OS X Geforce Now Gaming: Sluggish on Mac Pro 2013

[admiralawsome]

I recently purchased an maxed out Mac Pro 2013 (3.5ghz, D500, 128 GB Ram) to use as my main machine. Everything works fine as intended but i got really strange issues with this mac and gaming over geforce now. This Mac runs the latest supported MacOS (12.6.5), is connected direct to the Router via Cable and the Geforce Now App is on the latest Version as well.

TL;DR: Official supported Mac Pro not able to stream games over GFN - weak Win10 machine embarresses with flawless performance

Problem

• It is very sluggish and everything beyond strategy games, like an shooter, is unaplayable because of the doughy and slabby performance.
• The Rendering of the games seems a litte odd. Details and some shadows seems to pop up and everything beyond 30 Meters distance is rendered in ultra low settings
• It is way too dark and GFN ignores every gamma setting i set - but that´s probably manageable via the filters

Here´s what i tried so far without any impact:

• Changes the Port the Cable is connected to rule an faulty Port out (Router and Mac)
• Installed MacOS anew over the recovery mode
• Running the MacOS12 OnyX App just in Case...
• Reset the NVRAM
• Tried Wifi instead of Cable (Wifi N)
• Fiddling with different settings in the gfn app and ingame as well
• Changed to different Server Locations of GFN
• Checked my Internt connection and tested the GFN Servers as well - everything was fine and way better than the requirements

In stark contrast to the GFN Experience on this machine i got here an much older and weaker windows 10 machine here that runs GFN flawlessly. Sadly it is not mine, so it is just for the testing.

I Hope you guys can help me out and i apologize in advance for my bad english.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Has it been like that from the get-go with the Mac Pro?

On the free NGN tier I was having sound dropout issues and a complete NGN uninstall/reinstall, caches and everything, seems to have cleared it up.

 

[Irishman]

I recently purchased an maxed out Mac Pro 2013 (3.5ghz, D500, 128 GB Ram) to use as my main machine. Everything works fine as intended but i got really strange issues with this mac and gaming over geforce now. This Mac runs the latest supported MacOS (12.6.5), is connected direct to the Router via Cable and the Geforce Now App is on the latest Version as well.

TL;DR: Official supported Mac Pro not able to stream games over GFN - weak Win10 machine embarresses with flawless performance

Problem

• It is very sluggish and everything beyond strategy games, like an shooter, is unaplayable because of the doughy and slabby performance.
• The Rendering of the games seems a litte odd. Details and some shadows seems to pop up and everything beyond 30 Meters distance is rendered in ultra low settings
• It is way too dark and GFN ignores every gamma setting i set - but that´s probably manageable via the filters

Here´s what i tried so far without any impact:

• Changes the Port the Cable is connected to rule an faulty Port out (Router and Mac)
• Installed MacOS anew over the recovery mode
• Running the MacOS12 OnyX App just in Case...
• Reset the NVRAM
• Tried Wifi instead of Cable (Wifi N)
• Fiddling with different settings in the gfn app and ingame as well
• Changed to different Server Locations of GFN
• Checked my Internt connection and tested the GFN Servers as well - everything was fine and way better than the requirements

In stark contrast to the GFN Experience on this machine i got here an much older and weaker windows 10 machine here that runs GFN flawlessly. Sadly it is not mine, so it is just for the testing.

I Hope you guys can help me out and i apologize in advance for my bad english.

The first thing I would do is find out if the ethernet connection supports faster gigabit speeds.

The second thing is, if it doesn’t, order an add-on card that does (if your Mac allows it).

 

[diamond.g]

Does it matter what browser you choose?

 

[admiralawsome]

Has it been like that from the get-go with the Mac Pro?

On the free NGN tier I was having sound dropout issues and a complete NGN uninstall/reinstall, caches and everything, seems to have cleared it up.

Yes, the problem persists since day one. i will try to completely uninstall gfn and run it again after the new install.

 

[admiralawsome]

Does it matter what browser you choose?

I run with the official app - thats afaik an glorified wrapper around chromium, but i may be wrong on this one. i tested it with vivaldi and i could´t test ist because the seem to bee a problem with the ui - i see the mac os cursor instead the ingame ones and can´t click/activate things.

 

[admiralawsome]

So i tested a few more games (like Division 2, CK3, Witcher3 etc.) and the result ist allaways the same:

• Kinda blurry and not so crisp like i a m used to with the win10 machine (and i used it for more than a year)
• Realy low res rednering of the surroundings - like when i approach an tree it pops op in three stages of details
• Ist feels like there is somesthing wrong with gfn or the codec?

I don´t know what to do, to get the same experience like i had an the old Win10 Laptop :/

 

[BrianBaughn]

Do you get good results with the application's network test in settings?

 

[admiralawsome]

Do you get good results with the application's network test in settings?

Yes, i did. And of course they´re no packetdrops and picturesdrops as well.

And i have forgotten to mention that i did delete (with all the stuff in /application support) gfn and resinstalled it like you said.

And i nothiced some strange difference between the genereal ooziness of the stream - there is definitely a layer of blurredness over the stream compared to the windows gfn (see Picture 2)

And there is a weird delay with the controls but thats not corresponding with the ooziness of the visuals. It feels like playing with a ping of 120+ (ingame it is mostly by 20-30) whilst the visuals are running with some minor delay. Feels realy weird compared to the snappiness of the win experience.

 

[nettmanek]

I had terrible quality while playing from the UK with broadband 500mbps upload and download. The reason for that was the server GeForce now was picking up for me. Stopped when selected manually the right server for my location (London) and quality was like dream

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

I run Geforce Now without a hitch on my 2011 iMac, even while pushing Handbrake in the background (I am genuinely impressed with Geforce Now!), on Mac OS 10.13 with 16GB RAM and on Wifi, so it should run without problems on yours. Do you have another machine you can try out, to rule out the network/router, and the Geforce Now server?

 

[nettmanek]

As I said, the issue was in the server settings. When selected automatic server selection it was picking up some strange server causing problems with quality, however, after selecting server manually it was ok and the quality is very good.