COD4 - Not impressed

[costabunny]

Well I eagerly waited for the near 1 hour to install. Then to apply the 1.7 patch.... and fired up the MP...

NOT IMPRESSED!


Cannot use my old profile (from Windows) - even with the key change to windows key.
Framerate sucks (even on lower settings/res)
Game is a bit juddery (OpenGL sucks at gaming)
Waited months for this darned game
Verdict - Versus the same game running on the same hardware under Vista? Windows beats the MAC OS version hands down.

I will never buy another shooter forthe mac again. Yes my MAC Rules for all my worky, and most fun stuff. But for Games its windows all the way. I wish this were not the case but it seems it is.

dissapointed, but not disheartened :)

[Consultant]

It's a fact that very few games are optimized for Mac OS. Just look at the benchmarks from various sites, one example is barefeats.com

However, COD4 plays great on MBP.

[palebluedot]

Well I eagerly waited for the near 1 hour to install. Then to apply the 1.7 patch.... and fired up the MP...

NOT IMPRESSED!


Cannot use my old profile (from Windows) - even with the key change to windows key.
Framerate sucks (even on lower settings/res)
Game is a bit juddery (OpenGL sucks at gaming)
Waited months for this darned game
Verdict - Versus the same game running on the same hardware under Vista? Windows beats the MAC OS version hands down.

I will never buy another shooter forthe mac again. Yes my MAC Rules for all my worky, and most fun stuff. But for Games its windows all the way. I wish this were not the case but it seems it is.

dissapointed, but not disheartened :)

No offense but maybe your just a nub who didn't tweak his settings right :P

Also have you ever played Quake Wars on the Mac? That games runs as good if not better then its native Windows client.

BTW If your game took an hour to install you did something wrong.

Buy the game and support Mac gaming everyone! :P

[evan g]

No offense but maybe your just a nub who didn't tweak his settings right :P

Also have you ever played Quake Wars on the Mac? That games runs as good if not better then its native Windows client.

BTW If your game took an hour to install you did something wrong.

Buy the game and support Mac gaming everyone! :P

um... i don't think you noticed the Demi GodESS thing..

anyways, @costabunny

i don't blame you. Mac's just arent made for gaming these days. They are made for everything else! that's why instead of figuring out some way to fix the mac gaming market, they just came out with Boot camp!

[t19880821]

No offense but maybe your just a nub who didn't tweak his settings right :P

Also have you ever played Quake Wars on the Mac? That games runs as good if not better then its native Windows client.

BTW If your game took an hour to install you did something wrong.

Buy the game and support Mac gaming everyone! :P

No offense, but you shouldn't even HAVE to tweak your settings.. AT ALL.

[pianoplayer1]

Well I eagerly waited for the near 1 hour to install. Then to apply the 1.7 patch.... and fired up the MP...

NOT IMPRESSED!


Cannot use my old profile (from Windows) - even with the key change to windows key.
Framerate sucks (even on lower settings/res)
Game is a bit juddery (OpenGL sucks at gaming)
Waited months for this darned game
Verdict - Versus the same game running on the same hardware under Vista? Windows beats the MAC OS version hands down.

I will never buy another shooter forthe mac again. Yes my MAC Rules for all my worky, and most fun stuff. But for Games its windows all the way. I wish this were not the case but it seems it is.

dissapointed, but not disheartened :)

I was able to transfer my profile fine... change key -> transfer profile -> and change back key if u want

[costabunny]

No offense but maybe your just a nub who didn't tweak his settings right :P

Also have you ever played Quake Wars on the Mac? That games runs as good if not better then its native Windows client.

BTW If your game took an hour to install you did something wrong.

Buy the game and support Mac gaming everyone! :P

Nub who didn't tweak his settings?? oh dear oh dear what a plank.... (lets not get into that shall we?) (Try accomplished computer person who belives SHE shouldn't have to tweak settings to play over 30fps on stock maps on a top spec machine!

if you have a suggestion to improve performance, lets have it then???? (and please leave th nub/noob etc comments for the xbox forums :p )

....and how do you do something wrong when installer simply copies from DVD to Hard disk??

I want support the Mac Gaming effort - but when people like me (who have many years experience with building PC Gaming systems) get a game that plays pretty poor out of the box on the Mac; its hard to be happy.

Its not really the macs fault - simply that DirectX is king for gaming API stuff these days (still praying for next incarnation for OpenGL to catch up)

[palebluedot]

Nub who didn't tweak his settings?? oh dear oh dear what a plank.... (lets not get into that shall we?) (Try accomplished computer person who belives SHE shouldn't have to tweak settings to play over 30fps on stock maps on a top spec machine!

if you have a suggestion to improve performance, lets have it then???? (and please leave th nub/noob etc comments for the xbox forums :p )

....and how do you do something wrong when installer simply copies from DVD to Hard disk??

I want support the Mac Gaming effort - but when people like me (who have many years experience with building PC Gaming systems) get a game that plays pretty poor out of the box on the Mac; its hard to be happy.

Its not really the macs fault - simply that DirectX is king for gaming API stuff these days (still praying for next incarnation for OpenGL to catch up)

OK first off I was just kidding - I am not a lolzilla forum troll. It is often easy to forget that sarcasm is hard to important with a emoticon.

That said - yes you do have to tweak your settings. COD 4 on Windows is a bit better but not by much if you find the right balance on the options pane. Since COD 4 is a port you should have known there would be a slight performance hit going it but its negligible (10 fps off 60+ isn't bad since your eye/monitor cant see more then that).

I am no idiot either and would go so far as to call myself a hardcore gamer for a decade who is obsessed with performance. That said I think your statement was a bit misleading. Anyone who buys a port should know its going to not perform as well and even us MBP users are getting fine performance on here - so like I said maybe turn off AA (as Aspyr cant seem to ever get AA right).

As for the install - mine took about 15 min so I don't see how yours could have taken an hour?

Lastly, it IS Macs fault. Open GL does not have the same API development as DX simply because Microsoft throws free money at the dev world to use their APIs and tools. On the same note Open GL is pretty powerful in its own right. What is bad in OS X with Open GL rests solely on Steve Jobs' shoudlers. The drivers for OS X are laughable, their investment in gaming negligible (and often hostile), and their response to Open GL enhancement slow and lazy. It took them six months to fix some minor GLSL bugs that still haven't totally been worked out. The reason gaming is dead on the Mac rests entirely on Apple and to a lesser degree on us. I am sick of hearing the "just bootcamp it" statement. If you enjoy boot-camping and using Windows great but I left Windows for OS X and try to minimize my time in their and maximize my gaming. I'm more then willing to occasionally shell out 60 bucks for Aspyr's steaming piles of stress if it means we will increase the OS X native gaming market share.

We wont make it better by wishing it away but if we show Apple and Valve/EA/Blizzard that we are committed (or staying committed in Blizz's case) then perhaps one day Mac gaming wont be mocked by the lolzillas on every forum this side of AOL.

(edit) P.S. forgive my use of the gendered he. I meant it as a generic gender neutral identifier - I have no way of knowing anyones gender on this forum and unfortunately English lacks a proper neutral identifier for such situations ;)

[Cromulent]

Game is a bit juddery (OpenGL sucks at gaming)

Why make a comment like that if you don't understand what you are saying?

[costabunny]

Ok I do apologise for assuming you were a little console-whore-troll :p

I just got up and was mean :(

I totally agree that Apple needs to do something, but it i the OpenGL that is lacking also. I want (truly) to have all my games native - I am a Mac after all, and I hate having to bootcamp. I expected more after all the comments I saw. (AA was offyesterday)

I have spent some time on my server this morning and have the framerate up a bit (at a quality hit that hurts), but a 8800GT with 2.8GHz CPUs should do more even with OpenGL :(

I mean I am getting frame rates now that are similar to what I am used to under bootcamp (thats how Ive been playing since I got the Mac Pro), however the quality and res is far far lower :(

I will persist (tho having to use a second PC for teamspeak is sucking while teamspeak is still under beta for the Mac).

The install is still a mystery - near an hour to copy 6.7GB from DVD to the Mac Hard disk (nothing else disk intensive was running). don't know whats going on there.....

[costabunny]

Why make a comment like that if you don't understand what you are saying?

I do understand what I am saying - Its juddery and OpenGL is far less capable than DirectX in its current incarnation (Ive used OpenGL on multiple platforms and its always less capable than a DX based app on the same hardware).

[Winni]

DirectX is more than just a graphics API like OpenGL, so you cannot compare the two that easily. If you want to compare the two, you can only compare the Direct3D subset of DirectX with OpenGL.

For developing a multi-platform game, OpenGL is your --only-- choice, there is no other graphics API for that purpose.

Regarding the performance, it's well known that Apple's graphics drivers are about as lousy as it gets, and especially their OpenGL support sucks rocks. When OpenGL-games are slow on the Mac, blame Apple, not the guys who wrote or ported the game.

On Vista, OpenGL is now translated to Direct3D-calls; which adds another performance-consuming layer and is the reason why on Vista OpenGL applications just have to be slower than DirectX-apps. And Microsoft did even that job better than Apple is at writing drivers for their own hardware and operating system.

Apple never cared about gaming on the Mac. Guess why I have an Xbox 360 standing next to my Mac Pro.

[Cromulent]

I do understand what I am saying - Its juddery and OpenGL is far less capable than DirectX in its current incarnation (Ive used OpenGL on multiple platforms and its always less capable than a DX based app on the same hardware).

No it isn't.

In terms of features OpenGL and Direct3D are on a level pretty much. The differences in terms of performance could be down to any number of reasons - none of which are directly related to the OpenGL API itself.

[pianoplayer1]

Well its definately a BIG hit.

On showdown on XP on my macbook pro 2.4 8600m with custom settings I can get like 120 fps outside dropping to about 60.

On the same map, same profile, same settings on osx I get 30 to 80 fps. Thats a huge performance drop! And it sometimes even drops below 30.

[234412]

Well seeing as PC's are the best atm for gaming you cant criticize it not being like it is on your PC. But what the hell? Its amazing I have no lag or anything nothing is slow at all for me and Im on an 24" imac with just the ATI graphics and I have got everything on the highest settings.

[sinisa]

Well its definately a BIG hit.

On showdown on XP on my macbook pro 2.4 8600m with custom settings I can get like 120 fps outside dropping to about 60.

On the same map, same profile, same settings on osx I get 30 to 80 fps. Thats a huge performance drop! And it sometimes even drops below 30.


Hi,

First, I'm a newbie here, so hi to all :-)

Regarding COD4 and other DX games on Mac - game companies in most cases (such as EA) do not use OpenGL at all on Macs. They use sub-systems such as Cider (check transgaming.com) that instantly creates virtual machine when user clicks on the app/game to run, and runs that game in it's own virtual environment. That means, game is STILL DX, and virtual machine is translating calls into OpenGL & GLSL. From user-perspective, player believes he is running Mac version of the game. And, it is slower than on a PC/Windows. Really, user is playing the game using virtual machine. That will NEVER on any OS give high performance.

[EDITED: p.s. performance drop using Cider-like environment is 20-40% depending on complexity of DX->GL calls, which is about the ratio you described: 120-60 on windows, and 30-80 on macosx ]


I'm OpenGL/C++ developer for more than 6 years now, and from my extensive experience I can tell you that there is no better API than OpenGL for 2D/3D rendering. I did a lot of work with D3D and it cannot give that level of performance and image quality as OpenGL can.

Reason why so many games are in DX and the ones done with GL sucks is simple:
1. DX is Microsoft's API, and Windows is the most spread OS, thus being the biggest market.
2. GL is constantly being crippled on Windows platforms, for well, almost decade and a half now, intentionally, by Microsoft, by not providing the latest drivers for OpenGL to be shipped with the system, or giving at least an option to Windows-user to easily update drivers. Let me just remind you that you do need to update DX if you wanna play the newest games (unless you just bought your copy of Win with newest DX packed in it) every now and then.
3. DX can be used on XBox,XBox360.
4. OpenGL can be used on Playstation3. Compared to XBox360, PS3 just started to spread the market.
5. Based on 1...4, game companies have a choice: make money for the biggest market using only 1 API to lower the cost, or, make a little more than that by using 2 API's with significantly increased cost. Math is easy. This means that most of resources is spent on DX-based games, thus making them more optimized, better graphics etc, while a lot less resources was spent on GL-based games, even though possibilities are even higher. OpenGL3.0 API is out, and it is ONE GENERATION ahead from DX10 (which by the way works only on XBox, while even with 9600 DX10 examples (from Microsoft's SDK) still have performance issues).

One more fact in favor of OpenGL:

1. Games done in older DX have no guarantee will work properly on the newest DX. Try to play any older game (ie. Cossacks, copy that worked perfectly after SP2 reports DirectDraw failure (DirectDraw is part of DX)). This basically means that whatever you do in DX will have life length until next service pack, next DX update or patch, after which you (developer) will have to make an update. Even Microsoft's updates of DX are very inconsistent: DX9 is actually upgraded from DX7, and not DX8, which was basically thrown to trash. This instability in core development means that base architecture of DX is full of patches & workarounds.

2. Games done in older version of OpenGL will ALWAYS work in newer versions, no matter what API's update is. OpenGL core is perfectly engineered, concrete-stable, and most important - is cross-platform STANDARD. This means, that not just one party decided what is the best (like in the case with DX), but parties such as NVIDIA and SGI (just one of members of board of directors) were involved. Having manufacturers of graphic card involved just shows you to what level architecture of OpenGL is.

[EDITED: p.p.s: OSX would not have such fancy GUI without OpenGL. Spaces & Doc uses GL. Genie effect uses GL. Finder's image preview mode uses GL. On Vista, DX is used for desktop composition. Vista cannot compare to OSX, neither with smoothness (I am not talking about creativity here, just performance) nor stability of desktop manager (here I refer only to desktop drawing, not general instability of Windows operating system, which is another story) ]

Cheers

[Rodus]

Also a noob (but longtime lurker). The use of Cider is one of the biggest performance damagers for any Mac game and unfortunately Aspyr will keep on using it to make life easier (and cheaper). Translating DX calls to Open GL is bound to hit the framerates and any Mac gamer worth their salt should know that no matter what your system you pretty much always have to tweak the settings.
I've just got COD4 and am running it on a C2D iMac - x1600 and I was pleasantly surprised that with a bit of tinkering it will run more then playably, with 2X AA.
Apples constant dismissal of gamers will hopefully take an about turn now that the iPhone is seen as a competent gaming platform. With decent drivers and native game ports there's no reason why OS X can't compete with Windoze for game speed.

[Eric5h5]

The use of Cider is one of the biggest performance damagers for any Mac game and unfortunately Aspyr will keep on using it to make life easier (and cheaper).

Aspyr does not use Cider.

--Eric

[sprice25]

i am very impressed with the performance on our (Early 2008) Mac Pro 2.8 Octo. We're running an ATI 3870, 4GB RAM on the Mac Pro. You have to tweak your settings. We're running most all the settings on their highest at a 1920x1200 resolution on our Cinema Display 24". It runs great. I am very impressed with the quality, similar if not better than gameplay on the PS3 version. I'll be writing a thorough review on our Mac App Blog in my sig later in November. Benchmarks and video will be included in the review. We're also going to test it on a MacBook Pro and also try it with our 3870 and 2600 in the Mac Pro. Should be interesting.

[sinisa]

Aspyr does not use Cider.

--Eric

So are they actually port entire game into native OpenGL? Or they use some other virtual machine?

[Eric5h5]

So are they actually port entire game into native OpenGL? Or they use some other virtual machine?

They have some in-house libraries that translate from Direct3D to OpenGL. Probably some manual work is involved too, I would imagine.

--Eric

[Rodus]

Eric is totally correct, my mistake, sorry. It is good to see that a porting house is making the effort but that aside I don't see COD4 as a failure at all. It runs great on my machine which is at minimum specs and is great fun.

[sinisa]

They have some in-house libraries that translate from Direct3D to OpenGL. Probably some manual work is involved too, I would imagine.

--Eric

When you say 'translate', you mean 'translate-in-run-time' or in 'compile-time'? Are their games native GL or still some sort of DX virtual machine?

[sinisa]

Eric is totally correct, my mistake, sorry. It is good to see that a porting house is making the effort but that aside I don't see COD4 as a failure at all. It runs great on my machine which is at minimum specs and is great fun.

mybe her mac has issue with hardware / driver...? running some GL/GLSL benchmarks could give an answer why is performance so low.. like output GL info that driver returns, which version, shader language, extensions etc.

[EDITED: @costabunny: i have this app i'm using to get gl info, maybe you could try it and post info file back to this thread: http://www.visionmaxstudio.com/temp/OpenGLInfo.dmg (~600kb) ]

[Eric5h5]

When you say 'translate', you mean 'translate-in-run-time' or in 'compile-time'? Are their games native GL or still some sort of DX virtual machine?

You'd have to ask Aspyr about that.

--Eric

[sinisa]

You'd have to ask Aspyr about that.

--Eric

Unless game was originally written in GL, I doubt they port it to native GL on mac. That would include rewriting 1) game code 2) render engine. Even with recoding 1), doing that for 2) is huge work, since all game companies usually use third-party render engines (such as Unreal, which is DX-based), and doing all that from scratch and still have same look & feel of the game and still have enough profit.... I don't believe that. They may claim it is not Cider, but it is some other v.machine, maybe their own, but still not gonna work as fast as mac & GL can push.... until games are developed in GL for both platforms (actually 3 platforms, since having it running on mac is 90% work done for Linux, same core, same API), mac gaming will still be behind windows.

[dnjmarlboro]

My experiences with CoD4 Mac:
C2D 3,02Ghz + 8800GT = same quality and FPS like playing under XP.

Finally i don't have to boot windose anymore.

[Luci3n]

I just upgraded my 3ghz 8 core MacPro to the 8800 GT vid card today.

It's like night and day difference compared to the 7300.

I still haven't tried some tweaks, but when I launched COD for the first time with the new card, it 'optimized' the settings. It looks great to me.

I highly recommend getting this card if you don't have one.

Lucien.

[palebluedot]

Speaking of GLSL and lag, all blame goes to Apple. Blizzard, Crossover, and WINE developers have all begged Apple for years now to fix their awful GLSL implementation and as usual apple ignores them citing no reason. There have been bug reports open for this for years - I talked to one developer who said hes given up after a year of them saying "we'll get around to it". Its a shame they are so hostile towards gamers at Apple and dont allocate their many resources to atleast minor development on some good drivers :(

We should start a "wake the @@#*# up, Apple" campaign to get better GL drivers with GLSL support that can atleast turn dx9 calls into glsl ones. I think right now any GLSL stuff gets tripled in the buffer if it is translated from DX9 due to shoddy/sloppy coding on apple's part (but I am no programmer so don't quote me on that)

[Alx9876]

Here's video of COD4 running on a new Macbook under Boot Camp.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drItRaF0iEU&feature=related

[guitarmaster18]

Hmmm... well, with maxed settings, my CoD4 runs perfectly in multiplayer (30-40 FPS Constant at a resolution of 1440x900, even when I hook into my 23 inch ACD it still runs at around 30 FPS) on my MacBook Pro in Mac OS X. It's interesting, however, that the single player gets MUCH worse framerates at the same specs as the multiplayer, leading me to believe that aspyr spent more time optimizing the multiplayer aspect than the single play aspect. This difference is hugely noticeable (a difference of, literally, around 20 FPS on my system.) Is anyone else experiancing these symptoms?

PS: I feel like I should have gotten the windows version... oh well :rolleyes:

[pianoplayer1]

Hmmm... well, with maxed settings, my CoD4 runs perfectly in multiplayer (30-40 FPS Constant at a resolution of 1440x900, even when I hook into my 23 inch ACD it still runs at around 30 FPS) on my MacBook Pro in Mac OS X. It's interesting, however, that the single player gets MUCH worse framerates at the same specs as the multiplayer, leading me to believe that aspyr spent more time optimizing the multiplayer aspect than the single play aspect. This difference is hugely noticeable (a difference of, literally, around 20 FPS on my system.) Is anyone else experiancing these symptoms?

PS: I feel like I should have gotten the windows version... oh well :rolleyes:

No actually singleplayer generally has lower framerates since the graphics are actually improved because of the lack of network connectivity. Also some singleplayer maps are much more vast in scope than the mp counterparts. The same hit is evident on the PC version - except its generally more than 30 fps for me in both sp and mp.

[mrfrosty]

No it isn't.

In terms of features OpenGL and Direct3D are on a level pretty much. The differences in terms of performance could be down to any number of reasons - none of which are directly related to the OpenGL API itself.

If not the API itself then perhaps the philosophy behind it. OpenGL is harder to develop for.

[gregorsamsa]

Lastly, it IS Macs fault. Open GL does not have the same API development as DX simply because Microsoft throws free money at the dev world to use their APIs and tools. On the same note Open GL is pretty powerful in its own right. What is bad in OS X with Open GL rests solely on Steve Jobs' shoudlers. The drivers for OS X are laughable, their investment in gaming negligible (and often hostile), and their response to Open GL enhancement slow and lazy. It took them six months to fix some minor GLSL bugs that still haven't totally been worked out. The reason gaming is dead on the Mac rests entirely on Apple and to a lesser degree on us. I am sick of hearing the "just bootcamp it" statement. If you enjoy boot-camping and using Windows great but I left Windows for OS X and try to minimize my time in their and maximize my gaming. I'm more then willing to occasionally shell out 60 bucks for Aspyr's steaming piles of stress if it means we will increase the OS X native gaming market share.

We wont make it better by wishing it away but if we show Apple and Valve/EA/Blizzard that we are committed (or staying committed in Blizz's case) then perhaps one day Mac gaming wont be mocked by the lolzillas on every forum this side of AOL.


I agree almost entirely, but for the bit about Boot Camp. I got a new 20" iMac (HD2600) about 5 months back. Since then I've bought 8 Mac-native games & intend to buy at least a couple more before the year's end. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but much more so than casual.

I'd love to continue to support Mac game developers uniquely, but I don't see myself holding out & continuing to miss out on excellent computer games like, for eg., the "Total War" series (not to mention cheaper PC versions), when Apple themselves don't give a hoot. So despite my (expected) 10 Mac-native titles in a relatively short time, & with more Mac-game buys intended, I strongly expect that like a lot of other Mac gamers, my only option later on will be to install a copy of Windows & Boot Camp it (probably when "Empire: Total War" comes out in February). After that, frankly, I'll probably buy mostly PC games & fewer Mac titles. So good luck to those who can stay "committed" indefinitely, but it seems that more & more Mac gamers are finding this increasingly difficult to do, for obvious reasons. Until Apple are prepared to enter into constructive discussions with game developers & start investing serious money in gaming, little can change.

[guitarmaster18]

No actually singleplayer generally has lower framerates since the graphics are actually improved because of the lack of network connectivity. Also some singleplayer maps are much more vast in scope than the mp counterparts. The same hit is evident on the PC version - except its generally more than 30 fps for me in both sp and mp.

Ahhh ok, so Aspyr didn't "optimize" the multiplayer, the multiplayer just has worse graphics. Ok, that makes sense now.

[hankolerd]

Unless game was originally written in GL, I doubt they port it to native GL on mac.

I don't know the story on what they did, but what it sounds like to me from what Eric said, though I don't know where he got his information, is that they take the base code, and run it through a translator, that outputs that code to an identical file in an identical project, but instead of directx code, it is written in openGL code. This is not at all hard to do if you know all the directx libraries and all the openGL libraries, though it would have taken a long time to write the translators, unless they wrote a translator to turn the libraries into translators, which could very well be the way they did it. When the translators were done, there is still sure to be plenty of errors that need to be fixed, this would explain the 7 month delay of the release. I don't think porting in natively in openGL is as ridiculous as you make it sound. But that is just my .02¢. I have never developed in either, so I don't know for sure what troubles arise when porting from one to the other. If they ported in Cider though, I sure hope it didn't take them 7 months, if that is the case, than Cider, or whatever virtualization software they did use, is not worth the money. :apple:

[rbarris]

Speaking of GLSL and lag, all blame goes to Apple. Blizzard, Crossover, and WINE developers have all begged Apple for years now to fix their awful GLSL implementation and as usual apple ignores them citing no reason. There have been bug reports open for this for years - I talked to one developer who said hes given up after a year of them saying "we'll get around to it". Its a shame they are so hostile towards gamers at Apple and dont allocate their many resources to atleast minor development on some good drivers :(

We should start a "wake the @@#*# up, Apple" campaign to get better GL drivers with GLSL support that can atleast turn dx9 calls into glsl ones. I think right now any GLSL stuff gets tripled in the buffer if it is translated from DX9 due to shoddy/sloppy coding on apple's part (but I am no programmer so don't quote me on that)

There's actually been quite a bit of progress on the GLSL front as of 10.5.5, many GLSL shaders which formerly could not run in hardware on an X1600 (or ran incorrectly) now do. Though the 7300/7600 driver still needs some work, and we look forward to seeing that side improve as well.

In the ongoing development of Diablo III and StarCraft II we have certainly encountered our share of driver bugs, the important thing is that we are actively documenting them and providing standalone test cases for almost all of them - it behooves us to do so since that accelerates the process of getting them fixed. This is a process which has been going on for a couple years now - there are times when we would like it to happen faster, but overall there has been significant progress.

Internally we have developed set of tools for rapidly characterizing and reporting rendering issues, to save valuable time when we find a glitch in a game that isn't in a public-available form yet. For example we can now capture a frame of game drawing and save it in a standalone application for a driver engineer to dissect/debug as needed.

So, considering the amount of discussion we have participated in (and the amount of change going on behind the scenes to address issues) - I really couldn't agree with the use of the phrase "ignored for no reason".

[palebluedot]

There's actually been quite a bit of progress on the GLSL front as of 10.5.5, many GLSL shaders which formerly could not run in hardware on an X1600 (or ran incorrectly) now do. Though the 7300/7600 driver still needs some work, and we look forward to seeing that side improve as well.

In the ongoing development of Diablo III and StarCraft II we have certainly encountered our share of driver bugs, the important thing is that we are actively documenting them and providing standalone test cases for almost all of them - it behooves us to do so since that accelerates the process of getting them fixed. This is a process which has been going on for a couple years now - there are times when we would like it to happen faster, but overall there has been significant progress.

Internally we have developed set of tools for rapidly characterizing and reporting rendering issues, to save valuable time when we find a glitch in a game that isn't in a public-available form yet. For example we can now capture a frame of game drawing and save it in a standalone application for a driver engineer to dissect/debug as needed.

So, considering the amount of discussion we have participated in (and the amount of change going on behind the scenes to address issues) - I really couldn't agree with the use of the phrase "ignored for no reason".

That is really good to hear :) I was more talking about the cries of WINE/Crossover devs, maybe Apple just listens to them less or something? The main issue that has been on the record for like 1 year now is a fbo shader issue in which the buffer overloads and reverts to software under GLSL (I probably misquoted that as I am not a dev). Apple has multiple bug reports on file and hasn't done anything to fix it yet.

I know they work towards making better drivers but with the amount of money I pay for my MBP (and everyone else who owns an Apple product) you would think they could allocate a few more dollars to driver development.

I read a running theory out there that this is why Valve refused to port to Apple and said that Apple was hostile towards gaming (although the other theory says that Steam wanted a 1 mil investment up front). Either way we gamers seem to be the losers.

Thank god for you all at Blizz, your the only shining light in this sea of darkness!