For those out there who have EA’s Battlefield 2142 for the Mac, you might want to know this. It offers the option to toggle the following settings:

• Full Screen Mode - Tells BF2142 to start in Fullscreen mode, unchecked it will open in Windowed mode (enabled by default).
• Use FBO for Backbuffer - No idea, but it seems to have little no affect on performance (also enabled by default).
• Fixed Function via Vertex Programs - No idea but it seems to help, and its enabled by default.
• Show FPS - Displays the current FPS in the top-left corner of the window or screen (disabled by default).
• Display this on subsequent starts - Do you want this settings window to open next time you launch the game (disabled by default).

The settings window also has two buttons, Play which starts the game and Quit which closes the settings window.

To get this window, navigate to ~/Library/Preferences/Battlefield 2142 Preferences/. Open the file config with a text editor and find the line “DisplaySettingsDialog” = “N”, replace the N with a 1. Save the file and start the game.

Apple’s Mac Pro doesn’t come with much of a video card in its default configurations. The Mac Pro I have (2007 model with 2x 2.66 Ghz Dual-Core Xeon CPUs) came with the NVIDIA 7300GT, which is not good for much. The new Mac Pros have the option to get the NVIDIA 8800GT, but the older ones cannot upgrade to the 8800GT because of the PCI Express 2.0 requirement.

For older Mac Pro owners the only upgrade option is the ATI X1900XT, which is a good graphics card but not as good as the 8800GT new Mac Pro owners have as an option. The X1900XT is not as good as an 8800GT, but still better than the 7300GT older Mac Pros came with.

Gaming: Performance differences between the 7300GT and the X1900XT are great. I tried Crysis, Counter-Strike Source and Unreal Tournament 3, all Windows games under Vista Home Premium.

Crysis: With the 7300GT I had to play the game with everything set to Low and at the lowest screen resolution the game supported. Performance, particularly the frame rate were playable, around 24 FPS. With the X1900XT I could play crysis at my screen’s native resolution, 1680 x 1050 with everything on Medium. Performance was comparable, a frame rate in the 20’s. Since the X1900XT does not support DirectX 10 (DX10), the highest setting available in Crysis was High, at the native resolution of the monitor (1680 x 1050) with the quality settings all set to High the game was not playable, but only by a few frames. I suppose that if you liked the quality that High offered and didn’t mind a large hit in the frame rate it would be playable.

Counter-Strike Source: Counter-Strike Source was a game I used to play on my old P4 gaming rig with an ATI 9800Pro, which could play everything set to the maximum setting at the native resolution of the monitor (1680 x 1050). I expected similar performance from the 7300GT, but it did not deliver. Just like Crysis, I had to set the resolution to the lowest setting and reduce the game’s visual setting. The X1900XT took care of all these problems and allowed me to play at my monitor’s native resolution with everything set to the highest setting.

Unreal Tournament 3: I haven’t purchased the retail copy yet, but I will. This game was with the Demo version. I also didn’t have a chance to try this game out on the 7300GT, so this is only on the X1900XT. The game played great, with everything set to the highest setting available and with the resolution set to 1680 x 1050. The performance was great and the frame rate did not get in the way of playing the game.

Below are two screen shots of the Vista Experience Index rating of the NVIDIA 7300GT and the ATI X1900XT.

• Vista Experience Index rating: NVIDIA 7300GT (Mac Pro)
• Vista Experience Index rating: ATI X1900XT (Mac Pro)

Boot camp will only allow you to use 2Gb of RAM, even if your computer has more than 2Gb of RAM. This is not the limit of a 32 bit system, its something Apple did in boot camp. The only solution I know of is to try the 64 bit version of windows, which Apple tells users not to use. Vista Anytime upgrade will not let you change from 32 bit to 64 bit.

Only Vista Business and Ultimate will utilize your Mac Pro’s two physical processors. I wish I knew this before I ordered Vista Home Premium… Vista will see all four cores in my quad-core Mac Pro in Device Manager, but you cannot use more than one physical processor (limited to two cores). Vista Anytime upgrade should take care of this problem. To my knowledge XP does not have a processor limit.