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Valve Claims Frame Rate Improvements of Up to 120% With Snow Leopard Graphics Update

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Yesterday, Apple released Snow Leopard Graphics Update, designed to address issues being experienced with high-performance games on Mac OS X 10.6.4. The issue was brought to light by Valve Software, which had recommended that Mac gamers not update to Mac OS X 10.6.4 until the issue was addressed.

Valve, which has been working closely with Apple and graphics card companies to improve gaming performance on the Mac platform, has now posted a technical explanation of the steps it has been able to take to improve performance as facilitated by the new software update. While the details are certainly interesting, the bottom line is that frame rates have been increased by 15% to 120% on some newer Mac hardware.
We are seeing dramatic performance improvements on iMac (Late 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac mini (Early 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac Pro (Early 2009), MacBook (Early 2009 and Mid 2010) and MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010) and MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010) models. Depending on the game, video settings and the hardware, we have measured frame rate improvements from 15% to 120% on these systems. On older systems, we are generally already operating at the limits of the hardware, so it is not obvious that any significant performance improvements can be achieved in the future.
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Valve has made a significant investment into the Mac OS X platform, working to bring its entire library of high-profile games to the Mac while also opening up its Steam game distribution platform to allow other developers to easily offer Mac versions of their titles.

Article Link: Valve Claims Frame Rate Improvements of Up to 120% With Snow Leopard Graphics Update
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/08/18/valve-claims-frame-rate-improvements-of-up-to-120-with-snow-leopard-graphics-update/
While this is good to see, it highlights an issue with drivers on apple machines. It would be wonderful if apple allowed nvidia and ati to support their cards directly.
 
How much does it affect the Early 2009 iMac models? They aren't that different from the Late 2009...

Edit: Portal seems to be running better for me. Call of Duty 4 seems to be about the same. Call of Duty 2 might be a little better.
 
milbournosphere said:
While this is good to see, it highlights an issue with drivers on apple machines. It would be wonderful if apple allowed nvidia and ati to support their cards directly.
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No, thank you. I've spent more than enough time in my life installing, debugging, rolling back, etc. catalyst and nvidia drivers, trying to figure out why the newest driver made some games faster, some games slower, caused new artifacts or crashes, etc.

I'll gladly give up some fps for a little bit of stability.
 
milbournosphere said:
While this is good to see, it highlights an issue with drivers on apple machines. It would be wonderful if apple allowed nvidia and ati to support their cards directly.
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If nvidia or ATI is in anyway competent in supporting drivers on Mac, Apple would not need to step up.

The whole reason why Apple is even doing driver for those hardware is because their support for Mac sucked.
 
cmaier said:
No, thank you. I've spent more than enough time in my life installing, debugging, rolling back, etc. catalyst and nvidia drivers, trying to figure out why the newest driver made some games faster, some games slower, caused new artifacts or crashes, etc.

I'll gladly give up some fps for a little bit of stability.
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Me too - of course that's on the PC side. My suspicion is that Apple doesn't see much of a need to farm that support out given that the only machines that support swapping video cards is the MacPro - every other mac has non changeable cards.
 
"while also opening up its Steam game distribution platform to allow other developers to easily offer Mac versions of their titles."

And we're still waiting for that to happen. All we got are Valves' old titles and freakin 2-D puzzle games.
 
"On older systems, we are generally already operating at the limits of the hardware, so it is not obvious that any significant performance improvements can be achieved in the future."

Really? Because I have an earlier Macbook Pro than any of the ones they mentioned. When I play Portal on OS X with it, it is really slow and choppy. When I play it on Windows on the exact same machine, I can run at 1680x1050 resolution with nearly maxed out settings and get smooth framerates.

Something tells me the problem here isn't the hardware.
 
LaDirection said:
"while also opening up its Steam game distribution platform to allow other developers to easily offer Mac versions of their titles."

And we're still waiting for that to happen. All we got are Valves' old titles and freakin 2-D puzzle games.
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you expected an instant flood of games? it takes time to write a game. it even takes time to port one.
 
On my late 2009 iMac (ATI), I saw a good increase from glview, but a modest one from a timedemo in half-life 2 (about 10%). Although my settings were at a level that was playable before the update.
So if I were to turn on antialiasing and up the resolution before the update and test it pre and post, I think I would have seen a greater difference.
 
Confirmed performance

Reelknead1 said:
Can anyone confirm this?
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So I have a late '09 27 Quad Core iMac.

I have been struggling on the Mac side, as everyone else, has with my games especially recently Starcraft II.

I was able to have high settings (highest is ultra) on everything but a few had to be medium before this update. Now I am running everything on Ultra and I am very impressed with the quality. I definitely have better frame rates running on Ultra with the new drivers then I did when I was at high/medium.

Very impressed with these graphic updates. I no longer have to boot to Windows 7 to play Starcraft II.
 
cmaier said:
No, thank you. I've spent more than enough time in my life installing, debugging, rolling back, etc. catalyst and nvidia drivers, trying to figure out why the newest driver made some games faster, some games slower, caused new artifacts or crashes, etc.

I'll gladly give up some fps for a little bit of stability.
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Did you ever read the release notes? It like they hard code for specific games in the drivers. It's crazy
 
It think this demonstrates that, finally, there is an actual focus on gaming at Apple. Apple has made statements in the past about how great the Mac was as a gaming platform, but they never put their money where there mouth was. The Valve/Apple relationship, if maintained, should help Apple get closer to parity with Windows for gaming performance. Perhaps we will see a day soon when we start getting relative mac/windows parity in important titles at release.
 
Crimsonscyes said:
There wasn't any speed increase with Starcraft 2 so hopefully they focus on that in a future update, if there is one....
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jason221 said:
How much does it affect the Early 2009 iMac models? They aren't that different from the Late 2009...
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I have an early 2009 iMac (3.06GHz C2D, 8800GS 512MB) and I noticed a MASSIVE improvement in Starcraft 2. Before, it was barely playable on the lowest graphics settings. Now I can set everything to "High" and it's perfectly smooth. Still can't do Ultra when loading from Mac OS X, which is unfortunate, because if I Boot Camp into Windows 7, I can play with everything on "Ultra".
 
Although my Mac isn't one of those mentioned, I've noticed a substantial improvement in performance with Half-Life 2: Episode 1. I used to get ridiculous frame rate drops when viewing certain environmental effects at any texture setting above Medium. Now I've got it running at Very High and it's running very well.

I've yet to try my other Source-based games, but I expect that they will have similar improvements in performance.
 
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