Hi all,
I have a Mac Pro 3,1 with dual 3.2 Xeons, 56GB RAM, and a Geforce GTX750Ti 2GB, running High Sierra 10.13.6 (and Windows 10). I am looking to use this machine as a host to stream games to my 2013 Macbook Air so I can play games on the sofa or in bed when I get a spare few minutes - nothing too demanding, I largely play strategy games.
I tried to play Total War Thrones of Britannia, and while native performance in 1650x1050 is quite decent in High, the streaming performance to the MBA at 1440x900 even in Medium was very choppy. I expected to drop a few frames of course but this was quite unplayable. Tested to my 2012 Mini connected via Ethernet and same result, which leads me to think it's not a network issue but largely a performance issue with the Mac Pro.
I'm not sure where Steam in-home streaming is doing the extra work (to encode the video, etc) - is it the CPU or the GPU? Nothing I can do about the CPU of course, but would I benefit from a newer GPU for this particular use? The native performance of this GPU is fine, it just seem to struggle doing the extra work involved in the streaming.
I have been considering upgrading the GPU - I of course know mine is not a top performer - to something like a GTX680 (£45 second hand) or even a GTX780Ti (£75 second hand). Both would enable me to install Mojave, and the GTX680 of course would give me bootscreen, which is not a dealbraker but a nice to have.
What do you guys think?
I have a Mac Pro 3,1 with dual 3.2 Xeons, 56GB RAM, and a Geforce GTX750Ti 2GB, running High Sierra 10.13.6 (and Windows 10). I am looking to use this machine as a host to stream games to my 2013 Macbook Air so I can play games on the sofa or in bed when I get a spare few minutes - nothing too demanding, I largely play strategy games.
I tried to play Total War Thrones of Britannia, and while native performance in 1650x1050 is quite decent in High, the streaming performance to the MBA at 1440x900 even in Medium was very choppy. I expected to drop a few frames of course but this was quite unplayable. Tested to my 2012 Mini connected via Ethernet and same result, which leads me to think it's not a network issue but largely a performance issue with the Mac Pro.
I'm not sure where Steam in-home streaming is doing the extra work (to encode the video, etc) - is it the CPU or the GPU? Nothing I can do about the CPU of course, but would I benefit from a newer GPU for this particular use? The native performance of this GPU is fine, it just seem to struggle doing the extra work involved in the streaming.
I have been considering upgrading the GPU - I of course know mine is not a top performer - to something like a GTX680 (£45 second hand) or even a GTX780Ti (£75 second hand). Both would enable me to install Mojave, and the GTX680 of course would give me bootscreen, which is not a dealbraker but a nice to have.
What do you guys think?