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 ESTFinal Words
The simple fact that Valve ported the Source engine to the Mac platform is enough to give the developers some leniency in improving performance. If Valve is truly committed to bringing all new releases on Steam to OS X than I doubt that Mac enthusiasts will be too bothered by the fact that performance is lower than under Windows, at least for a short while.
The Steam application itself is also slower under OS X. Launching games and the Steam application takes longer than under Windows.
| Half Life 2 Episode 2 Load Time | |||||
| Nehalem Mac Pro | Mac OS X 10.6.3 | Windows 7 x64 | |||
| Time from Launch to Menu | 48.7 seconds | 35.5 seconds | |||
Eventually performance and image quality parity will be necessary. Make no mistake, Apple is in the business of selling luxury computers. You can often get the same specs for less from Dell or HP, but the styling, attention to detail, ability to legitimately run OS X and user experience are all things Apple’s customers are willing to pay a premium for. A performance deficit rarely goes over well in these sorts of situations. It doesn't have to offer greater performance, but you shouldn't have to sacrifice so much just to play under OS X.
To Valve’s credit, at least on current generation Macs, Source engine games are absolutely playable. It supports Apple’s whole “it just works” mantra. You’re just better off running them in Windows if you have the option. Although I will admit that the convenience of not having to reboot is sometimes worth the frame rate penalty, at least for shorter gaming sessions. If I’m going to be playing for more than 20 minutes, then a reboot is more than worth it.
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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.