City of Heroes for Mac on Mac Mini
By
CuppaManga,
Posted on: 2009-05-24 04:50 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
The Mac Mini plays CoH very well, though you might not be able to max out all the settings like on a high-end PC. The video setting I use on my Macbook Pro is to turn the graphics slider up to maximum, and then switch on Advanced and turn World Detail down to 100%. You may have to reduce it a little more, or change the texture settings, based on how much RAM you have.
Supposedly the 9400M maps how much video memory it uses by how much RAM you have. If you have 2 GB of RAM the Mac Mini will struggle a bit with the textures (and 2 GB is juuust barely enough to run CoH anyway) and you may need to reduce the settings a bit more. Upgrading the RAM on a Mini is tricky, but it can be done - I think ifixit.com may have a guide.
In my experience, the Mac version has occasional stability issues (it doesn't crash the Mac, it just quits) that can often be mitigated by using /reloadgfx when you start to feel the video becoming more laggy. But since you have real stability issues on the PC, you'll probably find it an improvement that with a little practice you can control most of the issues. Your mileage may vary, but on my Macbook Pro I can usually play for hours without a crash - and when I do get one I can usually see it coming, because I was a few seconds too late using /reloadgfx.
Manga @ Triumph
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I have a friend who played it on the new Mac mini, of course he also cracked it open with a pair of putty knifes and doubled the memory and swapped in a 7200RPM hard drive.
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Greeting all!
In light of my recent problems with my main PC crashing when I try to play City of Heroes/Villains for more than a period of 5 min or so, I've been able to play steady on my wife's PC with similar, yet lower specs than my custom PC. I recently noticed that they have a version for Mac and was wondering if any of you play on the new Mac Mini with the NVidia 9400M built in. Currently, I'm on vacation with my wife and have my PC laptop with me, a Compaq Presario CQ-60. At home, my laptop can play the game smoothly with most settings on "Performance." It's a bit laggy here at the hotel, but I'm guessing it's just the hotel's connection. So, I'm actually considering selling my main PC and buying a Mac Mini so I can play City of Heroes on it and not hog up my wife's computer. I was wondering if it's worth it.
Do any of you play on a Mac Mini? If so, how does the game run for you on it?
To me, here are some pros and cons of changing over to Mac:
- Either no or less crashing since Macs are UNIX based
- Mac Minis are not able to be upgraded to a higher video card from the default mobo 9400M GPU
- Some programs that I'm used to on PC won't work on a MAC unless I possibly use something like the "Boot Camp" software.
- I can still use my serial codes for design software from the Adobe series
- The Mac Mini takes up less space.
- Macs are generally more expensive than PCs and most often less "bang for your buck."
What do you think I should do!?
Thank you for your input!