Apple working with partners to improve Mac gaming performance
With more major releases than ever headed to the Mac platform thanks to the release of Valve's Steam service, Apple is working closely with its hardware and software partners to improve performance of graphically intensive titles.
Rob Barris, a Valve employee who worked on the Steam client for Mac, revealed on the company's official forums that improvements are expected in the near future. He said that smaller, quick fixes could come sooner, though improved drivers in the future are expected to have the greatest impact.
"Performance is going to improve as drivers are updated," Barris wrote. "I would expect modest improvements in short term and larger ones in longer term. No, I can't put dates on them."
He continued, "We are making a lot of progress is identifying specific issues that need work inside the game and inside OpenGL and drivers. Apple, ATI and NVIDIA are all involved."
Barris' comments came in response to a thread complaining about game performance within Mac OS X. Though performance so far has been decent, it has fallen behind PC counterparts running similar hardware with Windows 7.
Steam is an online gaming networking service and storefront, which allows users to connect with one another, track each others' achievements in specific titles, and join each others' online games quickly. Its release for the Mac in May has inspired some game developers to bring their titles to the Mac, which traditionally has not been a strong gaming platform.
Earlier this month, Valve revealed through its monthly hardware survey that more than 8 percent of Steam users were on Mac OS X. Apple achieved that total in its first month of availability.
In March, when Steam for Mac was announced, Valve told AppleInsider that it worked closely with Apple to bring the client natively to the Mac.
"We've been working with them a bunch as we get more acquainted with their platform," said John Cook, director of Steam development at Valve. "They've been a great partner so far and we look forward to growing our relationship with them over time."
Rob Barris, a Valve employee who worked on the Steam client for Mac, revealed on the company's official forums that improvements are expected in the near future. He said that smaller, quick fixes could come sooner, though improved drivers in the future are expected to have the greatest impact.
"Performance is going to improve as drivers are updated," Barris wrote. "I would expect modest improvements in short term and larger ones in longer term. No, I can't put dates on them."
He continued, "We are making a lot of progress is identifying specific issues that need work inside the game and inside OpenGL and drivers. Apple, ATI and NVIDIA are all involved."
Barris' comments came in response to a thread complaining about game performance within Mac OS X. Though performance so far has been decent, it has fallen behind PC counterparts running similar hardware with Windows 7.
Steam is an online gaming networking service and storefront, which allows users to connect with one another, track each others' achievements in specific titles, and join each others' online games quickly. Its release for the Mac in May has inspired some game developers to bring their titles to the Mac, which traditionally has not been a strong gaming platform.
Earlier this month, Valve revealed through its monthly hardware survey that more than 8 percent of Steam users were on Mac OS X. Apple achieved that total in its first month of availability.
In March, when Steam for Mac was announced, Valve told AppleInsider that it worked closely with Apple to bring the client natively to the Mac.
"We've been working with them a bunch as we get more acquainted with their platform," said John Cook, director of Steam development at Valve. "They've been a great partner so far and we look forward to growing our relationship with them over time."
Comments
finally OpenGL 3.0 for mac maybe?
I believe it came out with MacOS X 10.6.3.
I'm the first!
Who cares!
As for OpenGL performance vis a vis Apple, I'm not holding my breath. Side note: 256MB DDR3 VRAM is standard on Macs, while 1GB DDR5 is standard on PCs.
Who cares!
Didn't think I did, then it happened that I was.
Grumpy?
Side note: 256MB DDR3 VRAM is standard on Macs, while 1GB DDR5 is standard on PCs.
No it's not... at least not on the cheap to mid PCs. Only high end gaming PCs have that and those machines often cost more than a Mac.
All being said though it's going to get real interesting for Mac gaming in the next year or so.
Side note: 256MB DDR3 VRAM is standard on Macs, while 1GB DDR5 is standard on PCs.
Troll much?
OBVIOUSLY I WAS CORRECT ALL ALONG
Troll much?
lmfao! It's like he's not even trying.
GDDR5 isn't standard on PC video cards. It's just there. In fact, doesn't the GTX 280 have a Mac counterpart that uses GDDR5?
Apple is working with another company to get their software to run better in OSX? NO WAY! What about all those cries from people that said Apple should never have to do this, and it's Adobe's fault that Flash sucks in OSX?
OBVIOUSLY I WAS CORRECT ALL ALONG
lmfao! It's like he's not even trying.
GDDR5 isn't standard on PC video cards. It's just there. In fact, doesn't the GTX 280 have a Mac counterpart that uses GDDR5?
The Radeon HD 4850? Outdated, but yeah, it does.
IGPs are well and away the largest selling graphics chips on the market. The discrete graphics market is far smaller. It's kind of weird b/c you have all these companies creating games that require better graphics cards, programs written to make use of your graphics card for parallel processing, etc and then you have Intel pushing terrible IGPs.
I believe it came out with MacOS X 10.6.3.
Not completely, they're still on OpenGL shading language 1.2. The one in OpenGL 3.0 is 1.3, the latest is 4.0, it's from OpenGL 4.0 :P
Instead, improve the iPhone 4 ordering system first.
They have more than a few employees and will fix gaming and the ordering system in parallel.
This is great news that Apple is taking gaming seriously after many decades of not doing so. The hope is Apple will put some engineers on OpenGL and make it a better gaming set of APIs than DirectX. Here's hoping!
Apple is working with another company to get their software to run better in OSX? NO WAY! What about all those cries from people that said Apple should never have to do this, and it's Adobe's fault that Flash sucks in OSX?
OBVIOUSLY I WAS CORRECT ALL ALONG
lmfao! It's like he's not even trying.
GDDR5 isn't standard on PC video cards. It's just there. In fact, doesn't the GTX 280 have a Mac counterpart that uses GDDR5?
Apple doesn't offer anything even remotely close to the GTX 280 and that card is about 2 years old already.