My iMac not cut up for the job anymore...

[JBalsa]

So I just had a question: I bought a late 2007 iMac (2.8ghz duo core 2gb RAM ATI Mobility Radeon pro 256 mb VRAM 4mb l4 cache) but it seems that it simply isn't cut up to handle X-Plane. I can run X-Plane on windows XP at extremely high fps, but some planes don't work. Does anybody know of any software or anything of the sort that may speed up X-Plane? Otherwise, I may switch my boot camp to Win XP and run it on that.

Thanks! - Jman

[Cameron]

Jason,

I'm not aware of anything that will really speed up your sim. At this point you're starting to hit hardware limitations vs. what the newer versions of X-Plane 9 are capable of.

Are you saying that you are running XP on extreme from your laptop with bootcamp already, or from another machine? I'm a little baffled on how your FPS may be effected so much between the two operating systems. Weird, for sure!

[JBalsa]

Ok, I run boot-camp on my iMac, and it runs Vista. Because Vista has newer ATI Drivers, and Direct X 10, I can run X-Plane 9 nearly maxed out and get around 30 - 90 fps depending on weather and location. The reason it runs so slow for me on OSX 10.5.6 is because the last ATI Drivers for my card were released in 2005! I am going to switch to Vista for X-Plane over the long weekend. On the same settings:

Vista: 30 - 90

OSX: 5 - 30

[Cameron]

Hey, Jason,

You may be right (and it makes some sense) that the new drivers are helping you out on the windows side. One thing that I will correct you on though (just for new people and informative sake), is that X-Plane runs OpenGL and not DirectX. I'm not sure which version of OpenGL the Mobility card you have supports up to, but I'm sure the drivers help with the latest OpenGL technology as well.