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Valve Claims Frame Rate Improvements of Up to 120% With Snow Leopard Graphics Update
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I got the notice of the need not to update AFTER I had already updated to .4.
Not very good notice on their part. Now, post update, I'll have to find the time to try it. Portal is very addicting. The first time I played it for over an hour and it seemed like it was only 15 minutes... Wow...
Not very good notice on their part. Now, post update, I'll have to find the time to try it. Portal is very addicting. The first time I played it for over an hour and it seemed like it was only 15 minutes... Wow...
Um, get *your* facts straight.
Apple, ATI and NVIDIA all have code in the OpenGL subsystem at various levels.
The update released yesterday has significant new code from all three of those teams in it, addressing different issues.
For example, improvements in MSAA performance are done in the layer that the GPU companies write. Improvements to the shader-uniform-transport and occlusion query mechanisms took place up in Apple's code. I have a long list of these improvements, those are just a couple examples.
There is really no useful purpose served by trying to pigeonhole the drivers as written by "one group or the other", they are written as a team effort. It's correct to say that Apple specifies priorities and scheduling, and is in control of the distribution process. However it is not accurate to imply that the GPU companies are not contributing any code, because they write a lot of what goes in.
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/geforce-macosx-19.5.8f03-driver-uk.html
for gtx285
This is general purpose drivers for GTX285 released in June, by Nvidia themselves.
Those drivers follow the same structure I describe above and likely came out of the same build system - which is to say they represent the same team effort that the stock drivers do.
There are lots of current OSX games that they could quickly and easily get on Steam if Valve worked with the gaming companies.
Agreed. Performance still sux in SC2. HL2, TF2 and CSS do run MUCH better now though, so that is a plus.
that's a different issue. just being on steam doesn't mean that the game has been optimized using valve's recently released libraries - it just means it uses steam's content protection and distribution features. Does anyone really need already-released CIDER games to be put, unchanged, on steam?
I had to laugh - I got the update for my GMA 950.
I know it's probably for the external display connection issue, but I secretly hoped it would give my cr*ppy Intel card the power of a 5870.
I haven't tried any games on it though since.... maybe it HAS!
I know it's probably for the external display connection issue, but I secretly hoped it would give my cr*ppy Intel card the power of a 5870.
I haven't tried any games on it though since.... maybe it HAS!
Actually, being an open OS, there's nothing stopping ATI or Nvidia releasing drivers for the Mac. Apple isn't telling the GPU companies they can't release drivers, as has been proven by a recent release by Nvidia.
Get your facts straight. Drivers (especially ones as low level as GPU/OpenGL) generally don't use APIs, they communicate directly with the hardware. According to Valve, the problem was with the ambient occlusion routine, which is accessed by an API. Apple and the GPU vendors have worked to improve that, by improving how the API communicates with the hardware. In any case, it is perfectly possible to access and use any Apple API, as the drivers are kernel extensions, thus running as root.
Performance with my '06 Mac Pro with a 8800 is massively improved in Starcraft II. Seems the optimisations aren't just for the latest Macs!
Well, I have a late 2007 aluminium 20" iMac so thought I'd give this a go. There's no harm in trying after all.
I have Portal (who doesn't? It was free after all) Before the update it ran on the lowest setting at roughly 29/30 fps and never went above that. Post update, depending on what is happening during the game, it's peaking at 60 fps!! Doesn't happen for long, it's not constant and oddly when you enter the lift to the next level while it loads it drops back to 29/30. So slight improvement.
Safari feels perkier with Flash and HTML5 on YouTube running smoother. Quicktime running a 720p version of the new Tron Legacy trailer is defiantly improved. The picture seems crisper somehow.
Eve Online also feels better. Not much but I can raise the detail level a notch and still maintain a playable 30fps.
I wasn't expecting anything on a near 3 year old iMac but I've been pleasantly surprised.
I have Portal (who doesn't? It was free after all) Before the update it ran on the lowest setting at roughly 29/30 fps and never went above that. Post update, depending on what is happening during the game, it's peaking at 60 fps!! Doesn't happen for long, it's not constant and oddly when you enter the lift to the next level while it loads it drops back to 29/30. So slight improvement.
Safari feels perkier with Flash and HTML5 on YouTube running smoother. Quicktime running a 720p version of the new Tron Legacy trailer is defiantly improved. The picture seems crisper somehow.
Eve Online also feels better. Not much but I can raise the detail level a notch and still maintain a playable 30fps.
I wasn't expecting anything on a near 3 year old iMac but I've been pleasantly surprised.
Of course they don't - that would just be stupid.
The reason that it is focused on those games is because when doing performance optimisation, developers don't just guess what functions need to be optimised - they take traces of applications that aren't performing well, see what functions are called very often and/or are taking too long to execute, and then they fix them.
So it will affect all OpenGL applications, but many programs would have different bottlenecks.
Thats straight up OpenGL vs DirectX right there.
You have to understand that OpenGL and DirectX are night and day. Im not a MS fanboy to say the least, however; DirectX is highly optimized and far superior to OpenGL.
I struggle to understand this:
My 8600M GT has seen an increase in performance. I haven't made any metrics, I tried Portal, and before whenever I ran through a Portal the FPS would slow down to a couple of frames per second when travelling through it, it now does not do this.
Hardware is always at their limits.
My 8600M GT has seen an increase in performance. I haven't made any metrics, I tried Portal, and before whenever I ran through a Portal the FPS would slow down to a couple of frames per second when travelling through it, it now does not do this.
Wong. OpenGL's fixed function pipeline is faster than DirectX's... And I don't expect programmable stuff would be much worse, as OpenGL is used extensively in workstation computing (in CAD, scientific applications, for accelerating CG and colour grading software for films, etc.).
It's all about the drivers, really.
Mac Pro 2.93Ghhz 8 core with Radeon 4870 512MB card here..
Pretty sure I am seeing a fair improvement. Not that my experience was at all bad.
In Half Life 2, I has most settings at highest and it was smooth.. now I have everything on full, 16 x anisotropic, 8 x MSAA etc etc.. and it runs at around 150fps at 1920 x 1200, with other apps and things running in the background and I have dual screens so one screen is pulling some of the frame buffer.
Very happy!
Pretty sure I am seeing a fair improvement. Not that my experience was at all bad.
In Half Life 2, I has most settings at highest and it was smooth.. now I have everything on full, 16 x anisotropic, 8 x MSAA etc etc.. and it runs at around 150fps at 1920 x 1200, with other apps and things running in the background and I have dual screens so one screen is pulling some of the frame buffer.
Very happy!
Man - that's good news. I have a 2009 2.53 C2D and I'm hoping I see some changes, though it's completely playable as it is, I'm hoping to see the increase.
Will try when I get home.
To those of you wishing Apple would let the gfx card companies provide their own drivers, I have just a few poorly formulated thoughts.
When using a gfx card stock driver, I hate having to install all their bloat ware w/ the actual drivers. Furthermore, I always end up using a third party driver after discovering that they are actually more stable than the orig.
I think it's good to let the third parties push the drivers functionality, but I think that Apple is pretty against this since they would see it as an inherent stability problem.
I'm not wholly against the idea, I just wish that the gfx card companies would realize we just want a stable driver and not a billion other things that are completely unnecessary.
It's been 2 years since I've had what people would consider a 'high-end' gaming rig (due to location and work), that being said, I remember that the gfx card co's were way more interested in putting out high end hardware than they were about publishing software that would was stable, effecient, and would effectively manage said hardware. Point being, I remember breathing new life into old cards via impressive software.
Oh well, point being - I'd be ok w/ the gfx card companies managing the drivers if they actually cared about software compatibility, stability, and usefulness - I think they aren't so Apple won't let them.
When using a gfx card stock driver, I hate having to install all their bloat ware w/ the actual drivers. Furthermore, I always end up using a third party driver after discovering that they are actually more stable than the orig.
I think it's good to let the third parties push the drivers functionality, but I think that Apple is pretty against this since they would see it as an inherent stability problem.
I'm not wholly against the idea, I just wish that the gfx card companies would realize we just want a stable driver and not a billion other things that are completely unnecessary.
It's been 2 years since I've had what people would consider a 'high-end' gaming rig (due to location and work), that being said, I remember that the gfx card co's were way more interested in putting out high end hardware than they were about publishing software that would was stable, effecient, and would effectively manage said hardware. Point being, I remember breathing new life into old cards via impressive software.
Oh well, point being - I'd be ok w/ the gfx card companies managing the drivers if they actually cared about software compatibility, stability, and usefulness - I think they aren't so Apple won't let them.
Civ 4 specifically is a rather dodgy Aspyr port using their less-than-stellar wrapper. As far as I can tell Aspyr have no desire to patch in any performance increases.
Source games, on the other hand, are natively compiled for OSX - no dodgy inefficent wrappers so real gains can be seen from driver improvements.
We're not going to see across-the-board performance increases in games until more studios follow Valve's lead and compile OSX native versions. The kind of compatibility wrappers used by Aspyr and the like put a definite ceiling on the kinds of performance you can hope to get.
A GPU might be continuously consuming electrical power and receiving clock cycles, and executing some kind of code internally, but that in no way guarantees that the CPU has been able to provide a steady enough stream of work to keep it at 100% utilization doing useful work.
That would be the distinction between operating at the limit of throughput, or not.
Multiple improvements in the SLGU make it possible to get closer to that peak utilization.