Warcraft III and iBook G4 800 (newbie)

youngjohnyoungjohn
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I have purchased an iBook 800 (everthing standard - 800/30/256) and Warcraft III Reign of Chaos.



The game seems to be very choppy while i'm actually playing.

The video cutscenes run perfectly as do the in-game menus, but scrolling and panning while playing is very jumpy.



I was wondering if topping up the RAM will fix the slow scrolling and stuttering i am experencing while i play, or if my machine is simply not fast enough for a 3D game like Warcraft.



I have set all the gamesettings to 'low' or 'off' and it runs the same as everthing set to 'high'........bizzarre....



(p.s. this is my first computer and i specifically brought it to play games on - the specs seemed more than enough for most games minimum specs)



Any help anyone can offer would be great before i spend any more money.......

J

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    My eMac doesn't perform that well in Warcraft III, and it's a 1 GHz with 640 MB of RAM. However, getting more RAM will help (with Warcraft III and other things as well).



    One question, though... what were you thinking when you bought, of all things, a Mac laptop for games??? Macs aren't good game machines, and neither are laptops. If you just want games, build a $400 PC box that'll smoke any G4 Mac for games, or buy a game console. Macs are better than PCs for a lot of things, but not for gaming.
  • Reply 2 of 6
    youngjohnyoungjohn Posts: 15member
    I got a mac (mainly) because it is my first computer and i didn't want all the constain hassles you get from buying a Windows machine. All my friends have windows pcs and dispite them having lots of cool games, they also have constant complants about crashing and viruses, etc etc.



    I just figured i could do without all that until i learned more about computers....



    I'm guessing i'll get more RAM in the future, but i'm still keen to hear from anyone else with an iBook 800 and 3D games...



    cheers
  • Reply 3 of 6
    majormattmajormatt Posts: 1,077member
    I have to boot to OS9...works 3 times better.
  • Reply 4 of 6
    kraig911kraig911 Posts: 912member
    youngjohn... make a disk image. I did that on my 1ghz powerbook ti it helps a lot. but still yeah my od pc is faster at it then my mac. They just code better games on windows than mac
  • Reply 5 of 6
    youngjohnyoungjohn Posts: 15member
    As far as i know, the iBook G4 won't start up in 9 and i've tried running Warcraft in classic but that just slows it down more....



    So I've created a disk image and i play from that now (means i can play anywhere now which is great - kudos to Kraig) The game runs a little better, but i'll buy a 512mb chip soon and that should (hopefully) do the trick.



    Thanks again for your help guys....
  • Reply 6 of 6
    stoostoo Posts: 1,490member
    Make sure that performance is set to "highest" in the Energy Saver control panel! Warcraft III runs OK on my revision A 12" PowerBook, which is about the same spec.s as an iBook G4 (except my PowerBook probably has a worse graphics card ).



    More RAM is probably a good idea, especially if the CD/hard drive spin up frequently during play.
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