if you completely hosed your system (highly unlikely) it isn't hard to reinstall OS X and then do a full restore from Time Machine to get to where you were before it happened. It is lost time of course but this is the price we gamers pay I guess at times, well some of us anyway.

Sorry, I talk too much then forget to post the relevant link which is here:

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/89538/en-us

[boujikia]

I want to know if they will fix the wierd graphical glitches with items in the menu, cross hair, etc. which mac users with the intel HD 5000 are experiencing and have been posted here by others. Descriptions of things as in ammo, etc. in-game and the cross hairs looks like just a bunch of abstract exploding lines, completely obscuring what they are supposed to be, as well as are descriptions in options menus.

[mrqe93to]

I have 10.10.5 on partition while my main drive is on 10.8.5. If I update the NVIDIA driver on 10.10.5, will it affect my main drive?

[TheOrangeBox]

You need to ensure that you have installed the NVIDIA driver in the OS that you are booting into. If you boot into 10.8.5 than you need to have the right NVIDIA driver installed in that OS.

[mrqe93to]

Originally posted by TheOrangeBox:

You need to ensure that you have installed the NVIDIA driver in the OS that you are booting into. If you boot into 10.8.5 than you need to have the right NVIDIA driver installed in that OS.

Hello. Thanks for the reply. Doesn't 10.8.5 already have driver for NVIDIA? I have a late 2012 iMac with "NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR5 memory."

[Ļ*]

Went through all these pages hoping for a solution. I thought "- Hey, Last Light worked perfect this will work too!". They can fakk off

[TheOrangeBox]

Originally posted by mrqe93to:

Originally posted by TheOrangeBox:

You need to ensure that you have installed the NVIDIA driver in the OS that you are booting into. If you boot into 10.8.5 than you need to have the right NVIDIA driver installed in that OS.

Hello. Thanks for the reply. Doesn't 10.8.5 already have driver for NVIDIA? I have a late 2012 iMac with "NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR5 memory."

Yes, in your case the iMac NVIDIA model is already set regardeless which partition you boot.
However, the video card has only 512MB instead of the reccomended 3GB.

[zalubiceps]

Изи

[mrqe93to]

Originally posted by TheOrangeBox:

Originally posted by mrqe93to:

Hello. Thanks for the reply. Doesn't 10.8.5 already have driver for NVIDIA? I have a late 2012 iMac with "NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR5 memory."

Yes, in your case the iMac NVIDIA model is already set regardeless which partition you boot.
However, the video card has only 512MB instead of the reccomended 3GB.

Hello. So is my iMac not compatible with the update?

I am not knowledgable with computers. What do 512mb and 3gb mean?

[TheOrangeBox]

It means that the videocard installed in your iMac doesn't have the ability to render on screen the playability of the game. The amount of video ram that is required is 6 time more than your actual 512 megabyte videocard (3 gigabyte = 3000 megabyte)

[DirtyHarry]

It's peculiar that the video RAM requirement is also six times higher than the minimum requirement in Windows. I have a funny feeling this runs fine on a 2 gig GPU and possibly even runs on a 1 gig GPU but in both cases you'd have to turn down the textures to some degree, possibly a lot. I guess I will find out at some point when I try it with my Nvidia 775m 2 gig GPU and the web driver that is reported to fix the problems with this game on OS X for Nvidia users. In the worst case scenario, I can reboot to Windows 10 where I will have more than enough video RAM for this.

I prefer not having to reboot but it is times like this when I am very glad Apple gives us Bootcamp and Valve gives us Steamplay. I've been very, very resistant to this at times given how many titles work great natively in OS X but lately I've been called back to the dark side yet again because sometimes there is stuff I want to play enough (like this) to bother with it. The Windows 10 price was certainly right for a change. :D

A difference this great in the video RAM requirements between OS X and Windows does not make a lot of sense to me but then I never did anything in games development so what do I know? I guess they have some reason for posting those requirements. It just seems crazy it would be that different.

In any event, I would agree that buying this with anything less than the stated requirements is taking your chances at the minimum as usual when one does this with any game.

[DirtyHarry]

Originally posted by mrqe93to:

Hello. So is my iMac not compatible with the update?

I am not knowledgable with computers. What do 512mb and 3gb mean?

According to the requirements listed the answer would be no.

mb (megabytes) and gb (gigabytes) are measures of bits of data and/or computer executable code. This is why you see these used to describe hard disk and memory sizes as these measures describe the relative capacity of your system's disk and memory to hold or store programs and data. A gigabyte is 1000 megabytes. So your card has one half a gigabyte of memory to store data the video card uses to display images to the screen. As time has gone by, games in particular have demanded increasing amounts of memory to display highly detailed graphics for games. Likewise, the disk space required for them has grown as I am sure you have probably noticed more easily.

This game is listed with a very high video memory requirement. This for the time being at least is a rather unusual case where it requires so much video memory.

Older GPUs (graphics processing units) which are the chip on a video card that does the work of processing the graphics sent to the display in large part at this point have 512 MB (megabytes) of memory or less. More common sizes currently are one and two gigabytes and high end cards have 4 gigabytes of memory. I can't recall seeing one but it would not surprise me if there are some very high end cards available with even more memory but there are no games that would require or probably even benefit from more than 4 gigs of memory at this point as far as I know. There could even be a few exceptions there but they'd still be fairly rare at this point in time.

I'd expect most new systems now purchased with gaming in mind to have 1 gigabyte of video memory at the absolute minimum with 2 gigabytes being increasinly more common and 4 gigabytes will wind up being the next standard configuration sooner than later I'd say.

When it comes to gaming on PC/Mac hardware as a rule any given system is only going to perform reasonably well with current titles for roughly three years depending on how demanding a game is. Beyond that it becomes upgrade time. For Mac owners in particular with systems that cannot be upgraded with newer GPUs (aside of Mac Pros and hackintoshes) you basically have to upgrade every three years to be able to run current games decently and it could be a shorter time period depending on what Mac hardware you bought to begin with.

Gaming on a Mac is an expensive proposition depending on what you want to play given how often you need to replace your hardware to keep up. I'm not bashing Macs. I love mine but this reality goes with the territory. If I stick with the iMac line I'd have to swallow spending around 3 grand every three years. For this reason in my own case, I am seriously considering a Mac Mini for my next Mac and screen that supports television and computer inputs. This way I can add anything I want to game with from consoles to a Windows gaming PC while still being able to use a Mac for all my day to day computing needs. That's just my own idea of one way to have the cake and eat it too. I realize that's not for everyone.

I wish Apple would give us an upgradable mini tower Mac. Such a Mac could potentially be great for gaming and all the other stuff we love our Macs for where it would be upgrable and considerably more affordable over the long haul even considering the "Apple tax." I don't see that happending sadly but hope springs eternal.

I know that is more info than you asked for but I hope you find the memory expanation at least to be helpful. On a bright note, there is still a ton of great games you could play on your system but the newer more demanding ones are just going to be too much for it until you upgrade.

[TheOrangeBox]

I have to say DirtyHarry that NVIDIA cards on a Windows OS performs better than a Mac OS. I recently tested a GeForce GT610 - 1Gb on a Mac Pro booted in Windows and the play was far smoother than the comparative crawling experience on the MacOS. Surprised as well that the Windows specs for the videocard is far lower than a Mac.

[*BURRRP!*]

TheOrangeBox, welcome to gaming on Mac.