Abysmal Performance

when is 10.6.4 coming out?

I'm not really sure if this helped me or not, but...

I manually disabled multi-threading since I remember that having it enabled in my Windows partition made performance a bit wonky.

"mat_queue_mode 0" (no quotations) in the dev console for those curious on how to turn off multi-core rendering.

It did seem to help stuttering a bit. By the way, to set the default setting back, just type in "mat_queue_mode" and it will tell you your default setting (mine was "mat_queue_mode -2").

My biggest problem is stuttering, but otherwise the game runs quite nicely. I'm hoping for some more improvements to the engine, but it's difficult where to point as it could just be lack of good Apple drivers that strengthen OpenGL performance.

All this talk about 10.6.4 is making me highly considering an upgrade to Snow Leopard, if the reports are true.

Well 10.6.4 isnt out just yet, so I would wait for it to come out before you upgrade... that said: it is a big improvement from 10.5

I'm using the latest beta of 10.6.4, and I have similarly awful performance. 10 fps average.

My Mac is a mid-2007 MacBook Pro (2.2ghz core 2 duo, geforce 8600m gt 128mb) and it flies at TF2 on Boot Camp.

I also have a bug I haven't seen anybody else with yet - when I die, my MBP just freezes. It gives me a flashing grey transparent overlay that just makes it impossible to do anything else. I'm a little disappointed in this release.

[RageBattle]

My audio keeps cutting out in addition to the bad fps. I got all the settings on low, the phong remover packs, and the old school pixel pack and it hardly helped in fire fights. Of course I am aware this laptop isn't ideal, even for a Mac, but it ran adequately through Crossover. I really need to get Snow Leopard as well.

Originally Posted by Re: Your Brains

My Mac is a mid-2007 MacBook Pro (2.2ghz core 2 duo, geforce 8600m gt 128mb) and it flies at TF2 on Boot Camp.

Same machine here. I'm getting disappointing performance here as well. With Textures on Low, Shadows on Medium, Color Correction off, Motion Blur off, antialiasing and such off, and the rest on high (as per the game's recommendation) I'm getting a lot of skipping and sound cutting out, making the game pretty much unplayable. I haven't tried with everything on Low, but to be frank, if I have to do that then I would rather just play in Boot Camp. In BC I can run the game flawlessly with everything but antialiasing maxed out.

That said, I'm sure Valve will get everything sorted out, improving performance and such in time. We just need to be patient. They're obviously working on it. I'm hoping 10.6.4 will make some kind of improvement, though. Its kind of annoying that we need to wait for a new OS update to get improved drivers. It's not very efficient. That's not Valve's fault, though.

[Rojo]

I also have a noticeable drop. Probably somewhere around 100 FPS on Windows and 50 FPS on Mac.

It sucks depending on Apple for driver support.

Originally Posted by victori

depends on the chipset, what chipset do you have? The G92 driver has obviously been improved.

9400M.

I'm having the same issue, but both Half-Life 2 and Portal ran beautifully. So it's not the drivers. (I'm on a 2008ish Macbook Pro running 10.5.8)

I'm trying just about everything I can think of. I have no idea what's wrong.

[kyle2k5]

i'm happy with how the game is running. turned details to medium, AA off, VSYNC off, color correction off, 1440x900. i get ~35fps, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, but the game stays steady through firefights even with a fair number of people.

the performance would definitely be better on my system on windows, but still, very playable in its current state and it still looks great.

i was getting some sound cut-out like in half life 2, but it seemed to only last a little bit and then after that the game was fine.

also, after adjusting my settings the first time, performance actually went down, so i had to restart the game (which brought it up to what it is now).

Native res on my 27" i7 is about 50-60% of the performance on Win7/bootcamp.

[Shifty Gray]

Originally Posted by Innervision180

Same machine here. I'm getting disappointing performance here as well. With Textures on Low, Shadows on Medium, Color Correction off, Motion Blur off, antialiasing and such off, and the rest on high (as per the game's recommendation) I'm getting a lot of skipping and sound cutting out, making the game pretty much unplayable. I haven't tried with everything on Low, but to be frank, if I have to do that then I would rather just play in Boot Camp. In BC I can run the game flawlessly with everything but antialiasing maxed out.

That said, I'm sure Valve will get everything sorted out, improving performance and such in time. We just need to be patient. They're obviously working on it. I'm hoping 10.6.4 will make some kind of improvement, though. Its kind of annoying that we need to wait for a new OS update to get improved drivers. It's not very efficient. That's not Valve's fault, though.

Same machine here but I have everything as low as possible and the performance is still unacceptable with horrible frame rates and sound cut offs.

I am however not that hopeful about improvements anytime soon.

[rbarris]

Performance is going to improve as drivers are updated. I would expect modest improvements in short term and larger ones in longer term. No, I can't put dates on them.

We are making a lot of progress is identifying specific issues that need work inside the game and inside OpenGL and drivers. Apple, ATI and NVIDIA are all involved.

Um... it doesn't crash my entire laptop when I die any more, but this happened:
http://i50.tinypic.com/jhftqo.jpg

Originally Posted by Re: Your Brains

Um... it doesn't crash my entire laptop when I die any more, but this happened:
http://i50.tinypic.com/jhftqo.jpg

TF2 on the Atari 2600.

Originally Posted by rbarris

Performance is going to improve as drivers are updated. I would expect modest improvements in short term and larger ones in longer term. No, I can't put dates on them.

We are making a lot of progress is identifying specific issues that need work inside the game and inside OpenGL and drivers. Apple, ATI and NVIDIA are all involved.

Fantastic and awesome news!

That's one gripe I have with Apple, the release of drivers is pretty much up to them entirely. With my Windows partition I can download company distributed drivers that help performance quite a bit. Sure, it's convenient to have drivers updated automatically, but it's not convenient when those drivers aren't up to date (by Nvidia/ATI standards I suppose).

I'm glad Valve is taking the steps to work with these companies so that consumers can get their hands on the latest and greatest drivers, and the best performance possible... Oh yeah! And that fact that you guys are continuing work inside the game as well as OpenGL. Exciting stuff! You guys rock!