Apple Seeds 'Snow Leopard Graphics Update' to Developers

[AaronMT]

This is needed *now*. I am sick and tired of StarCraft II crashing with _gldAttachDrawable being the #1 top crasher. At least a dozen times a day while trying to play the game.

 

[Jason Beck]

With Apple really starting to dominate these days it's understandable that they want to create a viable gaming platform in their computers. I think this is the advent of them taking gaming a little bit more serious. I think we will be behind Windows still even in the next year, but not so far behind.

OSX itself is very, very capable and manages memory far better than even Windows 7. You guys are completely right in that Apple needs a sit down with its graphic driver department. I think they probably are starting to address this issue. With the hardware that we have in our Macs, we should be capable of playing the games we like with at least, at the very frickin least some decent frames.

Apple is becoming the mainstream giant in all respects. So I know Steve probably wants to create a "Games for Apple" platform. For the operating system we utilize we don't need exceeeeedingly fast computers to enjoy the latest games. In that respect it also boils down to developers wanting to specifically code ports for OSX. OSX is becoming a big, decent platform to develop on for anything. A lot of people that use Windows and OSX don't really want to use Windows, but are forced to to be able to enjoy their games acceptably. it shouldn't be like that and I don't think it will be for long.

If anyone from Apple is listening, thank you for at last taking a little.. well a bigger notice of the gaming that is needed on Macs. We don't want to play Oregon Trail forever.. and lord knows how many times I have found Carmen San Diego. Kidding.

i use my Mac for graphic arts. Bur I must say, if my next Mac was a fully capable game machine (I plan on buying a new MBP probably next refresh), and able to draw some fast frames on legit late titles.. I would maybe stop playing my xbox so much.

Apple, please *fix* the game platform. I can see them integrating downloading games into iTunes at some point with all the latest titles... straight onto your Mac. Bioshock 3? Whatever's clever, straight to your hard drive. I am with you guys, I think that this next year and a half is going to be a good one.

Those frame increases on the iMacs were impressive. I would love to see a little increase in my Macbook even! I have an SSD in mine and it is fast for what I need it to do. Oh well just some thoughts on the issue. Hopefully this is a good thing!

 

[AaronMT]

Anyone have the seed note PDF?

 

[Stridder44]

I wouldn't expect any performance boost in old Macs such as the ones with intel graphics, old nvidias or ATIS.
Perhaps not even on the 9400M.

I would. If not, that would be the biggest pile of bulls--t ever.

 

[HiRez]

I hope Diablo 3 will run as smooth as possible. That's the only game i'm really interested in right now. Still play Diablo and Diablo II and Heroes of Might and Magic II.

I remember having big issues with Diablo II on my Pismo PowerBook. The frame rate was horrible and laggy. Turns out the issue was ... surprise... OpenGL. Turning off OpenGL rendering and going "down" to software rendering made it run beautifully. Weird how sometimes the pieces that are supposed to improve performance can be the very ones killing performance.

Need that Starcraft 2 fix pronto, I'm seriously worried I'm going to see molten solder dripping out the ports.

 

[MacUpNorth]

All;

I installed this last night and it was a huge breakthru for me.

This is easily available;
-download mid 2010 iMac update.
-use pacifist to extract.

Performance;
Big improvement at 2560x1440;
Framerates went from 700-800fps OpenGL to 1200+

Did you install the whole package, or just specific parts of it?

 

[Pentad]

I wouldn't expect any performance boost in old Macs such as the ones with intel graphics, old nvidias or ATIS.
Perhaps not even on the 9400M.

 

[csalm87]

Now if only someone would violate their NDA and publish the seed notes...

Really though, it would be nice, but hey, I can't blame you for not doing it. I know there's some people on here who have access to this though.

This is the only thing it says in the seed notes:
The Snow Leopard Graphics Update contains general fixes that enhance the stability and reliability of graphics applications and games.

I never understood why Apple is so secretive with stuff like this. Obviously, a "graphics update" would include fixes. Duh.

 

[thagomizer]

This is not solely a driver problem. Sims 3 uses Cider; basically the Mac port is just a Windows game that runs in emulation on a Mac. Any Cider game is going to give you horrible performance. Spore has the same problem, it runs like crap even on a Mac Pro with a GTX 285.

Apple's graphics drivers are completely subpar.

The other day I decided to do a test. I installed The Sims 3 on my Mac Pro with a GTX 285. One install on OS X and the other on my Windows 7 Bootcamp partition. On Windows I was getting 150 fps with all settings maxed at 1920x1200. On OS X I was getting 20 and less with all settings maxed at 1920x1200. That's just sad.

I hope this leads to Apple being serious about graphics and, in turn, games.

 

[aliensporebomb]

Ah.....

Did you install the whole package, or just specific parts of it?

Just the ATI drivers - everything with ATI at the start of the filename.

Screenshots of before and after framerates from GL View.

Before (and not even as good as normally achieved):

After (much better - 2560x1440):

Check out the improved framerates at lower resolution (1920x1080 HD res):

 

[MikhailT]

Hopefully this includes my 8600m. I'd like for it to stop frying mother boards.

Don't get your hope up, there's nothing that can be done for 8600m. Software drivers can't fix hardware issues, they can reduce the chances of it happening but not too much. In fact, if the drivers are improved to the point that the GPUs are being used more, the heat can increase from the higher performance and this can harm the chips.

It does seem kind of backwards of Apple to not put graphics at anywhere near priority for so many years when there are so many apple owners who do graphics intensive work on theirs, such as photography and photoshop, etc.

Hopefully apple is listening to the growing groan of all of these people along with the gamers.

It's only for the past few years that those kind of work were being offloaded to the GPUs (non-workstation types). I believe CS4 was the first to use GPU acceleration.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

Safari already feels snappier just reading this news.

Especially if you use Firefox.

 

[Vidd]

I reboot a lot less into Windows since Steam came to Mac. Unfortunately, the graphics performance is just so much worse in OS X, it's almost not worth playing. I don't want to turn the settings down just because I've booted into my preferred OS.
Hopefully these prospective updates will close the gap a little.

 

[CaoCao]

I'm hoping for some 9400M love considering the 2010s are after they started focusing (much better increase=much more buys)

 

[Ferazel]

Hmm, while I think that AlienSporeBomb's numbers may be a little too great. (I'm getting 2000-2100 at 1080p pre-update on my Mac Pro 4870, although the iMac does use the mobility 4850).

I'm very happy that Apple is pushing this out as a separate update so hopefully we can benefit sooner than 10.6.5.

 

[analog guy]

Screenshots of before and after framerates from GL View.

based on your post, i downloaded openGL extensions viewer. i just had time for one test on my early 2008 mac pro @ 1920x1200x32bpp, running 10.6.3.

i was running 10.6.4 for week or so, but -- perhaps coincidentally -- my nvidia 8800 GT failed at the same time. (anyone know if it's possible that 10.6.4 could have taken out the card? never had a minute of trouble with it up until that point.)

i reverted back to 10.6.3 (didn't help), then got an nvidia gtx 285.

anyway, my results are attached. i'm a little hesitant to change the drivers on this system, but it would be interesting to see what the improvement (if any) is.

 

[darkplanets]

I know its a far-fetch since its an '08 model, but I'd really love it if my ATI 2600 HD "Pro" (lol, it means mobile) didn't suck under OSX.

SC2 can run at native res on medium settings with 35-40 fps in windows.

SC2 can run at less than native res on low settings with 25-30 fps in OSX if I'm lucky.

 

[rajid]

Wonder if this will fix netflix/silverlight?

I wonder if this has anything to do with the strange flickering I keep seeing on the right edge and top of my monitor when viewing netflix streaming movies (via silverlight, of course). I've installed silverlight twice and it doesn't fix the problem. (This is on a Mac Mini, 1.83Ghz Core Duo. Yep, it's an older machine, but it used to work fine before Snow Leopard.)

 

[Fender2112]

Does this mean I now get to watch You Tube videos?

 

[wjlafrance]

I wouldn't expect any performance boost in old Macs such as the ones with intel graphics, old nvidias or ATIS.
Perhaps not even on the 9400M.

9400M is in 6 month old MacBooks. AppleCare isn't even over for them yet.

For those with SC2 causing windtunnel effects, check this out: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/13501356

It's not a fix for bad graphics, but at least you can set a reasonable FPS and not melt your chips.

 

[zweigand]

I'm guessing the only love my Nvidia 7600GT iMac will continue to see is from boot camp.

 

[Riemann Zeta]

Let's hope this leaks to the tubes by tomorrow. It is desperately needed and it could be months before Apple decides to publicly release it.

 

[Blueyo]

Hey all,

I have a question, is the 9400m processor on my Macbook Pro 2009 capable of playing Starcraft 2 if all the problems with Apple's drivers were fixed? I tried playing Starcraft 2 Beta and the main graphics option that lowered FPS to about 1 was "shader" which is also the option that made the game look amazing.

I just wanted to know if Apple fixes the graphic drivers, will I be able to play the game with "shader" enabled and at a possible 1280x960 resolution.

Thanks

 

[bankshot]

Somehow I doubt this will do anything to address the ridiculous graphics bugs in iPhoto '09 + Snow Leopard on my 2-year-old Mac mini. When editing photos, the editing area goes "bad" (all black, way too bright, or way too dark) about every 5 or 6 photos. I have to get out of the editor and back in - then it's fine for a few more photos.

Then sometimes I get garbage all over the screen, even outside the editing area. If I'm lucky, it goes away by getting out of the editor and moving windows around to force redraw. If not, the whole screen stops responding, requiring either a hard reset or remote reboot over ssh (but all gui work in progress is lost in either case).

It's ridiculously frustrating, and somehow I suspect Apple doesn't care about supporting old hardware with bug fixes. They want me to "fix" it by giving them more money for a new machine.

 

[arkmannj]

Pretty please help out my 8600 M GT !!!