Does GZDoom run successfully on macs with intel hd4000?

[printz]

I wonder if buying a low end macbook pro with good enough specs but Intel hd4000 integrated gfx would allow me to play gzdoom, and without glitches or missing features. My current macbook only has Intel GMA, which is too weak -- either it will refuse to run, or it will work, but slow and with visual glitches (some times crashing ). I'm talking about the Mac version of gzdoom that's somewhere in the internet. I read that hd4000 may be better.

[Graf Zahl]

The HD4000 offers the performance of a 5 year old low end graphics card. Whether it's feature limited on GZDoom depends only on its shader capabilities. If it supports GLSL fully it may be ok

It needs to support the GL_EXT_GPU_shader4 extension in order to use shader based features fully. It still needs decent shader performance or you'll not be able to enjoy it.

Anyway, if you want to play games, don't go cheap. This chipset is low end garbage that's not worth spending money on.

[printz]

Is GZDoom noticeably less intensive than modern games (such as Doom 3 and newer)? Though I did experience slowdowns on my equipped PC in maps with too many dynamic light sources, so who knows…

Then again, my main reason for using GZDoom is to be able to decently play maps with many 3D floors (including sloped) and portals. Maybe ZDoom catches up, if it hasn't already (I didn't verify).

[Graf Zahl]

Performance very much depends on mapping style. From benchmarks the 4000 looks a bit slower like a Geforce 9800.
This should be fine for most maps but some more demanding stuff may cause slowdowns.
Remember, when Doom3 came out even those cards weren't available yet.

[printz]

Performance very much depends on mapping style. From benchmarks the 4000 looks a bit slower like a Geforce 9800.

Slower like the GeForce 9800? Then it sounds good to me, since I have a GeForce 9600 GT in my desktop, and it serves me well, no slowdowns unless in special situations, for what 3D games I use.

[Graf Zahl]

Yes, but don't forget:

NVidia has better hardware and significantly better drivers.
I guess the Intel will lose a lot in the driver alone.

[Agentbromsnor]

Is GZDoom noticeably less intensive than modern games (such as Doom 3 and newer)? Though I did experience slowdowns on my equipped PC in maps with too many dynamic light sources, so who knows…

Then again, my main reason for using GZDoom is to be able to decently play maps with many 3D floors (including sloped) and portals. Maybe ZDoom catches up, if it hasn't already (I didn't verify).

Funny. The main reason for using GZDoom is so that I can play WADs in a 3D envirement without that horrible software rendering that hurts my eyes. I'm not kidding; if I use mouselook in ZDoom I litterally get nauseous because all the verticle lines stay verticle, so the entire field of view gets distorted.

I've downloaded WADs that come in a zip-file with ZDoom included, but even then I usually look for a way to run it with GZDoom.

As for specs, I'm using a intel dual core 3 ghz with 4 gb RAM and a ATI Saphire RADEON and it runs fine for me (yes, even with the often dreaded ATI!). Although I do have to admit that when a map has door that contains a large space with lots of things behind it, it can cause a slight hickup before I can enter. Its just a minor issue though.

[Rachael]

I wonder if buying a low end macbook pro with good enough specs but Intel hd4000 integrated gfx would allow me to play gzdoom

Even low end, Macs are horribly overpriced. That, and GZDoom doesn't run natively in Mac OSX (last I checked) and getting WINE to run with it well is a bitch. Even if you use boot camp and boot to windows, Graf does have a point: Intel GPU chipsets are a horrible rip-off, they are years behind the times and their drivers aren't a heck of a lot better. Their drivers struggle to render things correctly. I'd just go with NVidia or ATI, you'll have a lot better performance. You'll probably also want to note that because GZDoom was developed on NVidia hardware, it was optimized for it, and will run a lot smoother on it. (ATI's OpenGL implementation is noticably slower on all games, not just GZDoom)

Get a non-Nac with a low end NVidia chipset. Even a 9600 can run GZDoom beautifully and will not cause you any problems.

Low end ATI's are also somewhat decent but performance can be a bit wonky especially in complex areas. ATI's drivers do not handle GZDoom's state-switch commands as smoothly as NVidia drivers do.

[Gez]

That, and GZDoom doesn't run natively in Mac OSX (last I checked)

There's no Mac version of the OpenGL init code (yet) and for some reason the Unix code doesn't work on Apple's iBSD. So you can get GZDoom running natively on Macs, but only in software mode, which is nearly pointless.

However, there is this. Please note though that it practically uses a different OpenGL renderer: large parts of the OpenGL code have been rewritten, so porting "just" the Mac code from it isn't easy. (Especially not when you do not yourself have a Mac to check if what you're attempting to port runs on the target platform.)