Counter Strike Source = poor performance on MBP

Mac Questions said:

Got a new 2010 MBP, and I've got my preferences set to always use the NVIDIA 330M chip, and never the integrated Intel one. Just got a copy of Counter Strike Source through Steam, all up to date, and running OS X 10.6.3.

However, the game runs terribly, even on the lowest graphics settings. Less than 10 frames/second. Compare this to my old MBP with Mobility Radeon X1600, which ran the game maxed out butter smooth.

Anybody else experiencing problems?

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That's pretty abnormal. I would start by running it with -autoconfig in the launch options which can be set in the Steam client after right clicking the game title and selecting Properties.

Are you running it on the internal screen?

Some users had old settings from their PC client get mirrored onto the Mac through the magical power of Steam Cloud, leading to interesting problems, one of which looked kind of like an a-ha video.

when in doubt, -autoconfig..

Considering the fact that I have an x1600 MacBook Pro with 256MB of VRAM I find it hard to believe you were maxing out settings. Maybe in Windows, but in OS X? No chance. The x1600 in OS X struggles to keep 30fps(this is when staring at a wall, otherwise it goes 10 and below in a decent amount of action) on the lowest settings possible at a 1024x640 resolution.

Mac Questions said:

It was in Windows XP, 1680x1050, with everything maxed out except antialiasing.

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When comparing performance you want to be using the same OS, otherwise it's pointless.

It does seem like all the Steam games are having serious lag issues in OS X. This is most likely 's fault and not Valves... but I do hope they work on fixes and improvements to bring the FPS close to parity with Windows/DX. If that's at all possible.

I dunno... I've been getting okay performance, but as soon as I bump up the resolution I get a huge framerate drop, other things don't seem to affect it much.
On a related note, my fps caps at 60, even though that's what I average on medium res. w/ everything else set to high. Going lower doesn't help.

Also, keep in mind that Counter-Strike was recently updated to the Orange Box version of the Source Engine. Strange performance problems have been known to occur in TF2 since forever (high performance machines performing badly for no apparent reason).

Oddball things like network choking, anti-virus interference and random video settings have been known to trigger stubbornly low frame rates, so I suggest trying everything at least once (at least you found a partial fix with autoconfig).

CSS plays great on my mbp, no slowdowns ever.period.

256bit said:

I dunno... I've been getting okay performance, but as soon as I bump up the resolution I get a huge framerate drop, other things don't seem to affect it much.
On a related note, my fps caps at 60, even though that's what I average on medium res. w/ everything else set to high. Going lower doesn't help.

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I was looking into that problem as well. Seems like valve did something to efficiently handle OSX and it's problems with opengl. You can bypass that 60fps cap using gl_disable_forced_vsync (or something like that) you'll see it.

However, Not sure if this is stable (fps might drop frequently)....until apple releases better software

swl7 said:

I was looking into that problem as well. Seems like valve did something to efficiently handle OSX and it's problems with opengl. You can bypass that 60fps cap using gl_disable_forced_vsync (or something like that) you'll see it.

However, Not sure if this is stable (fps might drop frequently)....until apple releases better software

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Not much point in going above 60 FPS unless you are using one of those new 120 Hz LCDs or you have an old school CRT.