Abysmal Performance

Anyone else getting about 1/3 of the performance that they normally would under Windows?

I'm running a Mac Pro 2.93ghz 8-core machine with 16GB RAM. I have both the GeForce GTX 285 and a Radeon 4780 and neither of them get anywhere close to where I'm at under windows. Either card under OS X gets around 45 fps average under mild settings whereas under windows will net me ~150fps with completely maxed settings.

I know there are some performance tuning options that guys use under windows to squeeze more performance out of the game. Does anyone have any tips for running under OS X?

[victori]

Wait for 10.6.4, it increases FPS by a good 70%; nothing todo with valve here, just crummy apple drivers.

[Ntt4]

Disable AA and vsync. This seems to be a big problem.

I've kicked back AA and vsync is currently disabled. Those are the first things I took out of the equation.

victori, I sort of thought it had something to do with Apple's drivers as well. I had just hoped that they would have had them sorted out by the time Valve released any games. I heard several comments by the Valve team that they were "working closely with Apple" on this whole deal and had just expected more from it.

Here you go, sir. TF2mac apparently hates when you change settings mid-game. After upping my settings, I restarted TF2mac and now it works fine.

Apt thread: http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1301908

Happy hunting!

[victori]

10.6.4 will be *the* platform for gaming on mac, they did an excellent job in cleaning up the performance issues with OpenGL.

COD4 Act1:The Bog (start of level) barely ran at 10fps on 1024 resolution. Now with 10.6.4 it runs at 35-38fps at a *higher* resolution of 1280.

This is all on a Geforce 8800GT

What OS are you using? I had Leopard running on my Mac and it gave me similar problems with a lesser powered machine than yours but I just bought and installed Snow Leopard today and it runs MUCH better now. Portal works great for me now.

[SamiDullard10]

Originally Posted by Briano

Here you go, sir. TF2mac apparently hates when you change settings mid-game. After upping my settings, I restarted TF2mac and now it works fine.

Apt thread: http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1301908

Happy hunting!

i tried to restart and now its trying to validate then says it is too busy. >.<

[victori]

Let me guess this? http://victori.uploadbooth.com/bugs/...bug-report.mov

I have not been able to play for awhile now.

Briano, I've had no luck restarting TF2 after making changes. Seems no matter what I do at the moment, I'm hitting a brick wall.

I'm currently running 10.6.3. I guess I'll hold out until 10.6.4.

Thanks for the input, guys! Much appreciated.

Originally Posted by victori

10.6.4 will be *the* platform for gaming on mac, they did an excellent job in cleaning up the performance issues with OpenGL.

COD4 Act1:The Bog (start of level) barely ran at 10fps on 1024 resolution. Now with 10.6.4 it runs at 35-38fps at a *higher* resolution of 1280.

This is all on a Geforce 8800GT

Are you on 10.6.4? Because I am, and I have a negligible change in FPS:

Here are some demo benchmarks:

10.6.3
253 frames 8.728 seconds 28.99 fps (34.50 ms/f) 4.093 fps variability
566 frames 11.548 seconds 49.01 fps (20.40 ms/f) 1.442 fps variability
320 frames 8.363 seconds 38.26 fps (26.13 ms/f) 1.336 fps variability
373 frames 8.711 seconds 42.82 fps (23.35 ms/f) 2.250 fps variability
160 frames 11.112 seconds 14.40 fps (69.45 ms/f) 2.799 fps variability

10.6.4 beta
253 frames 8.352 seconds 30.29 fps (33.01 ms/f) 3.368 fps variability
566 frames 11.999 seconds 47.17 fps (21.20 ms/f) 24.151 fps variability
320 frames 8.527 seconds 37.53 fps (26.65 ms/f) 1.580 fps variability
373 frames 8.675 seconds 43.00 fps (23.26 ms/f) 12.990 fps variability
160 frames 10.737 seconds 14.90 fps (67.11 ms/f) 26.623 fps variability

[victori]

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

The performance was truly disappointing.
Details set way down, to lowest resolution and it crawled in a moderate fire fight.
CrossOver for Mac ran much faster, and of course, Bootcamp is orders of magnitude better. Near max settings on native resolution (1440x900) runs flawlessly.

This is a Macbook Pro circa 2008 btw.

[rike889]

good luck to you guys

[stickman]

Originally Posted by Briano

Here you go, sir. TF2mac apparently hates when you change settings mid-game. After upping my settings, I restarted TF2mac and now it works fine.

Apt thread: http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1301908

Happy hunting!

I can attest to this. After loading up in-game performance was decent and I tweaked some graphics settings and the framerate fluctuated (from looking at the ground/sky) from ~10 to 50. As soon as the 'steam servers are not busy enough to handle my request' I'll run further diagnostics.