Mac Gaming

One of the things that really seemed to improve the gaming experience on the iMac for me was updating the default ATI video drivers that came with Boot Camp. I didn’t measure how much of an improvement there was the first time I updated, but it was definitely significant. Here’s the tutorial I followed on YouTube, to upgrade the drivers so that the card was listed as a Radeon HD 2600 PRO. The tutorial is for Vista, but the steps are pretty similar for XP.

When I tried to follow these same steps earlier this week, with a new driver from ATI, it didn’t work. So, instead, I used Mobility Modder to convert and install the driver, which went off without a hitch. My card is once again listed as a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 XT, but I’ve gotten a bit of a frame rate boost (~4-5 fps) according to the Far Cry 2 benchmark tool. You can see the before and after test results in the gallery. Especially note the difference in the minimum frame rate for each loop — quite an improvement.