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Bad ports from Aspyr and crap OpenGL.

My point is that I think COD4 is less about "crap OpenGL" and more about a bad port. Either way, as you suggest if you care about COD4 then just run it under Boot Camp. There are plenty of other games that run very well under Mac OS X, especially in Lion and Mountain Lion, in my experience.
 
I ask you, what 1,1 Mac Pro video card choices do I have that will potentially yield me better results than what I'm getting now, and do you know why my windows have laggy resizing to them? Particularly Safari and GarageBand.

The OS X GUI is OpenGL accelerated, correct? IIRC too, I've been able to smoothly resize GarageBand on other Macs, but on mine with this uber powerful GPU it's laggy as all heck. It just bugs me. Any ideas? I read my card may be somewhat incompatible with my machine, thus causing this.

I'm all with sticking with Lion, just want to get proper GPU performance out of it.

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According to this: http://www.hwcompare.com/10465/radeo...-6570-oem-1gb/



THe Radeon HD 4870 should beat the 6570 hands down, but maybe given it's newer generation and Windows 7 drivers it's gonna be faster than what I've got?


I appreciate the input Asgorath, I really do, I'm just trying to get this thing working the way it really should be.

And is the 5870 incompatible with the Mac Pro? I also read the 7300 allowed smooth resizing of windows but the 4870 has issues with it.


According to this, the 5870 works in my Mac Pro, but wouldn't yield any better results: http://www.barefeats.com/wst10g5.html

I wonder if 10.7.5 would help at all?


EDIT: Well after tweaking Nexuiz a bit I happened to get 300+ FPS, very happy with that, so I think I'll just stick with my current card, and eventually get Windows 7 32 bit and Boot Camp if I really need to, or just stick with my gaming PC :)


Thanks all for the input! Still wondering why my windows are resizing unsmoothly (some, not all), but it doesn't take up any more CPU power than the ones that do resize smoothly, weird.
 
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The Radeon HD 5870 doesn't work in the Mac Pro 1,1... correct?

It works AFAIK. It just doesn't work at full speed so the cost/ benefit is not so great.

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Thanks all for the input! Still wondering why my windows are resizing unsmoothly (some, not all), but it doesn't take up any more CPU power than the ones that do resize smoothly, weird.

Did you ever mention your CPU speed on that 1,1? Just curious as the 2.0GHz is pretty darn slow.

Geekbench CPU scores for the Mac Pro 1,1 were 3700-5500 depending on what clock speed.
For reference a new base model Macbook Pro will get you 11,000. 6 Years is a long time in tech especially after the core i5/ i7 change over.

Safari will resize slowly if there are complex elements on the page. Some carbon based apps also will resize badly. Same for Java. If it is an Apple OS app like Finder or iCal or something than it may just be CPU needs and the fact that you are running arguably Apples most resource demanding OS they ever released (10.7).
 
My CPU speed is 2.66 Quad Core Xeon. It's fast, can handle multiple 1080P videos at once and decently play CoD 4, and flash barely makes it break a sweet (one of those 1080P videos was playing on YouTube too while playing CoD 4 - 30-60FPS easy)



Nexuiz is now 300+ FPS, so maybe my video card is being properly utilized after all. Warsow (intensive game) is constant 59FPS on highest settings maxed out. CoD 4 is almost usually 60FPS, TF2 goes from 30FPS all the way to 120-140 FPS, it's just not consistent depending on the environment.



Window resizing on Mail is slow and laggy, same with Skype, again it was someone that told me the 7300 resizes smoothly, but the 4870 doesn't (someone on these forums). Anyone know why?
 
...TF2 goes from 30FPS all the way to 120-140 FPS, it's just not consistent depending on the environment.
Unfortunately that is just video games. If something explodes or there is more smoke or more textures to draw at farther distance things get slower. Also TF2 being an online experience further complicates playing experience. But this may not be what you are asking.

Window resizing on Mail is slow and laggy, same with Skype, again it was someone that told me the 7300 resizes smoothly, but the 4870 doesn't (someone on these forums). Anyone know why?

I don't know of any GPU window resizing brand favoritism.
I have noticed the new Mail.app is very heavy for a mail program and uses a ton of GPU to do it's "phone thing" eye candy. Skype has always been sucky on OS X (at least after 2.8 version that I still run). I wouldn't use it for any type of performance indicator.
 
Well on Windows with a 6570 TF2 is nearly always above 60FPS, always, usually in the 100 range. On OS X with my 4870, it's generally around 60 but dips down to about 30 or less sometimes, depending on the situation, but sometimes it jumps up to 100+ - it's just inconsistent.


Portal 2 on the other hand runs so well, it's 100+ nearly all the time, and this is with everything MAX'd out.


Oh well, OS X isn't a gaming platform, but at least some good games run well on it :)


Anyone else have smooth resizing on their GarageBand, and under what OS and what version of GB?
 
Here it is: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1439303/


cryingrobot says his nvidia card performed better at windows resizing and OS X's graphics all around better, weird.

I've noticed that as well. Gaming on the 5770 is really good and impressive (WoW, DIII, Skyrim Cider, Civ V) but I would say OS X performance is worse than the 7300GT it replaced. Scrolling is jerky and even stalls at times. Definitely an Nvidia would be the best card driver-wise.
 
I've noticed that as well. Gaming on the 5770 is really good and impressive (WoW, DIII, Skyrim Cider, Civ V) but I would say OS X performance is worse than the 7300GT it replaced. Scrolling is jerky and even stalls at times. Definitely an Nvidia would be the best card driver-wise.

Are you running a 1,1 Mac Pro 2006 Model?
 
Gaming on the 5770 is really good and impressive (WoW, DIII, Skyrim Cider, Civ V) but I would say OS X performance is worse than the 7300GT it replaced. Scrolling is jerky and even stalls at times. Definitely an Nvidia would be the best card driver-wise.
Either there's a huge gap between the 5770 and the 6870 or Lion is indeed poorly implemented compared to Snow Leopard. With the 6870 in the 1,1 under 10.6.8 Snow Leopard i did not experience the problems you did with your 5770.

Actually the 7300 choked on seemingly easy things like EyeTV playback, so i had to connect that monitor over to the 6870, which drove its two monitors without a noticeable slowdown, even during game sessions on its main monitor...
 


Are you running Snow Leopard? Or Lion?


I just downloaded BioShock 1 off the Mac App Store and guess what, crap performance there as well. In some areas it's buttery smooth 60FPS with vertical sync, then it'll plummet to 20-30FPS out of nowhere.


This can't be right, even under OS X. So, I think I'm going back to Snow Leopard and see how things fare there.
 
Are you running Snow Leopard? Or Lion?


I just downloaded BioShock 1 off the Mac App Store and guess what, crap performance there as well. In some areas it's buttery smooth 60FPS with vertical sync, then it'll plummet to 20-30FPS out of nowhere.


This can't be right, even under OS X. So, I think I'm going back to Snow Leopard and see how things fare there.

If you dip below 60 with vsync enabled, then yeah, the actual framerate will drop to 30 FPS. Even if the game could've rendered at say 58 FPS. Try running without vsync, vsync is only really good if the game can reliably stay well above 60 FPS.
 
If you dip below 60 with vsync enabled, then yeah, the actual framerate will drop to 30 FPS. Even if the game could've rendered at say 58 FPS. Try running without vsync, vsync is only really good if the game can reliably stay well above 60 FPS.

It's almost worse with vsync off, it makes no sense, but yes it drops that low even with vsync off.
 
Are you running Snow Leopard? Or Lion?


I just downloaded BioShock 1 off the Mac App Store and guess what, crap performance there as well. In some areas it's buttery smooth 60FPS with vertical sync, then it'll plummet to 20-30FPS out of nowhere.


This can't be right, even under OS X. So, I think I'm going back to Snow Leopard and see how things fare there.

Lion. Never ran the 5770 in SL. The 5770 should be almost identical to the 4870 performance-wise. Games rely so much in CPU power so I have a 340MHz advantage per core to your system. I know that I'm not necessarily getting the maximum potential out of the 5770 and that could be why users generally don't see an improvement with a 5870 on an MP 1,1. Sure, it could also be the PCIe 1.0 as opposed to 2.0 but there's no conclusive evidence for that.

So gaming performance on a MP 1,1 is not the best possible one due to many factors. I'm happy with mine however. DIII is maxed out completely at 1929x1080 and generally runs above 30fps. WoW is almost maxed out with new MoP gfx features and 4x multisampling and I never get below 25fps. It's normally 35-50 and even past 100 at times. But I usually cap my fps at 60.
 
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