" Here's an update/solution for you and your readers. After emailing you last night and continuing to toil away, though it has never effected anything at all before in this manner, I shut off ATIcellerator II out of "I've tried everything else so i might as well try this" frustration and whaddayaknow, that solved the problem.
Even at the fairly modest overclock I had it set at 418.50 (10.71%) / 366.75 (8.67%), it was a major issue with Quake 4. Oddly, I didn't have this issue at all with Doom 3 (in fact ATIcellerator II helped pep its performance up a touch), but perhaps the engine has been tweaked significantly.

Hopefully, this info will help others fix or outright avoid this problem on their machines. A side note; this shouldn't scare folks away from ATIcellerator II, the program has been fantastic and, at the settings I use, has never caused any problems with any other game or software.
Thanks, Christian "

I didn't know he had overclocked the card before, but definitely something to remember for those that have. If you're overclocking a card and see any display problems, back off to the stock speeds as a test. I asked the first Quake4/9800 SE owner that reported the problem if he had overclocked the card and he said no, but it would be interesting to see if downclocking it would help though. (I've added Christian's comments to the previous page here on Reader Reports on ATIcellerator II Overclocking Utility)
BTW - a reader replied to this post he's also seen snow in his 128MB 9800 Pro during some QT movies and in Jedi Knight II. (The snow would be more visible in dark areas.)

"Mike... Found this for your readers:

Hello, I cannot find a working solution for this posted so I'll post the solution I came up with (well, cobbled together from other people's hard work). I am using a MacBook Pro and an external G-Tech Q drive that supports USB 2.0. While XP does not officially support booting from a USB drive there is a way around it.

This solution requires access to a PC and is a bit time-consuming.

1. Use BootCamp to create a 5GB XP partition.
2. Using a PC and your Windows XP SP2 CD, go through the following process to create a USB enabled XP SP2 installation CD:
   http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176
3. Plug your USB 2.0 external drive into your mac.
4. Put your new XP SP2 CD into your MAC and boot holding down the "C" key.
5. XP installation should begin, when you get to the drive choice, be sure to choose your USB drive. You may have to pre-format this drive to NTFS, mine was already formatted.
6. You will get a screen warning you that drive C needs to be formatted. This is OK because XP needs to write some temporary data to the startup (internal) disk. It will format the 5GB XP partition you created in step 1.
7. Follow the installation prompts and when your Mac reboots be sure to hold down the Option key. You will get a choice to boot to either your OSX installation, XP or the XP CD. Choose the XP hard drive.
8. The normal XP installation will continue. You will get some warnings about unsigned divers. This is fine and is occurring because you tampered with the XP installation files in step 2. NOTE: My installation hung once here. I just reboot and tried from step 7 again and it worked fine.
9. Once XP comes up install your BootCamp device drivers.

Good luck! I just now finished this so I have some testing to do. A very big thank you to emmanual from ngine.
-William R."

" Mike, Roxio allowed me a sneak peek of Popcorn 2 so I had a chance to try it out before its release on Wednesday. I wondered if I would find any use for Popcorn 2 since I'm satisfied using Toast 7 for video conversion and copying. It's almost like Roxio is playing leapfrog between these apps. Toast 6 couldn't compress video DVDs so Popcorn 1 was created to do that. Then Toast 7 added the Popcorn compression plus allows conversion of the videos to other formats such as DivX or iPod Video.
Now Popcorn 2 can do all that plus give much greater control of what gets included or excluded from a DVD that is being copied. Because Popcorn 2 does some things with more control and in a simpler interface than Toast 7 I'm glad to start using Popcorn 2 for these video-export and DVD copying purposes and continue to use Toast 7 for its many other purposes.
I'm particularly pleased that Popcorn2 doesn't require the time-consuming extraction of MPEGs from VIDEO_TS folders before converting to other formats the way Toast 7 requires.
-Thomas "

" My friend Mike had me check the permissions panel on the two (non-boot) drives I was unable to render on previously - somehow I had been eliminated as a user. Once I reinstated myself, I was able to render without problems on either drive. YEAH! I'm excited.
THANKS for everybody's suggestions.
-Kathleen "

Thanks again to all the readers that sent suggestions. Much appreciated. (I updated the Wed. archived news page to include the above.)

" I see that Logitech has released an updated version of their Control Center software.
Not sure what the changes are, but it seems to include support for Intel Macs in addition to the newer Logitech products.
No direct link that I could find, so I'm using the support link for their new wireless Mac keyboard.
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/downloads/software/US/EN,CRID=1796,contentid=11483
-Erik "

FYI - a reader sent a note that Logitech notes this does not support Fast User Switching.

" I have a Rev.A 1.8GHz 20in iMac G5 with 768MB of RAM and the game runs like total crap. I borrowed a friends 1GB stick of RAM to see if having 1.5GB of RAM would help the game performance and didn't see much change. I guess it has a lot to do with the really bad nvidia card they used back in the day.

I'm considering picking up a Core Duo system for my daily graphics/video work and my wife is obsessed with the Sims so I'd be really interested in hearing some impressions of the game running on the new hardware.
-Brandon T. "

If you have an Intel CPU Mac and the Sims 2, let me know what you think of the performance. Thanks.
Here's replies from an Intel CPU Mini (intel GMA950 graphics) and an Intel iMac (w/much better graphics chip than the Mini).

" Yes, I have just installed it on a dual core Mac Mini and it does run like crap. Frame rate is real slow. It also locks up when I try to change the resolution to the native 1650x1050 of my 20" wide screen monitor. I swear it runs better on my 1.25Ghz Powerbook.
I'm going to contact Aspyr today and complain.
-Antonio "

The Mini has onboard Intel GMA950 graphics with shared memory (not the best gaming graphics solution). Just for the record I asked how much ram the Mini had and he said 2GB. It's been years since I played a Sims game but I didn't think it was as graphically taxing as some FPS games but maybe things have changed. (Since the PC version is probably DirectX, I wonder if it would run better under XP on the Mini using bootcamp.)
A later reply from an Intel CPU iMac owner:

" I just installed The Sims 2 Universal on my Intel-based iMac (20"; 2GB RAM; 500GB HD) along with the The Sims 2: University. I am not a Sims player, but my son was looking over my should as I started it up and changed the graphics to the highest available. My son thought it looked great and ran fast.
Like I said, I am not a player so I can only give you this first impression. My children are out of school this week for spring break and I am sure that I will hear more about the game's play as the week progresses.
-Art "

Note: another reader later replied to this post with a FYI on the Univ. binary patch and expansions:

" I've been having issued with the Universal Patch for the Sims 2 working for me. So... I called Aspyr during lunch to ask a few questions about the Sims 2 patch. Things are alot clearer now. The patch is designed for Sims 2 without the "expansion packs" installed. If you install the patch after the expansion packs are installed it will always try to revert it back to the bare install.. and any attempt of starting the game will give you an error message.

They are currently working on Universal Patches for the Expansion Packs and they should be out soon.
The Tech on the phone was very helpful and apologized for any inconvenience they caused me.

It would have been really nice if the documentation with the patch actually mentioned that this doesn't support either of the expansion packs.... would have saved me alot of pain.

The odd thing is one of your readers (Art - see above) claims to be playing the game with the University Patch applied and getting great performance. I mentioned this to the Aspyr Tech on the phone and they were puzzled and restated that the patch only works with no expansion packs installed.

I wonder what process that reader used to get the game patched and running.
-Brandon T. "

I wrote Art to ask about this but am guessing he applied the patch to the base game before installing any expansion packs - and as for performance, he mentioned that his son said it ran 'fast'. (One subjective comment only.)
Update (4/19/2006) - Brandon later wrote:

"I ran the game with the expansion packs installed under Rosetta on my Core Duo iMac w/256MB of VRAM. It was playable but choppy, but it still had better performance than my old G4 Mac mini. And of course, when I removed the expansion packs and installed the Universal patch the game played silky smooth with all options turned up all the way. The new iMac has amazing gaming performance and I can't wait for the other Universal patches to be released.
Hopefully with this boot camp announcement Mac developers will keep coding popular games like this to OSX.
-Brandon T."

I linked to an article/commentary on that recently (that said it won't hurt Mac gaming development). I wonder if the Intel Mini owner that reported poor performance was due to having expansion packs installed (running under Rosetta) or if it's due to the Mini's onboard Intel GMA950 w/shared memory. (Would not be my choice for 3d/gaming, but I'd think the Sims would be more CPU bound than graphics.)

• About Apple Remote Desktop 3.0
• Apple Remote Desktop 3.0: Quit the Remote Desktop admin application before installing
• Apple Remote Desktop 3: First launch dialog causes a "Copy and Open" or Open Items task to fail
• Apple Remote Desktop 3: Your task server, "", could not be contacted
• How to uninstall or disable Apple Remote Desktop 2 or 3
• Remote Desktop 3: ARD 2.2 clients may hang during upgrade when running Mac OS X 10.3.8 or earlier
  
  
• Updating from Aperture 1.0.x to 1.1
• Aperture 1.1: Library not backward compatible with Aperture 1.0.x
• Aperture 1.1: "Configuration warning" alert when using with Mac OS X 10.4.5 or earlier
• Aperture 1.0: Checking RGB color values
• Aperture 1.0: Too Much Space Between Shots on Contact Prints
• Aperture: Avoiding issues with your External Editor (FAQ)
• Aperture: Color and gamma settings for print and web
• Aperture: How to export filenames without spaces
• Aperture: Images in excess of 100,000 not displayed
• Aperture: Metadata import/export issues (IPTC, keywords, EXIF)
• Aperture: Preserving Photoshop layers
  
  
• Boot Camp Assistant Beta: Doesn't work with multiple partitions
• Boot Camp Beta: Requirements, installation, and frequently asked questions (FAQ)
• Firmware update for Intel-based Mac does not install with non-GUID partition scheme
• About the (Intel CPU Macs) Firmware Restoration CD
  
  
• Final Cut Pro: Unexpected timecode breaks encountered with Batch Capture
• iDVD: Burning Double-Layer DVDs
• New SuperDrives support Double-Layer DVD burning
• iPod troubleshooting basics and service FAQ
• iPod: Compatible photo formats
• iTunes: Unable to import copy-protected audio discs
• Finding the timecode in iTunes
• Mac OS X: "Error -9672" when adding HP Photosmart 375 or 325 printer
• Mac OS X: "Network error -1011" when trying to use Software Update with Direcway Mac ISP
• Power Mac G5 (Late 2004) 1.8GHz models stop responding randomly
• How to transfer data from a PC to a Macintosh

• Review of WiebeTech Mini SATADock (IT-Enquirer)
• Free eBooks (Complex queries with Spotlight, Colour Correcting Old Degraded Photographs) (IT-Enquirer)
• Adobe Disable VM Buffering plug-in (Removes Photoshop CS2 painting pauses)
• M-Audio Firewire 410 and Firewire Audiophile 1.7.1 driver updates (dated 4/14/2006)

• Daystar G4 550MHz in iMac slot-loading (rated 10)
• Daystar G4 433MHz in Powerbook G3 lombard (rated 10)
• XLR8 G4 1.35GHz in iMac G4 (rated 10)
  
  (Full reviews of G4 and G3 upgrades compared to stock CPUs, including real world apps/game tests, install info, etc. are linked at the CPU upgrades page. OC/CPU module articles are on the Systems page.)

You can find the full reports by searching the database selecting the indicated Mac model and upgrade card brand/type. If you've upgraded the CPU on your Mac, send a review with your experience and rating. Search the database for entries from most every upgradable Mac model *before* you buy. (Searchable by mac model/upgrade brand).