Opinion: Do Mac gamers have low game performance standards?

[vraxtus]

My opinion: yes.

I think a lot of the Mac gamers that claim that performance is "fine," "acceptable," "playable," or "runs without a hitch," have some fairly low standards.

Seeing as how the new iMacs feature the Halo rates as only percentages, this only further convinces me of that fact. Even on my Rev B 12", I find War3 only barely acceptable... those others that claim it runs "fine" or "perfect" I think really don't game that much.

I guess I'm hoping that one day both Apple and Apple developers will get on the ball, and really push more for gaming on our machines... at least, for better performance. 18 FPS on some UT2K4 maps, with my Rad9800 Pro SE is NOT acceptable to me at all... *especially* having paid so much for it.

But I suppose my desires are as much of a pipe dream as those that think a Powerbook G5 will be out in 6 months

[shortyjj]

From the front page of Inside Mac Games:


'While budget-minded Mac gamers have lots to be excited about in the G5 iMac machines, given the unprecedented power packed into the compact consumer computer, Mac gamers have further reasons to rejoice: Apple has bundled Pangea Software's Nanosaur 2 and GarageGames' Marble Blast Gold with every one of the new iMacs sold...'

Clearly, if this is what we have to be excited about, our standards must stay very low...

[takao]

Originally Posted by vraxtus

My opinion: yes.

I think a lot of the Mac gamers that claim that performance is "fine," "acceptable," "playable," or "runs without a hitch," have some fairly low standards.

Seeing as how the new iMacs feature the Halo rates as only percentages, this only further convinces me of that fact. Even on my Rev B 12", I find War3 only barely acceptable... those others that claim it runs "fine" or "perfect" I think really don't game that much.

hm that might be.. i don't know for sure..because last time i played with my own hands on a mac was in the days where 133mhz powerpc chips where 'a real killer'

hm for me acceptable i mean 1024x768 resolution - medium features etc. and running relativly smooth.. with UT2004 (only tried the demo) i got around 25+ fps with itunes, icq , mozilla and outlook express on the background in onslaught modus against 12 bots or something..and i recognzied slow down some times ... i think 40 fps would be possible but it just run fine...(i'm the guy who rather turns down the details instead of resolution...)
haven't tried doom or a lot of newer games
but except UT2004 (onslaught... not deathmatch) i haven't come over to a game where i had to turn the resolution to the infamous 800x640 or or even to 640x480

Originally Posted by vraxtus

I guess I'm hoping that one day both Apple and Apple developers will get on the ball, and really push more for gaming on our machines... at least, for better performance. 18 FPS on some UT2K4 maps, with my Rad9800 Pro SE is NOT acceptable to me at all... *especially* having paid so much for it.

But I suppose my desires are as much of a pipe dream as those that think a Powerbook G5 will be out in 6 months

hmm at what resolution are you runing those maps...18 sounds indeed _very_ low for a radeon 9800 pro

[vraxtus]

Originally Posted by takao

hmm at what resolution are yo uruning thsoe maps...18 sounds indeed _very_ low for a radeon 9800 pro

1280x1024 high detail all across the board, on several Onslaught maps... and even a few CTF ones as well.

[bousozoku]

Originally Posted by vraxtus

My opinion: yes.

I think a lot of the Mac gamers that claim that performance is "fine," "acceptable," "playable," or "runs without a hitch," have some fairly low standards.

Seeing as how the new iMacs feature the Halo rates as only percentages, this only further convinces me of that fact. Even on my Rev B 12", I find War3 only barely acceptable... those others that claim it runs "fine" or "perfect" I think really don't game that much.

I guess I'm hoping that one day both Apple and Apple developers will get on the ball, and really push more for gaming on our machines... at least, for better performance. 18 FPS on some UT2K4 maps, with my Rad9800 Pro SE is NOT acceptable to me at all... *especially* having paid so much for it.

But I suppose my desires are as much of a pipe dream as those that think a Powerbook G5 will be out in 6 months

Considering that your machine is minimally-equipped with RAM, you're not well-equipped to speak for everyone. If you had 4 GB, or even 2, I'd think you would have a better idea.

I'm not saying that ported games work well on Macs--ports rarely work well on any machine. Sloppy code on x86 machines doesn't get better on Macs and there generally isn't enough raw power to ignore it. I find the performance of my dual G4/800 to be acceptable, but I'm not enthusiastic about it.

[vraxtus]

Originally Posted by bousozoku

Considering that your machine is minimally-equipped with RAM, you're not well-equipped to speak for everyone. If you had 4 GB, or even 2, I'd think you would have a better idea.

Since when was a gig of RAM a minimal requirement?

[Jigglelicious]

Originally Posted by bousozoku

Considering that your machine is minimally-equipped with RAM, you're not well-equipped to speak for everyone. If you had 4 GB, or even 2, I'd think you would have a better idea.

I'm not saying that ported games work well on Macs--ports rarely work well on any machine. Sloppy code on x86 machines doesn't get better on Macs and there generally isn't enough raw power to ignore it. I find the performance of my dual G4/800 to be acceptable, but I'm not enthusiastic about it.

RAM has very little to do with the actual raw performance you get in games. Sure, more RAM helps stop "texture thrashing" and other hitching related to not having enough memory where the game is forced to read data straight from the HDD at critical points instead of fast RAM. But once you have more RAM than the game uses, adding more will do absolutely nothing. And UT2k4 does NOT take up more than 1GB RAM.

[bousozoku]

Originally Posted by vraxtus

Since when was a gig of RAM a minimal requirement?

Since Apple said that the machine required 512 MB. Obviously, 512 MB wasn't a recommended configuration and 1 GB is hardly much more, especially for playing games, such as UT2004, which are processor-intensive.

[takao]

Originally Posted by vraxtus

Since when was a gig of RAM a minimal requirement?

hehe i still remeber the days when i got my computer in sept. 02...i wonder how often i heard the sentence "you have one GB of ram ????" from other users ... i only know one person who has 1 GB too ...

i haven't noticed any problems with age of mythology and warcraft 3 either (on the same resolution as before)
perhaps the performance break down gets suddenly bigger with the next resolution over 1024x768...you never know
have you checked for anti-aliasing etc. ? i never use it .... because outside of screenshots i never noticed any big 'improvement'

[vraxtus]

Originally Posted by bousozoku

Since Apple said that the machine required 512 MB. Obviously, 512 MB wasn't a recommended configuration and 1 GB is hardly much more, especially for playing games, such as UT2004, which are processor-intensive.

Funny... OSX REQUIRES 128... interesting. UT2K4 RECOMMENDS 512... and 1 GB is TWICE as much as 512... curious where you get your #s... even with SetCacheMegs set beyond 256, it's been proven for many games there's no significant boost in performance past that amount.

[vraxtus]

Originally Posted by takao

have you checked for anti-aliasing etc. ? i never use it .... because outside of screenshots i never noticed any big 'improvement'

Actually, I never realized how crappy games look without FSAA and AF...

[bousozoku]

Originally Posted by vraxtus

Funny... OSX REQUIRES 128... interesting. UT2K4 RECOMMENDS 512... and 1 GB is TWICE as much as 512... curious where you get your #s... even with SetCacheMegs set beyond 256, it's been proven for many games there's no significant boost in performance past that amount.

Yes, Mac OS X (not OSX) will run with only 128 MB. However, it doesn't run nicely until 512 MB, even having only a few simple applications open. It's especially bad if you have a slow hard drive (5400 or 4200 rpm) and fewer than 512 MB. If you would consider trying to run UT2004 with only 512 MB, I would think that you're wanting it to fail to perform and that you had low performance standards, in general.

What is significant? If you're only looking at numbers, that's nice, but that doesn't always tell the story. It's cute to say "my fps is bigger than your fps" but it doesn't always mean a lot. If you put 1 more GB into your machine, it might be significant to your playability, even if the number isn't a big percentage gain.

[vraxtus]

Originally Posted by bousozoku

If you would consider trying to run UT2004 with only 512 MB, I would think that you're wanting it to fail to perform and that you had low performance standards, in general.

Let me ask you this, then. Have YOU actually ran UT2K4 with 512 MB?

I HAVE. And the performance change between 512 and 1GB was slim to nil (5%) at most.

What is significant? If you're only looking at numbers, that's nice, but that doesn't always tell the story. It's cute to say "my fps is bigger than your fps" but it doesn't always mean a lot. If you put 1 more GB into your machine, it might be significant to your playability, even if the number isn't a big percentage gain.

So at what point do we measure "significant" against not a "big percentage gain"?

I think your assessments are totally false, seeing as how you've not even had the firsthand experience of dealing with this machine, or spec'd it at either configuration.

[pgc6000]

Originally Posted by vraxtus

My opinion: yes.

I think a lot of the Mac gamers that claim that performance is "fine," "acceptable," "playable," or "runs without a hitch," have some fairly low standards.

Seeing as how the new iMacs feature the Halo rates as only percentages, this only further convinces me of that fact. Even on my Rev B 12", I find War3 only barely acceptable... those others that claim it runs "fine" or "perfect" I think really don't game that much.

I guess I'm hoping that one day both Apple and Apple developers will get on the ball, and really push more for gaming on our machines... at least, for better performance. 18 FPS on some UT2K4 maps, with my Rad9800 Pro SE is NOT acceptable to me at all... *especially* having paid so much for it.

But I suppose my desires are as much of a pipe dream as those that think a Powerbook G5 will be out in 6 months

With what many people said, I say yes to some games. You may remember when I was talking about how Halo ran farily well on my machine, I ment as well as Halo can run. It still ran quite sloppy. But I found the C & C Generals Demo, AOE II (I can hardly remeber the original AOE, I have it lying around somewhere), and AOM to run just fine. I guess it depends on the game.

[takao]

Originally Posted by pgc6000

With what many people said, I say yes to some games. You may remember when I was talking about how Halo ran farily well on my machine, I ment as well as Halo can run. It still ran quite sloppy. But I found the C & C Generals Demo, AOE II (I can hardly remeber the original AOE, I have it lying around somewhere), and AOM to run just fine. I guess it depends on the game.

yeah i have age of empires 1+2 lying around as well ...
(i played age of empires on the 486 of my sig...and age of empires2 on my pentium 3 ..so those shouldn't be a problem for any PC either mac or x86 out there...)

from what i've heard generals and AOM can get very demanding with lots of units and high details(and after all those aren't very new...)

is the new settlers going to be released for mac ? ..i've read that is actually designed to meet a lot of old hardware..and from the pictures it looks gorgeous for a 3d RTS...

[Golem]

Well I think some PC gamers have ridiculously high standards but that is just me. I have seen quotes of 30 fps as barely acceptable and unplayable.

To give an example of a game with a nice long baseline I started playing Diablo II on a G3 350? or g4 400? With speeds of 12-30 fps. I found that acceptable. Under a G4 cube 450 Hardware accelerated video started dropping as low as 6 dps and that was too slow. Slow enough to go through Blizzard support and eventually use software mode to get back to 12-30.

Roll on G4 800 tower and I will still using software mode for around the same speeds. 1.10+a G5 1.8 with bleh fx5200 I now sit at around at around 100 fps.

Does it help? probably only a little.

I concede it may help more with a game like ut2k4 but for me since i never play enough to be good and I am old enough for my reactions to have slowed I allways die anyway in that sort of game. Even 5 years ago with Quake II?/III on identical hardware I would die with 1 kill vs 10

[~Shard~]

Some PC gamers definitely have unreasonably high standards. Some of this spills into the Mac community at times - just take a look at the mammoth new G5 iMac thread and you'll find a lot of people whining how the iMac's FX5200 is crap solely because it won't play Doom3. So yes, in some respects some Mac users have unrealistic standards for gaming, but only in certain respects - I think it boils down to that they want the iMac to be an ultimate gaming machine, which it is obviously not designed to be. But that's another ugly discussion...

In general though, I think Mac users are a little more tolerant of matters relating to games - otherwise, they'd be frustrated and wouldn't use Macs at all if they put such a priority on games.

[Jimong5]

Originally Posted by vraxtus

I guess I'm hoping that one day both Apple and Apple developers will get on the ball, and really push more for gaming on our machines... at least, for better performance. 18 FPS on some UT2K4 maps, with my Rad9800 Pro SE is NOT acceptable to me at all... *especially* having paid so much for it.

thats odd, because I have a dual 867 G4 with a 9700 128 MB, and I dont have 18 FPS maps since the upgrade (1 GB RAM). halo now runs like a dream, given the fact this macs 2 years old... (provided I have pixel shaders off, but even on I get 18 FPS on the cinematics with everything including pixel shaders on, and even 2x FSAA.) WC3 is also flawless, honestly, I can hold over 20 FPS even with full army battles now. maybe the macs arent powerful enough to do FSAA yet (I played halo with full (9x) FSAA on, it was like a pre-rendered movie, but ran like 5 FPS even in simple scenes.game technology is getting to its peak, and shaders and FSAA are the only things really left to boost it further. and truth is, these are hoggy.

[Timelessblur]

Originally Posted by Jimong5

thats odd, because I have a dual 867 G4 with a 9700 128 MB, and I dont have 18 FPS maps since the upgrade (1 GB RAM). halo now runs like a dream, given the fact this macs 2 years old... (provided I have pixel shaders off, but even on I get 18 FPS on the cinematics with everything including pixel shaders on, and even 2x FSAA.) WC3 is also flawless, honestly, I can hold over 20 FPS even with full army battles now. maybe the macs arent powerful enough to do FSAA yet (I played halo with full (9x) FSAA on, it was like a pre-rendered movie, but ran like 5 FPS even in simple scenes.game technology is getting to its peak, and shaders and FSAA are the only things really left to boost it further. and truth is, these are hoggy.

I might like to point out the 9800SE is a bad card. it has power but to give you and idea where it stands here is a list of ATi Card from the best to the worse

9800pro
9800 np
9700 pro
9700np
9600XT
9800SE
9600pro
9600NP
The rest of ATI cards

[DarkNovaMatter]

I think many PC gamers have highly unreasonable fps wants. Its sort of the penis envy of the gaming world. You should check out whats happening on your machine, I am getting atleast 30 fps on the large maps (50 meg- and thats not including textures, sounds, logos,etc.). I am fine with a game that gets atleast 20 fps and is smooth (meanings no hick-ups). With a 1.4 ghz cube and a Radeon 9K and 896 meg (ram usually only speeds up slower machines) of ram (only 2x agp too), I run UT2k4 on 1024x768 or even 1280x (forgot verticle res) with 2x FSAA (not much but its still good) and get 30 fps.

Most time why macs have lower FPS is because the code is ported from Dircet X to Open GL, the code might be specific for x86, or the code might not be exactly the best code (or might even be a bad port- macplay has had a few that have had problems). One thing though, I have found Open GL to be a verry good quality render'er, sure it may be slower then Direct X but it has been a sure fire thing. Also remember that specific code (Direct X for the most part is tied to x86) is always going to run better on its intended platform.

[Jimong5]

Originally Posted by Timelessblur

I might like to point out the 9800SE is a bad card. it has power but to give you and idea where it stands here is a list of ATi Card from the best to the worse

9800pro
9800 np
9700 pro
9700np
9600XT
9800SE
9600pro
9600NP
The rest of ATI cards

thats odd, I was under the impression that the SE was ATI's flagship card for the mac currently (having twice the vram at least) are you sure that the 9600 xt is faster than the 256 MB ati card?

[Daveman Deluxe]

The 9800SE is the same as the 9800 pro, only with half of the pipelines.

[nagromme]

Some, including hard-core gamers, have HIGH standards. Plenty of those are Mac users, and some whine on these forums as a result Which isn't bad as long as they also whine directly to Apple!

Other Mac users have lower standards. I'd say I'm in the middle, and appreciate both views.

That, of course, is true of PC users too. It's not as if PC users all have high standards. My PC friends have some PITIFUL old machines, and they have fun with their choppy 3D games all the same.

There's no one right standard--unless maybe it's "am I having fun?"

[kilpajr]

I have a 15" PB with ATI 9700 128MB video card and 512MB RAM. I have played WC3 with no problems whatsoever with all settings at high. I don't know what kind of fps I am getting but I do not notice any jerkiness.

I have also played the UT2004 demo and was surprised by how smooth it was. I don't know what settings I had (probably the default) but it was very playable. Even when there were 3-4 guys in a room, I didn't detect any slowdown. I am thinking about buying the full version. Has anyone tried the full version on this machine, and if so how was the performance?

[vraxtus]

Originally Posted by Timelessblur

I might like to point out the 9800SE is a bad card. it has power but to give you and idea where it stands here is a list of ATi Card from the best to the worse

9800pro
9800 np
9700 pro
9700np
9600XT
9800SE
9600pro
9600NP
The rest of ATI cards

Wow, this is the most blatantly INCORRECT statement I've seen in a while.

I'll let BareFeats prove just how incorrect you are.

Silly noobs hah

Oh and in case you're wondering, the 9800 SE is a PRO card. GG