Valve recently introduced Mac owners to Steam and the company is confident the Apple-made computers will make more than adequate gaming machines, especially now that Apple, ATI and Nvidia are working hard to improve things.
On the Steam forums, one user complaining of 'abysmal performance' was told Apple, Nvidia and ATI were all working with Valve to improve performance and things should improve as drivers are updated.
Lobsters:
Anyone else getting about 1/3 of the performance that they normally would under Windows?
I'm running a Mac Pro 2.93ghz 8-core machine with 16GB RAM. I have both the GeForce GTX 285 and a Radeon 4780 and neither of them get anywhere close to where I'm at under windows. Either card under OS X gets around 45 fps average under mild settings whereas under windows will net me ~150fps with completely maxed settings.
I know there are some performance tuning options that guys use under windows to squeeze more performance out of the game. Does anyone have any tips for running under OS X?
Rbarris (VALVE):
Performance is going to improve as drivers are updated. I would expect modest improvements in short term and larger ones in longer term. No, I can't put dates on them.
We are making a lot of progress is identifying specific issues that need work inside the game and inside OpenGL and drivers. Apple, ATI and NVIDIA are all involved.
Check out the full thread here (via Engadget).
STOP! Well there's your problem right there, fella.
So let me get this straight, my quad core with 4gb ram and a 4890 which could be built for <900$ now, blows your $3300 Mac out of the water by a FPS factor of 3x? Silly Mac bois...gaming is for Windows
I was looking at a 4870 for a MAC. A used one on eBay still goes for $220. While a used 4890 for PC I have seen as low as $100.
STOP! Well there's your problem right there, fella.
I was looking at a 4870 for a MAC. A used one on eBay still goes for $220. While a used 4890 for PC I have seen as low as $100.
So let me get this straight, my quad core with 4gb ram and a 4890 which could be built for <900$ now, blows your $3300 Mac out of the water by a FPS factor of 3x? Silly Mac bois...gaming is for Windows
Mac is getting its start, but I doubt it will be on par with or better than WIndows in gaming anytime soon.
The drivers are a good start, but some of those machines need more that drivers!
His multi thousand dollar machine would get kicked in the pants, even if he used windows, by my machine wich costs 1/4 as much for me to build.
And try to play something only optimized for a mac, and you'll likely see the same thing, but reversed. Don't blame the rig. Blame the programmers.
First, they're working on the source engine for openGL and that's instantly applicable to linux.
Then there's the fact that they have the graphics people onboard for this on macs, so some of that should also spill over to linux.
Mac folks will never admit the Wintel boxes beat them in anything (for 1/2 the price)...
Mac Pro's aren't meant for gaming, they're meant for number crunching