Well on normal it's adequate and a bit nicer on the worse distance but that's no fun. The thing is the free version is a shitty flash app, and I do have to wonder how representative of the real products performance it is.
The free flash app is slower than the paid launcher in general. But there are things in paid minecraft that can bog things down. Lighting, differing monster spawns and etc. Plus there's the sort of problem like java memory leak to take into account. And of course, the rare bad update that breaks the game's speed outright.
BUT! The good news is there are ways to optimize minecraft. Unlike the free version you can fiddle with everything to make it work faster from your pc itself to using fan mods designed to make minecraft run better.
I am trying to sound optimistic but the basic message here is you can make it run ok on an older machine with a lot of work on your end.
Or wait I guess I am trying to sound antagonistic? Well whatever it is a fun game.
My desktop computer is running with an Intel Quad Core 64-bit Q6600 2.40 GHz, clocked to 3.01 GHz, 2MB L2 cache (water cooling.) Have 8gb RAM at 800 MHz or something and msi N465GTX M2D1G craphics card. I have absolutely no problems with lag. The game runs smooth here. Also I'm using Windows 7 64-bit Edition as OS.
A little edit to respond to post above me: The memory leak bug seems to have been fixed, for now. I only encounter it on the server software, but that only happens if some users go crazy with TNT. Last that happened the poor old PC crashed. It have 2gb RAM and about the same in PF, and everything were gone! Only 16mb free in the PF, haven't seen anything use THAT much memory in my life.
Yeah, my old laptop was a 2.2Ghz dual core P4 portable with 768MB of RAM, Minecraft Java version ran at .1 FPS; VNES ran at 3FPS. Java didn't work for anything on that computer. Battlefield Heros wouldn't even start up! But now, everything runs 60Fps and it's great on my new modern laptop.
I didn't overclock it, but samaron and I have the same quad-core chip(though I got 3GB RAM and I got an x2600 HD something or other Radeon card that's just 256MB ram) for our desktops. I had no doubt that beast could handle the game.
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BUT! The good news is there are ways to optimize minecraft. Unlike the free version you can fiddle with everything to make it work faster from your pc itself to using fan mods designed to make minecraft run better.
I am trying to sound optimistic but the basic message here is you can make it run ok on an older machine with a lot of work on your end.
Or wait I guess I am trying to sound antagonistic? Well whatever it is a fun game.
A little edit to respond to post above me:
The memory leak bug seems to have been fixed, for now. I only encounter it on the server software, but that only happens if some users go crazy with TNT. Last that happened the poor old PC crashed.
Anyone got any saved levels on file to post?