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Windows twice as fast as OS X (Page 2)
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Eriamjh
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Apr 21, 2006, 07:10 AM
 
Yup. Windows is faster.

Still not switching.

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sabrejim
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Apr 21, 2006, 09:12 AM
 
I made a 3D cube in Java and it runs at 100000fps in osx and 980007 fps in XP. osx wins. DUH!
     
SMacTech
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Apr 21, 2006, 11:27 AM
 
Originally Posted by Tomchu
The defensiveness of you people when faced with less-than-happy-OS X-facts amuses us to no end.
Exactly who is us that you a referring too? Is there more than one person behind the keyboard over there?
     
Chuckit
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Apr 21, 2006, 11:29 AM
 
We are Borg.
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Tomchu  (op)
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Apr 21, 2006, 12:01 PM
 
Me, and my co-workers reading the thread.

Anyway, like I said ... once more benchmarks start popping up (and not even game benchmarks), I'm convinced we'll see that Windows trumps OS X in pretty much any test. I've used both long enough to be able to say that Windows takes advantage of hardware in a tighter fashion.
     
cybergoober
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Apr 21, 2006, 12:15 PM
 
Who cares?

I don't use Mac and OS X because I think it's faster than Windows. I use it because it suits my needs better, and I just prefer the whole experience more than I do on Windows.

Am I saying OS X is perfect? Nope. Would I mind if OS X gained some more speed in certain areas? Again, nope.

I just don't see what the big deal is about which one is faster... *shrugs*
     
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Apr 21, 2006, 12:48 PM
 
when i finish my game of solitair on windows, all the cards go crazy and start bouncing on fullscreen, try that OSX
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Horsepoo!!!
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Apr 21, 2006, 01:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by Tomchu
Me, and my co-workers reading the thread.

Anyway, like I said ... once more benchmarks start popping up (and not even game benchmarks), I'm convinced we'll see that Windows trumps OS X in pretty much any test. I've used both long enough to be able to say that Windows takes advantage of hardware in a tighter fashion.
Well then Tomchu-poo...explain the Cinebench results, the iTunes conversion results, and the Quake 3 results posted here: http://www.barefeats.com/bootcamp.html

Then also explain the Mac version of Opera's javascript results seen on www.24fun.com's javascript benchmark test app.

Go ahead, Tommy-wommsy. Oh, these weren't the benchmarks you were looking for?

Myself and a few coworkers are amused by your poor troll skills. You can do better than that...come on.
     
Tomchu  (op)
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Apr 21, 2006, 01:52 PM
 
cringe
( Last edited by Tomchu; Jul 11, 2021 at 09:29 PM. Reason: cringe)
     
aesculanus
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Apr 21, 2006, 02:00 PM
 
"Pedantic" is an adjective, not a noun. "Pedantics" is not even a word.

Sorry for being a pedantic prick, idiot.
     
Chuckit
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Apr 21, 2006, 02:17 PM
 
Originally Posted by Tomchu
Like I said, I'm not advocating that anyone switch to Windows because it's faster. My statement begins and ends with "Windows is simply faster". I still wouldn't give up OS X because of that. Don't take my arguments too far.
You were right the first time: "Windows is simply faster" is a statement, but not an argument.
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Horsepoo!!!
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Apr 21, 2006, 02:17 PM
 
Originally Posted by Tomchu
Like I said, I'm not advocating that anyone switch to Windows because it's faster. My statement begins and ends with "Windows is simply faster". I still wouldn't give up OS X because of that. Don't take my arguments too far.



I could give possible reasons for why iTunes is faster in OS X, but I'd have to run my own tests to make any conclusive statements. The same goes for Cinebench. I would really like to know more about their testing methodology personally. Was DEP on, for instance? If so, why? OS X has no such thing, so it should be disabled in XP, as it hinders performance in a few cases.

When I asked for more benchmarks, I wanted benchmarks that were done in a very transparent manner, and described. I can easily turn a benchmark into saying what I want it to say.
So now that you've proven that you've got double-standards, this thread can be locked.

You ask for methodologies when it comes to tests that show the Mac platform beating Windows. But when it came to WoW...you didn't ask for any methodology...you just took Gabe's word as fact and started a trollish thread.

So how's about you get a job and stop pretending like you have one, buy yourself an iMac Core Duo, install Boot Camp and install you favorite OS on it and do some Cinebench tests...disable whatever you think may hinder Window's performance and post the result. Then slap some ****in' sense into yourself and untoggle 'Full Screen Glow' and test WoW for Mac vs WoW for PC since you're so keen on disabling features that hinder performance.
     
Tomchu  (op)
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Apr 21, 2006, 02:20 PM
 
cringe
( Last edited by Tomchu; Jul 11, 2021 at 09:29 PM. Reason: cringe)
     
Chuckit
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Apr 21, 2006, 02:21 PM
 
Correct, you have no argument, but dream that someday you will. Perhaps you should have waited for that day to make this thread.
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pliny
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Apr 21, 2006, 02:23 PM
 
I just stopped to see what was going on at Macnn and...oh is this thread still going?
i look in your general direction
     
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Apr 21, 2006, 02:59 PM
 
Honda Civic is faster than a Dodge Neon.

*ducks*
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smellycat
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Apr 21, 2006, 03:28 PM
 
ok um wow. clarity time

these numbers mean NOTHING since in windows by default WOW runs in DirectX. You can force opengl in windows to have a comon control during a benchmark and there is zero mention of him doing that. Theres no way he did no way at all.

Second Gabe and tycho have been running a mac for like 2 months. theyre hardly qualified. **** it took gabe like 2 days to figure out how to turn his imac on. check his posts he flat admits it.


if you run wow in windows in opengl mode and then bench it on the mac youll find theyre about the same speed. ati's opengl drivers have always sucked.

tycho and gabe are just trying to generate hits off the mac buzz lately


man i used to think those guys were smart but christ i cant believe theyd even talk about this without trying to use the same renderer. what an idiot
     
Chuckit
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Apr 21, 2006, 03:37 PM
 
Well, it sounds like they intend to compare the optimal behavior of WOW on each system rather than OpenGL performance on Mac OS vs. Windows, so I think you're being a little harsh.
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smellycat
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Apr 21, 2006, 03:43 PM
 
not really if hardocp or anandtech ever made a mistake like that theyd be crucified for it by the community.

thats what happened to tomshardware.com they did a bunch of articles like this back in the day comparing nvidia and ati. the community called them frauds and they went from being the #1 hardware site on the net to a site that if its lucky sits in the top 50 now.
     
production_coordinator
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Apr 21, 2006, 04:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by Tomchu
Me, and my co-workers reading the thread.

Anyway, like I said ... once more benchmarks start popping up (and not even game benchmarks), I'm convinced we'll see that Windows trumps OS X in pretty much any test. I've used both long enough to be able to say that Windows takes advantage of hardware in a tighter fashion.

And I, for one, will not care in the least.

I grew out of the "my car's faster than your car" phase in high school. Sure, raw speed is nice, but not at the expense of what OS X has to offer.
( Last edited by production_coordinator; Apr 21, 2006 at 04:12 PM. )
     
tooki
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Apr 21, 2006, 04:09 PM
 
Originally Posted by aesculanus
"Pedantic" is an adjective, not a noun. "Pedantics" is not even a word.

Sorry for being a pedantic prick, idiot.
Knock it off.

tooki
     
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Apr 22, 2006, 12:02 PM
 
Sad that Tomchu gave up so quickly...I was having fun tearing him a new one.
     
mrmister
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Apr 22, 2006, 03:26 PM
 
Maybe he's busy running his own benchmarks, so that then there might be something to actually talk about.
     
Chuckit
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Apr 22, 2006, 03:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by daprguy
not really if hardocp or anandtech ever made a mistake like that theyd be crucified for it by the community.
That's the point: They didn't make a mistake. You seem to believe they were testing something other than what they actually were, at least by my reading of it. If you want to see whether OS X or Windows can run WOW better on the same machine, of course you're allowed to use each platform's respective advantages. Running it in OpenGL in Windows would be unfair to Windows if DirectX gives better speed.
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real
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Apr 22, 2006, 03:44 PM
 
"And"

I don't use OS X because it screaming fast, I use it because I am more productive on a Mac.

the good news is that Apple now has to get on it and make OS X that much faster, now that we can run Windows and OS X side by side

real
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Apr 22, 2006, 05:45 PM
 
Hi!
Originally Posted by Tomchu
I'm only pointing out that Apple's Crown Jewels are flawless.
Does my knowledge of the English language fail me, or is this the opposite of what you meant to say?
     
gentryfunk
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Apr 22, 2006, 07:19 PM
 
Lately, I've been reading a lot about the microkernal implementation of OSX verses the large kernal approach....maybe what we are seeing here, in part, is the communication between kernal and GDI....
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Tomchu  (op)
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Apr 22, 2006, 07:44 PM
 
cringe
( Last edited by Tomchu; Jul 11, 2021 at 09:29 PM. Reason: cringe)
     
wadesworld
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Apr 22, 2006, 08:52 PM
 
Aw shucks, I guess I'll have to quit enjoying playing WoW on my Mac every night.

Wade
     
rhashem
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Apr 22, 2006, 11:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by Tomchu
Me, and my co-workers reading the thread.

Anyway, like I said ... once more benchmarks start popping up (and not even game benchmarks), I'm convinced we'll see that Windows trumps OS X in pretty much any test. I've used both long enough to be able to say that Windows takes advantage of hardware in a tighter fashion.
THe basic point you seem to be missing is that OS performance is largely unimportant for the types of things people use Macs for. Almost all workstation applications are compute-bound, meaning that they spend 99% of their time in their own code, not in kernel code. If you a complex POVray render in both Windows and OS X, you'll get the same result, because the OS doesn't actually do anything in such benchmarks except get the hell out of the way. Almost all workstation apps are like this --- Matlab on Linux runs just as fast as Matlab on Windows.

OS speed is thus largely irrelevent for the desktop. What is actually more important is how the OS handles load. Windows, as fast as it is, handles load terribly. Something as simple as Acrobat plugin having a fit can bring a Windows box to its knees. OS X isn't as good as Linux or FreeBSD at handling load, but at the end of the day, I'm much happier working on an OS X box, because it doesn't completely give up in the face of an errent Matlab script or simultanious software builds. For a desktop machine, the fact that the system can create 1m threads per second is useless if its got a scheduler that can't maintain good interactivity under high load.
     
rhashem
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Apr 22, 2006, 11:31 PM
 
Originally Posted by gentryfunk
Lately, I've been reading a lot about the microkernal implementation of OSX verses the large kernal approach....maybe what we are seeing here, in part, is the communication between kernal and GDI....
OS X isn't a microkernel. It uses a microkernel (Mach), but when NeXT Step changed into OS X, the BSD layer was moved into the kernel and IPC was replaced with function calling. There is some IPC in the loop, eg to the window server, but that communication isn't in the critical path.

OS X is slow largely because it contains a lot of out-of-date code. Understanding this requires some knowledge of OS X's kernel. OS X doesn't use FreeBSD as its kernel. It uses XNU, which is a mixture of Mach 3.0, 4.4BSD-Lite2, and FreeBSD code, with lots of NeXT and Apple extensions. Some of that code is quite new. For example, the network stack is from FreeBSD, and is fairly cutting edge. Other stuff is quite old. There is a lot of 4.4BSD-Lite2 code in XNU, and Mach itself, being a derivative of even older versions of BSD, includes a lot of old code in its scheduler and VM. Now, code isn't bad just because its old, but in the decade or two since 4.xBSD was cutting-edge, a lot of improvements have been made to the BSD codebase. Both NetBSD and FreeBSD have gotten massively reworked virtual memory managers, and FreeBSD has gotten a massively reworked I/O system and scheduler. Not to mention the fact that HFS+ is getting very long in the tooth compared to some of its competitors. So the fact that Linux creates threads 10x faster than OS X really isn't surprising --- Linux got a greatly improved thread scheduler just a couple of years ago, while OS X hasn't really benefitted from anything like that.
     
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Apr 23, 2006, 04:00 AM
 
I thought it was pretty well known that OS X's Open GL implementation is significantly slower than Windows. Apple coded for stability and reliability, not speed.
     
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Apr 23, 2006, 01:43 PM
 
Will you children please grow up? This includes TomChu and the mac users here acting like infants. Apple will no doubt improve the OpenGL subsystem in Leopard like they have done with each successive 10.x release. If they fix the bugs in their implementation and implement the 2.x standard, I think you will see the game performance gap.

Tom, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. You can disable the glow feature and get back your FPS. I don't think you understand that the gfx system is in O X completely different from the windows implementation of OpenGL. In windows, OpenGL is largely the responsibility of the OEM drivers whereas in OS X, it is the main gfx "stack" and the drivers simply implement the feature the can support from that stack. In this way, OpenGL is the OS X equivalent of DirectX rather than the card dependent OpenGL implementation of windows.
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Apr 23, 2006, 07:36 PM
 
Originally Posted by Grrr
Fortunately, speed is far from everything. Unless you are a heavy gamer. In which case, what did you buy a Mac for? Get a playstation or whatever instead..
What a useless answer. Perhaps you missed the part where the OP is playing WoW, which is not available for Playstation, Xbox, or any other console.

(This is not a personal attack; I'm talking about the post, not about the author.)

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis
So, you're saying the bottleneck is the OS itself... and not the underlying graphics subsystem?
The clockrate (stock or retarded) is the same under OSX and Windows.

Originally Posted by rhashem
That's not what you said. You're justified in saying Windows is faster for games than OS X, but that's not exactly news! And to be pedantic, NVIDIA's drivers aren't part of Windows (Windows's GL stack blows hard, it's a software implementation). So you're really comparing NVIDIA's driver writers with Apple's, with Windows having pretty much jack to do with it.
nVidia's drivers are both included with and compatible with Windows; I'm not sure how you can get from "included and compatible" to "not a part of."
     
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Apr 23, 2006, 10:14 PM
 
Originally Posted by mduell
What a useless answer. Perhaps you missed the part where the OP is playing WoW, which is not available for Playstation, Xbox, or any other console.
Yeah but if you buy something like a PS2 or a Gamecube you get to play real games which are not just a simplistic mindless waste of time with a chatroom full of idiots running in the background.

I suggest MGS2 or F-Zero GX would be a good place to start.
     
rhashem
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Apr 24, 2006, 01:30 AM
 
Originally Posted by mduell
nVidia's drivers are both included with and compatible with Windows; I'm not sure how you can get from "included and compatible" to "not a part of."
3rd party drivers are not a part of the OS. They are developed seperately, and the binaries are seperate on the disk. Windows has an OpenGL stack that's part of the OS, and its a software rasterizer that is seperate from any vendor-supplied ICD.

Giving Windows credit for NVIDIA's driver work is not fair. You could just as easily give the credit to Linux, which has great OpenGL performance courtesy of NVIDIA's drivers, but that's not accurate either. The most accurate statement is to say that NVIDIA's OpenGL stack is a lot better than Apple's, which I don't think anybody would argue with.

Clearly, Apple needs to improve its GL stack, there isn't a doubt there. However, for a first-party GL stack bundled with the OS, OS X's really isn't that bad. At least its accelerated, which is more than can be said of the default GL stacks on most other OSs, including Windows.
     
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Apr 24, 2006, 03:20 AM
 
Originally Posted by rhashem
3rd party drivers are not a part of the OS. They are developed seperately, and the binaries are seperate on the disk. Windows has an OpenGL stack that's part of the OS, and its a software rasterizer that is seperate from any vendor-supplied ICD.

Giving Windows credit for NVIDIA's driver work is not fair. You could just as easily give the credit to Linux, which has great OpenGL performance courtesy of NVIDIA's drivers, but that's not accurate either. The most accurate statement is to say that NVIDIA's OpenGL stack is a lot better than Apple's, which I don't think anybody would argue with.

Clearly, Apple needs to improve its GL stack, there isn't a doubt there. However, for a first-party GL stack bundled with the OS, OS X's really isn't that bad. At least its accelerated, which is more than can be said of the default GL stacks on most other OSs, including Windows.
I think you're being needlessly pedantic. If you have an nVidia GPU and you run Windows or Linux, you get the great performance of the nVidia driver and GL stack. If you have an nVidia GPU and you run OSX, you get the mediocre performance of the OSX driver and GL stack. The end result is that Windows and Linux have better performance in WoW than OSX, regardless of who wrote the most relevant code.
     
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Apr 24, 2006, 04:04 AM
 
Originally Posted by sushiism
Yeah but if you buy something like a PS2 or a Gamecube you get to play real games which are not just a simplistic mindless waste of time with a chatroom full of idiots running in the background.

I suggest MGS2 or F-Zero GX would be a good place to start.
HAHA good point
     
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Apr 24, 2006, 09:24 AM
 
Originally Posted by Big Mac
To which animated gifs do you refer?
Have you been living under a rock the past 5 years?
Although the issue would mostly be apparent to those of us with slightly less than 'up to the minute' mac models, it does still happen to many macs which are more than within 10.4 specs.
Load up say, a webpage that happens to have a lot of gif animations in it, maybe some page of smilies or whatever, and look at your cpu meter. It will rocket up.
Try the same thing on a far older Mac running OS 8/9 or whatever, and a cpu meter will barely flinch. Its not uncommon for a few measly gifs to bring OS X to a crawl. In fact I remember people complaining of weird slow down issues on this very forum, when replying to posts, simply because there was a bunch of smilies doing their thing to one side. All sucking up resources..
It will also happen most anywhere else in the OS too. IE not just web browsers, but iChat or whatever too.

As much as I love OS X, the fact it has considerable issues dealing with something as simplistic as a few gif's, does irk me.
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Apr 24, 2006, 09:27 AM
 
Originally Posted by mduell
What a useless answer. Perhaps you missed the part where the OP is playing WoW, which is not available for Playstation, Xbox, or any other console.

(This is not a personal attack; I'm talking about the post, not about the author.)

I was talking about games on Macs in general. Anyway, to each their own..
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Apr 24, 2006, 12:11 PM
 
Originally Posted by rhashem
OS X isn't a microkernel. It uses a microkernel (Mach), but when NeXT Step changed into OS X, the BSD layer was moved into the kernel and IPC was replaced with function calling. There is some IPC in the loop, eg to the window server, but that communication isn't in the critical path.
Great
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gentryfunk
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Apr 24, 2006, 12:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by rhashem
OS X isn't a microkernel. It uses a microkernel (Mach), but when NeXT Step changed into OS X, the BSD layer was moved into the kernel and IPC was replaced with function calling. There is some IPC in the loop, eg to the window server, but that communication isn't in the critical path.
Great point. OS X is a system pulled from a variety of sources. In many ways this makes for a more robust system and in some ways it creates problems. Game performance may be weaker on the Mac; however, I'll take the tradeoff for a much more stable system.....Apple can work on the I/O over time.
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rhashem
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Apr 24, 2006, 01:26 PM
 
Originally Posted by mduell
I think you're being needlessly pedantic. If you have an nVidia GPU and you run Windows or Linux, you get the great performance of the nVidia driver and GL stack. If you have an nVidia GPU and you run OSX, you get the mediocre performance of the OSX driver and GL stack. The end result is that Windows and Linux have better performance in WoW than OSX, regardless of who wrote the most relevant code.
There's that word again. The argument in this post has gone from being "Windows twice as fast as OS X" to "The end result is that Windows and Linux have better performance in WoW than OS X, regardless of who wrote the most relevant code." Some pedantry is exactly what this thread needs!

Your point is that "at the end of the day, Windows runs WoW faster than OS X." Fine, that's well-taken, but it's also not a very useful statement. Nobody is going to argue that OS X is a super gaming platform. On the other hand, the fact that NVIDIA's drivers are the source of XP's good OpenGL performance, rather than some Microsoft IP, that brings some substantial insight. It means that it is entirely possible to improve OS X's OpenGL stack to the level of quality of what is found on Windows and Linux, in a very well-defined and entirely feasible manner. It's not a nebulous problem with an uncertain solution, as is say some of the problems surrounding OS X's performance in server tasks.
     
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Apr 24, 2006, 03:54 PM
 
Has anybody even mentioned that WoW for OS X isn't a port? It was developed concurrently alongside the Windows version, and it was built from the ground up using OpenGL. There was no directX conversion. If you check out the Mac support forum on worldofwarcraft.com, the CMs have said that they're waiting for Apple to finish up with a new rev of OpenGL that will make WoW significantly faster in OS X.
     
Horsepoo!!!
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Apr 24, 2006, 10:27 PM
 
Originally Posted by Zak Nilsson
Has anybody even mentioned that WoW for OS X isn't a port? It was developed concurrently alongside the Windows version, and it was built from the ground up using OpenGL. There was no directX conversion. If you check out the Mac support forum on worldofwarcraft.com, the CMs have said that they're waiting for Apple to finish up with a new rev of OpenGL that will make WoW significantly faster in OS X.
I was curious about this and went to the forum to check this out (since you didn't provide any link)...and then I saw a CM say that Blizzard was going to make the client faster and repeatedly mentionned that Full Screen Glow was a problem and that it was being worked on.
     
TheSpaz
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Apr 24, 2006, 10:32 PM
 
I'm not even going to respond to this thread.... oops.
     
baw
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Apr 24, 2006, 11:03 PM
 
I played the Mac OS X version of Quake 4 this weekend. It was fun.
     
KEL9000
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Apr 25, 2006, 01:28 AM
 
shouldn't the comparison be to windows vista not xp, because vista has more of the features of OSX incorporated into it.

OS9 is pendatically faster than OSX, not including full system lock-ups causing restarts.

If you want fast try DRDOS that "dir" command IS snappy.
I am now going to tell the computer what he can do with a life-times supply of chocolate.
     
Hal Itosis
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Apr 25, 2006, 02:12 AM
 
Originally Posted by rhashem
There's that word again. The argument in this post has gone from being "Windows twice as fast as OS X" to "The end result is that Windows and Linux have better performance in WoW than OS X, regardless of who wrote the most relevant code." Some pedantry is exactly what this thread needs!

Your point is that "at the end of the day, Windows runs WoW faster than OS X." Fine, that's well-taken, but it's also not a very useful statement. Nobody is going to argue that OS X is a super gaming platform.

On the other hand, the fact that NVIDIA's drivers are the source of XP's good OpenGL performance, rather than some Microsoft IP, that brings some substantial insight. It means that it is entirely possible to improve OS X's OpenGL stack to the level of quality of what is found on Windows and Linux, in a very well-defined and entirely feasible manner.

It's not a nebulous problem with an uncertain solution, as is say some of the problems surrounding OS X's performance in server tasks.
Well said. (Bonus 'mod' points for being both informative and balanced)

Okay Tomchu & mduell. . . time for your negative spin. (The world waits)
-HI-
     
Zak Nilsson
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Apr 25, 2006, 03:01 AM
 
Originally Posted by Horsepoo!!!
I was curious about this and went to the forum to check this out (since you didn't provide any link)...and then I saw a CM say that Blizzard was going to make the client faster and repeatedly mentionned that Full Screen Glow was a problem and that it was being worked on.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...mp=1#post22753

"...new tune-ups for the Mac client are somewhat contingent on improvements to the GL API and drivers that Apple and ATI are working on. Beyond that is NDA land."

WoW is running pretty much the best Blizzard can make it run on Macs right now, and it has nothing to do with the Windows version. The Mac game was built from the ground up for OS X and using OpenGL.
     
 
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