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Steam for Mac Now Live, Portal is Free Until May 24th
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Well, I've played Portal on OS X and on my Windows 7 boot camp partition and I get far better graphics performance out of my Windows version ... but that's probably down to Direct X and Windows having better gaming drivers.
So I downloaded Steam, and Portal on my MacBook Pro. Fun game, but would love to play it again, but on my Mac Pro.
However, not super keen on downloading 5GB twice though. Any tips? Can I put the steam folder that the game is in on an external drive, and copy onto my Mac Pro?
However, not super keen on downloading 5GB twice though. Any tips? Can I put the steam folder that the game is in on an external drive, and copy onto my Mac Pro?
Yes of course you can. I even copied my files from Windows 7 into OS X to save on download time. Just make sure Steam isn't running when you copy them over.
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Performance disappointment
I just finished playing through Portal again on the Mac and must say I'm disappointed by the performance. This was on the first Mac Pro listed in my signature.
With identical settings here are the FPS I get:
OS X 10.5.8
51 fps = Average FPS through most of the game.
30 fps = FPS in a room with acid/water floor.
10 fps = FPS in final fire area of room 19.
Windows 7 - 64 bit
180 fps = Average FPS through most of the game.
100 fps = FPS in a room with acid/water floor.
70 fps = FPS in final fire area of room 19.
That is a pretty drastic difference. If performance on TF2 is just as bad this will put a serious dent in my plan to ditch my Windows partition completely.
Now granted I was expecting a performance hit and do assume things may improve slightly over time or with 10.6 (updated OpenGL drivers) but I'm not sure they'll be able to make up over 100 fps with some tweaks.
I also haven't been following any of the beta discussion so I'm sure this has been discussed before, I don't think I'm breaking any new ground here, just wanted to share my experience.
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I just finished playing through Portal again on the Mac and must say I'm disappointed by the performance. This was on the first Mac Pro listed in my signature.
With identical settings here are the FPS I get:
OS X 10.5.8
51 fps = Average FPS through most of the game.
30 fps = FPS in a room with acid/water floor.
10 fps = FPS in final fire area of room 19.
Windows 7 - 64 bit
180 fps = Average FPS through most of the game.
100 fps = FPS in a room with acid/water floor.
70 fps = FPS in final fire area of room 19.
That is a pretty drastic difference. If performance on TF2 is just as bad this will put a serious dent in my plan to ditch my Windows partition completely.
Now granted I was expecting a performance hit and do assume things may improve slightly over time or with 10.6 (updated OpenGL drivers) but I'm not sure they'll be able to make up over 100 fps with some tweaks.
I also haven't been following any of the beta discussion so I'm sure this has been discussed before, I don't think I'm breaking any new ground here, just wanted to share my experience.
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downloaded Portal and Torchlight and both work great on my 21.5 3.06 ghz iMac. not choppy at all.
Okay, those of you having the problem with Portal not downloading/showing up in your Library/dumping you to a blank screen, I can pretty much guarantee it is an issue with your firewall settings.
After painstaking troubleshooting on this (tcpdump FTW! You're not a sysadmin unless you know it cold!) I was able to determine that Steam likes TCP/27017 open before it will actually act right in any sort of fashion. I had opened up ports TCP/27020-27050, UDP/27000-27015 and UDP/1200. Wrong. </facepalm>
Please read this Steam KB article on the exact port range you need opened in order for Steam to work.
Steam is now downloading Portal at a rate of 2.4 Mbps for me. I should have it in about 15 minutes.
After painstaking troubleshooting on this (tcpdump FTW! You're not a sysadmin unless you know it cold!) I was able to determine that Steam likes TCP/27017 open before it will actually act right in any sort of fashion. I had opened up ports TCP/27020-27050, UDP/27000-27015 and UDP/1200. Wrong. </facepalm>
Please read this Steam KB article on the exact port range you need opened in order for Steam to work.
Steam is now downloading Portal at a rate of 2.4 Mbps for me. I should have it in about 15 minutes.
I didn't take down any FPS numbers, but using identical settings on OS X and Windows 7 on Portal was like the difference between night and day.
My iMac is a 2.4GHz C2D with 4GB RAM and a 128mb ATI Radeon HD2400 ... and while it's hardly a powerhorse, on Windows it runs games easily at 1680 x 1050 with medium texture details, trilinear filtering, full reflections, etc. The only thing I need to turn off is AntiAliasing which does dent performance on my system, but Half Life 2 on Windows 7 through Boot Camp looks stunning from the off, as does Portal.
On OS X with the same settings, simply looking around the environment is sluggish and not a patch on my Windows performance.
So for now, until Apple sort out some form of gaming drivers (which I don't see happening), I'll be keeping my Windows 7 partition where it is.
Finally 
. Steam on the mac
I hope that this move from Valve, persuades more developers to bring their games to OS X
. Steam on the mac I hope that this move from Valve, persuades more developers to bring their games to OS X
Great! Thanks for the tip. Downloading like a charm.
I'd tried the "normal" way a few times today and had all but given up on getting it.
Except for one issue, Portal works really well on my 3.33 imac. Saved games keep disappearing (or perhaps they're overridden). Only four or five saves will show up in the load screen, and they are only of the most recent levels. This glitch doesn't allow you to replay levels that you might want to reexperience.
Underwhelmed by the performance on the 9600M GT. Even with everything on low (but still native resolution) I get framedrops, especially when opening up a portal.
Since I'd like to give Valve some credit for the effort, I'm assuming this is a driver issue. But as already said above, I cannot see a driver update making up for the the performance gap. Is it opengl or bad coding for opengl?
Or probably a combination of everything.
Since I'd like to give Valve some credit for the effort, I'm assuming this is a driver issue. But as already said above, I cannot see a driver update making up for the the performance gap. Is it opengl or bad coding for opengl?
Or probably a combination of everything.
Finally
I hope that this move from Valve, persuades more developers to bring their games to OS X
Me too... gaming is the main reason for me not fully converting!
Yeah I couldn't d/l using that link either. Just got a black screen. Try poking around other areas for a good d/l link. I got it by d/l Torchlight demo, then using the link to Portal on the next page it took me to
I tend to run games at lower than native res .. Usually around 720p.. which bumps the speed significantly but wow
I can see a *big* FPS hit.. Had to bump a few settings down on Portal, but it's still a good start. Very playable on my 9600m MBP.
I can see why TF2, L4D (and Killing Floor) aren't up yet if this is to be expected across the board.. This sort of slowdown could cripple L4D/KF. Its not necessarily all Apple's fault either.. I suspect there's a bit of optimisation left for Valve to do too.
I can see why TF2, L4D (and Killing Floor) aren't up yet if this is to be expected across the board.. This sort of slowdown could cripple L4D/KF. Its not necessarily all Apple's fault either.. I suspect there's a bit of optimisation left for Valve to do too.
It worked fine after I deleted local content and re-downloaded. Hopefully that fixes it for others as well.