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Civilization V Updated for Mac Pro, Includes 4K and OpenCL Support [Updated]

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wizard

macrumors 68040
May 29, 2003
3,854
571
I suppose this makes sense for a first release. However what about Intel GPU support? Some of those new Intel GPUs are awesome OpenCL machines.

Aspyr-Blair said:
Hey guys, our apologies but the blog post that is being quoted here has an error. The OpenCL update does NOT take advantage of the second card, but rather focuses solely on taking full advantage of the OpenCL framework so that iMac and MBP owners would see benefits as well. MacRumors and we will get the edit out asap.

Springsup is right on with the tech. Essentially OpenCL (used properly) allows you to shift computing processes over to the GPU, thereby reducing the overall memory footprint of the game.

We chose Civ V as the focus for this effort for two reasons:

One, Civ V is by far the biggest game on the Mac. It was important to us that if we were to spend the time, money, and resources on an update that we knew wouldn't make any money, it really needed to benefit the most amount of users as possible.

Two, Civ V would get the most benefit from a reduced memory footprint because of the way the game works. :apple:
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Analog Kid

Analog Kid

macrumors G3
Mar 4, 2003
8,857
11,370
Aspyr-Blair said:
Hey guys, our apologies but the blog post that is being quoted here has an error. The OpenCL update does NOT take advantage of the second card, but rather focuses solely on taking full advantage of the OpenCL framework so that iMac and MBP owners would see benefits as well. MacRumors and we will get the edit out asap.
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I really appreciate you being proactive in correcting this. Still very interested in how OpenCL improves gameplay performance-- it's a beautiful game that can become grindingly slow.

I'm not sure there's much of a market for it yet given the shallow penetration of the new Mac Pro, but I think some of us would be interested in knowing the technical benefits and challenges of opening an OpenCL queue on the second device. Is it particularly challenging to do in a backwards compatible way?

Thanks for the update!

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commander.data said:
It's kind of concerning that such an incorrect statement could emerge from the company. It's not a small error, but a complete 180.
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Not the first time engineering and marketing have fallen out of sync...
 
A

Aspyr-Blair

macrumors 6502
Aug 20, 2012
319
35
Austin Tx
Thanks for posting the Aspyr news link Commander.data! I had not caught that and its now edited to reflect the work done.

We actually started this effort out many months ago with the intention of only enabling the second card, but once we started digging in we realized we could make a much bigger difference by focusing solely on OpenCL. The misprint is simply that, our blog guy looking at old internal docs and picking up the second card language. Everything else is the same. Civ V is the first big title to support 4K resolutions, the misprint is HOW it does it. Again, our sincere apologies for the misprint.

wizard said:
I suppose this makes sense for a first release. However what about Intel GPU support? Some of those new Intel GPUs are awesome OpenCL machines.
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Its on the wishlist for sure, but for now Intel integrated GPU's didnt make the cut.
 
A

alvindarkness

macrumors 6502a
Jul 11, 2009
562
397
Aspyr-Blair said:
Thanks for posting the Aspyr news link Commander.data! I had not caught that and its now edited to reflect the work done.

We actually started this effort out many months ago with the intention of only enabling the second card, but once we started digging in we realized we could make a much bigger difference by focusing solely on OpenCL. The misprint is simply that, our blog guy looking at old internal docs and picking up the second card language. Everything else is the same. Civ V is the first big title to support 4K resolutions, the misprint is HOW it does it. Again, our sincere apologies for the misprint.



Its on the wishlist for sure, but for now Intel integrated GPU's didnt make the cut.
Click to expand...

Since its utilising OpenCL for its improvements, wouldnt it by default end up using both cards for OpenCL functions on a new MacPro? I thought all GPU cores available to the OS were available to any app that used OpenCL transparently?

I realise you are saying Civ V wasnt optimised specifically to utilize dual-GPU, and it may be arguing over symantics, but wouldnt the second card give an OpenCL performance boost? Or does it have absolutely no impact on performance at all with regards to Civ V?
 
C

CamH

macrumors member
Jan 11, 2004
49
0
So is the game actually faster or is it still better to start up in bootcamp to play Civ5?
 
springsup

springsup

macrumors 65816
Feb 14, 2013
1,222
1,209
alvindarkness said:
Since its utilising OpenCL for its improvements, wouldnt it by default end up using both cards for OpenCL functions on a new MacPro? I thought all GPU cores available to the OS were available to any app that used OpenCL transparently?

I realise you are saying Civ V wasnt optimised specifically to utilize dual-GPU, and it may be arguing over symantics, but wouldnt the second card give an OpenCL performance boost? Or does it have absolutely no impact on performance at all with regards to Civ V?
Click to expand...

It depends. In theory, OpenCL allows you to write hardware-agnostic parallelised code - it could run on the CPU (all CPUs support OpenCL if they have driver support) or any GPUs that are present.

In practice, code is often targeted to specific hardware. The biggest performance bottleneck is usually transferring data to/from host and GPU memory. However, if you're on a SOC then there is no separate GPU memory and it makes more sense to memory-map. Those are separate commands, so you as a programmer need to make sure you use the right one for the hardware you're on. Similar hardware-specific nuances creep up all over the place, so writing very portable abstract code is not that easy.

In my opinion, OpenCL should abstract those kind of details away and the hardware driver should decide on the best thing to do. OpenCL is a pretty low-level API, though. I've argued about this at great length, but the Khronos group members seem to prefer optimising for performance and letting the programmer explicitly control everything.
 
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alvindarkness

macrumors 6502a
Jul 11, 2009
562
397
springsup said:
It depends. In theory, OpenCL allows you to write hardware-agnostic parallelised code - it could run on the CPU (all CPUs support OpenCL if they have driver support) or any GPUs that are present.

In practice, code is often targeted to specific hardware. The biggest performance bottleneck is usually transferring data to/from host and GPU memory. However, if you're on a SOC then there is no separate GPU memory and it makes more sense to memory-map. Those are separate commands, so you as a programmer need to make sure you use the right one for the hardware you're on. Similar hardware-specific nuances creep up all over the place, so writing very portable abstract code is not that easy.

In my opinion, OpenCL should abstract those kind of details away and the hardware driver should decide on the best thing to do. OpenCL is a pretty low-level API, though. I've argued about this at great length, but the Khronos group members seem to prefer optimising for performance and letting the programmer explicitly control everything.
Click to expand...

Ah I get ya, good response thanks mate. With how Apple has been pushing people to use OpenCL I kinda presumed it worked the other way round - where the drivers decided on the best way to use available OpenCL processing units and does it all quite transparently and in a well optimised way that was hidden from the programmer. But thats quite an eye opener.
 
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CamH

macrumors member
Jan 11, 2004
49
0
I asked a legitimate and relevant question in this thread earlier and it was deleted. Can anyone answer it?

Does the OpenCL in use in this game now give it speed parity with the PC release of Civilization V, or is it still better to restart in Bootcamp to play it? Are there any performance comparisons?
 
FinalDragoon06

FinalDragoon06

macrumors newbie
Jul 22, 2008
9
0
Lehigh Valley, PA
CamH said:
I asked a legitimate and relevant question in this thread earlier and it was deleted. Can anyone answer it?

Does the OpenCL in use in this game now give it speed parity with the PC release of Civilization V, or is it still better to restart in Bootcamp to play it? Are there any performance comparisons?
Click to expand...

I just opened it up, the option for GPU texture decode was enabled, yet hopping around a Renaissance-era game still resulted in the textures loading in tile by tile every time I moved. This isn't an issue in the DX10+ Windows Version.

That's on a 27" 2011 i7 iMac with AMD Radeon HD 6970M (2 GB). Unfortunately that means the game is still unplayable for me on the Mac. :( So I'd say it's still worth booting into Windows.
 
8

835153

Guest
Aug 5, 2013
116
1
FinalDragoon06 said:
I just opened it up, the option for GPU texture decode was enabled, yet hopping around a Renaissance-era game still resulted in the textures loading in tile by tile every time I moved. This isn't an issue in the DX10+ Windows Version.

That's on a 27" 2011 i7 iMac with AMD Radeon HD 6970M (2 GB). Unfortunately that means the game is still unplayable for me on the Mac. :( So I'd say it's still worth booting into Windows.
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I have a 27" i7 with same Vcard and 12GB RAM while on 'huge' maps some tiles take a second to load I wouldn't call it unplayable. It would be nice if they were 'just there' instead of wanting a split second to see them but its not a massive problem.

With regards to this new update it has broken edge scrolling for me and I have submitted a bug report to Aspyr. Down and right no longer scroll if i take my cursor off those edges yet up and left still work as normal.

There is also a graphical issue with the static background scenes on the main menu and scenario loading screens. On 2560x1440 resolution the image is now smaller and in the centre of the screen with a big black border around yet the civ5 logo stays where it should creating a weird overlap of the black border and the background image.
 
8

835153

Guest
Aug 5, 2013
116
1
I know consecutive posting is against forum rules but the thread has gone quiet and I need to garner a response from this post with regards to trying to quash a bug in this latest update from Aspyr. Hopefully that is ok.

If anyone has a 27" iMac can you let me or Aspyr know if you have problems running this latest update in fullscreen mode at 2560x1440 resolution. As I've mentioned I have problems with edge scrolling but Aspyr are unable to replicate the problem. I have tried all kinds of settings, new user accounts, removing peripherals, reinstalling etc and the problem persists.

After exhausting possible solutions Aspyr seem to think its something on my system thats causing a problem but it worked fine prior to the update.
 
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irDigital0l

Guest
Dec 7, 2010
2,901
0
Are people buying this on the Mac App Store or Steam?

Never had any problems running it on Steam (plus its cheaper).
 
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