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Welcome to IWETHEY!

New *grumble*
Video card isn't up to snuff. So if I wanted to play it would be a $300 "free" game.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New sux2bu
It's purty.
-Mike

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania
New Innit just.
100fps at 1920x1080.
New Re: *grumble*Its what you get for buying...
Fanboi stuff.

<BSEG>
New Why $300?
It plays fine on my dad's MacBook Pro which has the GeForce 9400M. Tiger Direct has various 9400 models starting at $35.

It shows more detail on my MacBook Pro, which has the GeForce 9600M. TD has the 9600s starting at $75.
New I have a 7800
Needs at least an 8 series; the 8800 GT is the one the NVidia site had listed for 1st edition Mac Pros.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
New Gotcha
guess the small market for Mac video cards is one of the downfalls of there not being a non-Pro Mac tower.
New Pleasantly surprised by performance of my MBP's 8600M GT
My MacBookPro's a late '07 model, but still runs Portal quick enough. Only downside is the portals themselves are 'black' and don't show what's on the other side of them. Ah well, any excuse to upgrade...! It works a treat on my iMac, well, I started playing it a few months back via Bootcamp.

Oh and I TOTALLY agree with Spiceware - if you haven't played it, don't google ahead for spoilers! :)
They said I was gullible ... and I believed them
New That's a recently introduced bug
when I ran it this evening it downloaded an auto-update and the Portals turned black. They were fine before the update.

There's a topic about it at Valve's forum:
http://forums.steamp...ead.php?t=1265578

rbarris on page 2 has this to say
We saw this bug and thought we had it fixed. One thing that affected this bug's behavior in our sleuthing was whether or not the game started up in windowed mode.

Please try this - right click the "Portal" title in the Steam game list, and select Properties. In that dialog click the "Set Launch Options" button. Then in that text field just put this text:

-windowed

This will cause the game to start up in windowed mode (which you can then change back to FS using Options->Video tab)


the -windowed trick worked for me.

On page 7 alfred posted
We have a fix for the black portal issue in testing, we hope to have it out real soon.
New Yay, thanks!
They said I was gullible ... and I believed them
New Played it last night and it looks like they fixed it.
New About these new exotic video specs
To wit, in my Newegg flyer du jour:
http://www.newegg.co...m=N82E16814125320

I understand the numbers game and the mega-transistors/mm-boardspace carrot for gaining the $$/ (gaming the wallets?)
Got a chuckle out of This one being named for (Enrico) Fermi! -- who might revolve in grave over the triviality of his physics being here cited, er orthogonally.

But, what with over-clocking, water-cooling and 17 speed-controlled fans dispersing the Heat/KW-hours of energy expended in the lifetime of one of these Gamer boxes(n)
-- can anyone 'rate' this particular mere-$350 specimen, in relation to oh, any comprehensible sort of spec
-- via which The Next Model, in 2 months or so: shall eventually (eat-it-for-lunch?)

I mean, if it's about frames/sec @ resolution-X -- is that All ye need to note, in these abstruse matters?

(Just curious; far as I'm concerned, my Spring '08 20: iMac is Magic-enough. Still. And of course, this card likely wouldn't surf in a Mac Pro, if I comprehend the Mac/Beast bus differences -- and iMacs don't do either bus,at all; not to mention limits of X-res in that non-replaceable display.)


New I believe the latest buzzwords are related to "physics".
The games are trying to incorporate things like realistic bounces, ray-tracing for reflections, depth of focus in viewpoints, by incorporating F=ma and so forth in the underlying engine. Hence "Fermi" for nVidia's latest.

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Physics_engine

The graphics hardware is continuing to get more complicated, so they're starting to hit a wall. Fermi was late and heat can be a problem with them, apparently. Of course, MS's DirectX drivers continue become more and more complicated and to be late as well, so there's the usual issue of the software and hardware rarely being in sync.

Unfortunately, one can't simply take the winner as being the card with the most RAM, most transistors, highest clock rate. It's complicated and depends on what you want to do with the card. E.g. http://www.maximumpc..._and_power_hungry - a 250W graphics chip...

I think it's nuts to spend more on a graphics card than on a CPU, but I'm not a gamer. :-)

HTH.

Cheers,
Scott.
New Thanks, most illuminating
So the Fermi connection has a basis, in Fact.

800 WATTS !?!!?!1111!!!!!!7-11
A pair overclocked [!!] off a KILOWATT main PS. ... I buy an efficient reefer; this guy cancels out about 8 of them.
Shades of the Veyron 250 (mph not watts) road test, wherein, "tires are good for 15 minutes; that's OK though because the fuel runs out in 12."

Unusually informative -pedia article re the high-precision designs and the game Real-time purposes.
Love. It. One expects such cognitive dissonance in Times like these (as have never Been, before. Planetary Peril being generally only One-per-Planet, I wot.)

And a commenter at Newegg got it right too:


Cons: These cards run at higher temperatures, especially when they're under load. But....Wait for it! They were designed that way, and therefore tolerate higher temps. Also, manually increasing the fan speed helps to keep the GPU cooler.



Answer: Electronics never Likes 'hi-temp' and those items that tolerate [mil-spec] a bit more of that.. do so at reduced MTBF, for all reasons Sig. Fermi could elucidate, while peering at the Periodic Chart and the 2p/2s electron shells ... and how far they can oscillate before they forget their Momma -- OK, that's a too-technical answer. But fun.

Thanks, as so often, you pointed to exactly what I wanted to grok about this sport, including the usual clash twixt real-time CPU, software with a few buffer overflows and: voracious Gamers, lusting for an Authentic Vicarious <sic> experience of causing The Big Crunch;
jes watchin the Universe, femtosec by femtosec:
heading for

Everything •••···> Nothingness.



Bloody Power freaks!


     Portal free for Mac & PC (until May 24th) - (SpiceWare) - (35)
         Go figure.... - (mvitale)
         OMG - (Bman)
         DAM YOU.. - (Bman) - (3)
             The boy showed be the demo a couple of years ago - (crazy) - (1)
                 I was surprised I didn't get sick - (SpiceWare)
             don't worry - it's a very short game - (SpiceWare)
         2 hours in - (Bman) - (1)
             Don't go looking at the Indie Pack, then. - (pwhysall)
         D'you think they'll have the Linux client ready before then? - (static)
         STILL PLAYING -NT - (Bman)
         *grumble* - (malraux) - (13)
             sux2bu - (mvitale) - (1)
                 Innit just. - (pwhysall)
             Re: *grumble*Its what you get for buying... - (folkert)
             Why $300? - (SpiceWare) - (6)
                 I have a 7800 - (malraux) - (5)
                     Gotcha - (SpiceWare) - (4)
                         Pleasantly surprised by performance of my MBP's 8600M GT - (Meerkat) - (3)
                             That's a recently introduced bug - (SpiceWare) - (2)
                                 Yay, thanks! -NT - (Meerkat) - (1)
                                     Played it last night and it looks like they fixed it. -NT - (SpiceWare)
             About these new exotic video specs - (Ashton) - (2)
                 I believe the latest buzzwords are related to "physics". - (Another Scott) - (1)
                     Thanks, most illuminating - (Ashton)
         Only 10 Hours - (Bman) - (1)
             see, short game :) - (SpiceWare)
         Played thru with the commentary - (SpiceWare) - (3)
             I've managed to get myself addicted to Torchlight. - (Meerkat) - (2)
                 I'll check it out, thanks! -NT - (SpiceWare) - (1)
                     I have to second Peter's rec of Osmos - (malraux)
         Totally missed this trailer - (SpiceWare) - (4)
             Machinarium is good too - (malraux) - (3)
                 I did - (SpiceWare) - (1)
                     Steam is dodgy. - (malraux)
                 it's on sale - (SpiceWare)

Now, with built-in MIDI ports!
87 ms