OS X List of Mac Metal games

[jeanlain]

DiRt Rally doesn't even run under 10.12.

That's why I said you couldn't compare performance for DiRT Rally. I meant gaming performance in general. But I found my answer it was you who started a thread to report poor general gaming performance on 10.3. Has it been solved, BTW?

In your first DiRT comparison test with 4X MSAA, Windows was 55% faster, if one computes the performance difference the same way you did in your last test (windows fps / mac fps -1). So removing MSAA reduces the difference, like I saw.

What puzzles me is why the performance delta is higher on your system than on mine, considering that our GPUs are similar (both Polaris). The delta is around 35% on my iMac with 4X MSAA, and 20% without MSAA (Windows using recent crimson drivers). And 2 Feral guys said the game shouldn't run more slowly than 80% of the Windows performance on AMD... I'm thinking High Sierra may reduce gaming performances on certain laptops, as you saw in other games.

 

[Janichsan]

That's why I said you couldn't compare performance for DiRT Rally. I meant gaming performance in general.

Correct, but DiRT isn't the only game that allows benchmarking. And with other games (e.g. Hitman), I don't see tremendous differences between Sierra and High Sierra (War Thunder aside, which I don't see as good tool for benchmarking Metal at the moment for other reasons). Except for...

But I found my answer it was you who started a thread to report poor general gaming performance on 10.3. Has it been solved, BTW?

...this, which in fact has yet to be solved. But as other mentioned in that thread, there's a way to temporarily fix the problem: restart the MacBook, and graphics performance is fine, until you put it to sleep. Wake it up again, and performance is crap.

In your first DiRT comparison test with 4X MSAA, Windows was 55% faster, if one computes the performance difference the same way you did in your last test (windows fps / mac fps -1).

Oops, you are correct: I calculated the difference not the same way. The second method actually makes more sense, since it really expresses how much Windows is faster than macOS.

 

[jeanlain]

(War Thunder aside, which I don't see as good tool for benchmarking Metal at the moment for other reasons)

Interestingly, war thunder on Metal no longer appears to be capped at 60 fps, not even 120 fps. I wonder how they did it since they the game shows no sign of using openGL and Metal is supposed to be constrained by core animation at 120 fps. I didn't see screen tearing either, even though frame rate can go above 400 fps at low resolution.

 

[Irishman]

Interestingly, war thunder on Metal no longer appears to be capped at 60 fps, not even 120 fps. I wonder how they did it since they the game shows no sign of using openGL and Metal is supposed to be constrained by core animation at 120 fps. I didn't see screen tearing either, even though frame rate can go above 400 fps at low resolution.

What do you consider to be low resolution?

 

[jeanlain]

1280*720

 

[Shamgar]

I don't play Heroes, but I am under the impression a recent patch introduced a bug which caused the minimap to be unreadable when using Metal. I don't believe this bug is present in SC2, so perhaps the removal from HoTS is related purely to this.

High Sierra introduced several bugs in HoTS when using Metal. The two biggest ones were the inability to remember vsync settings (dropping frame rates to half every time the game was launched), and the minimap being unclickable (making for inefficient navigation about the map). Similar issues have occurred in SC2, though not as gameplay breaking. Blizzard couldn't seem to find a solution for those bugs.

 

[mario-64]

Blizzard couldn't seem to find a solution for those bugs.

Sure they could -if- they really wanted to. It would be more correct to say they "wouldn't" find a solution as it would take development resources they weren't willing to devote. Just my opinion

 

[Shamgar]

They did try to fix the bugs, but developing for Metal in High Sierra exceeded their development resources. At least for the time being. It's not clear if that's because their allocated resources were so slim, or because Apple made things so hard. Or some combination thereof.

 

[jeanlain]

Other companies handle Metal well (see OP). I'm not sure why it took 10 months of beta for blizzard to finally remove Metal from their game.

 

[Shamgar]

I have seen the very short list of metal games in the OP, yes.

 

[jeanlain]

Still longer than the list of DX12 and Vulkan games. And that doesn't count iOS games of course.

 

[Janichsan]

Other companies handle Metal well (see OP). I'm not sure why it took 10 months of beta for blizzard to finally remove Metal from their game.

Maybe they had unresolvable issues with Metal in HotS (and SC2?) on Nvidia GPUs, like Aspyr and Feral often have.

 

[jeanlain]

I don't remember user reporting issues specific to nVidia GPUs.

 

[Shamgar]

The problems affected both my GTX 1080 and Radeon Pro 460.

 

[Joseph wheeler]

Finally, we have big games using the Metal API.
EDIT: the list can't be exhaustive. All upcoming games from Feral, Aspyr and those that run on UE4 and Unity 5 will most likely use Metal. I grouped games according to the developers who actually did the porting to Metal.

Feral Interactive
- F1 2016 (Ego Engine 4.0)
- F1 2017
- Hitman (Glacier Engine)
- Total War: Warhammer (Total War Engine 3)
- Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III (Essence Engine 4)
- Bioshock Remastered (Unreal Engine 2.5?)
- DiRT Rally (Ego 2.5)
- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (Glacier Engine)
Announced:

Aspyr
- Mafia III (Illusion Engine)

Blizzard
- World of Warcraft (WoW Engine)
Open beta:
- StarCraft II (SC2 Engine)
- Heroes of the Storm (SC2 Engine)

Epic Games (Unreal Engine 4)
- Obduction
- Refunct
- Everspace
- Fortnite
- Ark: Survival Evolved
- Observer
Open Beta:
- Unreal Tournament
Announced:

Unity (Unity 5)
- Ballistic Overkill
- Cities: Skilines
- Micro Machines World Series
- Universe Sandbox 2
Announced:
- Space Pirate Trainer (VR!, version running on the Mac mentioned at WWDC)

Telltale Games (Telltale Tool)
- Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series
- Minecraft: Story Mode - Season Two
- Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series

Others
- The Witness (custom engine) - Thekla
- Headlander (Buddah Engine) - Double Fine Studios
- War Thunder (Dagor Engine 4) - Gaijin
Open beta:
- Fugl (custom engine) - Team Fugl
- Arma III (Real Virtuality 4) - Virtual Programming
Announced:
- X-Plane 11 (custom engine) - Laminar Research

What else? I can keep the list updated.

[doublepost=1514859484][/doublepost]

Finally, we have big games using the Metal API.
EDIT: the list can't be exhaustive. All upcoming games from Feral, Aspyr and those that run on UE4 and Unity 5 will most likely use Metal. I grouped games according to the developers who actually did the porting to Metal.

Feral Interactive
- F1 2016 (Ego Engine 4.0)
- F1 2017
- Hitman (Glacier Engine)
- Total War: Warhammer (Total War Engine 3)
- Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III (Essence Engine 4)
- Bioshock Remastered (Unreal Engine 2.5?)
- DiRT Rally (Ego 2.5)
- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (Glacier Engine)
Announced:

Aspyr
- Mafia III (Illusion Engine)

Blizzard
- World of Warcraft (WoW Engine)
Open beta:
- StarCraft II (SC2 Engine)
- Heroes of the Storm (SC2 Engine)

Epic Games (Unreal Engine 4)
- Obduction
- Refunct
- Everspace
- Fortnite
- Ark: Survival Evolved
- Observer
Open Beta:
- Unreal Tournament
Announced:

Unity (Unity 5)
- Ballistic Overkill
- Cities: Skilines
- Micro Machines World Series
- Universe Sandbox 2
Announced:
- Space Pirate Trainer (VR!, version running on the Mac mentioned at WWDC)

Telltale Games (Telltale Tool)
- Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series
- Minecraft: Story Mode - Season Two
- Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series

Others
- The Witness (custom engine) - Thekla
- Headlander (Buddah Engine) - Double Fine Studios
- War Thunder (Dagor Engine 4) - Gaijin
Open beta:
- Fugl (custom engine) - Team Fugl
- Arma III (Real Virtuality 4) - Virtual Programming
Announced:
- X-Plane 11 (custom engine) - Laminar Research

What else? I can keep the list updated.

There is also Firewatch by Campo Santo, the best game on the planet

 

[wubsylol]

[doublepost=1514859484][/doublepost]
There is also Firewatch by Campo Santo, the best game on the planet

Firewatch never got Metal support. Campo Santo blamed issues with Unity.

 

[coder0000]

Thanks. I'm getting 76 fps with these settings with Vsync off.
It seems MSAA has a huge impact on performance, much less so under Windows. Investigating...

Bug in the driver -- will get addressed. MSAA % hit should be comparable to Windows.

 

[jeanlain]

Bug in the driver -- will get addressed

Or not...
For several bug reports, I got the reply "we don't know when/how the issue will be addressed".

In respect to this bug, the 10.13.2 update made it far worse. At high resolution and 8X MSAA, Windows is like 3 times faster than macOS.

 

[Janichsan]

Bug in the driver -- will get addressed. MSAA % hit should be comparable to Windows.

Not a bug. MSAA under Windows is faster due to the GPU vendors massively tricking to accelerate it.

 

[coder0000]

Or not...
For several bug reports, I got the reply "we don't know when/how the issue will be addressed".

In respect to this bug, the 10.13.2 update made it far worse. At high resolution and 8X MSAA, Windows is like 3 times faster than macOS.

As stated above, in this particular case it's a bug and will be addressed, which should bring the MSAA percentage impact in-line with Windows.

 

[jeanlain]

How do you know it's a bug that will be addressed?

 

[marksatt]

How do you know it's a bug that will be addressed?

I assume because it was filed and discussed with Apple.

The performance delta for MSAA was always going to have to be addressed by driver changes as the vendors are in control of how MSAA is implemented.

 

[jeanlain]

Macgamerhq has posted a list of Mac Metal games.
https://www.macgamerhq.com/guides/macos-metal-games/

 

[jeanlain]

As stated above, in this particular case it's a bug and will be addressed, which should bring the MSAA percentage impact in-line with Windows.

macOS 10.3.4 indeed improved MSAA performance. On DiRT at MSAA 8X, performance went from 28 fps on 10.3.2, to 16 fps on 10.3.3, to 44 fps on 10.3.4. Nice!
Curiously, performance is slightly lower than on 10.3.2 at MSAA 2X.

 

[coder0000]

macOS 10.3.4 indeed improved MSAA performance. On DiRT at MSAA 8X, performance went from 28 fps on 10.3.2, to 16 fps on 10.3.3, to 44 fps on 10.3.4. Nice!
Curiously, performance is slightly lower than on 10.3.2 at MSAA 2X.

Which machine is this on? I could be mistaken but I don't think 10.13.4 has the full fix so there should be more uplift on the way. Full fix to bring 8xAA impact more in-line with DX should be in 10.13.5 I believe.