Low FPS with upgraded 15 MBP and monitor

[Kyle Merosi]

[FONT=verdana]Hi everyone,[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana]I'm having an issue with low FPS in games with an external monitor. I have a late 2011 MBP with 2.0 i7, 16GB ram, AMD Radeon HD 6490M, and boot camp x64 windows 7. I recently bought a 24" U2412m Dell monitor to hook up to the laptop. While playing Tera Online my FPS is right around 15 while playing full screen 1920x1200 with 60 hertz refresh.[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana]I feel that I should be getting much better FPS than this, does anyone have any ideas? Is my graphics card simply not capable? I've heard that one problem might be having different refresh rates on the two monitors? Though I'm not sure why this would affect the game running on only one monitor. I would like any help, as I would like to be able to take advantage of this monitor instead of wasting it's space.[/FONT]

[FONT=verdana]Thank you for helping[/FONT]

 

[Jad Chaar]

Well, MACs are not for gaming (I play SC2 or Civ on my mac sometimes, but it is a better experience on a PC with DX11 and such). 1920x1200 is way too high for a AMD 6490M since macs are usually limited to about 256mb of VRAM with the lower end macs. What does your system info say about your graphics (in OSX). If anything, try updating the video driver, but it will be no use before you tell me how much memory is for the graphics

 

[Kyle Merosi]

Well, MACs are not for gaming (I play SC2 or Civ on my mac sometimes, but it is a better experience on a PC with DX11 and such). 1920x1200 is way too high for a AMD 6490M since macs are usually limited to about 256mb of VRAM with the lower end macs. What does your system info say about your graphics (in OSX). If anything, try updating the video driver, but it will be no use before you tell me how much memory is for the graphics

Here is the full report:

hipset Model:AMD Radeon HD 6490M
Type:GPU
BusCIe
PCIe Lane Width:x8
VRAM (Total):256 MB
Vendor:ATI (0x1002)
Device ID:0x6760
Revision ID:0x0000
ROM Revision:113-C0170H-521
gMux Version:1.9.23
EFI Driver Version:01.00.521
Displays:
Color LCD:
Display Type:LCD
Resolution:1440 x 900
Pixel Depth:32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Mirror:Off
Online:Yes
Built-In:Yes
DELL U2412M:
Resolution:1920 x 1200
Pixel Depth:32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Display Serial Number:YMYH131L178S
Main Display:Yes
Mirror:Off
Online:Yes
Rotation:Supported
Connection TypeisplayPort

 

[St1ckM4n]

What in-game settings are you playing on? Put textures to low.. and other stuff to low, then see what happens.

 

[Kyle Merosi]

In your guys' experience has performance been better on single player games as opposed to MMO's? I fired up Bastion and had a much better experience. Although I know Bastion is not graphic intensive, I was hoping that is a common trend in single player experiences.

Edit: Also, would I have better luck running games on my native OSX said as opposed to the bootcamp windows 7?

 

[St1ckM4n]

Online games generally have lower fps. This is due to a metric boatload of sprites being on the screen at the same time. E.g. in a 'village', you'll have 50 people on your screen, with pets, effects, etc. This doesn't happen in single-player.

 

[LNCPapa]

I will tell you Kyle that you cannot configure a MBP to have decent 3D gaming performance for almost any recent game. I've got a couple of MBPs and that is one of my biggest complaints - no matter how much money I throw at the thing if I travel and want to game I have to bring another device. The MBP just does not cut it.

 

[Jad Chaar]

I will tell you Kyle that you cannot configure a MBP to have decent 3D gaming performance for almost any recent game. I've got a couple of MBPs and that is one of my biggest complaints - no matter how much money I throw at the thing if I travel and want to game I have to bring another device. The MBP just does not cut it.

The 650M is pretty powerful but isnt worth 2500 bucks. I really hope the next MBP doesnt use integrated graphics from Intel since it is said to match 650M performance. Hopefully nVidia brings something nice to the table with the 750M.
@OP, 256MB of VRAM isnt enough to run games at even 1440x900 (MBP default resolution) with even medium settings. You need to play on low if anything. Maybe updating your drivers in Bootcamp may help, I have never done that before and dont know if it works

 

[LNCPapa]

I don't have anything positive to add about the 650M but I can say that you don't exactly update your drivers in bootcamp - you just update the version of bootcamp and there aren't that many versions out there. Driver support isn't high on their list of priorities for Windows on Mac.

 

[Jad Chaar]

I don't have anything positive to add about the 650M but I can say that you don't exactly update your drivers in bootcamp - you just update the version of bootcamp and there aren't that many versions out there. Driver support isn't high on their list of priorities for Windows on Mac.

Yeah sadly. I am happy to see that in OSX 10.8.3 they are focusing on graphics drivers, this may elude to Open GL 4.3 coming to the Mac in future versions.