!!!! my FPS shot up
About a Mac version: Some numbers from (yes) Steam
- Thread starter EmpireOfCats
- Start date
!!!! my FPS shot up
Day = made.
The massive boost in FPS?
Tarkhan
King
This is one of the reasons that updating your graphics driver is ALWAYS important.
My frames per second in some cases went up over 100%, seems like Apple's weak GPUs will be because of software
I would give any new release at least a week or two before using it, as sometimes the drivers are screwed up. Older games or video cards occasionally perform worse with newer drivers, so it's a good idea to wait and see if there are any problems you should be aware of.
In fact, Nvidia released drivers not too long ago that actually fried some video cards. A little patience can save you a lot of grief.
I updated this morning and noticed when loading Steam that their normal sales pop-up was informing me of the Apple update. Nice to know that Steam is paying attention. I guess I should test the update, so I'm off to play some Half-Life 2.
Well, at least you guys don't contradict yourselves in the same post, but that's the best that can be said of it.
EmpireOfCats
Death to Giant Robots
Sigh. Do we have to make a war out of this?
The graphics driver was not a question of "working" or "not working", but of working "fast" or working "very fast". "Fast" was enough for everybody when Macs were not a game platform, because stability was much more important, and that's where Apple put its priorities. Now "fast" is not good enough anymore, and so Apple is being forced to move to "very fast" (Steve Jobs is famous for not liking computer games, so maybe "dragged kicking and screaming" is the best choice of words here).
To my knowledge, the old driver did not cause any problems with serious work, and did not affect the stability of the system in any way. It still "just worked". However, it was "just too slow".
So "broken" now means "not working 'very fast'"? Interesting language you Apple people have. It's a bit hard to understand for the non-initiated though.
Compac make rubbish PCs, why compare poor quality branded PCs to Macs?
3 years is actually a decent lifespan for an 'off the shelf' type PC, particularly if it never got defragged or cleaned to remove dust and dirt on the inside (My PCs are always fully dust proof, I make sure to always buy a case with dust filters, and attach extra ones if needed).
My PC doesnt ever crash (except for when overclocking and testing for maximum stability).
There is only one brand of Macs made by Apple, and Apple make good macs. Whereas there are hundreds of brands that make PCs, 90% of which make completely crap computers, that I could have built better when I were 12.
Also - My PC spec (similar components, some things are different based on price matching what I have):
VS a mac specced as close as I could get it to mine:
Fix'd
Maybe PC games dont get released for the macs because all you can get on a mac is a 512 Meg ATI 4870, in a machine that costs several thousands of £££. Macs arent designed for playing games on, if you want to play games and you bought a mac, thats your own mistake and problem.
EmpireOfCats
Death to Giant Robots
Don't worry, we'll talk you through it.
"Broken" in a general computer context means "Tango Uniform", as in, it doesn't work, crashes, turns your graphics card to ashes, starts fires, rips a hole in the space-time continuum. This is not the case. The computer as a whole still "just works".
"Broken" in the very special context of computer games means that you cannot play the game at a satisfactory level. YMMV here -- I did fine with all my Mac Steam games, but other people seem to demand 100 fps, and for them (and for Valve itself), it was "broken". The computer as a whole still "just works", but the games aspect is "broken". Same word, different context.
Note that nowhere have I ever claimed or will ever claim that Macs are free of all errors and defects, that Apple never screws up, or that Steve Jobs is the kwisatz haderach. They are a company, charged first of all to make money for their shareholders, and they are human, which means their machines have a problems like everything else built by human hands. They just happen to have less problems, which is why -- as discussed ad nauseum in earlier posts -- some us think it is worth our money to by a Mac instead of a PC that might be less expensive.
This discussion is beginning to repeat itself. More to the point, we are getting away from the really important question -- what about the Mac version of Civ V?
*snip*
Also - My PC spec (similar components, some things are different based on price matching what I have):
VS a mac specced as close as I could get it to mine:
Fix'd
Maybe PC games dont get released for the macs because all you can get on a mac is a 512 Meg ATI 4870, in a machine that costs several thousands of £££. Macs arent designed for playing games on, if you want to play games and you bought a mac, thats your own mistake and problem.
I'm in shock that you would just straight out lie like that,
making your own computer is always cheaper, and you do realize the Mac Pro is a workstation right?
http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro
The Mac Pro ships with a 5770 contrary to what you claim, Apple doesn't make a Mac Pro that is a quad at 3.33GHz, however it does make a hexacore at that frequency (that chip alone costs $1,127 from Intel)
You also can't get a three year next day service warranty on a home built computer
Mac Pro is a workstation, but the only thing that they sell that would compare to a normal desktop PC. Their Imacs are really poor specced, and they dont make normal priced desktops with better specs.
That Mac Pro that I posted was specced at the same time that I bought my current motherboard (May). So they offer better hardware now, yet a 5770 still isnt a workstation graphics card, it is a desktop mid range gaming graphics card!
A real workstation would have a FireGL, or Quadro card.
Now if you look at the macs intended for the normal user, the Imac, the last I checked, the highest model was £1600 and came with an ATI 4850. Absolutely no one that is right in their mind would pay that much money for that spec for a gaming computer.
I am aware that the mac pro is a workstation computer (if still rather inferior for that task), and that the Imac is a nice looking, convenient, sleek and small computer, suitable for web browsing, office work, and multimedia. However Mac users should also realise that Macs are not gaming computers, and if you actually want a computer to play video games on, you need a PC.
As for warranty issues, warranties for individual components are normally a lot faster than a warranty on a whole pre built computer. If something does break, you can simply take it out, buy an immediate replacement, send the faulty part back for warranty service and sell the replacement as brand new. It is far far faster to keep a self built PC repaired and serviced yourself than it is to wait for a pre built computer to get repaired.
So right now with Macs, you would have to pay at least £1650 to get an Imac with a just adequate for gaming ATI 5750 and a Core I5 2.8 Ghz. Also, that model uses a 2560-by-1440 resolution screen, which in all honesty, is far too much for a 5750 to handle any current game on, even Civ 5 would struggle to run on that card at that resolution. And for that much money you could have a seriously far better specced gaming PC, and one which is actually built well enough to be reliable and stable!
Apple Macs make absolutely no sense at all for a gaming computer.
Crustacean Soup
Chieftain
I don't get that. I downloaded about the same amount of things, and made about the same amount of changes to OS X as I did to Windows on the same machine before I got either to a perfect state. If you're buying a Windows machine from an OEM it's going to be in just as workable a state as you'd expect.
I agree with you on that.
IMO anyone at least minimally comfortable with the innards of a desktop computer (i.e. you aren't afraid, like I used to be, the inside is somehow going to kill you) is better off building the computer themselves. The first time I put a computer together I found it a lot easier than I had originally thought it would be. It was pretty fun too, in a geeky sort of way.
From what I can tel, I lump Macs in with other prebuilt computers because of the fact you end up paying for stuff you don't want or miss out on things you do want. Sure, you can customize some components on computers from any of the major competing system builders now, but how often do you get a choice on things like the brand of RAM or HDD, or the size of the case, or the size (and hence noise signature) of the fans or the number of USB ports?... and I haven't even mentioned motherboard quality yet.
For reasons I don't understand, Apple don't want me to have the option of installing one of their operating systems on my computer and unfortunately a Mac with similar components and similar moddability would cost a huge deal more.
I apologise if the way I approach this conversation is almost religious - it's just an opinion formed from the experience I've had and the sorts of performance requirements and budgets I use when considering computers. I think the point I'm really trying to make is that while I appreciate there are a large number of users for whom a Mac purchase makes sense, the design decisions and prices set by Apple simply exclude me personally from that group. Owning a computer is already a luxury, and in a sense it's as if owning a Mac is an even greater luxury (that's the only compliment you're going to get from me today, Apple
). I often get the impression that the advice given by those who favour Mac is intended to be general and so the advice is to me. I mean, things like gaming (i.e. games that require a graphics card
) and building computers obviously aren't for everyone, so if they were things that didn't concern me then obviously it'd be a waste of time for me to focus on them in arguments about what computer I should buy.Macs vs. PCs is a question of what the user wants. For me, the affordability and performance (for games) of a custom-built desktop PC simply can't be matched by any Mac option that is available to me.
And sorry for technically being off-topic... I can't help myself - I'm learning a lot about Apple/Macs here - as a person in a different market to the USA's, I don't exactly get a lot of exposure to Mac "culture".
And by the way, for me at least, Windows has always "just worked".
0) Yes, people got
![[pissed]](/images/smilies/pissed.gif "Pissed [pissed]")
about the last update cycle, for some reason it took 500 days for them to update it, probably Intel's new chip release cycle1) okay, then go with two 5770 or a 5870
2) The Mac Pro is getting Quadros within a month, Nvidia is finishing up the drivers (I think it's a 5000 and a 6000)
3) Next day repair is slow? Actually sometimes they repair it within a couple hours, besides most common failure is the hard drives, and Apple makes it really easy to back everything up
4) Just how high is the VAT??? It is a quad core i5 so not that bad, anyways you can spend £160 and make it an i7
5) There is a reason it has 1GB of GDDR5 RAM, besides you could always drop the resolution
6) Why would Civ 5 struggle? Civ4 rendered the whole map, even under the fog of war. you could turn down the resolution or the settings if you wanted to make it run better.
7) My point isn't that they are good for a dedicated gaming machine, but that they can game
0) Yes, people got
1) okay, then go with two 5770 or a 5870
2) The Mac Pro is getting Quadros within a month, Nvidia is finishing up the drivers (I think it's a 5000 and a 6000)
3) Next day repair is slow? Actually sometimes they repair it within a couple hours, besides most common failure is the hard drives, and Apple makes it really easy to back everything up
4) Just how high is the VAT??? It is a quad core i5 so not that bad, anyways you can spend £160 and make it an i7
5) There is a reason it has 1GB of GDDR5 RAM, besides you could always drop the resolution
6) Why would Civ 5 struggle? Civ4 rendered the whole map, even under the fog of war. you could turn down the resolution or the settings if you wanted to make it run better.
7) My point isn't that they are good for a dedicated gaming machine, but that they can game
1) You cant get those in a prebuilt Mac, and hardly no one buys a mac to upgrade into a gaming spec.
2) Quadros have been available for decades now as Nvidias workstation GPU. For macs still not to have them supported in their £5000+ workstation computers is ridiculous.
3) Next day repair is very very slow when I can repair it myself within an hour or two instead.
4) An I7 doesnt do anything to improve video game, or any other performance outside of Multithrtreaded benchmarks. Many PC enthusiasts including myself who bought an I7 on release have severely regretted doing so after the I5 was released. In all benchmarks done with a quad core I5 and I7 clocked to the same frequency with turboboost enabled, the I5 will always win in video games because it has a higher turboboost multiplier and clock speed than the I7 does. Also, triple channel memory is a complete waste for video games, believe it when everyone that built an I7 rig purely for gaming are fuming several months later about how much better off they would have been with an I5 for less money instead. Also, a lot of people who use the I7 CPU have found it better to disable hyperthreading to greatly reduce temperatures, and overclock it by an extra 200 Mhz instead, essentially turning it into an I5 750.
5) 1 Gb GDDR5 isnt going to help at 2560 x 1440, especially not on a single 5770. You are looking into 2 Gb 5870 territory there, or 1.5 Gb GTX 480. A 1 Gb 5770 is barely adequate for todays games at 1080p resolution, for any resolution exceeding 2500+ pixels, a 1 Gb 5770 is far too low a spec for video games. No one running a PC with that high a resolution uses 5770s. They are mid range cards and generally are very good at 1680x1050, and adequate at 1080p, but even at the latter most people gaming on a PC would want better, either two 5770s, a 5850, or the new GTX 460 (double up on the 5850 or 460 for 16x AA in all your games at 1080p).
6) Civ 5 uses higher graphics than Civ 4, supports DX11 and tessellated maps, and even lots of advanced features under DX10 mode. I would wonder the same thing from when I read the preview where they tested the game on an I7 spec with an ATI 5870, and complained about the game really slowing down in the later stages.
7) Yes they can play WoW and the Sims. Give them anything recent and they wont manage. No one here can tell whether or not Civ 5 will run well on a mac, and judging by the recommended specification that has been released for Civ 5, and by reading the preview that was played on a 5870, only the most expensive Imac with the 5750, or a Mac Pro will be capable of sufficiently running Civ 5 at 1080p resolution as a maximum, and even then it will probably be running at slideshow speeds later on into each game. Most people who own a lower specced mac do not meet the recommended spec for this game.
Nice way of trying to dodge my point.
So, does a Mac never have driver issues or does 10.6.4. screw over drivers? You can't have them both.
1) Apple sells 5770s and they run just fine in the 2009 Mac Pro (basically same computer except faster/more cores, better GPU and faster RAM)
2) The Mac Pro supports the Quadro 4800 and the Quadro 5600
3) Next day repair at latest, if it will take longer they give you temporary Mac Pro
4) Haven't you heard of the OpenGL OpenCL dream team? they work together so upgrading one will boost the team
5) Actually from Mac users I hear the 5770 runs games fine at 1080p
6) tester's copies can be poorly optimized
7) And all those Valve games
well it generally caused people FPS to drop, however Apple made it up to us by giving us drivers better than before they screwed up, previously people had like 70 FPS and then it dropped to 35 and now it's at 100, some people are now getting 150-200 FPS in TF2 now
