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The 2010 MBP's Steam for Mac Performance Thread (+ Why CSS won't come soon)

rmbrown09

rmbrown09

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 25, 2010
949
1
USA
The Following Thread should cover the following.

Performance of the new MBP's as they take on the slew of new games being presented (VALVe has said they will release new games each Wednesday, so keep looking for your Css' and L4D's)

Link to Download Steam Client:
http://store.steampowered.com/

Counter Strike Source will not be here all that soon so don't get your hopes up, they are redeveloping it, to run on a new engine. No point in porting the old engine when they will just have to do it again. Link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/260

Personally on my 2.53 i5 15", I ran Portal on 1440x900 native, Maximum settings, without any AA, and AF at 4x

FPS seemed to be weird in this game, when there were no Portals around, I would pull 60 almost all the time, but make a couple, and I could drop all the way to 30.

If I made Portals but didn't look at them, back up to 60's.
Update: Steam put out an update a couple hours back, and I don't know if it's just me but I get 60 FPS almost all the time now, max settings (no AA)
Here is a screen from my preliminary game play.

Want to know your FPS in game?
1. Bring up options (esc) and go to keyboard, and then advanced, make sure developer console is enabled.
2. hit the ~ key and bring up the console
3. type (no quotes) "net_graph 1"

This is the load on my i5 MBP
Screenshot2010-05-12at30517PM.png


Steam has been getting plenty of updates so don't be surprised if you see this alot.
Screenshot2010-05-12at85950PM.png



Screenshot2010-05-12at20010PM.png


Screenshot2010-05-12at20210PM.png

58FPS
Screenshot2010-05-13at41100PM.png
 
It'd be entertaining to see if the games will even launch on Intel graphics and if so, how silly it is :)
 
I'm hoping that Steam will influence Apple to release some updated GPU drivers ASAP

and get 10.6.4 out the door
 
Tegeril said:
It'd be entertaining to see if the games will even launch on Intel graphics and if so, how silly it is :)
Click to expand...

Well considering that people play Portal on 300$ netbooks with Atom processors... of course the OS is not the same and neither are the graphic drivers...
 
This is going to be awesome.

By the way, I'm not familiar with Steam, or how it is maintained. I'm at the house, so the internet is way too slow to get it until I go up to the College tomorrow, but will "Portal" be completely free?

In other words, once I download the game, will it be freely accessible from then on? Or will it not allow me to play it anymore when May 24 comes up?

Just wondering. I only have the 320M machine, so gaming is not my thing (when it comes to my Macs. Check my sig for my gaming machine), but it's still kind of exciting. :D

Alex :apple:
 
lordofuo said:
This is going to be awesome.

By the way, I'm not familiar with Steam, or how it is maintained. I'm at the house, so the internet is way too slow to get it until I go up to the College tomorrow, but will "Portal" be completely free?

In other words, once I download the game, will it be freely accessible from then on? Or will it not allow me to play it anymore when May 24 comes up?

Just wondering. I only have the 320M machine, so gaming is not my thing (when it comes to my Macs. Check my sig for my gaming machine), but it's still kind of exciting. :D

Alex :apple:
Click to expand...
Not exactly sure, it might just be till then, or forever, idk
 
Nano2k said:
Well considering that people play Portal on 300$ netbooks with Atom processors... of course the OS is not the same and neither are the graphic drivers...
Click to expand...

Those netbooks are most certainly not running 1440x900, and definitely not 1680x1050 or 1920x1200...
 
Man someone should have warned me portal was 5gigs.

Sadly my machine doesn't have that much space to loose for a game... I guess that's the biggest draw back to my SSD.
 
The Steam Browser needs some work.. its extremely choppy and makes looking for games a pain in the &#$.. still waiting on the games to finish downloading.
 
I am hoping that the choppiness of the client is due to the fact that a lot of Mac people are hammering the servers today. It can only get better over time.

I don't have the exact fps numbers but Portal works beautifully on my i7, hi-res display at native res. - all settings maxed and 2x aa. Can't wait to try other games.

Also,
the Steam client itself doesn't seem to be triggering the discrete gpu, which is good.
 
You know what this means now? A virus will make Macs just like windows but worse..without protection.
 
Just to remind you al, Portal is only free until May 24th so grab it NOW! I played the first 5 or so levels, no idea of the FPS and haven't changed any graphics settings but it plays fine. Steam at last on the Mac plus the new Crossover launched today.
 
Guys, if you're running Portal and don't like the blurry-ish look, turn off the color correction in the advanced video settings. It'll make it look better.
 
On my hi-res 15" screen I seem to be getting 30 fps normally, dropping to 20ish when looking into a portal.

The thing is running in native resolution (the default when you start the game is quite a bit lower).
 
Tegeril said:
Those netbooks are most certainly not running 1440x900, and definitely not 1680x1050 or 1920x1200...
Click to expand...

Lots of netbooks can easily push pixels on larger displays. Netbooks running 9400m graphics can play Portal (and other source engine games) as well as or better than most macbooks can in OSX.

The OpenGL engine isn't great, and Apple's driver (or Kext or whatever) support and general graphics APIs are crap. I will be using steam on my mac, but it will be on the windows Bootcamp side.
 
I'm getting a nasty error when trying to shut down Steam.. keeps saying I need to close an open application after I have exited the game.
 
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