[eicca]

Running 3.7.4 official on OSX 10.12.2, MacBook Pro 13" 2011 model. Using MediaVPs 2014, currently playing retail FS2 campaign.

Sometimes my computer drops to 5fps when a Sathanas model is rendered, in game or in tech room. Sometimes it runs it just fine. It's never consistent. I've stripped down the effects to mostly basic stuff, but like I said, sometimes it runs just fine.

How can I go about figuring out what's killing my FPS?

[Mongoose]

I'd hazard a guess that the fact you're playing on a 13" Macbook is what's killing your FPS.  I sincerely doubt that thing has any sort of dedicated video card.  Exactly which graphical features have you disabled at this point?

[eicca]

I'd hazard a guess that the fact you're playing on a 13" Macbook is what's killing your FPS.  I sincerely doubt that thing has any sort of dedicated video card.  Exactly which graphical features have you disabled at this point?

I've disabled differed lighting, framebuffer shockwaves, post processing, soft particles, anti-aliasing, glow maps, missile lighting and shadows. Like I said, some of the time it runs great. Some of the time, completely randomly, it runs terrible. Doesn't seem to be related to background processes.

[DahBlount]

I'd wager that your entire system is going to have performance issues here and there depending on the mod you're playing. The original FS2 campaign was designed for old systems, so it shouldn't suffer too much there. Mods from recent times have taken advantage of modern hardware to abuse the hardcoded limits of the game, having battlefields with tons of weapons and ships flying around (beams are a BIG offender in terms of performance). There's not much you can really do to fix performance unless you were to upgrade to hardware with much greater performance limits.

[AdmiralRalwood]

I'd hazard a guess that the fact you're playing on a 13" Macbook is what's killing your FPS.  I sincerely doubt that thing has any sort of dedicated video card.  Exactly which graphical features have you disabled at this point?

I've disabled differed lighting, framebuffer shockwaves, post processing, soft particles, anti-aliasing, glow maps, missile lighting and shadows.

Have you tried -no_glsl?

[FrikgFeek]

Try tracking how much video memory you're using through something like RTSS and MSI Afterburner. I'd wager if you're getting massive slowdowns when a YUEG ship like the Sath is rendered it's probably because you're running out of VRAM.

[jr2]

I'd hazard a guess that the fact you're playing on a 13" Macbook is what's killing your FPS.  I sincerely doubt that thing has any sort of dedicated video card.  Exactly which graphical features have you disabled at this point?

I've disabled differed lighting, framebuffer shockwaves, post processing, soft particles, anti-aliasing, glow maps, missile lighting and shadows.

Have you tried -no_glsl?

This.  You're probably on an Intel integrated card.  Which uses available normal RAM as video RAM (much slower than real VRAM, btw).

[eicca]

Sounds like it could be RAM issues then, if it's intermittent.