Dragon Age: Origins on Macbook Air

March 27, 2011 12:50 PM

Dragon Age: Origins on new MacBook Air: I believe my system meets or exceeds the required specs, but even on the lowest graphical settings, the game runs intolerably slowly. Is there anything I can do? Full technical specs inside.

BioWare says the requirements to run DA:O on OS X are as follows:

• Mac OSX 10.6.2 Leopard or higher
• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
• 2GB RAM
• ATI X1600 or NVIDIA 7300 or greater
• At least 17GB of hard drive space for installation
• This game will not run on PowerPC(G3/G4/G5)based Mac systems or Intel GMA class of video cards.

I have a brand-new 13" MacBook Air with:

• OS X 10.6.7
• An intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.13 GHz (the faster of the two Air options)
• 4GB of RAM
• An NVIDIA GeForce 320M with 256 MB of VRAM
• Plenty of hard drive space
• (And obviously, I don't have a PowerPC Mac nor do I have an Intel video card)

The only confusing thing to me was the requirement that the NVIDIA card be "7300 or greater." Now, obviously "320" is less than "7300," so maybe this is where I blew it. But it looked to me as though NV had changed their product numbering rubric somewhere along the way, and in any event, according to Wikipedia, it appeared to me that the 320M was at least as (if not more) powerful than the 7300. (It also is four years newer.) I realize I could be wrong about this, and of course the 320M is a mobile chip.

As I say, I've tuned the game settings down as low as possible, but the interaction is very choppy and essentially unplayable. One additional detail is that I am operating my Air in clamshell mode, attached to a 1920x1080 widescreen monitor. Could that be causing issues? (Note that I've gone down to the lowest in-game resolution possible, 800x600, and still experience these problems.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell to computers & internet (14 answers total)

What happens when you run your external monitor at 1366x768 (the native resolution of your builtin display)? Or if you just turn off the external monitor and use the builtin display?

If it runs fine under either of those conditions then your problem is that the video card isn't powerful enough to run games on a 1920x1080 display. The resolution of the GAME is only part of the equation. Your video card still has to send instructions for all the pixels on the display resolution, and 1920x1080 has nearly twice the number of pixels as 1366x768.
posted by sbutler at 1:08 PM on March 27, 2011

Sbutler: Thanks for the suggestion. You know, as I was finishing writing out this question, I thought to myself, I really ought to try it in non-clamshell mode. And indeed, using the built-in display (which is actually natively 1440x900, according to System Profiler), the game seemed to operate tolerably - even when setting the game to use 1440x900. I'll also try setting the external monitor to that resolution and then running the game that way. (My preference would be to play the game on the external screen.)
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 1:28 PM on March 27, 2011

So it looks like my external monitor (Dell S2309W) doesn't support exactly 1440x900.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 1:39 PM on March 27, 2011

One possibility is that running it in clamshell mode increases the likelihood of CPU throttling due to heat. 2010 MBAs are supposed to be better about this than the older models, but I'm not sure anyone outside apple really knows the details. (You should be able to see whether it is throttling using iStat or something.) So try running it on the external monitor in non-clamshell mode.
posted by advil at 1:44 PM on March 27, 2011

Sorry, meant to include the list of available resolutions on the Dell external monitor:

640 x 480
640 x 480 (stretched)
800 x 600
800 x 600 (stretched)
848 x 480
1024 x 576
1024 x 768
1024 x 768 (stretched)
1280 x 720
1280 x 960
1280 x 1024
1344 x 1008
1360 x 768
1600 x 900
1920 x 1080

What am I best off trying to run the external screen at?
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 2:15 PM on March 27, 2011

I would try a resolution less than the native resolution on your Air. 1360x768 is the closest one, and the aspect ratio is almost correct (1.77... native, 1.770833... OS). Probably won't even notice, although in graphics sometimes even minuscule differences can have a large impact. Won't know until you try. 1280x720 is the highest one listed with the same exact aspect ratio as your monitor.
posted by sbutler at 2:21 PM on March 27, 2011

Thanks a ton, sbutler. Really appreciate all your help here. One more question: Do you know of any sort of utility which will switch my monitor into a new resolution when I try to play DA? In other words, something that will work behind the scenes when I click on the DA icon, so that I don't have to first go into System Preferences and manually change the resolution each time?
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 2:28 PM on March 27, 2011

Don't know of an app that auto switches, but if you go into System Preferences -> Displays, in the lower left there's a "Show displays in menu bar". Makes it easier to switch.
posted by sbutler at 2:32 PM on March 27, 2011

So it's definitely better at a lower resolution on the external screen, but still choppy (dialog in particular). Any other thoughts or recommendations?
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 2:52 PM on March 27, 2011

How is the monitor attached to the Mac? By which I mean, what sort of cable are you using?

Not wishing to be condescending, but if you don't know what I mean, take a look here. It's most likely going to be a Digital Visual Interface (DVI), a High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI), or, possibly, if it's a Mac/Dell pairing, a DisplayPort interface.

The reason I ask is that certain connectors handle certain resolutions better/worse than others. If you have multiple choices then it might not be a totally terrible idea to try something else. I don't know anything about DisplayPort but certainly if the choice was between DVI or HDMI, I would go with HDMI.

And even with a Mac I'm sure you'd still want to try the usual nonsense: close programs you aren't using, update drivers, maybe try patching the game if there's a patch available.
posted by tumid dahlia at 4:13 PM on March 27, 2011

I'm familiar with what you mean - I'm using a DVI connector. That's really my only option at present, because for the Air, you need to buy an adapter, and I'd rather not have to buy a separate one for a different sort of connector. Out of curiosity, why would you go with HDMI over DVI? (As it happens, the Dell only supports VGA and DVI - no HDMI.)

And I've done all the other stuff: Closed all other programs, ran all the updates on the game, ran software update on my system, etc.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 4:26 PM on March 27, 2011

Most of the information about the geforce 320m says that it does not have dedicated memory, but shares system memory.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:32 PM on March 27, 2011

Out of curiosity, why would you go with HDMI over DVI?

Personal preference more than anything. Convenience, if you pressed me. The only real advantage is HDMI deals with audio as well, there's no difference in image quality and a negligible difference in speed.

If the GPU shares system memory as Ad hominem suggests, there may be a way to configure it to take a larger chunk. System memory is inferior to dedicated graphics memory, obviously, but the more the merrier, and if you've got 4GB total, it would be worth trying to get it to use 512MB or even 1GB.

This is usually hard-wired into the GPU, so I doubt there's just a little slider bar sitting in System Properties or whatever that will let you change it. However, there may be a third-party "tweaking" tool if you Google around. You could also Google around for "Dragon Age tweaks Mac" or queries along those lines, there could be some people out there with tips to help you squeeze a bit more performance out of the thing.
posted by tumid dahlia at 4:49 PM on March 27, 2011

Apparently, operating the Air in clamshell mode was causing serious problems. The Air doesn't have a fan, of course, though it does a decent job of staying at a reasonable temperature if the lid is open. If it's shut, it will overheat and start to throttle back the processor. This was even more pronounced with a resource-intensive game like Dragon Age. However, even operating in "open" mode, the game's performance is far from great. I've only played it a few minutes (it just hasn't held my interest), and gameplay was somewhat laggy, especially during the one real battle I participated in.

So my advice would generally be to only play this game on an Air if you're willing to put with this kind of less-than-ideal performance.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 1:07 PM on April 27, 2011