[lkearl]

I'm running Bootcamp on a Mac Pro 2.0 with 1GB RAM and a 7300GT video card. I'm wondering whether Mac versions of games or the Windows versions will perform better. My understanding is the Windows games use DirectX while Mac games use OpenGL, and I recall reading that DirectX usually performs faster than the Apple implementation of OpenGL. Does anyone know if this is true?

I've tried demos of these games, but I don't know if the Mac demo of Quake 4 is dual-processor enabled, and the Doom 3 demo isn't a universal binary while the full version is. So I don't know that the performance of the demos is the basis for deciding which version to buy.

Specifically, I'm looking at getting Quake 4, Doom 3 and Call of Duty 2.

Thanks.

[Big Mac]

Except in rare cases, cross platform gaming performance will always be better on the Windows side. The reason is simple - PCs are the target market, so the major design, coding and optimizing dollars go to making games run the best they can on Windows. If the target market were the Mac market, things would be very different. The Intel defection equalizes things somewhat, but games will still perform better on Windows.

[TheoCryst]

Agreed. It isn't as much a problem with OS X or OpenGL as much as it's a problem with developers. Nine times out of ten, Mac games are nothing more than quick ports of Windows games, and subsequently perform relatively poorly. In the end, though, the CPU has surprisingly little to do with the quality or ease of the port; most of the real work is changing from DirectX to OpenGL.

[Horsepoo!!!]

And as a side note, let me point out that Blizzard often mentioned that they were waiting for Apple to implement OpenGL changes required to boost WoW performance...yet, rbarris now says that multithreaded OpenGL and other OpenGL changes released in 10.4.7 and 10.4.8 won't be enabled until a later release...

So I don't think it's fair for them to say that Apple is slow with this stuff. Methinks Blizzard is trying to make a scapegoat out of Apple, when in reality, it's probably Blizzard that is mostly guilty of WoW's poor performance. Of course, I use poor performance lightly because I found the performance quite acceptable in the days I used to play WoW (before any optimizations were done). Of course, after nearly 2 years the full screen glow bug still exists...who's responsible for that, Apple or Blizzard? I dunno. But I'd more readily blame Blizzard.

Of course...I still love Blizzard. <3

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!!

And as a side note, let me point out that Blizzard often mentioned that they were waiting for Apple to implement OpenGL changes required to boost WoW performance...yet, rbarris now says that multithreaded OpenGL and other OpenGL changes released in 10.4.7 and 10.4.8 won't be enabled until a later release...

So I don't think it's fair for them to say that Apple is slow with this stuff. Methinks Blizzard is trying to make a scapegoat out of Apple, when in reality, it's probably Blizzard that is mostly guilty of WoW's poor performance.

So…Blizzard was supposed to have the new functionality implemented and tested as soon as Apple made it possible? I don't think that's fair to say.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

So…Blizzard was supposed to have the new functionality implemented and tested as soon as Apple made it possible? I don't think that's fair to say.

Well Blizzard was claiming that the changes in WoW were in place and that it was just waiting for Apple to make the required OpenGL improvements. Obviously this isn't true.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by TheoCryst

Agreed. It isn't as much a problem with OS X or OpenGL as much as it's a problem with developers.

It is a problem with Mac OS X. OS X's OpenGL is not multithreaded, while DirectX on the PC side is. Fortunately 10.4.8 fixes this, we just have to wait for games to implement it.

[goMac]

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!!

Well Blizzard was claiming that the changes in WoW were in place and that it was just waiting for Apple to make the required OpenGL improvements. Obviously this isn't true.

I think internally they have the changes ready, they just haven't released them to the public.

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by goMac

It is a problem with Mac OS X. OS X's OpenGL is not multithreaded, while DirectX on the PC side is. Fortunately 10.4.8 fixes this, we just have to wait for games to implement it.

Hmm, I did not know that. Cool!

[bleee]

Mac games will always get the shaft because of WIndows Direct X, back in the days of GLSetup.exe, 3DFX + Glide things were better. They developers aren't as locked down as they are with Direct X, some of the best games never made it to Mac like HalfLife and the HalflLife 2 it's not the games themselves its the engines they are built on. Having the HL2 Engine opens the doors to a ton of games not just the HalfLife series. There are alot of factors at work Apple is partly to blame they don't throw their support behind game developers like Microsoft with Direct X and even the Xbox. I just bought a Mac Pro and I have no idea where OS X stand with 5.1 gaming I spent a portion of today googling for Mac 5.1 gaming support to find very little information it's sketchy. Where as the windows world you have tons avaliable, not just hardware but I've also heard developers put way more into gaming sound on WIndows than Mac ports come with.

I truely want a windows free mac but it's not going to happen anytime soon atleast not for gamers. Especially with all this tight Direct X integration Mac games are losing ground.

As for Blizzard I think they are doing the best they can to support Mac's and props goes to them always for releaseing WoW for Mac on the same cd's as the Windows version!

[panzer07]

Originally Posted by bleee 

Mac games will always get the shaft because of WIndows Direct X, back in the days of GLSetup.exe, 3DFX + Glide things were better. They developers aren't as locked down as they are with Direct X, some of the best games never made it to Mac like HalfLife and the HalflLife 2 it's not the games themselves its the engines they are built on. Having the HL2 Engine opens the doors to a ton of games not just the HalfLife series. There are alot of factors at work Apple is partly to blame they don't throw their support behind game developers like Microsoft with Direct X and even the Xbox. I just bought a Mac Pro and I have no idea where OS X stand with 5.1 gaming I spent a portion of today googling for Mac 5.1 gaming support to find very little information it's sketchy. Where as the windows world you have tons avaliable, not just hardware but I've also heard developers put way more into gaming sound on WIndows than Mac ports come with.

I truely want a windows free mac but it's not going to happen anytime soon atleast not for gamers. Especially with all this tight Direct X integration Mac games are losing ground.

As for Blizzard I think they are doing the best they can to support Mac's and props goes to them always for releaseing WoW for Mac on the same cd's as the Windows version!

I am thinking of spending over $3K on a new Mac Pro and want to make sure Windows games work well on the Mac Pro. What have your experiences been? Would I be better buying an iMac 20? I use my mac for everything except Access, Visio, Project and all my games (LOTR BFME2 C&C Generals AOE II&III etc) and I want to make sure I can truly sell my PC and use a Mac Pro.

Thanks for your thoughts.

[lkearl]

Anyone know if I could install a 7600GT card to be used when I start up in Windows. It's a lot cheaper (about $200 Cdn) than an X1900 XT but better enough than the 7300GT that I'd like to use it for gaming.

Originally Posted by bleee 

Mac games will always get the shaft because of WIndows Direct X, back in the days of GLSetup.exe, 3DFX + Glide things were better. They developers aren't as locked down as they are with Direct X, some of the best games never made it to Mac like HalfLife and the HalflLife 2 it's not the games themselves its the engines they are built on. Having the HL2 Engine opens the doors to a ton of games not just the HalfLife series. There are alot of factors at work Apple is partly to blame they don't throw their support behind game developers like Microsoft with Direct X and even the Xbox. I just bought a Mac Pro and I have no idea where OS X stand with 5.1 gaming I spent a portion of today googling for Mac 5.1 gaming support to find very little information it's sketchy. Where as the windows world you have tons avaliable, not just hardware but I've also heard developers put way more into gaming sound on WIndows than Mac ports come with.

I truely want a windows free mac but it's not going to happen anytime soon atleast not for gamers. Especially with all this tight Direct X integration Mac games are losing ground.

As for Blizzard I think they are doing the best they can to support Mac's and props goes to them always for releaseing WoW for Mac on the same cd's as the Windows version!

[Tuoder]

Originally Posted by panzer07 

I am thinking of spending over $3K on a new Mac Pro and want to make sure Windows games work well on the Mac Pro. What have your experiences been? Would I be better buying an iMac 20? I use my mac for everything except Access, Visio, Project and all my games (LOTR BFME2 C&C Generals AOE II&III etc) and I want to make sure I can truly sell my PC and use a Mac Pro.

Thanks for your thoughts.

A Mac Pro with an ATi X1900 owns.

[rbarris]

Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!! 

And as a side note, let me point out that Blizzard often mentioned that they were waiting for Apple to implement OpenGL changes required to boost WoW performance...yet, rbarris now says that multithreaded OpenGL and other OpenGL changes released in 10.4.7 and 10.4.8 won't be enabled until a later release...

So I don't think it's fair for them to say that Apple is slow with this stuff. Methinks Blizzard is trying to make a scapegoat out of Apple, when in reality, it's probably Blizzard that is mostly guilty of WoW's poor performance. Of course, I use poor performance lightly because I found the performance quite acceptable in the days I used to play WoW (before any optimizations were done). Of course, after nearly 2 years the full screen glow bug still exists...who's responsible for that, Apple or Blizzard? I dunno. But I'd more readily blame Blizzard.

Of course...I still love Blizzard. <3

WoW performs well on the Intel Mac under 10.4.7, though not multi-threaded yet.

10.4.8 provides multi-threaded OpenGL on Intel Mac, but the current version of WoW (1.12.1) does not have the full support necessary to get the best results with MT-GL turned on.

A surprising amount of work has taken place since we froze WoW-1.12.1 to get MT-GL working really well - we had some exciting early results in terms of peak frame rates, but we had to smooth out a lot of texture loading issues that were causing frame rate hiccups as characters moved around the world. It's likely you'll see references to these types of issues (and how to streamline code to work through them) in an upcoming tech note from Apple. For some applications, enabling MT-GL may be as simple as adding a couple lines of code, for others you have to do more work to eliminate all the roadblocks, and WoW is in this category.

The patch which will officially allow the end user to turn on MT-GL in WoW will be released in early December 2006.

Considering that MT-GL was originally a feature slated strictly for Leopard (thus still months in the future), we're excited that it's been made available now in 10.4.8. The ball is plainly in our court at this point. I'd like to point out that the Burning Crusade beta test edition has the latest GL code in it and we have been getting positive reports from beta testers with the MT-GL enabled, so it's well out of the "vaporware" category.

On the topic of functionality added back in 10.4.7, the two big ones (and they have nothing to do with MT-GL, they are complementary enhancements) are the "buffer range" extension and the "GPU program parameters" extension, both of which allow us to further streamline our OpenGL coding, and WoW has supported both of these extensions for a while now with measurable benefit.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Good stuff...rbarris. My interest has been renewed now that I've got a Mac Pro and now that Burning Crusades is nearing release (with all it's rogue buff goodness...FINALLY ).

Not only will I be able to finally play WoW with full eye-candy on (I used to play WoW on a system that didn't even meet the Blizzard specs...a 2x800MHz G4. Back in the days, there weren't very many UI mods and large instance raids was in its infancy so for what it was worth, my computer was good enough to play WoW)...but I will own a DVD with all the changes to WoW to date (the Burning Crusades DVD) and it will be UB out-of-the-box, *and* it'll have the MT-OpenGL code.

[rbarris]

WoW 2.0.1 including the MT-GL support shipped today, and MT-GL is now enabled by default on systems that support it (Presently this means Intel Mac with 10.4.8 or higher).