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BioShock Infinite Coming to Mac on August 29th
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I just woke up to the great news, with brutal legend out today, and Sim City on the horizon its looking like a promising month.
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I play all the latest games at 1440p at 60fps. Yes, Far Cry 3, Bioshock Infinite etc. I may have to turn down the ultra settings and run them at a lowly "high" setting (lol), but 60fps is possible on the high-end iMac.
Hahahahahaha!
You missed the boat on that. Apple got "serious" about gaming over a decade ago. For five minutes.
They had a dev site and support, features all over the Apple site and a partnership with some Mac game dev regarding some third person shooter called Halo. Those were the days. Westlake and Aspyr ruled and Apple gave a **** for a second. That was also when Macs had real potential as gaming machines. Not the closed hardware systems they sell now.
Those days are gone and they are not coming back. If you want to play all the mainstream games you need to buy a console or build a PC.
But if you want to play Angry Birds and Draw Something on your phone, then Apple has you covered.
Apple clearly does care about gaming performance or they wouldn't bother putting an excellent GPU in their higher-end iMacs! Maybe they just assume we'll use Windows. Heck, I do!
Apples fault because THEY control the drivers , unlike the PC where you just grab new drivers to improve performance and add features.
un-optimized drivers are a killer, even under bootcamp ive had to hack beta drivers to get them to install because the bootcamp drivers are awful,
Made the difference between unplayable single and low double digits to 30 + fps for Skyrim on my 6770 21 inch iMac under bootcamp at native resolution, with everything set to high and a load of enchantment mods loaded.
So yeah, its kinda apples fault.
LOL? A 680MX is like what? A 660TI desktop card? Midrange at best. Not comparable to a 670/680 or the new 780 GTX cards. Those are high end cards (and even then you can always go up from their, by simply running two or more cards in SLI). Something you simply cannot do in an iMac. I'm not saying the iMac is bad per se for gaming, I just don't think that's what it is really buildt for. But let's be realistic the iMac is also not something hardcore gamers would get. It's just more of a work or personal computer that has enough oomph to play one or two games and it's fine for that. Just please don't call the 680MX high end!
Cougarcat is completely right, as of Mac OS X Mavericks (10.9) there will be full Opengl version 4.0 (And some 4.1) support.
In short: OpenGL 4.0 has all of shaders and tessellators and widgets that DX 11.x has.
So I hope to see more trippel AAA titles on Mac OS X soon.
Hahahahahaha!
You missed the boat on that. Apple got "serious" about gaming over a decade ago. For five minutes.
They had a dev site and support, features all over the Apple site and a partnership with some Mac game dev regarding some third person shooter called Halo. Those were the days. Westlake and Aspyr ruled and Apple gave a **** for a second. That was also when Macs had real potential as gaming machines. Not the closed hardware systems they sell now.
Those days are gone and they are not coming back. If you want to play all the mainstream games you need to buy a console or build a PC.
But if you want to play Angry Birds and Draw Something on your phone, then Apple has you covered.
All you have to do is to use Bootcamp. Then you have a PC.
Mate, the Internet tells me that you're not playing FC3 at High at 1440p. The 680MX isn't nearly as powerful as the actual 680, which pushes only 70 FPS at 1920x1200 @ high.
Aspyr has ported native and ONLY native for 17 years.
And we love you for it! <3
Q: Is there any multiplayer in Infinite?
And if there is, does it work across platforms (Steam, MAS, GameAgent)? Say, will someone playing the Steam version be able to play with someone playing the MAS version?
What an uneducated BS!
First off, both Direct3D and OpenGL are an API specification and not an implementation (though I agree that a "broken by design" specifications could make implementations practically slower than others), so talking about "efficiency" is simply wrong!
Furthermore, since OpenGL 4.0 the APIs have reached feature parity again (Direct3D 11) and I hear since OpenGL 4.3 OpenGL is actually more capable than Direct3D.
So it all boils down to the actual driver implementations, and interestingly, depending on who you ask, OpenGL implementations might actually defeat Direct3D even on the same (Windows) platform!
"But here’s the best bit: Using these new OpenGL optimizations, the OpenGL version of L4D2 on Windows is now faster than the DirectX version. With the same hardware, Windows 7/OpenGL/L4D2 clocks in at 303.4 fps — compared to Windows 7/DirectX/L4D2 at 270.6 fps. In short: OpenGL is faster than DirectX."
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/133824-valve-opengl-is-faster-than-directx-even-on-windows
Off course we Mac users are currently still stuck with OpenGL "3.2+" (almost, but not complete 3.3 API support) in Mountain Lion and since Apple is developing (and updating) all the drivers they might not be as efficient as the Linux/Windows OpenGL drivers (which are constantly being improved by AMD/nVidia, for instance). At least in Mavericks we can expect OpenGL 4.0 API support
Unless there's a different hardware ID between the iMac Radeon 6770M and the one in the MacBook Pro, AMD's Catalyst mobility drivers have always installed straight up. No "hacks" needed.
Didn't this game come out like 6 months ago on consoles and for Windows?
This is exactly part of the reason I switched back to PC from Mac. It was cool to see Steam come to OS X a few years ago but then you only had a handful of games to choose from or else boot into Windows to play any games.
Too many compromises using OS X and since Apple cares more about iOS over OS X why use it? How long did it take Apple to even acknowledge the importance of dedicated graphics let alone the fact pc gaming is still a viable market? And even then it was a half hearted attempt.
This is exactly part of the reason I switched back to PC from Mac. It was cool to see Steam come to OS X a few years ago but then you only had a handful of games to choose from or else boot into Windows to play any games.
Too many compromises using OS X and since Apple cares more about iOS over OS X why use it? How long did it take Apple to even acknowledge the importance of dedicated graphics let alone the fact pc gaming is still a viable market? And even then it was a half hearted attempt.
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I think it's not quite accurate to say Apple cares more about iOS over OS X just because Apple don't concentrate on gaming. As Apple make Pro Applications such as Final Cut & Logic Pro I find they're more concerned about people who use their computers to do actual work.
On a side note, it always amazes me when people say Apple systems are for people who don't do proper things on their computer; when they proudly play computer games on their custom-built PC all day whilst others are producing music and films on their Macs.
It's a High End among the mobile cards. Of course you can't compare it to Desktop cards.
Part of the problem is (as I understand it) all OpenGL calls on a Mac must go through WindowServer (also known as quartz compositor). No other process is allowed direct access to the GPU.
Bioshock creator Ken Levine just did an hour on Nerdist.
Pretty compelling:
http://www.nerdist.com/2013/07/nerdist-podcast-ken-levine/
Pretty compelling:
http://www.nerdist.com/2013/07/nerdist-podcast-ken-levine/
Splendid. As long as it's native to OS X. I'll buy, even at full price, which I hate doing.
Source Engine on Windows uses DirectX 9.0c. A more relevant comparison would be OpenGL 4.3 vs. DirectX 11.1
It was the only way I could work "would you kindly" into a post. I'm perfectly capable of using Google.
Yes, this ....
There was definitely a "golden age" of OS X gaming somewhere in the mid 2000's. I still own a bookshelf full of Mac game titles I bought in that era. That's when you saw everything from Stubbs the Zombie to True Crime: Streets of LA to Spiderman released as native OS X titles. I also bought C&C Generals, Battlefield 1942 and Star Wars: Jedi Knight around that time (and yes, Halo too).
As people predicted though, the ability to boot Macs into Windows really killed off the incentive to make OS X games. Now you just get the occasional crumb thrown our direction, when a title proves it's SO good in Windows that it justifies making the effort to eventually port it to a Mac version (and attempt to sell it for $40-50 again after it's discounted to about $20 for Windows, in most cases).
Thing is? I'm still one of those OS X users who hates booting into Windows. I did it to play Bioshock Unlimited already, but that's only because AMD started giving the game away free with a download code they threw in with new video card purchases. (And I bought a couple of 7950 cards to make a litecoin/bitcoin mining rig.) Otherwise, I would have waited for this Mac version to play it ... but it's slightly too late to get my $'s now.
There was definitely a "golden age" of OS X gaming somewhere in the mid 2000's. I still own a bookshelf full of Mac game titles I bought in that era. That's when you saw everything from Stubbs the Zombie to True Crime: Streets of LA to Spiderman released as native OS X titles. I also bought C&C Generals, Battlefield 1942 and Star Wars: Jedi Knight around that time (and yes, Halo too).
As people predicted though, the ability to boot Macs into Windows really killed off the incentive to make OS X games. Now you just get the occasional crumb thrown our direction, when a title proves it's SO good in Windows that it justifies making the effort to eventually port it to a Mac version (and attempt to sell it for $40-50 again after it's discounted to about $20 for Windows, in most cases).
Thing is? I'm still one of those OS X users who hates booting into Windows. I did it to play Bioshock Unlimited already, but that's only because AMD started giving the game away free with a download code they threw in with new video card purchases. (And I bought a couple of 7950 cards to make a litecoin/bitcoin mining rig.) Otherwise, I would have waited for this Mac version to play it ... but it's slightly too late to get my $'s now.
Hahahahahaha!
You missed the boat on that. Apple got "serious" about gaming over a decade ago. For five minutes.
They had a dev site and support, features all over the Apple site and a partnership with some Mac game dev regarding some third person shooter called Halo. Those were the days. Westlake and Aspyr ruled and Apple gave a **** for a second. That was also when Macs had real potential as gaming machines. Not the closed hardware systems they sell now.
Those days are gone and they are not coming back. If you want to play all the mainstream games you need to buy a console or build a PC.
But if you want to play Angry Birds and Draw Something on your phone, then Apple has you covered.