Second Life and the Macbook Pro

I got my Macbook Pro in October (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo with Nvidia's Geforce 8600GT M with 128VRAM). I was running Tiger 10.4.11 and experienced choppy graphics and crashes with Second Life and World of Warcraft. I took it to the Apple store and they recommended upgrading to Leopard, so I took the dive and upgraded the OS. Now, the graphics run smoother, but after a few minutes, or just long enough for the video card to overheat, Second Life just locks up the computer HARD. Can't even Command + Option + Escape on this one. A hard shut down is required for me to be able to do anything. I haven't been able to test it with World of Warcraft, but I suspect the same will happen. Just wanted you to know that you're not alone, and don't upgrade to 10.5 just to fix this issue since it doesn't. But Leopard is pretty nice besides not fixing my issue. =)

Hi there,

I'm running SL in a nearly full screen window on my MacBook Pro 17 and I find the fans ramp up almost immediately after I log in. SL runs pretty slow for me compared to my MacPro tower unit. I believe the graphics IS getting taxed considerably when in-world.

Do your frame rates improve when you reduce the size of the viewer window? If so.. I suspect video running outta steam..

In addition, I too have experienced the hard shutdown issue described by Crystal above when using my MacPro tower, even with 512MB video card. It happened literally dozens of times before I figured out that the graphics card was covered with dust and overheating while zooming a fast car around the Mooz racetrack, for example. Blew that bad boy off and no more screwy vid issues and best of all.. no hard lockups since.

This notebook has 256MB of video ram.. I really notice the difference between the two computers.

As an aside.. I have run SL on a Dual 1.25Ghz G4 thats got a 128MB video card in it. SL is miserable on that machine. It's much better if I run SL in a squinchy little window, but even then its a newbie bumping into stuff and extended times waiting for grey things to rezz..
Don't get me started about the spinning beachball......

If you use the windlight viewer these afore mentioned problems are amplified in my opinion. I think ya gotta have cubic video ram to be a happy camper on SL, no pun intended.

Hope this sheds some light..

Cheers, Malcolm

PS: Looking for an SL 'Think Different' T-shirt.. I can be found at Mooz often.. 🙂

Yes, this is an issue as I am sure by now most people have seen the other blogs and such.
Apple has never let me down in 20 years, I just bought a new macbook pro 2.4 partly to be able to have a faster better experience in sl, only quickly to learn that sl can only run for a short time before this complete lock up.
I understand its the driver for this specific video card but come on, its been many many months and
its still not fixed.
How could this take so long.
BTW its any high graphics game and such that will have this issue.
Please Apple, get the driver fixed

But you play them in Windows, right? I understand that playing SL and WoW +in Windows+ works perfectly fine, but the problem is that these are games that are compatible with Mac computers. They should not be having these problems running in an OS they claim to be compatible with.. It is obviously not the hardware we're having problems with. =/ And I refuse to buy a copy of Windows just to play a game that I used to be able to play on my previous Apple computer.

I recently upgraded to the current version of Second Life. When it would crash after about 15 minutes of use, I assumed the new version might be a bit buggy.

The crashes, however didn't just bring down SL, but took down the whole computer. Not only that, the computer was almost too hot to handle. Seems like the same thing others in this discussion have been experiencing.

I spend a lot of time teaching others about computers (professionally)and Macs in particular. This is the first time I have found myself truly disappointed in Apple. I hope this can be resolved soon, especially if this can be cured with a software fix (driver).

DE

It's worse than that for the brand new MB Pro, which I just activated yesterday. SL will not run AT ALL. The SL Wiki page has a huge workaround via the OpenGL Profiler, so I took all the steps - and still nothing.

I just bought an expensive state of the art notebook so I could enjoy SL - and it turns out to be the ONE notebook that won't run SL! A cheapo Dell would have done better.

And if I run SL on Windows, then I have to worry about antivirus and the whole Windows dungheap. Thank God I didn't wipe out my Powerbook.

Hi,

I am really sorry to hear about your new MacBook Pro - I honestly find it hard to believe that a brand new, top of the line laptop is incapable of running a program like Second life that a PC laptop 1/3 the price of the MBP can !!

I have an older MacBook Pro - it is the 2.0 Ghz model with upgraded ram (1.5 Gigs now) and the X1600 card. I did have Second Life running very smoothly in Tiger and actually was able to use the Windlight version.

Now, with the upgrade to Leopard, I can't even stand and text chat with 2 other sl residents without the spinning ball coming up repeatedly.

So, I have two choices I guess :

1. Wait for Apple to release further Leopard updates and hope that one of them will allow me to run Second Life properly

2. Set up Boot Camp, buy an OEM version of Windows XP SP 2 for $100.00, download and install Second Life on that partition and hope that the improvement in performance and frame rate is worth the investment and hassle.

I honestly detest having to install Windows software just to do what the MacBook Pro should be able to do in the first place.

it's a scandal i spent mouch money for macbook pro and now i must install windows vista to play second life. Why apple don't release new nvidia driver?? Maybe don't have good software developer? Now i use windows vista and is ridiculus but work better than leopard in my macbook pro!

I must buy a new desktop pc and before i think imac is a good chooise... now i riconsider that!

p.s.

after two mac in one year i riconsider the windows users words. "the mac is a normal pc you spent much money for nothing better"

For all practical purposes, Second Life is not compatible with MacBook Pros.

However, if you install boot camp and play Second Life within Windows on your MPB, you'll have no problems. You'll find fantastic frame frates, and the ability to move around without lagging to death! Imagine that! The ability to just MOVE!

This is the only way I can access SL on my MPB.

For all practical purposes, Second Life is not compatible with MacBook Pros.

Um, not really true.

Second Life reportedly runs fine on the MacBook Pros with the ATI X1600 chipsets.

There were some driver issues that plagued the MacBook Pros with the NVIDIA 8600M GT chipsets and caused hard lockups and terrible frame rates, but these have been addressed by a combination of OS X 10.5.2, the Leopard Graphics Update, and the latest official Second Life viewer. (I'm using one of these of the June 2007 revision and can attest that Second Life runs fine even with all the Windlight effects enabled, albeit slower than in Windows.)

There may be a new issue with the latest revision of the MacBook Pro (the Penryn ones, which also use the NVIDIA 8600M GT); I haven't heard anything official though.

I agree. I play WoW, and since their last patch, I can only play for around 5 minutes before the game and my whole system just locks up bad. My system will even just restart itself sometimes. I called Blizzard, prowled apple support, even went to the Raedon site, before finally finding the forums here. It's good to know that I'm not alone, and that my system is dying on me.

Getting 3-10 fps on lowest settings, latest update of SL using below listed. Any one have a fix?

Chipset Model: GeForce 8600M GT
Type: Display
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 128 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0407
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 3175

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro3,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP31.0070.B07
SMC Version: 1.16f8

Not sure what information you have, but SL does not work

What can I say? It works for me (June 2007 MacBook Pro, Leopard 10.5.2).

As stated though, there may be a new issue with the latest MacBook Pro revision and SL - if yours is a new Penryn model, that may be what you're experiencing. (You haven't really described what your problem is.)

Message was edited by: Mandy K

I play HL, and crysis on my 17" MBP fine I have had no problems.

Sorry to hear of your problems.

To clarify though, that OpenGL Profiler workaround has been superceded and should not be used if you are running OS X 10.5.2 with the recent Second Life viewer.