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League of Legends performance worse on OS X

AppleTecFan

AppleTecFan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 7, 2009
411
3
N/A
When I play League of Legends on Windows 8 on my MacBook Pro its great. When I am on the mac client for League of Legends the FPS jumps up and down from 30-70 not consistently. Is this a fault from Riot or the OS itself. Or is the client just a port from the Windows version not a native client
 
AppleTecFan said:
When I play League of Legends on Windows 8 on my MacBook Pro its great. When I am on the mac client for League of Legends the FPS jumps up and down from 30-70 not consistently. Is this a fault from Riot or the OS itself. Or is the client just a port from the Windows version not a native client
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The drivers on OS X suck compared to their windows counter part, this explains most of the difference seen between Windows and OS X when the game has been properly ported.
 
snaky69 said:
The drivers on OS X suck compared to their windows counter part, this explains most of the difference seen between Windows and OS X when the game has been properly ported.
Click to expand...

Is there anything I can do? I'm fine with using boot camp but I much rather play on OSX
 
It also has to do with the fact that OS X uses Open GL where Windows uses Direct X. That's all code optimizations that can be done on Windows, but not on OS X.

Long story short, there's a reason why people say macs aren't for gaming. Even if you can manage to game on it, feel how hot that sucker gets?
 
On my macbook air 13" (HD4000) i get a constant 50FPS on macos, everything high beside shadows (low).
Do you have ivy bridge or sandy? i mean hd3000 or 4000?
 
AppleTecFan said:
So there is nothing to do oh my side
Click to expand...

Have you tried using gfxCardStatus to explicitly use your dedicated graphics card when running the game?

Also, make sure you're using smcFanControl (or an application of similar purpose) to set the fans higher to reduce the temperature.
 
xShane said:
Have you tried using gfxCardStatus to explicitly use your dedicated graphics card when running the game?

Also, make sure you're using smcFanControl (or an application of similar purpose) to set the fans higher to reduce the temperature.
Click to expand...

it changes over when I open league, and my fan speeds are set a little higher when I game .no better..
 
thejadedmonkey said:
It also has to do with the fact that OS X uses Open GL where Windows uses Direct X. That's all code optimizations that can be done on Windows, but not on OS X.

Long story short, there's a reason why people say macs aren't for gaming. Even if you can manage to game on it, feel how hot that sucker gets?
Click to expand...

Just because you can feel the warmth of the laptop on your lap or hands, doesn't mean it gets hotter then a desktop pc, in fact, it doesn't.

Also this: http://www.coolermaster.com/product/Lines/notepal-series.html
 
fenjen said:
Just because you can feel the warmth of the laptop on your lap or hands, doesn't mean it gets hotter then a desktop pc, in fact, it doesn't.

Also this: http://www.coolermaster.com/product/Lines/notepal-series.html
Click to expand...

Actually, it does. The MacBook Pro gets around 100°c at which point it will throttle itself so it doesn't overheat. My desktop never gets so hot that it has to throttle itself, and I actually have a BIOS alarm set so it will beep obnoxiously if any portion goes over 80°. It's never gone off. If you accept my sample size of 1 desktop as a valid marker, a MacBook Pro does get much much hotter than a desktop.
 
B... said:
What is it then? Same GPU and CPU, same games at same settings, different OS, different FPS.
Click to expand...

It's more a matter of OpenGL vs DirectX than drivers/OS.

Generally, DirectX versions of the game are optimized better since developers rather invest their time improving the most played version of the game (Windows).

If Steam pushes Linux for gaming, developers may take OpenGL more seriously. Valve worked on a OpenGL port of L4D2 that they tried to optimize as much as possible just to prove it's possible to get better performance than with DirectX.

After optimizing the Source Engine for the Linux platform, Valve wondered why OpenGL was outperforming Direct3D at a technical level. Their research found that, on the same hardware, there are "a few additional microseconds [of] overhead per batch in Direct3D which does not affect OpenGL," indicating that Direct3D may not be as efficient as Microsoft would like developers to believe.
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Link

However there is no real incentive for developers to optimize their OpenGL ports that much right now, hence the performance discrepancy. DirectX is a proprietary API made by Microsoft so it will stay Windows-only.
 
pgiguere1 said:
It's more a matter of OpenGL vs DirectX than drivers/OS.

Generally, DirectX versions of the game are optimized better since developers rather invest their time improving the most played version of the game (Windows).

If Steam pushes Linux for gaming, developers may take OpenGL more seriously. Valve worked on a OpenGL port of L4D2 that they tried to optimize as much as possible just to prove it's possible to get better performance than with DirectX.



Link

However there is no real incentive for developers to optimize their OpenGL ports that much right now, hence the performance discrepancy. DirectX is a proprietary API made by Microsoft so it will stay Windows-only.
Click to expand...

It would help if Apple updated their OpenGL support more aggressively... ML is still on what? 3.2?
 
Playing League on my Windows 7 bootcamp partition does run significantly better for me as well. I discovered that the LoL client for Mac is a 32-bit application, whereas the client on Windows is 64-bit. I'm guessing this ties into OpenGL vs DirectX.

However, I did notice that this was the case for Minecraft as well. On Mac OS X, Minecraft runs in Java 32-bit mode. There is a simple modification you can make to the launcher that forces it to run in Java 64-bit mode, which I found to yield a noticeable increase in FPS.

Just my 2¢
 
It has all to do with drivers.

Simple put, windows drivers for commercial line of products (gpus for gamers) have drivers that are written for high performance, support most of the latest DX/OpenGL features and allow massive customization when it comes to performance vs quality ratio. When you run game under windows, you have all effects available, and game runs smooth due to drivers optimization, the good part and the bad part (i.e. by lowering image quality).

In OSX, drivers are written to work, that's the main idea behind the programmers job. Who cares about game performance, most people don't buy macs to play, they do it to work, on stable platform, reliable software and that includes drivers at most.

You won't get windows performance on OSX systems, that's what Boot Camp is for.
 
Yes but it is 2013 and apple begin to claim you can play games as well..at retina macbook pro 15" they showed diablo 3. So i guess for killing users to even care windows for games they will make better drivers/opengl in next OS, because already most of the apps from windows now they have a equivalent on mac as well that run better..so only the games remain the only reason to use bootcamp
 
Serban said:
Yes but it is 2013 and apple begin to claim you can play games as well..at retina macbook pro 15" they showed diablo 3. So i guess for killing users to even care windows for games they will make better drivers/opengl in next OS, because already most of the apps from windows now they have a equivalent on mac as well that run better..so only the games remain the only reason to use bootcamp
Click to expand...

Well you can, but no one says it's reasonable or will be at the same performance level as on windows. OSX still falls behind when it comes to OpenGL support. So forget abut real gaming on mac, not going to happen any time soon.
 
There is some misinformation in this thread...

1. It is true that OS X driver performance is lower compared to windows drivers. Thats a fact.

2. It is also true that Apple has dramatically improved their drivers lately. My experience with games and benchmarks is that driver performance of 10.8.3 on my rMBP is within 80-90% of Windows, which is rather good. AND absolutely sufficient for 90% of the gaming people do. As Blizzard games clearly illustrate.

3. OP's problems with LoL probably have nothing to do with drivers - LoL is by no means a demanding game and should run really well even with slightly reduced drivers performance.

4. OS X game ports often have issues with visual latency (fps lag) - especially when rapidly changing the camera position. I don't know what's the problem here, it seems to do with loading of the data. I have no idea whether its the driver or some problems in the port code.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
Actually, it does. The MacBook Pro gets around 100°c at which point it will throttle itself so it doesn't overheat. My desktop never gets so hot that it has to throttle itself, and I actually have a BIOS alarm set so it will beep obnoxiously if any portion goes over 80°. It's never gone off. If you accept my sample size of 1 desktop as a valid marker, a MacBook Pro does get much much hotter than a desktop.
Click to expand...

Well if your Macbook goes up to a 100 degrees then there's certainly something wrong. Mine doesn't go higher then 60 or so. Even while gaming.
 
so i have 2 cases only for League of legends

- on my iMac 21.5" 650M on macos i get 60 FPS and in large battles i get 32fps
- on my macbook air 13" hd 4000 under windows 7 i get 45 with 20 fps


both run at native resolutions, i mean 1080p on imac and 900p on macbook air but in the air i have shadows off.

So on windows hd4000 is worse than macos ?? what the hell

I mean windows 7 hd4000(1440x900 with high and shadows off) vs macos(1920x1080p high)..kind a big difference, but yes the macbook has i5 dual core 1.8 ghz, and imac has i5 quad core 2.9ghz with 650m
 
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