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Valve Warns of Gaming Performance Issues With NVIDIA Graphics Cards on Mac OS X 10.6.4

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Late last week, Valve Software alerted users of its Steam game distribution platform that Apple's Mac OS X 10.6.4 released last Tuesday appears to be causing performance issues for players of high-end games on Macs with NVIDIA graphics cards. As a result, Valve recommends that users for whom this might be an issue hold off from updating their systems.
The recent 10.6.4 update from Apple has noticeable performance issues for NVidia graphic chip owners running high performance games.

If you wish to avoid this, you should consider waiting to install the 10.6.4 update until Apple has had the opportunity to address this issue.
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Valve made a splash earlier this year when it brought its popular Steam platform to Mac OS X and began releasing titles in its own game library for the Mac. While Mac users of Steam have reportedly been enjoying relatively good stability compared to Windows users, they have also been experiencing lower framerates, degrading the gaming experience somewhat.

We noted last week that Valve is working with Apple, as well as graphics card manufacturers NVIDIA and ATI, to improve drivers and make other changes that should improve the gaming experience on the Mac platform. In the meantime, however, Mac OS X 10.6.4 appears to be a step backward, at least for high-performance games, and it is unknown when Apple will address the issue.

Article Link: Valve Warns of Gaming Performance Issues With NVIDIA Graphics Cards on Mac OS X 10.6.4
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/06/21/valve-warns-of-gaming-performance-issues-with-nvidia-graphics-cards-on-mac-os-x-10-6-4/
Oh my gad, i really thought osx could be good at gaming, but alas, this comes up. with a huge letdown and a big punch in the stomach for gaming on a mac.
 
I had this weird itching feeling about 10.6.4, and it was enough to not motivate me to update my MBP. Guess I have enough justification to hold off even longer now.
 
Another Apple Failure 🙄 You know how Microsoft "patches" tend to "break" things? Just more evidence Apple is headed in the wrong direction...
 
Strange. No problems on my machine. Not that it will stop the astroturfing trolls who hang out here from making smarmy remarks.
 
I dont' game on my mac but like to keep up on what is going on. Wasn't there a MacRumors article on the fact that Valve said the next update would slightly improve performance?
 
Steam game performance sucked as much as it does now when Steam first came out for the Mac, so I didn't notice any performance drops since 10.6.4. I don't use my 9600 because it keeps crashing the system so I'm stuck with 9400, but it's playable. I don't have major issues I can run it at 30 fps with most things on High, except Anti-Aliasing which results in horrible lags.
 
Sort of funny, people were asking if this update "improved performance due to the Valve announcement" and it looks like it did the opposite. 😱
 
After reading this, I'm actually happy OS X didn't tell me about the update. While I don't play Steam stuff often, I would like it to work when I do want to play it.

Anyone know if there are issues with other games or with WINE/CXG?
 
slb said:
Strange. No problems on my machine. Not that it will stop the astroturfing trolls who hang out here from making smarmy remarks.
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When Valve goes out publicy and say that you shouldnt update to 10.6.4, there is something wrong.

Don't be so obvious.
 
Must not be a problem for people with ATI video cards. I was just thinking yesterday that HL2 performance has been getting better and better with every update. It runs about has fast in OS X for me as it does in Windows now. I couldn't be happier.
 
10.6.4 also seems to have f'ed up my Safari installation. Safari is crashing at least once an hour now under normal use... I switched to Firefox for now. 🙁
 
Kind of late for an "Apple update breaks X" report. I'm squarely in the camp of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" when it comes to Apple updates. I've been burned way too many times by them.
 
Nice job, Apple. Glad to see you're focusing on your desktop OS instead of just throwing **** out and calling it an update. 🙄
 
slb said:
Strange. No problems on my machine. Not that it will stop the astroturfing trolls who hang out here from making smarmy remarks.
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It might be a coincidence; it might not. But after updating to 10.6.4, I've had Half-Life 2 periodically drop in framerates for a few seconds at a time. It's really frustrating.

And in one unusual quirk, after loading a new section of a map (after an auto-save), the game dropped to about 1 fps permanently. Quitting and reloading the save game doesn't even fix it — yet after I replayed up to that point (and continued from there), no problems.

It NEVER did that before. All of my Source games performed flawlessly in 10.6.3.

But yeah, like the other guy said: If Valve says there's a problem, there IS a problem.
 
How could this have got through beta testing?! Every build was accompanied by instructions to beta testers to focus on graphics drivers?! 😕
 
Since Apple has released - 10.6.4 comes up with an Error saying that My Graphics Driver is outdated - This is shown if you use an Nvidia CUDA card like GTX285..... Come on Apple/Nvidia.
 
Let's see how the fanboys will try to turn things around and blame this on Valve. 😱

I have updated to 10.6.4, and while my frame rates are still the same (around 70fps), I did have to reboot my system twice because of it getting locked up. (The screen freezes, and sounds begin to loop at a very fast pace.) Not looking good.
 
Yep, I can confirm this problem.

Over the weekend i was playing Enemy Territory Quake Wars on my Mac Pro, with Nvidia 8800 GT Apple Card.

And it crashed a couple times. system is unstable with the new 10.6.4 update with games on this.

Also, there is major lagg now. so something in the system is causing things to be aweful for gams now.

so... now i know why, was getting a little worried about my Mac going bad, but i guess its all about the system update. Thanks Apple!

I hope Apple gets working on this fast, it is a major problem.
 
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