Valve: Apple, ATI, Nvidia to Improve Mac Gaming

By Jane McEntegart
published

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).

Jane McEntegart
103 Comments Comment from the forums
  • sliem
    "I'm running a Mac Pro..."

    STOP! Well there's your problem right there, fella.
    Reply
  • dark_lord69
    Perhaps gaming performance will improve but unless prices improve as well... I'll pass.
    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.
    Reply
  • Tuguz
    It won't be easy and will probably take a while to reach an adequate level.
    Reply
  • aznguy0028
    "I'm running a Mac Pro 2.93ghz 8-core machine with 16GB RAM. I have both the GeForce GTX 285"

    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 :)
    Reply
  • megamanx00
    I'm sure alot of it has to do with moving a primarily D3D game, under DirectX, to OpenGL. Driver optimizations will indeed help, but the source engine is going to need alot of work. Of course, it seems Mac users are deliriously happy to pay more for their hardware, so they probably won't spend too much time improving it :p
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    Even if they make improvements, the performance will never be the same. DX has had the gaming spotlight for nearly 20 years while OpenGL has not. That means game devs had the time to leaqrn the tricks, tweaks and optimizations on DX while not the same in GL.

    Mac is getting its start, but I doubt it will be on par with or better than WIndows in gaming anytime soon.
    Reply
  • rembo666
    I would never own a Mac, but I'm happy that OpenGL drivers will finally get some love. This will benefit Apple, Windows, and Linux. The reason is that there are a bunch of cross-platform applications that use OpenGL and could use a performance boost.
    Reply
  • anthropophaginian
    A lot of Macs have underpowered graphics cards as they were not designed with gaming in mind. It's just as well that valve started with the mature source engine games as many of them wouldn't handle any more than that.
    The drivers are a good start, but some of those machines need more that drivers!
    Reply
  • razercultmember1
    Mac Pro. 'Nuff said. :P
    Reply
  • builderbobftw
    More like mac-unpro.

    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.
    Reply