[Hydra]

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/03/02/doom3/index.php

Title says it all. All in all not spectacular but not horrible either I think. They also mention that the 6800 will best the X800 on the Mac, wasn't sure if what was happening on the PC would cross over in this regard.

-Jerry C.

[demograph68]

Part of the problem is that it wasn't conceived for use with dual processor.

[Captain Egotist]

Originally posted by demograph68:
Part of the problem is that it wasn't conceived for use with dual processor.

I think that's ********. I only hope ID corrects this fairly soon.

[Hydra]

Originally posted by Captain Egotist:
I think that's ********. I only hope ID corrects this fairly soon.

I don't think it is a matter of correcting a flaw. The game was designed from the ground up to not benefit from multiple processors. Quake 3 on the Mac from the beginning was smp. Even the PC version was smp aware but became broken at some point and never fixed. It never really was more than a curiosity as dual processors on the PC are/were far rarer in the hands of consumers. Carmack is on record I believe stating that he is unhappy with the direction the industry is headed with multi-core chips from Intel and others. To be fair it is not just him, 99% of the games out there seem to have very little in the way of smp support.

-Jerry C.

[JHromadka]

The bad thing is that those benchmarks were done on a top-of-the-line Mac with 2.5GB RAM. Imagine how pitiful it would be on my 1.5GHz PowerBook with 1GB RAM.

[U n i o n 0015]

Originally posted by JHromadka:
The bad thing is that those benchmarks were done on a top-of-the-line Mac with 2.5GB RAM. Imagine how pitiful it would be on my 1.5GHz PowerBook with 1GB RAM.

I don't think it will be pitiful, they said they played it on a 1.5Ghz PowerBook with 1GB Ram at the default options and got low 20s. Low 20s isn't terrible, but not great, obviously.

[videian28]

Originally posted by U n i o n 0015:
I don't think it will be pitiful, they said they played it on a 1.5Ghz PowerBook with 1GB Ram at the default options and got low 20s. Low 20s isn't terrible, but not great, obviously.

yeah but wasn't that at 640x480? (or did I read it wrong?)


that blows chunks

[KS-Jayhawk]

I just wonder how well it will run on my dual 1.8 with 1.5 GB ram - at least I have the x800 xt....hopefully I will get at least 30 fps. Anyone care to guess?

[hldan]

Originally posted by Hydra:
http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/03/02/doom3/index.php

Title says it all. All in all not spectacular but not horrible either I think. They also mention that the 6800 will best the X800 on the Mac, wasn't sure if what was happening on the PC would cross over in this regard.

-Jerry C.

I understand that it's the general consensus that PC's are better as gaming machines than Macs but can someone explain exactly why? I read the article on Doom 3 for the Mac and even with the 2.5 DP G5 the frame rates are still lower than an evenly specced PC. So why is this?

[U n i o n 0015]

Originally posted by videian28:
yeah but wasn't that at 640x480? (or did I read it wrong?)


that blows chunks

No, you read it right. It was at 640 x 480. Which sucks if you're running it on a laptop, you want to run at the native resolution. But I think there's a big difference between "playable" and "plays well enough that I don't mind." I don't think it will play well enough that I won't mind. And I've got a brand-new 12" PowerBook too. I might just get it for XBOX...it'll definitely be a solid port and should run well.

To the poster above, they mention in that article why it's harder to port games for Macs. Part of the reason is that it's harder for the OS to concentrate on just the game. I think a big part of it is that Apple isn't pushing to get more developers or technology makers on their boat. If Mac gaming was a large enough part of Apple's marketshare, you'd see a lot more effort being put into eeking every bit of muscle these machines have.

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by JHromadka:
The bad thing is that those benchmarks were done on a top-of-the-line Mac with 2.5GB RAM. Imagine how pitiful it would be on my 1.5GHz PowerBook with 1GB RAM.

Ya not to mention the video card they used.

[CincyGamer]

thats some bs about the OS can assign resources.. this is *nix we are talking about. It has a very good priority based OS. The real reason as John Carmack said in an issue MacAddict last year: "The compilers are not as good as PC and do not produce as tight of code coupled with the lower CPU speeds."

There will be improvements after the game is released. Tiger performance might be better. I have several games I am wating until I get a PM to play. halo, KotOR, Call of Duty.. because my 1 ghz can run these, but I want to experience these games with all effects on full. So, i am playing the Myst series, WoW, RtCW and Dungoen Siege in the meantime.

I have TIger Beta as I am a ADC subscriber/developer and really after awhile its not that big of deal. It wears off fast. I have my powerbook dual partition with panther on one and Tiger Beta on another and it works out really well. But i look for the day when I can just have one partition again. Java 1.5 hasnt been released yet for Panther, but is a Tiger feature, so have to switch back and forth for that for example.

[Captain Egotist]

Originally posted by hldan:
I understand that it's the general consensus that PC's are better as gaming machines than Macs but can someone explain exactly why? I read the article on Doom 3 for the Mac and even with the 2.5 DP G5 the frame rates are still lower than an evenly specced PC. So why is this?

Simple. There are a TON more PC gamers out there... so what does this mean? The mac version does not get NEARLY as much optimization. A 'slow' mac can outdo a fast PC in photoshop tests... why? Because the tests were optimized for use on a mac. Since most games are made to run REALLY WELL on a pc, but only 'run decently' on a mac, the FPS on comparable sytems will always give the win to the PC.

- Rob

[Boondoggle]

Originally posted by Captain Egotist:
Simple. There are a TON more PC gamers out there... so what does this mean? The mac version does not get NEARLY as much optimization. A 'slow' mac can outdo a fast PC in photoshop tests... why? Because the tests were optimized for use on a mac. Since most games are made to run REALLY WELL on a pc, but only 'run decently' on a mac, the FPS on comparable sytems will always give the win to the PC.

- Rob

Which is why I'll be getting the xbox version of Doom 3...

Consoles, although they aren't as good as a really high end PC, are the best value for gaming IMHO.

bd

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by Boondoggle:
Which is why I'll be getting the xbox version of Doom 3...

Consoles, although they aren't as good as a really high end PC, are the best value for gaming IMHO.

bd

Yup, I think people are nuts for spending $1500 + for a gaming machine. Even $300 for a video card is retarded.

I would rather play on my $200 Xbox have slightly less cool graphics but on a 50 inch screen and not have to play with a keyboard.

[Turnpike]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
and not get to play with a keyboard.

that's better

[CincyGamer]

Historical note -
I bought my friend a copy of Return To Castle Wolfenstein for his Xbox. It was a top game when it was released. It has Xbox live support and extra levels than the Pc versions.

When you compare it against the mac version (Aspyr) several things jump out. You have to get past 6 levels before you get to the point where the PC game starts (inside the castle). Its really hard to get an accurate shot as the control knobs on the controller arent as precise as my optical mouse. When you play the PC version (1280x854), some little details are missing like some textures arent there such as the bricks in the wall do not look as real( maybe because it thru a tv)

There were some other disapointments.. You cant pick up a chair to use as a shield or step on. Cannot choose different gun sights. But this was a good port for XBox. All the elements are the same. Its just not as immersive as playing it on the PC. I have only played it at his apt once so far.. Cant get him off of Halo2 or MechAssault.

YMMV..

[robco]

SMP shouldn't make a difference. The Athlon64s are single-CPU setups running at about the same clock speeds and they beat out the P4s hands-down on Doom 3. Since AMD and Intel (and IBM and Freescale) are coming out with dual-core chips, there will probably be more support for SMP in the future. Right now, few users have need of it.

The problem is that the only decent gaming Macs are the pro-level G5s with expensive upgrades. It will probably run really badly on an iMac G5 and barely at all on an eMac or mini. I would also guess that many dual-G5 owners use them as pro machines - for Photoshop, Maya, etc, and not for gaming. This makes the pool of Doom 3 for Mac customers very small.

I hate to say it, but with the current crop of hardware (nothing really powerful graphically in the consumer line), the Mac just isn't a strong gaming platform. I think Aspyr did what they could, and I don't fault them - the G4 was stagnant too long - but yeah. I'll get the Xbox version. It won't be as detailed or have as much eye candy, but it will run on a system that's less than half of what you would pay for an X800 or 6800 video card. Getting accurate with the thumbsticks on the Xbox controller definitely takes practice.

Fortunately most current Macs can run WC3 and should be able to handle Sims 2.

[cSurfr]

I don't believe they ever said what video card they used in that Dual G5. The iMac is obvious (5200 Ultra). But in the caption, it says "Aspyr tells us that if you have an Nvidia GeForce 6800 card in your Power Mac, chances are you'll see modestly higher numbers than what we saw here." leads me to believe they were in fact using the stock 5200 Ultra in the G5 as well. I'm getting the game on the 14th, and will do some benchmarks of my own with me sing 1.8G5 and 6800 Ultra DDL...

cs


edit: My mistake, they did say they used the X800. I'll do some benches on my own regardless.

[Hydra]

Originally posted by cSurfr:


edit: My mistake, they did say they used the X800. I'll do some benches on my own regardless. [/B]

Yeah and not just a run of the mill X800 it is an X800XT which is no light weight in the GPU arena.

-Jerry C.

[cSurfr]

It was mentioned to me that ID talked about the FPS in this game, and how they aren't as important as they are in a straight shooter like UT2004, Far-Cry, etc. You aren't simply running around jumping, shooting everything that moves. They have also said that this game is toned down quite a bit because of that.

[CincyGamer]

Then by that logic, they should be higher if there is less action. I am getting framerates for other games that are very good performance. Things will get better over time. I cant run D3 currently, but will be able to for sure with the new G5 PowerBook
which we are waiting for. Most people that have bought a Mac recently will be able to play this game. Plus, there will be patches for the performance just like what happened with the UT and Halo games.

Apple compiles and releases their own video drivers. We have Tiger coming out, plus speed bumbs for alot of Apple computers this year. Such as hopefully 3.0 GHZ PowerMac, the new powerbook G5, iBook g5?
and probably a iMac speed bump? So maybe this year wont be so bad on the Mac game front. We are still in transition from G4 based computers to all G5 based. The hardware and licensing issues seem to be the challenges, not the challenge of porting the top titles from what Ive read on the forums. Example: Men of Valor was cancelled because of monetary concerns more than anything from what Glanda Adams posted.

[Captain Egotist]

Not to burst your bubble, but your enthusiasm would be a bit more realistic if you understood the fact that apple puts in the shittiest videocards they can afford into their machines.

- Rob

[mac freak]

Things could be worse, but I''m very disappointed that the Doom 3 engine does not much like dual processors, seeing as the entire industry is tending toward dual cores...

[sniffer]

Originally posted by Captain Egotist:
Not to burst your bubble, but your enthusiasm would be a bit more realistic if you understood the fact that apple puts in the shittiest videocards they can afford into their machines.

- Rob

Then of-course you would also want comparable hardware with the same video cards perform the equally in game-benchmarks in the first place..

[blues02]

Those scores are barely playable, lots of slowdowns at those framerates. Expect the FPS to drop to the teen in large complex rooms with multiple enemies onscreen.

[i am yujin]

LOL.

That is all.

[lenox]

to people who have a sizeable chip on their shoulder about apple hardware and games :
(the rest of you, please ignore)

Guess what? Macs are not economically-viable gaming machines. Games are a nice added touch for the pro who sometimes gets bored and needs a bit of release..but that's about it.

complaining about apple and game developers not catering to gamers and pc hardware enthusiasts is like complaining that ford isn't catering enough to tricycle riders. or something.

i use my mac for work and media-related stuff usually, and in a blue moon i'll play neverwinter nights or some emulated games on it. it handles these well.

when i had a pc (before i got bored and tore it apart), it handled all the recent pc games (including doom 3) just fine. in the end it was more trouble than it was worth, however.

i agree it would be nice if the mac was up to speed in the pc gaming market....but it's FAR from a deal-breaker that it's not.

[Spliff]

http://www.barefeats.com/doom3.html [Doom 3 performance tweaks]

From Barefeats.com today:

MAC GAME PERFORMANCE BRIEFING FROM THE DOOM 3 DEVELOPERS
Glenda Adams, Director of Development at Aspyr Media, has been involved in Mac game development for many years. I asked her to share a few thoughts on what attempts they had made to optimize Doom 3 on the Mac and what barriers prevented them from getting it to run as fast on the Mac as in comparable Windows PCs. Here's what she wrote:

"Just like the PC version, timedemos should be run twice to get accurate results. The first run the game is caching textures and other data into RAM, so the timedemo will stutter more. Running it immediately a second time and recording that result will give more accurate results.

The performance differences you see between Doom 3 Mac and Windows, especially on high end cards, is due to a lot of factors (in general order from smallest impact to largest):

1. PowerPC architectural differences, including a much higher penalty for float to int conversion on the PPC. This is a penalty on all games ported to the Mac, and can't be easily fixed. It requires re-engineering much of the game's math code to keep data in native formats more often. This isn't 'bad' coding on the PC -- they don't have the performance penalty, and converting results to ints saves memory and can be faster in many algorithms on that platform. It would only be a few percentage points that could be gained on the Mac, so its one of those optimizations that just isn't feasible to do for the speed increase.

2. Compiler differences. gcc, the compiler used on the Mac, currently can't do some of the more complex optimizations that Visual Studio can on the PC. Especially when inlining small functions, the PC has an advantage. Add to this that the PowerPC has a higher overhead for functional calls, and not having as much inlining drops frame rates another few percentage points.

3. More robust and modern OpenGL implementation on OS X. The fact that OpenGL is engineered from the ground up on OS X to be accessible from many applications at once is wonderful for the rest of the world, but does have a performance hit for games. Sharing GL with the rest of the system invokes a small overhead that Windows doesn't have, since Windows can basically assume GL is just in use for one application.

4. OpenGL framework/drivers split on OS X. On Windows, ATI and nVidia are responsible for the OpenGL code all the way from the hardware to the game. On the Mac, Apple handles the top layers of OpenGL and then hands data off to the video card drivers. On Windows this allows the video card manufacturers to do some more direct optimizations that make sure data gets passed to the card as fast as possible. The Mac can't short circuit that process, since there is a fairly well defined boundary between GL and the video card drivers. This is complicated by the more modern GL implementation on OS X as well- Apple can't just put in a bunch of hacks to shove data around the wall and into the cards, just for the game.

5. And the last, but definitely most important factor: Amount of time Apple/ATI/nVidia have had to optimize specifically for Doom 3. On Windows, ATI/NVIDIA spent multiple programmer years tuning their OpenGL implementations for Doom 3, starting back over a year ago while the game was still in development. Apple/ATi/NVIDIA have done an immense amount of work on OS X's GL in the last 3-4 months, but there is no way they could get as much done as the dozens of Windows engineers working on the problem for over a year. 10.3.8 includes a huge number of GL optimizations that make a big difference in Doom 3, and the game wouldn't have been in any shape to ship without these. One of the biggest things ATi & nVidia do on the PC for Doom 3 is have application specific OpenGL optimizations just for the game. They can detect Doom3 is the application using GL, and even which shaders it is downloading -- then they can shift to a mode that is highly optimized just for those cases.

The good news on all of these fronts, especially the last one, is that Doom 3 is such a highly visible benchmarking application, Apple/ATI/NVIDIA/Aspyr are all going to be continuing to work on increasing performance over the coming months/years. Just like what happened with Quake 3, the Mac OS matured, video card drivers got more optimized, and the game was tweaked so that eventually Mac performance is now as good or better than comparable PC hardware (I'd be really interested to see benchmarks with Quake 3 with the original shipping Mac app & version of OS X versus the latest app & current OS on the same hardware). Games drive hardware and the OS, and Doom 3 will likely push Apple to upgrade consumer video cards and continue to spend engineering time in the future to speed up OpenGL.

[oldsk00l]

I only have one thing to add.

The article above is very good, but I have to dispute one thing reported by macworld, that games "need more CPU cycles".

In the PC world the Athlon64 FX-55 clearly disproves this. Also in the PC world, ATI is *notorious* for having extremely poor software in the Linux realm. Given that OSX is obviously a Unix, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest that there is an inherent performance reduction due to this.

Also look at nVidia's driver behavior in Linux, as Ryan Gordon (who ported ut2004 to Mac/Linux) it's also a compiler issue.

I bet that all of those factors collectively, could have done this.

[Captain Egotist]

Originally posted by lenox:
i agree it would be nice if the mac was up to speed in the pc gaming market....but it's FAR from a deal-breaker that it's not.

That's your opinion. But I know a lot of my friends would rather be using a Mac (better OS, things work easier, etc) but they won't switch BECAUSE of gaming. Just because you feel that it's only an added bonus does not mean that everyone else feels that way.

[Hydra]

Originally posted by Captain Egotist:
That's your opinion. But I know a lot of my friends would rather be using a Mac (better OS, things work easier, etc) but they won't switch BECAUSE of gaming. Just because you feel that it's only an added bonus does not mean that everyone else feels that way.

I agree somewhat with the idea that the Mac isn't a gaming platform and games are more of a bonus to have around. The bigger problem I see is that OpenGL is a core element of OSX, not just gaming on OSX, and it seems to not perform as well as it could. GL rendering in 3D pro apps on OSX suffer in comparison to their Windows counterparts. All one has to do is look at Cinebench test results where a dual G5 can go toe to toe with a Dual Opteron in rendering, heck they seem nearly identical in performance/Ghz, but when it comes to OpenGL the dual G5 looks like it does 40-50% of the speed of the Opteron. Sure you could pass this whole Doom 3 thing off as just a game and not a big problem but when an underlying core technology of OSX itself is apparently not very efficient it will affect a whole lot more than just games.

-Jerry C.

[sniffer]

My guess is a combination unsatisfying game coding and video drivers, but I am no developer so my opinions has a weak foundation. OTOH all the readings on the topic so far haven't really given me a straight answer. Aspyr is playing the blaming game and the know-how people haven't really concluded with much yet. It'll be interesting to see where this discussion leads here and in other places. I'll assume the various benchmark results around the net will over time add up to some answers.

[245_Trioxin]

Apples are cool machines. They really are. But c'mon, PCs are better, especially at playing games.

Apple is too proprietary. And their choice of graphic cards are a joke. For God's sake, you charge somebody 2 ****ing grand for an iMac g5, 20", the least you can put in it is a 6800

[Captain Egotist]

Originally posted by 245_Trioxin:
Apples are cool machines. They really are. But c'mon, PCs are better, especially at playing games.

Apple is too proprietary. And their choice of graphic cards are a joke. For God's sake, you charge somebody 2 ****ing grand for an iMac g5, 20", the least you can put in it is a 6800

HOW DARE YOU! DON"T YOU REALIZE APPLE KNOWS BEST AT EVERYTHING?!?!?!

[lenox]

Originally posted by Captain Egotist:
That's your opinion. But I know a lot of my friends would rather be using a Mac (better OS, things work easier, etc) but they won't switch BECAUSE of gaming. Just because you feel that it's only an added bonus does not mean that everyone else feels that way.

Would you buy a biplane if you were an avid car racing fan?

[Liquidity X]

I have this for my PC, which I won and did not buy . It's an alienware 2.8ghz 64bit AMD with a ATI Radeon x800 xt platnium card and a gig of ram. Now I have doom 3 benchmarked the heck out of it and one thing i found was that when you run the timedemo demo1 the 1st time the results are far less because the gmae is loading all of the textures from that map into memory. You are suppose to base your results on your 2nd run of the timedemo as said by just about every game site on the net. Now I am wondering if macworld did this? Just to show the difference, when I ran at 1280 x1024, ultra quality, FFAA x4 i got 53 FPS the 1st run and 73 fps every run there after. So as you can see there is quite a big gap and the mac performace might be a good bit higher than previously posted.

[Captain Egotist]

Originally posted by lenox:
Would you buy a biplane if you were an avid car racing fan?

This is just a ****ing stupid comparison, I'm sorry, but you're a total nimrod.

Doom3 is out on BOTH platforms. There are tons of games available on BOTH platforms. The reason they (my friends) won't switch to mac is that in order to RUN any of the mac games reasonably well you NEED a powermac. Why? Because the graphics cards in every other mac in the entire lineup are outdated, slow, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, NON UPGRADEABLE.

But to answer your question, yes. Speed is speed, no matter if it's on the ground or in the air.

[discotronic]

Originally posted by Captain Egotist:
This is just a ****ing stupid comparison, I'm sorry, but you're a total nimrod.

Doom3 is out on BOTH platforms. There are tons of games available on BOTH platforms. The reason they (my friends) won't switch to mac is that in order to RUN any of the mac games reasonably well you NEED a powermac. Why? Because the graphics cards in every other mac in the entire lineup are outdated, slow, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, NON UPGRADEABLE.

But to answer your question, yes. Speed is speed, no matter if it's on the ground or in the air.

I have never in my life seen someone b*tch as much as you do. Your "Ego" makes you look like the nimrod.

Who cares what your friends do or do not do. Maybe when you and your friends grow up, you will realize there is more to life and computers than just games.

[Captain Egotist]

Originally posted by discotronic:
I have never in my life seen someone b*tch as much as you do. Your "Ego" makes you look like the nimrod.

Who cares what your friends do or do not do. Maybe when you and your friends grow up, you will realize there is more to life and computers than just games.

Hello Mcfly, thats why I'm on a mac. I don't play games that much. But I said that games DO matter to some people; they figure since they're spending X amount on something it should also have the ability to waste a lot of their time, which I don't think is a stupid rational. But anyway, I am captain egotist! I know better than you because I've done everything you've done, TWICE, and I did it better!

[discotronic]

Originally posted by Captain Egotist:
But anyway, I am captain egotist! I know better than you because I've done everything you've done, TWICE, and I did it better!

I seriously doubt you have done much in your life. Have you ever done anything to contribute to society or make the world a better place? About the only thing you could possibly do better than me is treat people badly.

People here are tired of your crap. Almost every post you make you end up calling someone a name or you belittle them. I'm surprised the mods let you keep this account. How many times have you been banned now?

[CIA]

I dunno what all the hubub is about, I've been playing Final Doom on my Mac for almost 10 years and the framerates are great!

/sarchasm

[Captain Egotist]

Originally posted by discotronic:
I seriously doubt you have done much in your life. Have you ever done anything to contribute to society or make the world a better place? About the only thing you could possibly do better than me is treat people badly.

People here are tired of your crap. Almost every post you make you end up calling someone a name or you belittle them. I'm surprised the mods let you keep this account. How many times have you been banned now?

Are you kidding?! I've gone to school where you did, only I recieved better grades! I even had sex with all the women you had sex with, only I did it better! I am god's gift to mankind! I am... CAPTAIN OBVIOUS! Bow before me.

[blizzard]

Is it really this much of a challenge to act civilly to people, Ca$h?

[Captain Egotist]

Originally posted by blizzard:
Is it really this much of a challenge to act civilly to people, Ca$h?

Doh. Sorry. I was in Captain Obvious mode. I'll be good now.

[lenox]

double post.

[lenox]

What a tool. I'd mention that a biplane is quite slow on the ground compared to a race car...but the dude went and got himself baninated.

[joe]

Originally posted by lenox:
What a tool. I'd mention that a biplane is quite slow on the ground compared to a race car...but the dude went and got himself baninated.

again... Seems like he gets a new handle every time they let him back in.

[lenox]

Originally posted by joe:
again... Seems like he gets a new handle every time they let him back in.

well that's hardly fair!

[blizzard]

Again, if you ignore him, he won't be able to make an ass of himself. So many times through all of this I had flash back to that image that someone made that says 'Arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics - even if you win, you're still retarded'. Old, but true. I'm not sure what exactly the thrill is that he gets out of derailing threads, but anyone who insults him back is barely one step better than he.