MacBook Pro Nvidia 9600m GT drivers (and StarCraft 2!)

Hey guys,

Well, I've finally seen the light. After seeing the comparison charts between Portal and Half-Life 2 between Mac OS X and PC I realize that OpenGL just isn't cutting it. Windows 7 performs 2-4x better. So, I just installed StarCraft 2 on Windows 7 and noticed a message that said my graphics drivers were out of date. SC2 was referring to the Boot Camp 3.1 release 188.xx Nvidia drivers. I'm aware of the laptopvideo2go.com hacked drivers but I know most of those releases fudge up many of the Nvidia control panel options. I know most of them do weird things like drop framerates dramatically when power is removed from the laptop without any way to change it. I think certain releases are "safe" when it comes to not breaking settings. I'd like to know if any of you all have some experience here. What are the stable releases that work great on the MacBook Pro with the Nvidia 9600m GT? Let's try to keep this thread going as new beta releases come out.

Thanks for your help!

 

Actually Blizzard usually does a pretty good job for writing on both platforms. Not many companies do anymore, I wouldn't hold Portal and HL2 as the best examples. But since there isn't a Mac open beta it's hard to say for certain. But I think it will run just fine on either, time will tell I guess.

 

well 197.16 works really well with 9600m gt here.you can try that.these are available on nvidia.com

 

All official Nvidia notebook drivers work excellent with Macbook Pros. Just go to Nvidia's website and download it.

Also don't bother too much about that message as long as your drivers are recent enough, and if your performance in-game is smooth. I'm running the 195.62 drivers and it tells me it's out-of-date too, even though I downloaded it less than 3 months ago.

 

Yeah I don't think Blizzard does that. I recall reading Blizzard outsources that service.

 

Actually there has been a SC2 mac client for a while now lol. Since late April.

 

To Ziddy: Really? Hmmm, well whoever they outsourced too didn't do a half bad job with the Mac version of World of Warcraft. My friends Macbook Pro ran it quite well.

Retto: Ya I got in on the first round of SC 2 beta, I had originally only seen PC as the option so I guess that was added later or I just skipped past it (not like i'm gonna even try it on my old macbook).

Either way with the 9600m I imagine it could run on either platform sufficiently. My old Geforce 7700go from my G1 did ok while I was buying my new G71. I had to turn most everything to low, but could do 1680x1050 around 25 fps. Nothing special mind you, but not bad considering it's still in beta.

Maybe someone who has gotten into the Mac beta could fill us in on how it runs on their rig? So far I have yet to find any friends online or IRL who have gotten in on the Mac side of the beta.

 

That USED to be the case, but the current i5/7 systems can NOT use Nvidia's reference drivers because of their non-standard GPU switching, right?

 

They don't have GPU switching enabled in Windows 7.

 

Errrr no you cannot use the 9400m on Macbook Pro you're forced to use the 9600m GT all the time.

But anyways I'm running everything on low at the moment on my Macbook Pro. I could turn up the settings a bit, but when the battles get really big it gets a bit choppy.

 

same, 2009 15" with 9600 2.4/4GB

I run everything on low. LOTS of units will cause it to lag if you bump it up much

 

Go to Nvidia's website and download the latest drivers for your operating system and graphics card.

 

Sounds lime you CAN use Nvidia's drivers on the new i5/7 MacBooks after all, so that's good! No GPU switching is fine, I just want that GT 330 or whatever it is able to run current drivers.

 

I never said that you could use the 9400m. I said that GPU switching is disabled.