Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Using Steam on the MBP. Lost performance or better efficiency?

T

thought-i-knew

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I'm sure as everyone's head Steam recently came out for mac.
Thus far all the articles I've been able to find (that'd be a whopping 3) show windows currently out performs it by ~40%, give or take you're MBP specs, but also that it's 5 times more stable on OSX! And that 60fps on OSX works just as well as 100fps on bootcamp.
SO if it's spitting out 40% less performance, is it using 40% less power? i.e. - more efficiency from OSX and the redesigned steam engine. I know that for the previous generation MBP simply running bootcamp can get hot (even more so when you throw a CPU intensive processes).
Does the running a game on the OSX with it's source engine overall run more efficiently than bootcamping them to windows? Or am I just as likely to get my lap set on fire? This also is useful to know for which to use when gaming on battery.

Thanks for all comments and feedback 😀
 
Last edited:
thought-i-knew said:
I'm sure as everyone's head Steam recently came out for mac.
Thus far all the articles I've been able to find (that'd be a whopping 3) show windows currently out performs it by ~40%, give or take you're MBP specs, but also that it's 5 times that it's more stable on OSX! And that 60fps on OSX works just as well as 100fps on bootcamp.
SO if it's spitting out 40% less performance, is it using 40% less power? i.e. - more efficiency from OSX and the redesigned steam engine. I know that for the previous generation MBP simply running bootcamp can get hot (even more so when you throw a CPU intensive processes).
Does the running a game on the OSX with it's source engine overall run more efficiently than bootcamping them to windows? Or am I just as likely to get my lap set on fire? This also is useful to know for which to use when gaming on battery.

Thanks for all comments and feedback 😀
Click to expand...
Haha Yeah i saw those same facts. It doesnt. Still uses just as much power :/ Man can it get hot playing tf2
 
I'm going to use steam on my 13" MBP in Mac OSX soon... I'm just downloading games, and when I can start playing I'll let you know how it pans out...😛
 
You'll also want to keep in mind that the aluminum chassis is meant to assist in heat transfer as opposed to those desktop-replacement behemoths with their monstrous fans.

Given that, it seems that it'll still be stressing the CPU/GPU that if you were to see a 40% increase in efficiency, it may not be all that beneficial. That's *if* there is that 40% increase in efficiency - it's most likely that they're still working out the bugs (Steam has been Windows-based for most of its existence).

That's why I have a gaming PC and a portable machine for everything else. 🙂
 
What I read till now about Steam on Mac is,
you get worse picture quality
much worse speed
old games
and really the only benefit is you don't have to use bootcamp.

The reason why it is slower has nothing to do with effciency or lower CPU clocks ...
It is because Game developers, Microsoft, Nvidia and AMD have spent years optimizing for DirectX and Steam on Mac only runs OpenGL Ports. The GPUs bios Apple uses because they are cheaper are DirectX optimized. The Game Engines are DirectX optimized and are just ported by a comparably small amount of programmers too OpenGL.
It is slower and although it might get better in the future, rest assured it will stay like this for a while, meaning years.
 
aimbdd said:
uhh actually your wrong. It is more stable then on windows.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2...in-gaming-performance-excels-at-stability.ars

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2010/05/26/steam-is-more-stable-on-mac-than-windows/
Click to expand...

That is what the op said, just hard to decipher the op's english...

thought-i-knew said:
I'm sure as everyone's head Steam recently came out for mac.
Thus far all the articles I've been able to find (that'd be a whopping 3) show windows currently out performs it by ~40%, give or take you're MBP specs, but also that it's 5 times that it's more stable on OSX! And that 60fps on OSX works just as well as 100fps on bootcamp.
Click to expand...
 
Ah, well I had trouble understanding the op so I assumed... But does anyone know if games like Garrys Mod on the Mac will play with people playing on Windows or are the servers independent?
 
Stvwndr219 said:
You'll also want to keep in mind that the aluminum chassis is meant to assist in heat transfer as opposed to those desktop-replacement behemoths with their monstrous fans.

Given that, it seems that it'll still be stressing the CPU/GPU that if you were to see a 40% increase in efficiency, it may not be all that beneficial. That's *if* there is that 40% increase in efficiency - it's most likely that they're still working out the bugs (Steam has been Windows-based for most of its existence).

That's why I have a gaming PC and a portable machine for everything else. 🙂
Click to expand...

According to my friends who use steam on Windows computers, its quite buggy. However, it is even more buggy on OSX lol...😛
 
thought-i-knew said:
but also that it's 5 times more stable on OSX! And that 60fps on OSX works just as well as 100fps on bootcamp.
Click to expand...
it only applies to games that are old enough that they run on bootcamp with 100fps. Of course 60fps or 100 fps doesn't matter with a 60hz monitor but 18 or 30 fps do make a huge difference and that is the fps that you need to worry about. Any newer game you want to be able to run at 30-40 fps to keep the minimum framerate from dropping below 25 and that is hard enough on Windows with newer Gaming Engines without going to lowest details that just look like crap and worse than an older engine. Kill 40% of this barely enough power and there is hardly anything left.


Stability measures in Steam on both Platfroms aren't really comparable yet as there are like a million games on Windows some probably crap and a few dozens on Mac, also every idiot with sometimes the weirdest drivers runs Steam on Windows.
Unless somebody just wants to play CSS which should work Steam on Mac really is still a little pointless and don't fool your self the performance difference is not due to a few bugs that will disappear soon. Writing Graphics Drivers is according to AMD about as much work or more than developing an operating system and till now they only get enough attention on the Windows DirectX side. There has never been a reason to put in the same work for OpenGL. Workstation GPUs are for OpenGL but they are again not optimized for gaming workload and specific games like the DirectX drivers but for CAD and stuff like it.
 
dusk007 said:
Stability measures in Steam on both Platfroms aren't really comparable yet as there are like a million games on Windows some probably crap and a few dozens on Mac, also every idiot with sometimes the weirdest drivers runs Steam on Windows.
Unless somebody just wants to play CSS which should work Steam on Mac really is still a little pointless.
Click to expand...

Hmmm. I am sure there are people playing games on steam mac with crap drivers too. Just because it tells you to update i know a lot of people who don't update their mac.

I find running steam on mac very not pointless. I enjoy playing tf2 without restarting or turning on my desktop.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back