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Apple Releases Snow Leopard Graphics Update

Odd, for some reason Steam now tells me it requires OS X to be on a case-insensitve file system.

Ah well, can't be arsed messing about with Steam all for a quick go on Portal.
 
I can definitely confirm that Portal's frame rates have doubled. Each time I looked through a Portal I would get 30 FPS and now I'm getting 65 FPS which is at 100 FPS before looking through a Portal, and that's on my iMac i7 previous gen and 15" MBP with Nvidia 330 GPU.🙂
 
After install, I saw little addition in results with GLviewer… I'll test on games, but so far it seems graphic applications like Spaces are not lagging anymore.
I saw again a little glitch with the dock and Safari 5, though…

Moreover, I think my bug with Snow Leopard, the artefact window at first opening, is finally a Hard Drive gestion bug. Not a graphic card bug… not entirely. (It was not doing this with leopard)

Capturedcran2009-09-18225707.png


(MacBook Pro Early 2008, 8600M GT 512Mo)

I'll test more with Starcraft II, Bioshock and Portal, even if I can't really compare…
 
I wish they'd get around to fixing the outstanding driver issues with OS 8.6 while they're at it....support for my Voodoo 5 card has been absymal lately. 😡
 
juddering screen saver

2009 MBP with two 1920x1200 monitors, via dualhead2go, using the better of the 2 graphics cards. I don't have any games to test it; the best I could do is the screen savers. Both Arabesque and Shell start well but a few minutes in start juddering. No other programs running, timemachine not running, spotlight not indexing. Never happened before this update.

Sod.

Edited to add. It was a little odd. Bit like it was trying to run two instances of the screen saver at once a flicking between the two rather than just a variable frame rate.
 
wunderboy said:
My i5 17" would randomly freeze too and I linked it to the auto graphics switching. Basically, with it off my unit would appear not to freeze anymore. However, I did take it back and they put a new system board in there. I did a system profile before I sent it in. The only difference I see on the GT card is that my previous system board had ROM 5941 and this new or replaced one is ROM 5940. So far with auto switching on I haven't had a lock up.

I noticed nothing different on the system profile after I did the graphics update today. I would think that something would change there to show the new version, but maybe not.
Click to expand...

That's strange, my 330GT's ROM on 17" i7 is 3540. So I'm not sure why you have 5940.
 
wunderboy said:
My i5 17" would randomly freeze too and I linked it to the auto graphics switching. Basically, with it off my unit would appear not to freeze anymore. However, I did take it back and they put a new system board in there. I did a system profile before I sent it in. The only difference I see on the GT card is that my previous system board had ROM 5941 and this new or replaced one is ROM 5940. So far with auto switching on I haven't had a lock up.

I noticed nothing different on the system profile after I did the graphics update today. I would think that something would change there to show the new version, but maybe not.
Click to expand...


weird. version 3532 here.
 
StarCraft 2

MUCH MUCH BETTER

There are definite improvements in SC2, even on my Early 2009 17" MBP. I would imagine it is a NVIDIA card update, which would include performance for most macs with NVIDIA hardware, even if not specified. I seem to get equivalent performance on Snow Leopard and windows 7 on the same machine now. BIG DIFFERENCE
 
I'm really hoping it fixes a general crash we've seen in the GeForce drivers that was introduced in 10.6.4. We've gotten a lot of those crash reports and there's not much we can do about it.
 
Please, Lord, let this Graphics Update fix the kernel panics I've been experiencing every 4-5 days on my MBP... you know, the ones that have been happening as a result of the graphics extensions?
 
Xials said:
MUCH MUCH BETTER

There are definite improvements in SC2, even on my Early 2009 17" MBP. I would imagine it is a NVIDIA card update, which would include performance for most macs with NVIDIA hardware, even if not specified. I seem to get the same performance I do on Snow Leopard than I do with windows 7 on the same machine. BIG DIFFERENCE
Click to expand...

This is good to hear. 🙂
 
Looks like it's fixed a graphics corruption I was getting on my i7 on some websites when the Intel GPU is running. Haven't had the chance to test some Steam games yet.
 
Xials said:
MUCH MUCH BETTER

There are definite improvements in SC2, even on my Early 2009 17" MBP. I would imagine it is a NVIDIA card update, which would include performance for most macs with NVIDIA hardware, even if not specified. I seem to get the same performance I do on Snow Leopard than I do with windows 7 on the same machine. BIG DIFFERENCE
Click to expand...

Thats good to hear - I don't wanna have to buy windows 😛
 
Justinf79 said:
When did Bioshock get released for Mac? I'm only seeing a windows version on steam.
Click to expand...

It was released by Feral Interactive last year. And I played with it on an external partition with Leopard, because Snow Leopard's performances were not good enough.
 
I've just tested it and run a demo through before and after the update.

Hardware
Mid-2009 Macbook Pro 17" - 2.8GHz, 4Gb memory, 500Gb HDD.

Settings:
Team Fortress 2 (koth_nucleus)
All maximum settings @ 1920x1200
Except Anti-Aliasing (at 2x)

Before: 29FPS (average)
After: 37FPS (average)

Thanks Apple! Absolutely brilliant; it makes the game playable (I'm used to playing at 60fps+, but anything above 30 is fine).
 
****ing update... ***** up my catalog b-tree or something... When I got a loading bar below the grey apple... and it shut down 1/4 of the way. Tried booting in verbose mode and it sad corrupted catalog b-tree. Thank god I have a Windows 7 partition on my MBP.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
Downloaded and installed. Rebooted. YAY, no more garbled image if my external display gets accidentally disconnected! Thanks, Apple! 😀
Click to expand...

Awesome!

This happened to me for the first time yesterday (new setup has made my connection less stable).

I really freaked out, and thought my macbook was done for.
 
kgeier82 said:
weird. version 3532 here.
Click to expand...

Same version here. I'd say it has faulty GPU switching (if GPU ROM has anything to do with it). Judging by expose/desktop smoothness, sometimes the system won't switch to GeForce GPU. Plugging/unplugging the power adaptor helps.



By the way, the NVidia drivers + OpenGL/OpenCL included in the update are the same version that's been around for a while, coming from the last iMac update.

So if anything, it makes me f*ng angry that Apple released this update after probably MONTHS of having those drivers ready. I don't even want to know how many months behind PC drivers we are at this moment.
 
Gugus said:
It was released by Feral Interactive last year. And I played with it on an external partition with Leopard, because Snow Leopard's performances were not enough.
Click to expand...

Oh, damn, was hoping it would be on steam, because I have the windows version, but want the Mac version and don't want to have to buy it again.
 
Jimmdean said:
I'm hoping this might fix the intermittent freezing issues many 2-3 year old iMacs have been seeing since 10.6.3. I'm still running 10.6.2 because of it...
Click to expand...

I hope so too. This bug has been pissing me off big time and it's long overdue for a fix.
 
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