tiger substantially improves frame rates on Doom 3 - Cafe Macs exclusive

[Macdantheman07]

Café Macs Exclusive "With Tiger's official release date soon to be announced, according to rumors, we decided to take a look at real-world performance improvements with Apple's next-generation operating system.

As announced by Apple, Tiger will implement an entirely new core graphics engine for Macs whose video processors can support it. Jointly called Core Image and Core Video, these new graphics APIs allow the computer to process most, if not all, graphics rendering directly on the video card's GPU, rather than taxing the computer's own CPU, freeing up processor cycles for other tasks.

A developer was kind enough to examine these improvements, which have not only affected programs that implement them, but also applications that take advantage of existing graphics APIs - most notably OpenGL.

The recently released DOOM 3 was put to the test to examine these improvements, and the differences between the test machine running Mac OS X 10.3.8 and the same machine running the latest 10.4 Beta are drastic.

The test machine was reportedly a 1st-generation Dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5 with 1 GB RAM and was built BTO with a Radeon 9800 Pro.

As we already know, the performance of DOOM 3 for Mac in comparison to its Windows counterpart is a little depressing - but those tests were on a Mac running Panther. The test machine was able to crank out an acceptable, yet somewhat lackluster performance by running the game at somewhere between 20-30 FPS at 800x600 on High quality.

On the same test machine, now running Tiger, saw an incredible performance boost. A clean install of both the latest Tiger beta (8A414) and DOOM 3 saw a steady 35-40 FPS at 1024x768 on High quality, with 2x Anti-aliasing enabled. Quite an improvement.

What we are unsure of is whether it is one of these new Tiger graphics technologies or some other under-the-hood improvement that is offering this performance boost, or whether it is just an improved graphics driver that is helping out this fantastic, yet taxing game.

We are having more tests done and will post those results as they are finalized."
http://www.cafemacs.com/

[invaLPsion]

Incredible. I can't wait to see what's in store for we 6800 users. :D

[ZildjianKX]

I'm hoping this helps older games too, like UT2K4.

[Macdantheman07]

yeah this is pretty good news.

My computers are not exactly state of the art anymore, thus I am hoping that I will get a frame rate boost on Medal Of Honor Allied Assault and Halo.

I hear that part of what makes windows so nice for games is that it is able to fucus all of its attention (CPU and GPU) on the game, where as Mac OS X has many things (typical of UNIX system) running in the background all the time.

[Lacero]

Doom 3 runs acceptable albeit not awesome on a Dual G5 1.8, 1.2GB RAM with the stock Nvidia FX5200. Although I have to set it at 640x480 Low Quality, 4x AA with Shadows turned off. I haven't clocked the FPS but I figure it to be around 15-30fps. If Tiger does promise to drastically improve frame rates, I'll seriously consider buying a X800.

[GonzoRob]

will this give PB users a boost also ? Im using a 1.5ghz 12" ...


Rob

[Soulstorm]

Will this improvement include other games such as UT2004?

[vouder17]

Will this improvement include other games such as UT2004?

Yeah most probably....unless Doom 3 has some Tiger enhancement thingy

[Demon Hunter]

I'm very excited about this development. :)

It means Apple must be paying attention to OS X's memory and processor management... maybe they found a way to give one program absolute kernel access, while allowing the others to standby like Windows does...

[benpatient]

this appears to be...fake news.

there are multiple people posting in various forums all over the net saying things like "I can't break my NDA, but this almost certainly isn't true"

[applekid]

this appears to be...fake news.

there are multiple people posting in various forums all over the net saying things like "I can't break my NDA, but this almost certainly isn't true"

I've heard a mix of agreement and disagreement. Now, the ones I read were older builds, so maybe things have improved with these last builds.

If you read the comments on that article, there is a mixed bag of results, too (sounds like pirated copies, but nevertheless, sounds like there's been some improvement).

I for one will stay optimistic until Tiger's release. Panther had some nice enhancements for gaming and so did Jaguar.

[eXan]

I hope this rumor is true... And that Tiger will improve performance of my KOTOR and UT2004 :D

[grabberslasher]

Just FYIW I've only played Doom 3 on my Tiger machine. Powerbook 17" 1.5GHz, 128Mb gfx.

The performance on the latest Tiger build at 1440x900 with shadows off, no AA or anisotropy, nor decals and a slightly overclocked (+15%) GPU are around 20fps standard, 7fps when Imp throws fireball, and 50fps+ in certain areas.

ATIAccelerator for overclocking.

This is up by 6fps from the previous Tiger, and is untested in Panther.

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Just FYIW I've only played Doom 3 on my Tiger machine. Powerbook 17" 1.5GHz, 128Mb gfx.

The performance on the latest Tiger build at 1440x900 with shadows off, no AA or anisotropy, nor decals and a slightly overclocked (+15%) GPU are around 20fps standard, 7fps when Imp throws fireball, and 50fps+ in certain areas.

ATIAccelerator for overclocking.

This is up by 6fps from the previous Tiger, and is untested in Panther.

20 fps at 1440x900? Im darn impressed!

[DavidLeblond]

20 fps at 1440x900? Im darn impressed!

And on a Powerbook to boot!

[grabberslasher]

And on a Powerbook to boot!

;) :cool:

You do see the 7fps bit? :P When something with large AI or flame effects comes on-screen then those numbers drop <10.

[benpatient]

do you also see the "all shadows and every feature turned off" bit, as well, i hope...

no shadows, all decals and visual effects lowered all the way...basically it looks like quake 3. except 7 fps.

that's not "darned impressive" in my book.

[Soulstorm]

I wouldn't trust powerbooks for game benchmarking... even on panther

[Lord Blackadder]

Well, I'm expecting to see improvement from Tiger, but the article is claiming some pretty big performance jumps. I think that is certainly possible (we all know that current games do not take full advantage of Apple hardware), but whether this rumor is true or not remains to be seen. I'll stay optimistic until I hear otherwise. :D

[mrgreen4242]

If this is even close to true, Tiger will easily be the best bang for buck gaming upgrade available to most Mac owners. I don't think that there is a video card or RAM upgrade that could touch that kind of improvement for under $130.

[Lacero]

Have you seen some of the benchmarks at Barefeats? Looks like res between 6x4, 8x6 and 10x7, the implementation of OpenGL causes the frame rates to maintain at or around 45 FPS. This looks like a bottleneck between the CPU and GPU. Going higher res, the video card starts to choke, but it's hard to know for sure. So while it is still a rumor, it's highly likely Tiger should improve the frame rates in Doom 3.

[Soulstorm]

Sorry, but I found this:

http://www.macologist.org/viewtopic.php?p=5866#5866

This guy says that the article of cafe macs is not right. Systems 10.3.8 and 10.4 beta had almost identical results... check this out

[NNO-Stephen]

I net 2 frames a second gain on my PowerMac G4 867Mhz Radeon 9800 Pro, 1.5GB RAM

this is using 10.3.8 I get ~23 frames a sec and on 10.4 (8A414) I get ~25

low detail, no effects, no AA.

[deadfrog]

surely some of the irratic views on whether its improved or not could be dwon to what graphic card they have in... surely if it doesnt support core graphics and stuff it wont improve the gaming much... having said that i guess doom3 wont run on any gpu that doesnt support core garphics... dunno?

[Santaduck]

as in another thread, www.macbidouille.com has refuted the cafemacs results, while other readers with access to the tiger betas have reported modest benefits on some machines (although nothing like the incredible % gains of cafemacs).

[MacsRgr8]

Possibly nVidia cards benefit more from Tiger's (hopefully) better drivers.
IMHO for the nVidia cards there is more room for improvement, than for ATi's

[deanbo]

I guess the only way we'll know for sure is when Tiger is released. (Not too long to go now).