[neilio]

I've been wondering that very question. My powerbook is an amazing machine for creative work, and I can't imagine working on any other machine or OS for my freelance job.

But why is it that this powerful machine (15" 1.5ghz powerbook) makes such a poor gaming machine?

Case in point: I just recently purchased Battlefield 1942 for the Mac, after playing it extensively on the PC and enjoying it a lot. (Aside: I normally don't like video games, but BF1942 is just so much fun.) When I played it on a PC, the machine I used was a Compaq EVO N1015V, which I borrowed from the college I teach at.

At 800x600, BF1942 played pretty smoothly on the compaq, even though the processor wasn't amazing (P4 1.67, I think), and the video card wasn't too great, either. But it still played pretty well.

On my souped up Powerbook, BF1942 plays adequately, but nowhere near as smoothly as on the PC laptop. Is this just because the port to Mac wasn't very optimized? Or is there some other reason why?

I know this is kind of a lame question, but I've always wondered this.

[PCgeek]

did u update to 10.3.4???

go back. I read somewhere in the forums that the update reduces performance during gaming.

Plus your 15 inch powerbook comes with the radeon 9700 ....u should have no problems playing battlefield 1942...

i hope i could help

[Switched2Mac]

You will no doubt get flamed by every Mac Zealot for even hinting at such a thing. But it is a valid question.

I own a 12" Powerbook w/superdrive (Rev C.) and a 15" Compaq X1360US. I love both.

The Compaq has 512 meg ram, while the PB has 768. The Compaq has an ATI 9200 Mobility Radeon with 32 meg video memory while the PB has the nVidia with 64 megs video ram.

The Compaq is a Pentium M 1.4 gHz while the PB is G4 1.33 gHz.

The PB would seem to have the slight edge.

Unreal 2004 on the Compaq is awesome with full details, no slowdowns and its fan comes on only once is a while. The PB is somewhat sluggish and the fan is running full blast and temperature monitor shows it pegged at 149.5 degrees.

Greenpeace begins protesting outside my house saying that my PB running Unreal is contributing to global warming!

Command & Conquer Generals (awesome game!) runs fine on the Compaq with max detail. MacAddict magazine (last issue), the reviewer said that when he launched a Chinese nuke, the explosion (and the requisite onscreen effects) brought his dual 2.0 gHz G5 to its knees. The Compaq has no problem at all, not even a hint of slowdown. The PB running in 800x600 mode with everything notched down detail-wise is crawling during battles.

MacAddict C&C Generals Review

This is really sad.

One can argue that clearly the problem is with the porting of the games to the OSX platform. But that is hardly a consolation to the Mac gamer who just wants to play the game.

So how do we get it fixed?

[neilio]

Originally posted by Switched2Mac:
You will no doubt get flamed by every Mac Zealot for even hinting at such a thing. But it is a valid question.

Zealotry in any form is sad. No platform or computer system is perfect - Macs come close (), but everything has room for improvement. But yeah, I expect sooner or later someone will come barging in here to proclaim that I don't know what I'm doing, or I'm doing something wrong, or it's somehow my fault... (sigh)

One can argue that clearly the problem is with the porting of the games to the OSX platform. But that is hardly a consolation to the Mac gamer who just wants to play the game.

I guess one thing I just thought about is that gaming (real gaming, and not the pitiful attempt that OS 9 begat) on the Mac has only been doable for the past two years or so, since OS X has improved, so hopefully as the OS matures, so will the porting. I guess my question is, is it the OS, the hardware, the porting, or all of the above that is the problem?

[RayX]

Removed.

[wuzup101]

Just wondering what kind of settings you're playing with on the PB? The model you describe has plenty of power (actually I am ordering one tomorrow...). However if you're playing at the native resolution on the PB and 800x600 as you said on the PC that might be the difference right there. BF1942 is a pretty intensive game. It's not the most demanding, but it certainly can overwealm (sp?) many a computer.

The PC your playing it on actually uses an AMD 2000+ (1.67ghz) processor, not a pentium 4 like you stated. It's generally accepted that this processor is about equivalent to a desktop pentium 4 running at about 2ghz for most applications. It will give you a good bit of power, and is generally accepted as a great processor for a gaming system.

I will say that your PB definitely has a major advantage in the graphics department. The onboard 9700 should smash the video adapter that ships with the Compaq. However, because it is a port, the AMD processor combined with the windows OS that the game was origionally designed for might be enough to give the compaq the edge. I suspect (as mentioned above) we will see a lot of advancement in the gaming department in the next few years. For now, PC's tend to have the upperhand in most cases for gaming.

I can give you a "for instance" right now. I've noticed some people mentioning their frame rates here in certain games. Even the people who are running G5's w/ dual 2.0s and 9800s don't match my PC's framerates. I'm running a fairly high end system, but it's definitely not top of the line anymore (AMD XP "barton - 512k L2 @ 2.3ghz, 1gb PC3200, 9800Pro, etc...). the G5 will definitely stomp my machine into the ground in programs that are written independently for both the PC and the mac (not ports). However, when it comes to gaming with ported games they seem to fall behind greatly. I would chalk this up to the lack of games actually designed for the mac, not the computer's hardware.

Also, ram is also something to think about. It's hard to compare a Mac running X with a PC running XP and the amout of ram they use. PCs just don't need as much ram. It's not a bad thing or anything, but a PC with 512mb of ram isn't the same as a Mac with 512mb (and we all know this).

Anyway, sorry for the long drawn out post. Your PB is definitely a great machine. If you feel the need to you can always build a very decent PC just for gaming for a very reasonable amount of money. Not that you would ever want to do this if you're really hard core Mac or can't stand windows... just giving you the option.

I can't wait for my PB

[Link]

I'll take a shot at this. One of the reasons is that, if running at 800x600 on your powerbook screen, the powerbook is stuck having to interpolate the screen resolution to fill the screen. I'd guess that your PC doesn't have to handle this task, since it's probably hooked up to a CRT, thus taking much less GPU/CPU time to accomplish the task.

My suggestion would be to try it with an external CRT (just to see), as it'll probably give you a mild gain.

[rag on a muffin]

id say its just the fact that people are bad at porting games. unreal tournament, the original runs very badly for some reason, while quake 3, and other games run at extremely high frame-rates.
even the OSX port of marathon would run like crap on my old ibook, when i could run quake fairly well!

[Switched2Mac]

Half-Life 2 for the Mac would be real nice!

[Graymalkin]

Well like many Mac ports the game might have some serious performance killing bugs. UT2003/4 were practically crippled on the Mac because a huge bug in the audio subsystem. Once this was fixed the performance of these games improved by a huge margin. There's nothing inherent about the Mac as a platform that makes it bad for gaming, the chief problems with Mac games are tight budgets and schedules.

[Halfloaf]

But also consider that Windows uses DirectX, which has been optimized to the nth degree to work at the best speed possible with the latest Gfx chipsets. I don't think openGL comes close to DirectX in terms or performance.

I don't think it's the hardware so much, but the lack of work being done to get the games to run at full tilt on OpenGL.

I also can't help but feel that the graphics drivers for OS X could do with a serious injection of fine combed optimization. We've seen one update in OS X 10.3 for the ATI and nVIDIA drivers...Theres on avg. 1 update to the windows drivers a month. (Leaked or not)

I think the latest Apple Powerbooks feature some great hardware, now we just need some optimized drivers and OpenGL lib's to get the most from the kick ass goods.

My 2p.

-JT

[TailsToo]

There are also speed issues in porting the game. Since they are re-written, they are not always optimized for the Mac, and do run slower and more poorly than their PC counterparts.

[sniffer]

Originally posted by Halfloaf:
But also consider that Windows uses DirectX, which has been optimized to the nth degree to work at the best speed possible with the latest Gfx chipsets. I don't think openGL comes close to DirectX in terms or performance.

Can you back this up in some way please? There is a couple of years since I switched from PCs, but the general opinion and in my experience back then was that OpenGL was the performer, not the other way around.

BTW: I have high expectations for the upcoming Doom3. John Carmack is very favor of the OS X platform it seems, so I have a good feeling this game can show off some decent results on Macs as well. Just like Quake 3 Arena or hopefully even better.

The Doom3 3d engine even had its world premiere on MacWorld 2001.

[milhous]

I think the bottom line is until we get greater marketshare in the personal computer market, developers will not give it their all to make their games run with full performance parity as their PC versions because there is no need to make that extra investment to a platform with a smaller marketshare.

I'm inclined to believe that OS X and any modern Mac can experience high-performance gaming when coded right. We'll soon have the 5th iteration of OS X, so I believe that X's technology is mature.

[iomatic]

This is spot-on. The problem is porting houses have limitations on the chunks of code to re-optimize for OS X. There'll be updates, I hope, that will give us the performance we ought to have with these newer PowerBooks. I just wished it shipped on the DVD.

Check out insidemacgames.com forums for the latest information.

Originally posted by Graymalkin:
Well like many Mac ports the game might have some serious performance killing bugs. UT2003/4 were practically crippled on the Mac because a huge bug in the audio subsystem. Once this was fixed the performance of these games improved by a huge margin. There's nothing inherent about the Mac as a platform that makes it bad for gaming, the chief problems with Mac games are tight budgets and schedules.

[Halfloaf]

Originally posted by sniffer:
Can you back this up in some way please? There is a couple of years since I switched from PCs, but the general opinion and in my experience back then was that OpenGL was the performer, not the other way around.

Sniffer,

You hit the nail on the head right there... "my experience back then..." I would agree with you yes, three-four years ago you would have chosen openGL over DirectX, but nowadays...Hmmm. not so I think. DirectX is very much geared for gaming, where OpenGL is for 3D apps like 3Dstudio Max, Maya, Lightwave etc. Take a look at 3DMark by MadOnion.com....(PC benchmarking) It's completely written for DX 9. OpenGL???? Where?

Simply do a search on Google for "OpenGL vs. DirectX" and you'll come up with hours of reading pleasure.

Have a look at all the new GFX cards that are being releases....All "certified" for DX9. I think it's easier for the game developers to use DX8/9 to take advantage of the new cards features.

I would love to see some games that really tax the chipsets in our PB's. and by tax I mean OPTIMIZED CODE!!!

(Halfloaf dreams of days when FANTASTIC games ran on a 14Mhz Amiga 1200....zzzz)

-JT

[sniffer]

You're right Halfloaf, it's aprox four years since I switched, so I guess my knowledge on the topic is a little outdated. (oops)

A side note;

Quake Performance


3D games push the graphics processing unit harder than any other application. And of these 3D games, Quake performance has come to be the benchmark against which all graphics processors are measured. So you�ll be pleased to hear that when playing Quake III Arena version 1.32, in millions of colors, at 1024x768 resolution, all PowerBook G4 models blaze away at over 100 frames per second(2).

The only way I blaze away over 100 fps on Q3 in 32 bits/1024x768 on my 12" rev. C. is when I turn down everything (plus setting com_maxfps really high just in case) and stare at the wall. Is this misleading?

.. 10.3.4 btw.

I think the timedemo test reaches around 90 fps.

[OMGWTFBBQ]

Technically DirectX hasn't been tweaked to work on the graphics cards, but the other way around.
When you have the 900lb gorilla in the room (Microsoft), then you tweak your system to accommodate it.

That said, DirectX actually has a large subset of OpenGL built into it - but true to Microsoft in every way, when they put it in there, they changed it in small ways so that it essentially stopped following the true standard.

In the end, the main issue for Macs is very much what people are already alluding to on this thread. They aren't a big enough market share for game companies to build for them straight off the bat (there are some exceptions, which usually happen solely because someone in house loves the Macs, or prefers to develop on them).

So what you get are games that are designed entirely for DirectX which allows the game to function (largely without any real major tweaks outside of some networking code) either on PCs or the XBox and they then reach a massive range of users to buy their games.

Later, someone buys the rights to it and ports it to the Mac. The code has to be ported away from the pure DirectX things and over to the OpenGL side (easier to do when games are already using much of the OpenGL side of things, or that part of the DirectX code - Quake is one that does this, and therefore why it works well on Macs - it was an easier port).

It comes down to whether they are going to port it so that it runs and then get it out the door and try to make money on it, or are they going to port it so that it runs really well? The latter takes longer, and therefore cuts into profitability.

It would seem that in order to become part of the crowd that is first in line for a game actually written for the platform and not just ported, then one needs market share.
And for Mac to get market share, they are going to have to drop prices so that Joe Kidd can either afford one of his own, or convince his parents to get one.
When they have the option of a $2-3K Mac that is beautiful and might run their games very well, or a $600-1500 Dell that essentially sucks but will play the games that they want - it is a no brainer.

I think we can all agree that Mac has consistently shown no interest in that market segment, so until they do, the game market for us will be a "wait and hope the port that comes out is better than the Sim City ones" sort of deal.

[polendo]

I remember watching a program on Tech TV were a developer was asked about creating games in Mac OS X.

He basically said that OS X could be an awesome platform to create games.. BUT that currently every developer of Mac OS X games are practically on their own; that the Mac platform doesn't have enough documentation on how to create things. He practically blamed the lack of support of the Apple people for game developers.

Unfortunately, I don't recall which game that developer created for Mac OS X.. but he made it very clear that they were "discovering" things as they were coding the games.

regards

[rag on a muffin]

Originally posted by sniffer:
You're right Halfloaf, it's aprox four years since I switched, so I guess my knowledge on the topic is a little outdated. (oops)

A side note;



The only way I blaze away over 100 fps on Q3 in 32 bits/1024x768 on my 12" rev. C. is when I turn down everything (plus setting com_maxfps really high just in case) and stare at the wall. Is this misleading?

.. 10.3.4 btw.

I think the timedemo test reaches around 90 fps.

uh oh.. another powerbook owner stuck with evil 10.3.4 5200 drivers. im going to start a new topic explaining what to do to fix this.

[neilio]

Originally posted by rag on a muffin:
uh oh.. another powerbook owner stuck with evil 10.3.4 5200 drivers. im going to start a new topic explaining what to do to fix this.

Is there a reliable test I can run to see what kind of performance / drivers I've got here? There could be new video drivers in a hypothetical update for OS X... hypothetically speaking.

The Direct X / Open GL points are good ones - I completely forgot about that. I do hope that given time and the slowly increasing userbase that Macs have, more and more companies will spend more development time optimizing their ports / games for OS X and Open GL.

One small remark: keep in mind that when you hear stats thrown around like "4% user base" or whatever, two things are important qualifiers:

1) This almost always refers to market share, which is NOT a reliable or accurate indicator of the actual number of people currently using macs.

2) Many, many offices purchase thousands, if not millions of PCs, which artificially inflates the numbers. What I'd like to know (which I haven't seen good, accurate stats for) is the actual number of people who own and / or use a Mac at home. I have a feeling that number is much, much higher than the market share numbers bandied about.

Just a thought...

Neil

[Halfloaf]

Originally posted by rag on a muffin:
uh oh.. another powerbook owner stuck with evil 10.3.4 5200 drivers. im going to start a new topic explaining what to do to fix this.

Does 10.3.4 affect ATI Mobility 9000 adversely? Ta!

-JT

[sniffer]

Originally posted by rag on a muffin:
uh oh.. another powerbook owner stuck with evil 10.3.4 5200 drivers. im going to start a new topic explaining what to do to fix this.

Reverted back to 10.3.3, and the performance is MUCH better now. I have around the 100ish fps now in Q3A. Very nice.

[rag on a muffin]

Originally posted by Halfloaf:
Does 10.3.4 affect ATI Mobility 9000 adversely? Ta!

-JT

as far as i know, no only nvidia chipsets.