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

Vertical sync

spyker3292 said:
Portal and TF2 have been running great on my i7 MBP (330M GT). Portal gets a constant 60fps, with a drop (not too noticeable, just to 40-30fps) when you look into an open portal. TF2 runs great, but I didn't check the FPS for it. I can't wait till it goes public. I really want to replay Half Life 2.

Both games on medium-high settings.
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Coming from a pc gaming background it sounds like you have vertical sync enabled. What that does is try to limit your fps to 60fps to match your monitors refresh rate. The disadvantage of this setting enabled is sometimes the frame rate will drop below the 60fps into the 40 range.

Disabling it should crank up you fps to at least the 80s, but then you might get something known as tearing which you'll a horizontal line where the frame doesn't line up. That can be annoying but when benchmarking a system the non-vsynced numbers are usually more significant. Play around with the option and see what you like better.

I'm weird in the fact that I have PC for gaming and a MacBook for my laptop. I probably won't switch the PC out until Mac comes out with a cheaper tower. Mac Pros are sweet, but I really don't need that much power and iMacs are still under powered for the price when I don't want that form factor.
 
LagunaSol said:
I know, totally. I wish people would realize how ignorant they are. Stupid anti-Windows propaganda. Anti-virus protection on PCs is totally transparent and painless. It just updates itself automatically, no big deal. Then it throws your PC into an endless reboot cycle you can't escape from. Oh, wait, what???

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362926,00.asp
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I must be doing something wrong if I never get these problems.
 
Eidorian said:
I must be doing something wrong if I never get these problems.
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I think you’re doing something right :) or are just lucky. Neither of which works for everyone. Many PC users do just fine with security issues, despite putting in no effort at all. Many don’t do fine at all. By gaming on Mac, I can be sure I’m not fighting those problems. (Of course that’s just one reason I game on Mac OS X, and not the most important one. The unacceptability of rebooting is a bigger reason. And yes, there are reasons TO game on Windows as well—to each his own—but the choice to game on Mac is perfectly sensible.)
 
evilcheerio said:
Coming from a pc gaming background it sounds like you have vertical sync enabled. What that does is try to limit your fps to 60fps to match your monitors refresh rate. The disadvantage of this setting enabled is sometimes the frame rate will drop below the 60fps into the 40 range.

Disabling it should crank up you fps to at least the 80s, but then you might get something known as tearing which you'll a horizontal line where the frame doesn't line up. That can be annoying but when benchmarking a system the non-vsynced numbers are usually more significant. Play around with the option and see what you like better.

I'm weird in the fact that I have PC for gaming and a MacBook for my laptop. I probably won't switch the PC out until Mac comes out with a cheaper tower. Mac Pros are sweet, but I really don't need that much power and iMacs are still under powered for the price when I don't want that form factor.
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Sounds good on paper but it's not true. Yes his FPS might go as high as 80 but it will still drop to 40. And anyway since his monitor is only outputting 60FPS he won't be seeing 80FPS. Disabing vsync is only really good for benchmarking or seeing how high your FPS can go.
 
I love how wonderful news like this just turns into yet another huge dumb debate on pc versus mac.

Everyone, it's 2010. Aren't you all tired of this stupid debate? Seriously.

It's. Time. To. Move. On.

w00master
 
jimmyjoemccrow said:
Sounds good on paper but it's not true. Yes his FPS might go as high as 80 but it will still drop to 40. And anyway since his monitor is only outputting 60FPS he won't be seeing 80FPS. Disabing vsync is only really good for benchmarking or seeing how high your FPS can go.
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I think it'll have an effect on the overall smoothness of the game. Let's say it can only do 59fps at some point. Doesn't vsync lower the fps even further down to like 45 or 40fps to stay in sync with the 60Hz the monitor is set to?
 
bchreng said:
I think it'll have an effect on the overall smoothness of the game. Let's say it can only do 59fps at some point. Doesn't vsync lower the fps even further down to like 45 or 40fps to stay in sync with the 60Hz the monitor is set to?
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Not that I've noticed but the game I am playing at the moment (Bad Company 2) doesn't seem to cap the FPS even when I have vsync enabled. The other games I play (WoW and Left4Dead) run so fast that they don't drop below 60 in any case. Hmmm. I will experiment.
 
palebluedot said:
Steam for OS X comes out on my birthday (unless Valve time kicks in :rolleyes: ).

Talk about the best birthday present ever. Thanks Gabe Newell!!!
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Funny that you mention that because my birthday it today (the 11th of May)

I can't wait for Steam to be released!
 
nagromme said:
I think you’re doing something right :) or are just lucky. Neither of which works for everyone. Many PC users do just fine with security issues, despite putting in no effort at all. Many don’t do fine at all. By gaming on Mac, I can be sure I’m not fighting those problems. (Of course that’s just one reason I game on Mac OS X, and not the most important one. The unacceptability of rebooting is a bigger reason. And yes, there are reasons TO game on Windows as well—to each his own—but the choice to game on Mac is perfectly sensible.)
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I put forth little effort beyond not installing shady applications or going to questionable web sites. Though this applies to my Mac as well. The worst problem I've had in Ubuntu is dealing with some annoying FireFox shortcuts.

I've tried gaming on my Mac but I gave up on that years ago. In all honesty, it's really boring in the computer hardware world until Computex or back to school offers.

LagunaSol said:
You are truly an oasis of Windows-using bliss.
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The effort required is non-existent.
 
If all you are doing in Windows is gaming then you don't need a spyware program at all. If you are offline gaming, don't bother with an anti virus either. Unless you are constantly putting strangers USB drives in your slots then you don't need to worry.

The web and email are the biggest risks which you will not be using except (maybe) to download patches. Steam will download all the patches for you if you get your games that way.
 
mitchleeh said:
Valve is a game company. Steam is a distribution channel like iTunes/music. The big deal is, there are tons of great games not available on mac systems, and valve/steam are bringing them very soon.

You currently can't get them on PB so good luck with that. Steam is decent with deals and promotions, so it's worth checking out. Weird that you think the idea of buying a game is outrageous and you wont stand for it. Paying for a game is normal, and I don't know why you think you're entitled to free games...
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Uh yeah I can, and whenever I can get something for free I'll go for it, heck, anybody would, it's called saving money. I never said I think its outrageous, it's clearly YOU that thinks I'm entitled to free games, I never said anything about that, I'm just asking how this was a better option than free alternatives. No need to chastise me, all I asked is what it was..fool.
 
Cougarcat said:
Sounds like entitlement to me.
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LOL, it sounds more like a request to be banned to me.

because all he is doing is depriving those that create the said software of their rightful income, and when that happens often enough they end up going out of business.

iWonderwhy said:
Uh yeah I can, and whenever I can get something for free I'll go for it, heck, anybody would, it's called saving money. I never said I think its outrageous, it's clearly YOU that thinks I'm entitled to free games, I never said anything about that, I'm just asking how this was a better option than free alternatives. No need to chastise me, all I asked is what it was..fool.
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let me ask you this, Do you like getting payed for the work that you do ? (that is if you have a job), the developers also like to get payed to work. what your doing (or help doing ) is depriving the companies of their income. and what happens when they don't see enough income ? they start letting the workers go or go out of business.

People like you need to take a long walk off a short pier.

your nickname is iWonderwhy, and you wonder why your being chastised on these forums sort of fits your nickname. go figure
 
Where do you get the software to play these games? I'm interested in trying out the Portal game on my MBP.
 
Eidorian said:
I put forth little effort beyond not installing shady applications or going to questionable web sites. Though this applies to my Mac as well. The worst problem I've had in Ubuntu is dealing with some annoying FireFox shortcuts.

I've tried gaming on my Mac but I gave up on that years ago. In all honesty, it's really boring in the computer hardware world until Computex or back to school offers.

The effort required is non-existent.
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It's really simple. Mac platform is still very underdeveloped. Now that it is finally getting some exposure to computer gaming, it is bound to finally get the viruses too and the users will have to learn how to deal with them.
 
lilo777 said:
It's really simple. Mac platform is still very underdeveloped. Now that it is finally getting some exposure to computer gaming, it is bound to finally get the viruses too and the users will have to learn how to deal with them.
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Yep, Apple-haters have only been beating this FUD drum for about a decade now. Still waiting for that first virus in the wild that can infect Macs running OS X. :rolleyes:
 
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