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Game performance in 10.9

I

Impede

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 11, 2011
16
0
I haven't seen anyone else posting about it but this is a fairly big deal for some of us.

So far, Ive had a really excellent experience with Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, and once borderlands 2 installs ill see how that goes.

Testing on a quad 2.8 2010 mac pro with a 5870 and 16gb of ram. games running at 1920x1080.

Diablo 3, max settings Solid 60fps... the only word i can find to describe it is, buttery. Its amazing now, because previously, it was playable smoothly at mid settings, so if the game got busy it wouldn't hang and get me killed. In my play testing, I'm confident that the game will not stutter at Max settings and get my hardcore character killed. its great.

SC2, Max settings, overall 55-60 fps with slight resource hangs occasionally. but those drops in fps (down to 15-20) are so quick and the game recovers fast enough that i couldn't actually feel the hangs while playing. but they did show up when i moused over to see the fps information

Borderlands 2 Ill find out tonight.

Looks like the New OpenGL support seems to be the ticket to a better Mac OS X gaming experience. Hoping it just gets better.
 
travisbrowning

travisbrowning

macrumors member
Jan 28, 2013
71
1
Fort Walton Beach, FL
Impede said:
I haven't seen anyone else posting about it but this is a fairly big deal for some of us.

So far, Ive had a really excellent experience with Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, and once borderlands 2 installs ill see how that goes.

Testing on a quad 2.8 2010 mac pro with a 5870 and 16gb of ram. games running at 1920x1080.

Diablo 3, max settings Solid 60fps... the only word i can find to describe it is, buttery. Its amazing now, because previously, it was playable smoothly at mid settings, so if the game got busy it wouldn't hang and get me killed. In my play testing, I'm confident that the game will not stutter at Max settings and get my hardcore character killed. its great.

SC2, Max settings, overall 55-60 fps with slight resource hangs occasionally. but those drops in fps (down to 15-20) are so quick and the game recovers fast enough that i couldn't actually feel the hangs while playing. but they did show up when i moused over to see the fps information

Borderlands 2 Ill find out tonight.

Looks like the New OpenGL support seems to be the ticket to a better Mac OS X gaming experience. Hoping it just gets better.
Click to expand...

I haven't noticed any real improvements, but the only game on the computer I play is WoW.
 
Ddyracer

Ddyracer

macrumors 68000
Nov 24, 2009
1,786
31
I would like to see complete 4.2 support and maybe some of .3 around the release.
 
J

Johnf1285

macrumors 6502a
Dec 25, 2010
965
61
travisbrowning said:
I haven't noticed any real improvements, but the only game on the computer I play is WoW.
Click to expand...

Were you playing Wow on the computer in your signature?

I am interested in what Open GL 4 will add to Wow and hope it gives a bump in performance to begin to close that Mac/PC performance gap on the same hardware.
 
A

anzio

macrumors 6502
Dec 5, 2010
453
665
Innisfil, Ontario, Canada
Johnf1285 said:
Were you playing Wow on the computer in your signature?

I am interested in what Open GL 4 will add to Wow and hope it gives a bump in performance to begin to close that Mac/PC performance gap on the same hardware.
Click to expand...

OpenGL 4 support will need to be added by developers. While some drivers are improved–and you will see improvements there even without OpenGL 4, it still requires developer work.

The Mac team lead for WoW said they will add OpenGL 4 support if it improves performance in WoW

Source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/9245385714#10
 
w0lf

w0lf

macrumors 65816
Feb 16, 2013
1,268
109
USA
Are you sure this isn't like a placebo effect?

Dont developers actually have to implement/allow their games to access the new openGL extensions before the game would benefit from them?

Maybe it just seems smoother because your system is running better in general?

I dunno though maybe I'm completely wrong about this.
 
N

negativzero

macrumors 6502a
Jul 19, 2011
564
55
I'm playing Diablo 3 and I still don't see any framrate increase in my game. Same with Portal and Torchlight.
 
I

Impede

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 11, 2011
16
0
I Got borderlands 2 up and running when i got home, and it appears to be better as well, higher settings, less chop.

Maybe its just Newer drivers? Its possible that in general the new OS is just better... i don't know, but I usually would turn things down because I like normalized performance across the board instead of frame rate drops when the action starts.

ill note that even though BL2 runs "better", it does beach ball a whole lot until you are in the game.

Im pretty in tune with what my machine is capable of, and since i was waiting for the announcement of a new Mac Pro I opted to hold off on getting a better GPU for this machine. The 5870 is dated, and lots of people with newer machines, for instance a new iMac would trounce these games anyway. I see better performance on older hardware, is all I'm saying. Couldn't tell you exactly why.
 
L

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,198
19,057
w0lf said:
Are you sure this isn't like a placebo effect?

Dont developers actually have to implement/allow their games to access the new openGL extensions before the game would benefit from them?
Click to expand...

Extensions and driver quality are two completely different things. It is a fact that OS X 10.9 GPU drivers are much faster.

mattdo93 said:
Can anyone test Guild Wars 2 on Mavericks?
Click to expand...

It is actually playable now, I am getting FPS which is only slightly lower than on Windows. And the annoying stuttering when rotating the camera is almost gone.
 
204353

204353

Cancelled
Jul 13, 2008
955
117
leman said:
It is actually playable now, I am getting FPS which is only slightly lower than on Windows. And the annoying stuttering when rotating the camera is almost gone.
Click to expand...

That's great news. One of the best moment of the WWDC keynote (in my opinion) was when I saw 'OpenGL 4' on the screen. Hopefully it's a sign that Apple is going to take graphics much more seriously from here on.
 
L

leman

macrumors Core
Oct 14, 2008
19,198
19,057
MarcBook said:
That's great news. One of the best moment of the WWDC keynote (in my opinion) was when I saw 'OpenGL 4' on the screen. Hopefully it's a sign that Apple is going to take graphics much more seriously from here on.
Click to expand...

Well, it was just a question of time. Steve Jobs didn't care much for gaming but I think Apple recognised how strong driving force games can be. And OpenGL 4 is important for Apple, because it brings API compatibility with OpenGL ES. This means that developers could more easily create games that run on both iOS and OS X.
 
Baklava

Baklava

macrumors 6502a
Feb 1, 2010
569
53
Germany
Is someone using GameRange for online gaming? I can't open GameRange on Mavericks. Can someone confirm that?
 
ResPublica

ResPublica

macrumors regular
Jun 12, 2011
177
52
I don't think there should be any difference with current games because of OpenGL 4; it's not used by any Mac game up to this date. However perhaps Apple has updated some video drivers or made other improvements.
 
S

Serban

Suspended
Jan 8, 2013
5,159
928
so there are improvements in fps between mountain lion and mavericks in games like diablo/starcraft/league of legends?
 
S

Serban

Suspended
Jan 8, 2013
5,159
928
so...blizzard had all the games like starcraft /diablo use OpenGl 3, so the improvements you see is tha gap between opengl 1.2-v3. So the developers will have to bring even more to make their games support opengl 4 and i thing beginning with 2014 will have no more differences between windows and maverciks performance
 
w0lf

w0lf

macrumors 65816
Feb 16, 2013
1,268
109
USA
Serban said:
and I think beginning with 2014 we will have no more differences between Windows and Mavericks gaming performance.
Click to expand...

Nope. Having openGL 4 support is not going to suddenly make macs amazing gaming machines.

Game developers really have to make a game from the ground up for Mac to even give it a chance to perform on a similar level to Windows. Ports always suffer in comparison to their original and until Mac becomes a platform with enough Gamers to support paying for the development of more Mac native games there will still be a performance gap between Windows and Mac.

Also just because we have openGL 4.1 doesn't necessarily mean games will see astonishing performance.

I do however believe that Mavericks is a step in the right direction if you happen to be a Mac gamer. Maybe 5-10 years down the road Mac and Windows will be on an even level but not now.
 
slime73

slime73

macrumors newbie
Aug 8, 2011
21
5
w0lf said:
Nope. Having openGL 4 support is not going to suddenly make macs amazing gaming machines.

Game developers really have to make a game from the ground up for Mac to even give it a chance to perform on a similar level to Windows. Ports always suffer in comparison to their original and until Mac becomes a platform with enough Gamers to support paying for the development of more Mac native games there will still be a performance gap between Windows and Mac.

Also just because we have openGL 4.1 doesn't necessarily mean games will see astonishing performance.

I do however believe that Mavericks is a step in the right direction if you happen to be a Mac gamer. Maybe 5-10 years down the road Mac and Windows will be on an even level but not now.
Click to expand...

Actually game developers just have to make an OpenGL rendering backend for their game. OpenGL performance is equal in OS X and Windows, the majority of performance issues with ports stem from OpenGL wrappers/renderers which are poorly made or misuse an API feature.

OpenGL 4.1 allows developers to use new rendering features found in DirectX 11-capable GPUs. Some of those can give greater performance than alternatives, if the developer makes proper use of them.
 
Mattww

Mattww

macrumors 6502
Jan 11, 2008
395
19
Impede said:
I haven't seen anyone else posting about it but this is a fairly big deal for some of us.

So far, Ive had a really excellent experience with Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, and once borderlands 2 installs ill see how that goes.

Testing on a quad 2.8 2010 mac pro with a 5870 and 16gb of ram. games running at 1920x1080.

Diablo 3, max settings Solid 60fps... the only word i can find to describe it is, buttery. Its amazing now, because previously, it was playable smoothly at mid settings, so if the game got busy it wouldn't hang and get me killed. In my play testing, I'm confident that the game will not stutter at Max settings and get my hardcore character killed. its great.

SC2, Max settings, overall 55-60 fps with slight resource hangs occasionally. but those drops in fps (down to 15-20) are so quick and the game recovers fast enough that i couldn't actually feel the hangs while playing. but they did show up when i moused over to see the fps information

Borderlands 2 Ill find out tonight.

Looks like the New OpenGL support seems to be the ticket to a better Mac OS X gaming experience. Hoping it just gets better.
Click to expand...

Interesting that the 5870 got another lease of life. It would be nice to see if the 7950 performance improves as it seemed to offer little more other than the extra VRAM with 10.8, only the GTX680 seemed even worth considering for 5870 owners.
 
S

Serban

Suspended
Jan 8, 2013
5,159
928
Blizzard already official said that if supporting OpenGL 4 will improve performance they will make add ons /patches for every big games starcraft/diablo/wow.
 
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