Macintosh users post your questions or comments here.

[tyvol]

Short answer: Bootcamp is your best option.. and If you update to OS X Leopard, Bootcamp comes with it...
Losman

In my personal experience with a loaded Intel Mac Pro, this is very good advice!

The virtual machine offerings on the Intel Mac's (such as Parallels, etc.) are OK for Microsoft Office and such, but way too slow for most CPU/GPU intensive games.

Because it uses the Intel Mac in almost completely "native PC mode," Boot Camp is the way to go, however, but I would recommend that you not be tempted by Vista.

Only the 32-bit version of Vista is supported by Apple's Boot Camp and I've consumed innumerable hours installing/deinstalling Vista Ultimate in 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

As it isn't supported by Apple, the real experience with the 64-bit version is that it is shaky in Boot Camp and the search for proper drivers is not always rewarded. Some on other forums claim they are running X3 on 64-bit Vista, but they don't paint a pretty picture at all.

As for the 32-bit version of Vista, it works, after a fashion, but for the X3 experience using it, this is summarized by the word "inconsistent."

Correct me if I'm wrong on this Losman, but for consistency, performance and reliability, a fresh Windows XP Professional install in a separate Boot Camp partition (on a 7200 rpm drive), is the way to go for X3 players.

After all XP updates from Microsoft are made (3 or 4 passes, I forget which), and this process includes automatically installing the correct GPU driver, you have the highest performing and most stable platform available for running X3 (in PC native mode) on the Intel Mac of your choice, IMHO.

And, with most of the Intel Mac's out there (such as the Mac Book Pro (MBP)) there is more than enough horsepower to run X3 and XTM (no brag, but the PC performance indices shown for Boot Camp are very high indeed).

Lastly, and if your budget can stand it, more RAM is way better (even more than 4 GB)...

hth...

Cheers!

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[Losman]

In my personal experience with a loaded Intel Mac Pro, this is very good advice!

Correct me if I'm wrong on this Losman, but for consistency, performance and reliability, a fresh Windows XP Professional install in a separate Boot Camp partition (on a 7200 rpm drive), is the way to go for X3 players.


Lastly, and if your budget can stand it, more RAM is way better (even more than 4 GB)...

hth...

Cheers!

No corrections here, Thats sound advice..

I have no performance issues at all and thats with every thing Maxed out and Seta x 10...

Have fun
Losman

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[tyvol]

I enjoyed X3 vanilla (Mac OSX version) on my Intel Mac Pro so much (with many mods) that when I heard about XTM I couldn't wait to try it.

Using every install trick I ever heard about, alas and as of this moment, XTM will absolutely not run on a Mac, however "loaded-out" it is.

An "Out of Memory" crash always occurs whenever or however you try to launch the galaxy map (not the sector map). Everything else seems to run fine...

The Trouble Ticket I sent to VPLTD.com (the vendor of the native Mac version) came back with: (1) VPLTD doesn't support XTM but (1) Transgaming (maker of Cider - the Mac interpreter for PC games that X3 needs to run on the Mac) does.

So, I wrote to the Transgaming/Cider team with copious diagnostics attached. The response so far has been nada, zip, etc...

On a previous thread, Losman told me about his Intel Mac Pro configuration and that he was running X3/XTM in Windows (using Boot Camp) with no problem!

Following his lead (and a careful install process), I'm now running XTM on a similar XP Boot Camp set-up (as described above) for the last two days, and I just want anyone who is interested to know that XTM is a FANTASTIC IMPROVEMENT (!) over the original game and well worth everything it took to get it running!

Not only that, but every Mod or Script that I've added (25 is my current count) works as claimed and without conflict with each other!

To put it another way, XTM is an impressive accomplishment by any measure (by a lot of tireless talented folks). After experiencing it, it actually made me want to know who to thank!

In short, I've found that XTM is a wonderful upgrade to a great game (!) and if we Intel Mac folks can't run it natively (for a while...yes? I still have my hopes), IMHO it is certainly worth the somewhat painstaking process to get it running using the Boot Camp alternative!

Anyway, FYI...

Cheers!

PS... I'll be happy to post a list of the Mods/Scripts that I've found are "XTM compatible," if that's of any interest.

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[Draxis]

sounds good! I'm gonna buy the parts separately and assemble it myself, just ram etc. I am wondering, how much of a difference does 7200 rpm vs 5400 rpm make on the hard drive? enough to sacrifice 50 gigs? also is there a place to by a 250 gig that spins at 7200?

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[kevso101 - {SM}]

Hi Draxis,
hmmm the difference between hard disk speeds are a matter of milliseconds in terms access time and often the spin speed of the disk matters very little and generally it's unlikely you would percieve a difference unless the drives are nearly full. The better option is to look for the drive with the most cache memory onboard as this will increase access times, 8Mb is a good bet. It is also worth noting that if you intend to stick a high spin speed disk in a laptop it will get hotter.

Have fun

Kevso

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[tyvol]

@ Draxis
You may wish to Google OWC and Crucial to get the latest info to add to your knowledge on RAM options for your Mac Book Pro. Crucial's website is informative. Error correction RAM (called ECC) is a tad slower and more reliable (than Non ECC) but a little more expensive. ECC may not be available outside of Apple for the Mac Book Pro, though. I use ECC RAM but I've never ever heard of anyone's Non ECC RAM failing.

As for higher hard disk speed, good cache memory size (to decrease access times) and some additional heat, I believe Kevso is correct. You may not perceive much of a difference in a higher spin disk speed. I went for a high speed hard disk for Boot Camp (a 10k rpm Raptor) only because I know that hard disks can be sometimes be burdened with systems with lots of overhead - and Vista is out there - for the Intel Mac Boot Camp crowd (that includes me, lately). The Raptor (by Western Digital) works fine for Boot Camp and if/when you get to Vista on Boot Camp, you will notice that Vista's performance tests for games has numbers for each aspect of your equipment: processor speed, RAM, hard disk, GPU, etc. To give you a small reference, to run properly, Halo 2 needs a minimum of an overall performance rating of 3.0 with a desired performance rating of 4.0). Vista's rating of my Mac Pro set-up is 5.8, with all components of the system running at 5.9 except for my X1900 GPU which came in at 5.8! Anyway, and as explained elsewhere, this seems to be adequate for X3 XTM running on XP, as far as I can tell (so far anyway).

And, OWC is a good place to start looking for hard disk options.

Cheers!

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[Losman]

On a previous thread, Losman told me about his Intel Mac Pro configuration and that he was running X3/XTM in Windows (using Boot Camp) with no problem!

Following his lead (and a careful install process), I'm now running XTM on a similar XP Boot Camp set-up (as described above) for the last two days, and I just want anyone who is interested to know that XTM is a FANTASTIC IMPROVEMENT (!) over the original game and well worth everything it took to get it running!

To put it another way, XTM is an impressive accomplishment by any measure (by a lot of tireless talented folks). After experiencing it, it actually made me want to know who to thank!

In short, I've found that XTM is a wonderful upgrade to a great game (!) and if we Intel Mac folks can't run it natively (for a while...yes? I still have my hopes), IMHO it is certainly worth the somewhat painstaking process to get it running using the Boot Camp alternative!

Glad to here, your finally enjoying .. Yes its definitely worth any painstaking process to get XTM to run on your machine..

@ Draxis
You may wish to Google OWC and Crucial to get the latest info to add to your knowledge on RAM options for your Mac Book Pro. Crucial's website is informative.
And, OWC is a good place to start looking for hard disk options.

Cheers!

Thanks for that tip.. Sounds like you know your way around a computer tyvol..i will have to keep that in mind...


I order all my Mac stuff from ClubMac/Macmall for 2 reasons:

1) Wife gets a discount with them.. (through her work)

2) If you live in the US and don't reside in California (where they are located) you don't have to spoiler: pay taxes on your purchase(s) at least we don't here in Ohio..

Have fun
Losman

@ Kevso, Sounds like we have found another Techie...

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[kevso101 - {SM}]

Hi Losman,
Never hurts to have a few Techies about the place, welcome tyvol, perhaps we should petition Mokonzi for a Techie Team badge, hahahaha

Kevso

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[tyvol]

@ Losman/kevso101

Most grateful to be here and learn from helpful teachers like yourselves...
Ok, you found me out, I'm a Techie wannabe, but I don't deserve a badge...
I'd wear one, of course (everywhere), but I feel I must learn how to do "geek translations" a whole lot better... [Frankly, this is not so easy for me...]
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, is there any place where I can get a map of the current state of the XTM sectors?
See? I'm still just learning about all this...
Cheers!

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[Losman]

Hi tyvol

The Techies is something I started with Roger LS Griffiths and Kevso101, started off as a joke, but they know their stuff, so I still referr to them as TXU's Techies..(no badges at the moment)

I wanted to thank you for your very nice write up (well thought out) about reinstalling..

Now about the map...You should try this..Scorp's map link here..

Its a very useful tool..If you have any questions about it, either PM me or post here..It should be exactly what your looking for..

Have fun
Losman

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