Valve Claims Frame Rate Improvements of Up to 120% With Snow Leopard Graphics Update
Valve, which has been working closely with Apple and graphics card companies to improve gaming performance on the Mac platform, has now posted a technical explanation of the steps it has been able to take to improve performance as facilitated by the new software update. While the details are certainly interesting, the bottom line is that frame rates have been increased by 15% to 120% on some newer Mac hardware.
We are seeing dramatic performance improvements on iMac (Late 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac mini (Early 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac Pro (Early 2009), MacBook (Early 2009 and Mid 2010) and MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010) and MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010) models. Depending on the game, video settings and the hardware, we have measured frame rate improvements from 15% to 120% on these systems. On older systems, we are generally already operating at the limits of the hardware, so it is not obvious that any significant performance improvements can be achieved in the future.
Valve has made a significant investment into the Mac OS X platform, working to bring its entire library of high-profile games to the Mac while also opening up its Steam game distribution platform to allow other developers to easily offer Mac versions of their titles.Top Rated Comments
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While this is good to see, it highlights an issue with drivers on apple machines. It would be wonderful if apple allowed nvidia and ati to support their cards directly.
came to read the complaints about this..
leaving satisfied.
Edit: Portal seems to be running better for me. Call of Duty 4 seems to be about the same. Call of Duty 2 might be a little better.
15% to 120% is pretty huge.
came to read the complaints about this..
leaving satisfied.
:) at least it wasn't a rant.
While this is good to see, it highlights an issue with drivers on apple machines. It would be wonderful if apple allowed nvidia and ati to support their cards directly.
No, thank you. I've spent more than enough time in my life installing, debugging, rolling back, etc. catalyst and nvidia drivers, trying to figure out why the newest driver made some games faster, some games slower, caused new artifacts or crashes, etc.
I'll gladly give up some fps for a little bit of stability.
Apple should do these updates more frequently.
15% to 120% is pretty huge.
However, does this mean graphics performance is just bringing the Mac up to the same level as on Windows? Hopefully there will be benchmarks soon
While this is good to see, it highlights an issue with drivers on apple machines. It would be wonderful if apple allowed nvidia and ati to support their cards directly.
If nvidia or ATI is in anyway competent in supporting drivers on Mac, Apple would not need to step up.
The whole reason why Apple is even doing driver for those hardware is because their support for Mac sucked.
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