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First Impressions of Steam for Mac Including Portal and Team Fortress 2

doctoree said:
According to this report and to the report from Apple insider, the performance is really disapointing. These old games should really run very fast on such a sophisticated OS and although the tested GPU was not dedicated it is faster than the fastest dedictaed GPUs from when these games were released years ago. Additionally I used Geekbench to compare the performance of Windows to the performance of OSX (on my MacBook Pro) and OSX was always significantly faster. So a properly coded OSX title should always yield higher framerates then the same Windows coded title on the same hardware under Windows. Lets hope the performance will at least double towards the end of the beta!
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I wouldn't be so concerned with the processors.

In addition OS X gets some disturbingly high floating point scores in Geekbench. It can't be replicated on the same hardware under Windows.
 
I'm really looking forward to the release of this in 48 hours!

I never have thought of, and never will think of, the Mac as a gaming platform. I have my iPhone / PS3 for that.... However, I would REALLY like to get in on some Portal action. Never played that before... and who knows... maybe there will be other "must haves" to help me kill time on the airplanes :).
 
theBigD23 said:
How does Steam install on the system and install games? If you download a game, does it makes its own folder in the Applications folder or does it put it with Steam?
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On PC it keeps them all inside your Steam applications folder and under whatever your username is. This, I'm assuming will be different on Mac due to the fact that it's applications are installed differently. Then all your games are available via the Steam application or shortcuts(don't know if the Mac version will be doing this like the PC does) that it'll give you the option to create.
 
spaceballl said:
I'm really looking forward to the release of this in 48 hours!

I never have thought of, and never will think of, the Mac as a gaming platform. I have my iPhone / PS3 for that.... However, I would REALLY like to get in on some Portal action. Never played that before... and who knows... maybe there will be other "must haves" to help me kill time on the airplanes :).
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Ever heard of boot camp? Been using my Mac with bootcamp with Steam.
 
NaMMeR said:
Hopefully this means that Apple will finally have options for decent video cards clocked to at least default settings.
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Yeah I can't wait until the new BTO options come out for the 2010 Mac Pro. They better have some Radeon 5000 series and GeForce 400 series cards to choose from.
 
Can't wait to fire this up on my Hackintosh. 3.7ghz i7, GTX 285, 6GB RAM. I can play all Source games (L4D and L4D 2 included) with everything completely maxed out in Win7 and barely see a hit in the framerate. I hope the Mac versions stack up decently to that, although Apple really needs to tune up the drivers and their OpenGL implementation. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.
 
So, If I understand correctly

You have to pay that 'Steam Play' in order to play your windows-purchased games in your mac.

How much does Steam play cost?

I have a MBP 15'' with 9600 and TF2 is waiting for me :D
 
apple store down

I'm unable to start a new thread for this, so I'll put it here. The Apple Store is down - new Mac Pros?
 
iWonderwhy said:
What is this valve thing? Are there any free games, or is it basically like an online store where you have to buy all the games? If thats the case ill just stick with Pirate Bay thank you very much.
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You probably think you're stickin' to the man. You're actually stickin' it to all the people involved in making the game, as well as genuine customers who pay for your ride. Nobody ever said that having a broadband connection gave you the right to get all your media for free.
 
robj said:
So, If I understand correctly

You have to pay that 'Steam Play' in order to play your windows-purchased games in your mac.

How much does Steam play cost?

I have a MBP 15'' with 9600 and TF2 is waiting for me :D
Click to expand...

SteamPlay is free. That's the point. If you own it for windows, you own it for mac.
 
doctoree said:
According to this report and to the report from Apple insider, the performance is really disapointing. These old games should really run very fast on such a sophisticated OS and although the tested GPU was not dedicated it is faster than the fastest dedictaed GPUs from when these games were released years ago. Additionally I used Geekbench to compare the performance of Windows to the performance of OSX (on my MacBook Pro) and OSX was always significantly faster. So a properly coded OSX title should always yield higher framerates then the same Windows coded title on the same hardware under Windows. Lets hope the performance will at least double towards the end of the beta!
Click to expand...

I'm also surprised at the poor performance, even on the 9400m. Steam games have never been high spec games, and both Portal and TF2 are a couple of years old. They run on an Xbox 360 really well, no reason why a 9400m shouldn't be able to do as well if not better.
 
Yixian said:
As expected, Apple's choice of pathetic GPUs across it's entire Mac line is showing it's effect on native gaming.

I can only hope this will further pressure Apple to get it's act together graphics card-wise, everything else about their computers is cutting edge and good value for money but their GPUs are literally humiliating in comparison to PC counterparts many times cheaper. This has to change, the latest MBPs, for example, were utterly laughable.

Or, as has been said before in this thread, release a gaming MacBook Pro. I guarantee you, guarantee you, it will sell more than the AppleTV, Mac Mini and Xserve combined per month. Come on, you know that, I know that, Steve knows that, there's no reason to keep our heads in the sand about it anymore.
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Except gaming laptops are stupid anyway. With the progressive nature of games, it'll be outdated and unable to play games at high settings within 1-2 years. And you can't upgrade the GPU when that happens. If you want to game on a PC with maxed out settings, buying a gaming PC or building one is still your only option. Even gaming laptops are pathetic. That mobility 5870 is equal to like a pc 5750 counterpart and the displays on those laptops are like 1920 x 1200, which a 5750 can't comfortably push at high settings, and surely won't be able to at all when newer games involving dx11 and tessellation come out.. They're not worth it.

doctoree said:
According to this report and to the report from Apple insider, the performance is really disapointing. These old games should really run very fast on such a sophisticated OS and although the tested GPU was not dedicated it is faster than the fastest dedictaed GPUs from when these games were released years ago. Additionally I used Geekbench to compare the performance of Windows to the performance of OSX (on my MacBook Pro) and OSX was always significantly faster. So a properly coded OSX title should always yield higher framerates then the same Windows coded title on the same hardware under Windows. Lets hope the performance will at least double towards the end of the beta!
Click to expand...

synthetic benchmarks are stupid. They don't tell the whole story when it comes to real world performance. Geekbench does not even measure graphic performance of graphic cards.
 
My iMac with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, and a 128mb ATI Radeon HD 2400 handles Half Life 2 with no problems on reasonably high settings and it looks just as good as it does on the likes of the PS3.

So hopefully the Mac optimised version (if it's not just a port) will be the same.
 
Hmmm...Brad Nicholson. Haven't I seen you writing at TouchArcade? How many of you new bloggers has arn hired for all of his sites? It seems like he's getting to the point where he doesn't have to do as much writing and can do more investigative work. Nice.

Welcome aboard.
 
Yixian said:
As expected, Apple's choice of pathetic GPUs across it's entire Mac line is showing it's effect on native gaming.

I can only hope this will further pressure Apple to get it's act together graphics card-wise, everything else about their computers is cutting edge and good value for money but their GPUs are literally humiliating in comparison to PC counterparts many times cheaper. This has to change, the latest MBPs, for example, were utterly laughable.

Or, as has been said before in this thread, release a gaming MacBook Pro. I guarantee you, guarantee you, it will sell more than the AppleTV, Mac Mini and Xserve combined per month. Come on, you know that, I know that, Steve knows that, there's no reason to keep our heads in the sand about it anymore.
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And reduce their humongous phat margins? They'd rather save 20$ out of the 300$ they get in margins than provide you with a good computer.

This is the new Apple afterall - their business is selling crummy laptops with bottom of the barrel parts at premium prices.
 
After my experience with the Starcraft II demo I have to say I'm hesitant to use the Mac Steam and just stick with bootcamp. Because of DirectX, games just seem to run better on my Windows side. Anyone planning on scrapping Windows for the Mac Steam client? It's nice to see more games coming to Mac but they still seem crippled by OpenGL.
 
mac-pc-games.jpg
 
nconnella said:
After my experience with the Starcraft II demo I have to say I'm hesitant to use the Mac Steam and just stick with bootcamp. Because of DirectX, games just seem to run better on my Windows side. Anyone planning on scrapping Windows for the Mac Steam client? It's nice to see more games coming to Mac but they still seem crippled by OpenGL.
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I don't think it's OpenGL itself... it's just really bad/unoptimized drivers.
 
Yixian said:
Or, as has been said before in this thread, release a gaming MacBook Pro. I guarantee you, guarantee you, it will sell more than the AppleTV, Mac Mini and Xserve combined per month.
Click to expand...

That depends on the price it gets:
If it gets a reasonable price (what i think you meant) then sure it'll sell more then those products...

Hell, itll be the best sold laptop, problem is though that the other models will sell less because the gaming laptop has more value for money, and so apple would make less (as the gaming laptop gives them less profit per unit sold).
So gaming laptop will never, never see the daylight
 
junko said:
9400m can't even do high on a source game. :( I hope the 310m in the new macbooks does better.
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Not to say you're wrong, but my late-2008 unibody Macbook with a 9400m runs all Valve games (except L4D2) on the highest settings at the second highest resolution at over 30 fps.

As for non-Source engine games, I've been able to play just about any game to come out up to about 6 months ago. Sure, settings have to be dropped so they don't always look gorgeous, but you can still get a pretty great experience out of them. And yes, even Crysis runs really well on low/medium settings :)
 
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