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OS X Mac Gaming is Awesome!
- Thread starter Dirtyharry50
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Yeah, also... there are groups of people on the Mac who refuse to update their OS to newer versions while at the same time complaining about OpenGL.
OMG! You have no idea how frustrating that is. Even games like Starbound need at least 10.8 and I have people complaining to me in comments about why the game is broken, or why doesn't it work. Some of them were on 10.5 or 10.6.....
OpenGL has advanced, and people should actually read the game requirements if they want to play. Many that were on 10.7 had a simply update and were up and running.
Little note: Starbound in OpenGL runs better than in DX.
Although considering the game graphics, I don't thinking care about a difference of 250FPS vs 220FPS. I also agree with everything that Developer states, OpenGL is fragmented, and on windows just dog slow compared to OSX, and Linux. MS have done so much in the past to try and be rid of it.
This little blog from Wolfire Games is always an interesting read, albeit from 2010.
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/01/Why-you-should-use-OpenGL-and-not-DirectX
His stance has not changed, and personally I'm very excited for his game overgrowth as well.
Each to their own. I only boot to windows for early developer builds of games that aren't on OSX yet.
The games that have both versions I just stick to OSX, and I've not had any issues. Developers have gotten much better with ports, and with Unity games I found if they fun bad in OSX, they also run bad in Windows, and Linux due to bad developers.
For you guys that are running at higher settings and getting decent FPS in OS X, what resolution are you running at? I find that even on Windows on my rMBP, I have can't run at the max resolution without serious lag and end up usually bumping it down to 1920x whatever. On my desktop that's running a 680GTX, I'm using a 2560x1600 30".
Even at that resolution if suffers depending on the game. But I realize that it's capabilities won't let it run games at max rez. I was just wondering what everyone else is running their games at.
Could you tell me why Unity engine is a PoS?
Because it runs terribly in OS X. I can't play games like Gone Home, which is hardly a graphical powerhouse, without dialing back the resolution and in-game settings to just about minimum.
Top Multiplayer Games
CCG/TCG (collectible/tradable card game)
- Hearthstone http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/
- Hex http://www.hextcg.com
- Faeria http://www.faeria.net
MMO (massive multiplayer online)
- EVE http://www.eveonline.com
- Wakfu http://www.wakfu.com
- Dofus http://www.dofus.com
- World of Warcraft http://www.worldofwarcraft.com
Action RPG
- Diablo III http://us.battle.net/d3/en/
RPG
- Divinity http://www.divinityoriginalsin.com/
Strategy
- Starcraft II http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/
FPS
- mac doesn't do well in terms of FPS, or maybe because I dislike the genre
MOBA - DOTA - Action RTS
- Heroes of the Storm http://www.heroesofthestorm.com/en-us
- DOTA 2 http://blog.dota2.com/
- League of Legends http://www.leagueoflegends.com
all games and genres aren't in order, just randomized, however all very popular
have fun with your mac!
CCG/TCG (collectible/tradable card game)
- Hearthstone http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/
- Hex http://www.hextcg.com
- Faeria http://www.faeria.net
MMO (massive multiplayer online)
- EVE http://www.eveonline.com
- Wakfu http://www.wakfu.com
- Dofus http://www.dofus.com
- World of Warcraft http://www.worldofwarcraft.com
Action RPG
- Diablo III http://us.battle.net/d3/en/
RPG
- Divinity http://www.divinityoriginalsin.com/
Strategy
- Starcraft II http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/
FPS
- mac doesn't do well in terms of FPS, or maybe because I dislike the genre
MOBA - DOTA - Action RTS
- Heroes of the Storm http://www.heroesofthestorm.com/en-us
- DOTA 2 http://blog.dota2.com/
- League of Legends http://www.leagueoflegends.com
all games and genres aren't in order, just randomized, however all very popular
have fun with your mac!
Oh gods no. Even Macs are better than that garbage. xD
I have no idea why the Xbox One and PS4 are selling at all. They have almost no good exclusives, and games on these systems look like crap. A rMBP is vastly faster than a PS4, and that's hardly sporting'.
The iMacs are definitely market leaders for all-in-one PC's in terms of graphics; no question about that.
The problem is that a gamer doesn't want an all-in-one. We don't care about that; we only care about performance. We go for those ATX boards, we want that performance. The Mac Pro is the only Mac with non-mobile GPU's. It's honestly a friggin' tragedy.
The iMac comes with a double-whammy of problems here:
- It's a laptop in disguise, no matter how much we'd like to pretend it is not. Yeah, it has GeForce GTX 775M. Mobile. It's slow compared to mid-range desktop GPU's.
- The resolution is QHD (1440p), which is actually higher than most games play in nowadays (HD, or 1080p). In addition, the display has high response time.
- Mac OS X's OpenGL implementation simply isn't good enough. It's far, far too slow. Linux and Windows both blow it a new hole.
Not to mention OS X in general is not a good OS for gaming. It's not horrible, but it does things like mouse acceleration and full-screen v-synced compositing. Those are normally good things, but in video games it means latency and loss of precision, which is very bad. Then there's the "few games" issue but I won't hold it against OS X. It's not Apple's fault, at least directly.
This is in stark contrast to iOS vs. Android. In this instance, it is Android which is sluggish due to the way it's programmed and iOS which is snappy. People who want to play games on the go will almost always go for iOS over Android.
EDIT:
Ok, time to be constructive.
What should a good gaming Mac be?
- Get a desktop, replaceable GPU in there. I don't care how you do it; just do it!
- Improve OpenGL. Get the latest specs, including what they have called "Metal" on iOS. This tech comes to PC's soon in the form of DirectX 12.
- Be willing to sacrifice on the "completeness" or "out-of-the-box" experience in the name of performance. Don't ship a keyboard or that DREADFUL mouse/trackpad with it, for starters.
- Improve support for international non-Apple keyboards. Alternatively, provide a mechanical Apple keyboard.
- Low latency, high quality display. Don't add fake contrast.
- Contact game developers, convincing them to make Mac versions of their games. If a monetary incentive is required, so be it!
- Keep the price down. The cheapest model must be maximum $500.
- Reduce OS latency and, for the love of god, make it easy to turn of mouse acceleration.
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Oh?
OpenGL
http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/20/opengl-gdc2014/
Metal would just fragment and separate OSX even more. What needs to be done for the good of all is get those OpenGL improvements done, and dusted.
A couple of things to say to this.
The Mac OS X video drivers on the AMD side are vastly better than they are on the NVIDIA side, although the NVIDIA drivers can be improved by installing NVIDIA's CUDA framework, which installs their driver. Unfortunately, that causes OS X to break every time you update it, so it's not particularly optimal.
Secondly, nobody cares how you score in a benchmark. We're interested in the GAMES, in case you didn't get the memo, not in benchmarks. Even if you do get the same FPS in both Windows and OS X under the same settings, which is unlikely but can happen, the latency of OS X's display server ruins all of it anyway.
And finally, Mac OS X simply doesn't support most of the latest OpenGL features, which is why Unigine on OS X is designed not to render them. That's why you get more FPS and similar scores - the benchmarker thinks its doing work it's not actually doing.
I'd also like to point out that I am not fan of DirectX, either. I do OpenGL game engine programming for a living, and frankly I am sick to death of DirectX being proprietary and unique to Windows. It's causing so many porting problems. All I said was we need the same technology at the heart of OS X - we need 0 driver overhead. And trust me, it doesn't cause more fragmentation. OpenGL is already so fragmented I don't think it's possible to fragment it further. There's a reason we need GLEW.
We must accept, however, that the reason why this happened is because OpenGL was a pile of crap from 2001-2006, and on OS X it wasn't really updated properly until 2009. Furthermore, much of the blame for that catastrophe lies squarely with Apple.
Why don't you take a benchmark of a real game - like TombRaider, Starcraft 2, etc. and tell me with a straight face you get similar performance. I dare you!
Which features on Unigine are these exactly? The OpenGL renderer is using the same features on Windows, OSX and Linux.
You can't compare Starcraft2 or Tomb Raider because they don't have an OpenGL path on Windows. In saying that though, Tomb Raider is very close performance wise between Windows and OSX. Feral did a fantastic job.
not earth shattering...
... but thought I would post results.
MP 3,1 2.8GHz
24GB
dual Radeon 7970s (no xfire, I game in OS X - primarily for computation / cryptanalysis)
SSD OS, apps, home folder
hybrid for general storage
dual 27" 1900 x 1200 LCDs
WoW everything ultra varies from ~90 to 40 fps. Occasional dip to 30s in Alterac Valley.
Deus Ex Human Revolution - had to do the Xcode fps - seems to hover around 40-60 everything maxed out.
I'm fairly pleased. Curious if a 4,1 would gain me much more...
... but thought I would post results.
MP 3,1 2.8GHz
24GB
dual Radeon 7970s (no xfire, I game in OS X - primarily for computation / cryptanalysis)
SSD OS, apps, home folder
hybrid for general storage
dual 27" 1900 x 1200 LCDs
WoW everything ultra varies from ~90 to 40 fps. Occasional dip to 30s in Alterac Valley.
Deus Ex Human Revolution - had to do the Xcode fps - seems to hover around 40-60 everything maxed out.
I'm fairly pleased. Curious if a 4,1 would gain me much more...
You were arguing about the openGL implementation in general, not games. The Unigine benchmarks suggest that the openGL implementation in OS X may not be the sole culprit after all (and certain games like ESO perform as well or better on OS X). Most games are ported from directX using milddleware or some sort of emulation/translation layer (Source games are not fully native in that respect, the directX calls are translated at runtime). So it's probably fairer to compare results from a benchmark that uses openGL on both OSes.
And are you referring to that 32 ms latency? 32 ms is much lower than your reaction time, and it's not even clear whether the delay exists when VSync is off. Does it really ruins OS X gaming?
Source? The Unigine benchmarks use openGL 4 in both OSes. Do you know if Unigine uses anything from openGL 4.2+? You could as well argue that the latest openGL versions have optimizations that should speed things up. I'm not sure these versions actually enable new effects and stuff (like tessellation, which requires openGL 4.0 and which isn't used by the Heaven benchmark, even on Windows). openGL 4.3 enabled compute shaders, but I would be surprised if the Unigine benchmarks used them.
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Wow... this thread is still going? LOL...
I still haven't seen any benchmarks on OSX come close to my Tomb Raider benchmarks on Ultra settings... and yah the who cares people will hate me... but with TressFX on.
I know... not a fair comparison with my rig... but N19h7m4r3 did kick my @$$ benching Ice Storm...
I still haven't seen any benchmarks on OSX come close to my Tomb Raider benchmarks on Ultra settings... and yah the who cares people will hate me... but with TressFX on.
I know... not a fair comparison with my rig... but N19h7m4r3 did kick my @$$ benching Ice Storm...
What? NVIDIA's drivers have always been better for OpenGL. Whether it's OSX, Linux, or Windows. Where do you get this from?
It's one for the reasons Carmack has always touted NVIDIA for his OpenGL engines, and AMD had so much trouble with RAGE, and now Wolfenstein. Never mind professional applications.
From my 2010 Mac pro, vs 2013
GTX 660 vs D700
AMD haven't even met the Khronos Group's conformance tests yet, they've only been approved to run them now for Conformance to OpenGL Standards
Unigine, runs OpenGL4.0 on OSX, Linux, and Windows, they all have the same features. It's the thing that makes it a proper standard OpenGL test on all platforms.
Even on Overclockers.co.uk people have tested Linux OpenGL with Unigine, and found it faster than on Windows.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=26042260&postcount=625
Apple do not run the Khronos Group, the issues with OpenGL is failure on conformity, and finding a common solution. It's the reason there's a legacy fork in currently OpenGl implementations. Many developers simply do not want to move away from OpenGL 2.0/2.1, and are adamant those outdated features stay within it.
Here are the current Contributing members for the Khronos group
http://www.khronos.org/members/promoters aka Board Members
http://www.khronos.org/members/contributors Directly work on the API
http://www.khronos.org/members/academic Work on API but have no voting rights
http://www.khronos.org/members/contributors Everyone else with a stake in OpenGL
They all have to agree on a unified plan for OpenGL to succeed, and continue. As you can see there's far more than Apple.
I gladly would, if those games had OpenGL renderers to choose form on Windows.
Please show me those, I'll download them and run them for you, and even post them on my site.
I'm a massive advocate for Mac gaming, which is why I'm always vocal about it, and want Apple to shape up it's OpenGL drivers and underlying performance more.
I still haven't seen any benchmarks on OSX come close to my Tomb Raider benchmarks on Ultra settings... and yah the who cares people will hate me... but with TressFX on.
I know... not a fair comparison with my rig... but N19h7m4r3 did kick my @$$ benching Ice Storm...
I do love your rig ^_^
Sadly OpenGL is still far behind playing catchup with Direct X, and even Mantle. It's a damn shame and AMD's not helping as they're still lacking conformance to OpenGL standards.
Although If developers, along with AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel can actually get this done
http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/03/20/opengl-gdc2014/
Reducing OpenGL draw calls so much it almost becomes to the metal, such as Metal, and Mantle it'll significantly help the entire industry, and all Platforms.
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Historically when it comes to OS X OpenGL support AMD have had better support and performance compared to similar Nvidia based hardware. It really depends on the series of the card. That said the gap has narrowed in recent time.
Edwin
Run a program like the OpenGL Extensions Viewer (You can find it on App Store, among other places) - you'll notice that OpenGL 4.1 might not be complete and 4.2+ is definitely incomplete. Several older GLSL revisions are also missing.
You'll also notice another kind of funny fragmentation - the OpenGL files are located in a different folder in the dynamic library folder in OS X than they are in Windows and Linux, and they include several APPLE extensions that do things found on other OS's in a generally inferior way.
Also, I entirely agree with you about Feral Interactive. Those are some great people doing some great ports. They always manage to impress!
I can compare the performance of SC2 and Tomb Raider. Why shouldn't I? The game player doesn't give a toss about whether it runs OpenGL or DirectX - they only care about the performance, as I have said 1 billion times by now. If the DirectX path always works better than the D3D pass, well that's it then.
I haven't played Deus Ex Human Revolution, but in World of Warcraft I am able to max everything out on a ATi Radeon HD5850 and get a constant 60 FPS everywhere, including raids, AV, etc. on Windows. The fact that it is a 2009 card I think serves to eloquently point out the problem: My (old) 2009 card outperforms your 2012 card.
Windows is literally 3 years ahead in graphics implementation. THAT is the very real problem here. Stop denying it, it's ridiculous. I know I'm on a Mac fansite here, but please - be real about it. Macs are great for all kinds of things, but gaming is their achilles heel. Sadly.
Thanks for the super nice comments we do our best to impress
OpenGL on OS X Mavericks supports OpenGL 4.1 completely and a couple of functions in OpenGL 4.2 (Core Profile). OpenGL 4.3 and above are not available.
If you have a smaller list of supported OpenGL calls it's likely because your card doesn't have support for the newer features.
For the last bleeping time, nobody except people who play Oil Rush (which are few despite the fact that it's a fun game) cares how Unigine runs. Unigine has more features in DX11 mode than OpenGL 4.0 mode - because DX11 has more features than OpenGL 4.0.
Comparing the OpenGL path on Windows and Mac OS X sounds like a technically fair comparison, but actually the OpenGL path on Windows is woefully neglected, which is why nobody uses it. I wish it wasn't so, but it is. That said, it's still more feature complete than on OS X, albeit usually a little slower. Even worse though, Windows ships with drivers with OpenGL deliberately stripped out.
It's true that NVIDIA makes the best drivers by far - I already addressed this. The problem is that OS X does not ship with NVIDIA's driver. Apple writes their own driver, and it blows on NVIDIA cards. You sound like someone who has installed CUDA, so you won't see this problem - lucky you.
Unfortunately, the CUDA drivers can cause issues when updating OS X because the drivers don't update with it. You see similar issues on Linux.Who do you think has a wildly divergent OpenGL path and didn't include OpenGL 3.0 until Snow Leopard, forcing developers to continue using the 2.0/2.1 path for far too long whether they wanted to or not?
That's right: Apple!
I want the same thing!I gladly would, if those games had OpenGL renderers to choose form on Windows.
Please show me those, I'll download them and run them for you, and even post them on my site.
I'm a massive advocate for Mac gaming, which is why I'm always vocal about it, and want Apple to shape up it's OpenGL drivers and underlying performance more.
Unfortunately I'm not really good for finding OpenGL games on Windows that are also available on Mac. Most people don't use OpenGL on Windows anymore. See Wolfenstein: The New Order to see why.It
just
doesn't
work.
Whoo, you get it!
The thing is gamers don't care at all about your "fair comparisons". Only tech geeks care about that. Gamers can about one thing and one thing only: Where can I get fast gaming computers at a good price with software that will run my games well.
The answer to that question is "Not Apple", no matter how much you'd like to pretend otherwise.
Until that changes, Mac gaming will continue to be laughed at. Sorry 'bout that.
And you do impress! I've heard you're also heading to Linux. I work at DTU (aka Technical University of Denmark) and I have several friends who play video games on Linux there as well, and many of them are willing to throw money at almost any game that says Linux on it.Thanks for the super nice comments we do our best to impress
OpenGL on OS X Mavericks supports OpenGL 4.1 completely and a couple of functions in OpenGL 4.2 (Core Profile). OpenGL 4.3 and above are not available.
If you have a smaller list of supported OpenGL calls it's likely because your card doesn't have support for the newer features.
I hope I heard right!I tried slotting a GTX 680 in my Mac Pro 5,1 a while ago (during 10.9.0), and one of the OpenGL features did not work. I honestly can't remember which one. I'm not home right now though so I can't tell you either. I'm currently running 10.10 DP1 in order to learn Swift on my MBP 15" Ultimo 2011. It has a 6770M GPU which does support everything in 4.1, so that's good.
OpenGL 4.2 core profile is a little bit thin and, indeed, 4.3+ is completely unavailable. It's a bit of a shame really.
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You're mistaken
the Nvidia drivers on OS X are (and always have been) written by Nvidia, the same for AMD and their OS X drivers. The OpenGL framework and driver interface layer is written by Apple. You sound like someone who has installed CUDA, so you won't see this problem - lucky you.
The CUDA drivers are basically the same as the ones shipped with OS but have CUDA specific features enabled (if you look at the frameworks and driver binaries you can see that this is the case). They also have the latest hot fixes which are often missing from the drivers released as part of the OS.
This means CUDA drivers often have better improvements as any fixes planned for the next OS update appear in the CUDA drivers first.
And you do impress! I've heard you're also heading to Linux. I work at DTU and I have several friends who play video games on Linux there as well, and many of them are willing to throw money at almost any game that says Linux on it.
Linux XCOM is coming soon