Mac OS X Steam Performance: Half Life 2 Episode 2, Still Slower than Windows
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 4, 2010 2:04 PM ESTImage Quality: Still Foggy
As Ryan pointed out in his more timely piece, image quality under OS X is noticeably worse than under Windows.
The Mac screen shots are foggier for some reason and despite the fix that was applied to Portal, Half Life 2 Episode 2 appears to have worse texture filtering quality under OS X than Windows. This is more pronounced of a difference than what we saw under Portal.
Half Life 2 Episode 2 - Windows 7 - Click to Enlarge
Half Life 2 Episode 2 - OS X - Click to Enlarge
It looks like something is wrong with the AF setting, reverting to Trilinear filtering confirms my suspicion:
Half Life 2 Episode 2 - OS X - Trilinear Filtering - Click to Enlarge
But AF isn’t completely disabled. Using the Windows version for comparison it looks like Half Life 2 Episode 2 just forces 4X AF regardless of what you set the texture filtering option to:
Windows 7 4X AF
OS X 16X AF
The sky and muted colors are still a problem and I can’t seem to find out the cause of that one. There’s some texture banding off in the distance in the sky that’s only visible in the OS X version.
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LobsterDK - Monday, June 7, 2010 - link
A little off topic aren't we?WTF? Actually, WTF^2. Put down the pipe, you've had enough. Or better yet, pass it over. Stop bogarting that shit.
JerryNY - Monday, June 7, 2010 - link
I'm just curious what timedemo you guys are using? Also both articles were done using NVIDIA GPU's iirc any tests with ATi cards? My general experience is that driver issues are the opposite on Mac/PC and ATi seems to have better drivers on the Mac. On my Mac Pro I can select up to 8xAA using my 4870, the GTX 285 should easily be able to match that except for lousy drivers under OSX.TEAMSWITCHER - Tuesday, June 8, 2010 - link
My almost 4 year old MacBook Pro laptop plug is still working fine and has been more reliable than any PC laptop I have ever owned. The break away feature has two benefits; it prevents the laptop from doing a back-flip off a conference table, and it protects the plug site from the lateral forces ensuing from a sudden jerk on the power cord. This feature has saved my Mac on at least three occasions. PC laptops still use crappy OLD-SCHOOL power plugs - and will for at least 10 more years - Apple has a patent.A couple weeks ago I played Portal on my MacBook Pro. I had never played the gamed on a PC, so I have nothing to compare the experience to. It was fun, and I never really noticed a poor frame-rate or insufficient visual quality. The game was a bit short though.
So I lost a few FPS in a game - BIG WHOOP! This tiny loss is vastly over-shadowed by the fewer reboots, fewer application crashes, fewer graphic driver updates, fewer registry headaches, and the timely avoidance of the entire Windows Vista debacle.
If you look at performance from a total-cost-of-ownership perspective - the Mac is a very good platform. While the highs aren't as high, the lows aren't as low either.
cesthree - Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - link
Why waste the time to test 5+ year old games? Can't Mac's play anything newer? Since the Mac was running a GTX285, wait that's the only card *worth* running in a Mac, isn't it?It seems Mac users, and Linux users, spend more time talking about what "kernel it's built on", and how it fails in every aspect to performance in games to windows, instead of just using their "PC's".
It is a PC you know, not some PowerPC or whatever other garbage platform Mac used to use was. It's a PC running Mac OS. Nothing more. The opposite of Linux, to the extreme.
At least Linux fanbois don't riddle the television with useless, mindless dribble about how their latest fashion accessory bs is going to cost you another arm and a leg, just because it has a picture of an apple on it.
ckeledjian - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 - link
The fact here is that Microsoft has more experience than any other company at making operating systems that will perform fast in low end hardware. It has more experience than any other company at making operating systems for games. Microsoft has the best software and driver developing tools in the market, therefore, the best drivers for any hardware are more likely to be for the Windows platform. There is no advertizing, "Mac vs. PC" smearing campaign, etc that can win to the fact that there are no shorcuts to experience. One reason why Apple makes computers so top notch is because they need to, to compensate for an OS (OSX) that would not run sufficiently fast in lesser hardware. Then if you install Windows in a Mac, you notice how much faster it is (with the exception of a few seconds boot time and sleep time, because Windows would use the older BIOS and not the new EFI for these modes). That's why I don't believe marketing myths: I test myself. No OSX nor Linux can beat Windows in hardcore performance, because nobody have had so many years of experience and focus as Microsoft at making cheap hardware run the fastest possible.