Factorio Forums

My friend and I have been trying to play Factorio together. I've been playing just fine on my PC and Mac fine for the last couple of weeks. He got it the other night and it starts to lag right away. Here is his hardware and some of the symptoms we've noticed.

Mac 2.4 ghz Intel core i5
4gb ddr 3 1333 MHz
Intel HS graphics 3000 384 mb

First time he got it he purchased it through Steam. When both started it moved at a crawl. After a while we completely erased his Mac and reinstalled clean OS and restarted Steam and Factorio and still it was slow. We suspected Steam so we returned it and bought Factorio directly from site and still really slow. Even before we get into the game its slow to load and nearly impossible to navigate the menu. If we quit the game Mac starts running fine again.

Anything ideas?

Intel HS graphics 3000 384 mb

This is clearly under the required specs. The game needs 512 MB to run smoothly.

Koub wrote: This is clearly under the required specs. The game needs 512 MB to run smoothly.

Do you know if the game is coded to specifically look for 512 MB or RAM? Since he's running a Mac A lot of the information I'm reading states he needs to upgrade to 8GB of RAM from 4. At which point the system will allocate more VRAM to the intel Graphics 3000.

Also when he downloaded the Demo it didn't have these issues. Obviously its different than the full product. Just seems like this should've exposed this before buying it.

thanks for the help.

What are the minimal PC requirements?
1GB RAM, 512MB dedicated video memory, 1280x720 screen resolution.

Source : https://www.factorio.com/faq

And on Steam (sorry for the French version) :

MINIMUM:
Système d'exploitation : OSX El Capitan, Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion, Lion.
Processeur : Dual core 1.5Ghz
Mémoire vive : 2 GB de mémoire
Graphiques : 512MB Video Memory
Espace disque : 512 MB d'espace disque disponible

The demo has less content, so there is less to load. That's why it can run on really low end (or very old) setups.

[Edit] Are you 100% sure there is no setting in the BIOS that allows him to tune the amount of RAM allocated to graphics ?

Macs don't have bios like PCs do. But you were right. We upgraded his RAM to 8gb and its smooth as a whistle. For anyone who wants to know. Most Macs (but not all) have Intel integrated graphics. They borrow the system memory to be used as video memory.

4GB system RAM = 384 MB of Video RAM

8GB system RAM = 512 MB of Video RAM

The mac will dynamically change when you add more RAM.

Beyond that folks will need to use Terminal to enter UNIX code to override the 512MB cap that Apple programs. Unless it's a newer model. Usually harmless but still not recommended or required for Factorio. Easy Google search if you're looking for how to do this.