Does OS X run games better than XP?

fletch

The other day I was at the Apple Store asking if they knew if the new iMacs were going to have graphics card upgrades. They didn't know the answer to that, but the guy did tell me that OS X utilizes hardware better than a Windows machine does and can therefore run games "faster and better."



He then said that the 24" iMac with the stock 7300GT would run games like Call of Duty 2 at higher detail with higher frames than a XP machine with similar specs, even with a 7600GT.



Anyone know if this is truly the case? I'm a Apple Newb (well, kinda) so any help with this would be greatly appeciated.

hi_q

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fletch


The other day I was at the Apple Store asking if they knew if the new iMacs were going to have graphics card upgrades. They didn't know the answer to that, but the guy did tell me that OS X utilizes hardware better than a Windows machine does and can therefore run games "faster and better."



He then said that the 24" iMac with the stock 7300GT would run games like Call of Duty 2 at higher detail with higher frames than a XP machine with similar specs, even with a 7600GT.



Anyone know if this is truly the case? I'm a Apple Newb (well, kinda) so any help with this would be greatly appeciated.

My next purchase will be COD2. I will be certain to let you know, but all the other games I have run much smoother on my Mac than on my PoC.

paprochy

I think in the grand scheme of things, that was a load of bull. Maybe some games happen to run better but the lack of DirectX support in OS means that most games don't run as well as in Windows. That's what bootcamp is for.

Marvin

If Call of Duty 2 uses multi-threaded OpenGL then it's quite possible. They demo'd World of Warcraft running faster on the Mac than on the PC. However, such demos don't tell the whole story. Yes, OS X is a better designed OS with better memory management and the new OpenGL developments allow games to run faster when they are optimized but games tend to be written specifically for DirectX and heavily use pixel shaders so they don't always look as nice on the Mac side plus there are only a handful of Intel native games and they have not all been optimized for multi-threaded OpenGL and if they are, there's only a chance they will be faster - it's not guaranteed. A lot of games just run out of support so there will never be Intel versions of them and they run like crap under Rosetta.



In order for anyone to seriously consider the Mac side for games, the games need to be at least as fast, cheap, well supported and available as the Windows counterpart. In my experience, they have never been all four and when they fail on any of those counts, it's not worth it.



It's not even that Apple need to do anything to make things different but developers need to see that it's profitable to support the Mac. When it has less than 3% market share, it's not worth their while. Without their support and 3rd party intervention via companies like Macsoft and Aspyr, the product fails in price, performance and support. Look at the red blotches here:



http://guides.macrumors.com/Universal_Binary_Games



Whether or not the games run well is besides the point. The support isn't there. We only have Splinter Cell 1 on the Mac and it runs badly under Rosetta. No sign of the other 4 releases available for the PC. I can still run discworld on the PC.

fletch

Thanks for the responses, Gents. I was intending on running bootcamp once I get my iMac anyways, but the gaming situation pretty much seals it. Oh well, at least Windows is useful for something

finalblink

yeah Macs are not made for gaming, if you want gaming, and want to run games, run boot camp, but if not your SOL unless your gonna play WoW which dosent require A LOT of GPU use like lets say FEAR on a windoze machine.

feartec

Quote:

Originally Posted by paprochy


I think in the grand scheme of things, that was a load of bull. Maybe some games happen to run better but the lack of DirectX support in OS means that most games don't run as well as in Windows. That's what bootcamp is for.

Anything with a universal binary has run sweet on my iMac 20". Im not sure about all that mumbo jumbo with DirectX, but if it's universal binary that means I max out the graphics settings in any game I get for my Mac with no probs.

neyoung

Quote:

Originally Posted by paprochy


I think in the grand scheme of things, that was a load of bull. Maybe some games happen to run better but the lack of DirectX support in OS means that most games don't run as well as in Windows. That's what bootcamp is for.

That pretty much hits the nail on the head. Games run best with DirectX. If you are using XP you'll never choose to use OpenGL over DirectX because DirectX looks/runs quite a bit better. OS X only supports OpenGL so that should give you your answer right there. There may be a few games out there that run better in OS X, but I'm sure that they are few and far between.

benroethig

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fletch


The other day I was at the Apple Store asking if they knew if the new iMacs were going to have graphics card upgrades. They didn't know the answer to that, but the guy did tell me that OS X utilizes hardware better than a Windows machine does and can therefore run games "faster and better."



He then said that the 24" iMac with the stock 7300GT would run games like Call of Duty 2 at higher detail with higher frames than a XP machine with similar specs, even with a 7600GT.



Anyone know if this is truly the case? I'm a Apple Newb (well, kinda) so any help with this would be greatly appeciated.

He's pulling your leg. Mac gaming has a chance to be much better with the Machines running Intel processors (and therefore having access to the same code optimizations as the windows game) as well as (multi-threaded) OpenGL 2.1 in the upcoming 10.5 Leopard operating system. However, since Mac games are traditionally ports there are going to be slow down compared to the original PC games. That's the nature of the beast.

benroethig

Quote:

Originally Posted by neyoung


That pretty much hits the nail on the head. Games run best with DirectX. If you are using XP you'll never choose to use OpenGL over DirectX because DirectX looks/runs quite a bit better. OS X only supports OpenGL so that should give you your answer right there. There may be a few games out there that run better in OS X, but I'm sure that they are few and far between.

Direct X moved ahead of OGL for one simple reason, there is one company controlling the whole thing.