18 réponses à ce sujet

[OneoftheLost]

Recently I purchased Dragon Age for a relative, and after watching them play, decided to download the game from GamersGate for my Macbook. (White Unibody. Newst Macbook.) After playing the game for about 2.5-4 hours, I had a crash when entering the 'chapel' in the first village. Upon rebooting a couple hours later, I noticed that after about 5 minutes of play, the game would unexpectadly slow down. The framerate just... dies. It becomes laggy, and unplayable. Conversations are slow, pulling up the menu to leave the game, also slow.

On the PC technical forums, a huge 14+ page thread was put up, and still no response on Bioware's end. 


This is a very real problem, that frankly, has gone COMPLETELY ignored as far as I can tell. Does anybody, have ANY idea what I can do? Setting the Dual Core affinity was suggested, but Mac doesn't allow for such things as far as I know.

The game worked fine up until that first crash. Now, no matter how many times I re-boot, it simply starts to stutter and lag after 5 minutes of play time. Tried deleting saves, everything. I just don't get it. I hate to call it a Memory Leak, but without any support, I'm affraid that's EXACTLY what it sounds like.

The game I gifted still works fine. Cruel irony.

*SYSTEM SPECS*
Macbook - Snow Leopard
2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB MHz DDR3
Nvidia 9400M (256MB Vram)

Modifié par OneoftheLost, 01 mars 2010 - 11:49 .

[Welnic]

It's probably overheating. And I don't think it has anything to do with that crash. The little bit of playing that I've done with the Mac version it ran fine in the interior scenes of the City Elf origin. Once I got to Ostagar and out in to the wilds it slowed down enough that it became unplayable. I installed smcFanControl which let me crank the fans up all the way before I start playing and it made a huge difference.

[BSBNess]

Try playing on the lower end settings that might help

[OneoftheLost]

Welnic wrote...

It's probably overheating. And I don't think it has anything to do with that crash. The little bit of playing that I've done with the Mac version it ran fine in the interior scenes of the City Elf origin. Once I got to Ostagar and out in to the wilds it slowed down enough that it became unplayable. I installed smcFanControl which let me crank the fans up all the way before I start playing and it made a huge difference.

I hate to use such cliche' terms as 'undying grattitude' but THIS solved my problem. I guess I was so focused on looking for a software problem that I didn't even consider a hardware issue, especially after all of the complaints in the P C technical section. After trying the smcFanControl it worked GREAT. I simply went to 'active setting' and then 'Higher RPM' and it ran like a charm. Just got finished with a good solid playtesting, and had it ran just like before. Thank you so much!

On a different note, I'm a bit leery of turning up the fan settings, if that isn't default, won't it overdo the fans? Have you ever had problems with smc being left on too long? I'd hate to fix one problem, only to make another. 

@BSB - Thanks as well. I had originally turned down the settings, and that helped in the begining, and it was quite playable on medium settings with a lower resolution. I hear BAD things about the Dwarven city however...

Modifié par OneoftheLost, 02 mars 2010 - 02:30 .

[Janichsan]

Upon rebooting a couple hours later, I noticed that after about 5 minutes of play, the game would unexpectadly slow down. The framerate just... dies. It becomes laggy, and unplayable. Conversations are slow, pulling up the menu to leave the game, also slow.

This is neither the same problem as the one mentioned in the PC technical forum nor overheating. It's a mess up from Transgaming's side concerning all 9400M equipped Macs. "Solutions" are either to quit the game and restart it, changing the location or trying to bear the incredible lag for about another 5-10 minutes (then the game suddenly speeds up again). Changing the game settings does not help.
Transgaming is aware of the problem and replies to corresponding support requests with their usual "we will try to fix this whenever we will release a patch" - which might as well be never based on my past experiences with TG.

Modifié par Janichsan, 02 mars 2010 - 08:40 .

[OneoftheLost]

Hmm. Thanks for the heads up! Ive never had a problem with the 9400M, then again, Ive never dealt with Transgaming. I'll keep an ear out.

[Welnic]

When you cool a laptop you have to balance two main things, how cool it actually runs and how loud it is (and how much power it takes) to get it that cool. Apple has gone the route with their stock cooling ramp to never actually run the fans that fast to keep the noise down. One of the things that helps this work is the processor actually slows down once it gets to a certain temperature so it then doesn't make as much heat. This throttling down is what makes the game unplayable.



It definitely doesn't hurt the fans to run at full speed, it's just loud. When I played I just turned the fans to full speed, played the game, then reset the fan control to normal after quitting the game.

[SFKNIGHT]

I have this problem too and its not that big of a deal (been playing with the 10 min slowdown since Christmas and i still love the game), but is it confirmed that smcFanControl works and its the heating/cooling thats the problem. If so is there any adverse or negative effectts of using smcFanControl? If smcFanControl doesnt fix the problem is there anything else i can do? Once again its not a huge deal but id love to get this figured out.

[txa1265]

Apparently the 1.03 patch deals with the memory leak. I'm sure if you ask Transgaming they'll tell you they're working on THIS also ...

[Rendaril]

After I read these replies I went and installed the smcControlFan listed above. Unfortunately this didn't help at all. My lag started right after my intro quest (after I got to Ostagar) exactly as mentioned above however I did notice something odd. If I am looking down at the ground as I move (such as with the bird's eye tactical view) then there is no lag at all. It actually seems to speed up past normal. Using this I eventually got to the cutscene where they show the two armies, for this portion there was absolutely no lag at all, it ran perfectly. However immediately after it returned to my character the lag did as well. Please help I'm getting desperate.

[dualie11]

What you're describing sounds like classic lag caused by an underpowered machine. What kind of Mac do you have? How much RAM? Add more if you can. Lower all the settings to the absolute lowest level. Make sure you go have it set for high performance rather than better battery life in the Energy Saver preference pane.

[Rendaril]

I'm not very good with computers but this is what I found under "About this Mac"

Model Name: iMac

Model Identifier: iMac5,1

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo

Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz

Number Of Processors: 1

Total Number Of Cores: 2

L2 Cache: 4 MB

Memory: 1 GB

Bus Speed: 667 MHz

[Rendaril]

Some more info found under graphics/displays:



ATI Radeon X1600:



Chipset Model: ATY,RadeonX1600

Type: GPU

Bus: PCIe

PCIe Lane Width: x16

VRAM (Total): 256 MB

[Janichsan]

Rendaril wrote...
...
Memory: 1 GB
...

Well, you're actually below DA's system requirements: the game needs at least 2 GB RAM to run properly. While you can still play it with less – thanks to the operating system's memory management –, it will run significantly slower. Just as you are experiencing.

You should definitely think about upgrading your RAM. Not only is memory dirt cheap, it will also increase the overall performance of your computer a lot.

However, even with more RAM, don't expect miracles: the ATI X1600 is the rock bottom for DA.

[dualie11]

Yeah that's definitely the problem. Go to Crucial.com or some other site and upgrade the RAM to 4GB.

[Rendaril]

Okay, thanks for the info. I'll try to get a hold of some more memory. Thanks for the help.

[macintosh]

I have a macbook pro 2.8ghz core 2 duo with 4 gigs of memory and i lag sooo bad its frustrating. I use smcfancontrol and set my fans up at max and at first it runs great for about 2-5 minutes then it gets really bad. I'm almost certain its because the laptop gets so hot i'm thinking about getting those laptop coolers to see if that helps but I'm going to switch to desktop and I'll probably avoid using any laptops for gaming. Eve online runs smoothly tho.

[Member 121]

@ macintosh



Are you using OS 10.6?



I bought a laptop cooler and it didn't do much of anything to improve performance. smcfancontrol helped.

[macintosh]

Member 121 wrote...

@ macintosh

Are you using OS 10.6?

I bought a laptop cooler and it didn't do much of anything to improve performance. smcfancontrol helped.

Yeah I'm running SL 10.6.4 its the latest update and I keep hearing that this update made OpenGL worse I'm not really sure if thats true.