[Tomchu]

Gabe over at Penny Arcade did a comparison of WoW performance on his MacBook Pro under both XP and OS X. The results?

OS X: 15 - 20 FPS
XP: 35 - 40 FPS

I don't care anyone spins it -- that's a significant, ginormous difference in 3D performance. And it's something I've been saying for ages.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/04/19

[Nai no Kami]

Is WoW by any chance an Universal Binary?

[Ganesha]

So how does a game test the performance of the underlying OS?

I could easily write 2 applications one for Windows and one for OS X, to show OS X is 100 times slower the Windows. Then I could also easily do the reverse.

[lookmark]

The Mac dev team for Blizzard is pretty amazing, if their smart, friendly, and lucid posts on the tech support forum are anything to go by, but still, WOW for OS X (which, yes, is a UB) still needs some more tuning. In particular, there's a glitch with the "Full Glow Effect" that really kills FPS. Turn that off for each and you'll get a much closer frame rate comparison.

And, no, Windows isn't "twice as fast" as OS X. One game does not a platform make.

[Chuckit]

Thread title twice as deceptive as any politician!

[tooki]

Not surprising. Macs' 3D gaming performance has always been lousy.

tooki

[rickey939]

That's it, I am moving to Windows.®

[chessplayer]

What a ridiculous title! Unless all you do with Windows is play games all day. Why does the thread title not mention that you're comparing 3D performance for one game, not comparing the operating systems?

[angelmb]

The thread title is not that bad, the guy just missed the last part of the sentence "until break down".

[Sourbook]

Wow! The only thing this tells me is that WoW for Windows is faster than WoW for Mac. I would suspect that all games that are designed for Windows and ported to the Mac, will run faster in Windows. No?

[olePigeon]

I think I posted this as well someplace else, but here's what I think:

OpenGL and especially DirectX is more mature on the Windows platform. Infact, there are even competing driver companies for video cards. Since most of the games are written with Windows in mind, most of the testing and streamlining is geared towards Windows gaming.

I think what it tells us is that Apple needs to work on better OpenGL drivers.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Lock'er up.

I think it's been established by Blizzard itself that there's a bug with the full screen glow option. And since Gabe has specifically mentioned putting *all* options on...it's no wonder he's getting frame rates cut in half.

Had the test been done with full screen glow off, the story would be quite different.

The OP is trolling.

[tooki]

Well, the OP isn't the first person to notice that Windows tends to feel "snappy", while Macs are sometimes a tad sluggish. It's also been shown fairly conclusively that OS X is extremely slow at some tasks (like creating new threads) that impede performance of some types of applications. Now that the same hardware can run both Windows and Mac OS X, it's going to really make visible which slowdowns are due to application design, and which ones are the OS.

tooki

[rhashem]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Gabe over at Penny Arcade did a comparison of WoW performance on his MacBook Pro under both XP and OS X. The results?

OS X: 15 - 20 FPS
XP: 35 - 40 FPS

I don't care anyone spins it -- that's a significant, ginormous difference in 3D performance. And it's something I've been saying for ages, but am constantly getting shot down by Mac zealots for.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/04/19

Does this really surprise anyone? Apple has their own OpenGL stack, which isn't as mature as ATI's or NVIDIA's on Windows. Also, don't forget that workload tuning has a very major impact. The gaming market on OS X is very tiny. On the other hand, the pro market on OS X is quite strong. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Apple's OpenGL stack was more optimized for pro applications like Maya or Shake than for games like World of Warcraft.

Not all OpenGL applications are equivalent! Games tend to push few polygons, with lots of textures and special effects. Pro applications push tons of polygons, with relatively few textures or even flat shading or wire-framing. Games don't need accurate visual output, but rather can get away with approximations that "look right". Something like a visualization app or CAD package doesn't just need to make the output "look right", it has to faithfully reproduce the exact model its working with. It's well known that Quadros are substantially slower in games than equivalent GeForces, just because the driver optimizes for a different workload on the two cards.

All in all, a better benchmark of OS X's OGL stack is probably something like Cinebench, Maya, or Viewperf. I have a feeling it'll still be slower, but at least you'd be testing the thing in a workload it was designed to perform.

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by rhashem

All in all, a better benchmark of OS X's OGL stack is probably something like Cinebench, Maya, or Viewperf. I have a feeling it'll still be slower, but at least you'd be testing the thing in a workload it was designed to perform.

Entirely true...the Cinebench scores are higher under OS X than Windows.

If game developers used Apple's recommended codepath, I'm sure we'd see some better gaming results. But most ports are quick and dirty with barely any OS X optimizations.

But the 'twice faster' troll by the OP is just that since Blizzard has always told Mac users to disable full screen glow. Once that's fixed, the performance gap will be much smaller.

The OP should be banned simply for using such a ridiculous title.

If you read a tech article by Tom Karpik, take it with a grain of salt because he probably doesn't know ****.

[Grrr]

Considering OS X still has a heart attack when presented with a few measly animated gif's that a 20 year old Spectrum 48 would have handled with ease, I would not be surprised if Windows was faster.
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..

(Having said that, I play UT2004 a bit, and it runs good enough for me..)

[Tomchu]

cringe

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by Grrr

Considering OS X still has a heart attack when presented with a few measly animated gif's that a 20 year old Spectrum 48 would have handled with ease, I would not be surprised if Windows was faster.

To which animated gifs do you refer?

[xe0]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

I don't care anyone spins it -- that's a significant, ginormous difference in 3D performance.

please...

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Yeah, it is.



The same game doing the same things tests the subsystems responsible for 3D graphics on both platforms.

Horsepoo: Grow up.

tooki: Indeed. Graphics performance is not exactly up to par with Windows.

rhashem: I believe that ATI and NVIDIA both supply the OpenGL stacks for their corresponding drivers -- at the very least, they supply Apple with source code for their drivers.

Everyone else who got defensive: OS X ain't perfect. Live with it. In every single game comparison I've ever seen, Windows simply pushes better framerates. I realize that the popular excuse is always "But the game isn't optimized well!", but come on ... facts are facts.

You get zero on your reading comprehension test. Thanks for playing though.

[pliny]

bad thread name.

what about, "windows twice as fast as os x on this one fps test i did on WoW and since WoW makes me cream myself i am seeing red and starting this thread"

[Helmling]

So basically, nothing's changed. Macs aren't for games. I knew that when I switched, and I was a huge gamer.

But I still have no regrets.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Gabe over at Penny Arcade did a comparison of WoW performance on his MacBook Pro under both XP and OS X. The results?

OS X: 15 - 20 FPS
XP: 35 - 40 FPS

I don't care anyone spins it -- that's a significant, ginormous difference in 3D performance. And it's something I've been saying for ages, but am constantly getting shot down by Mac zealots for.

So, you're saying the bottleneck is the OS itself... and not the underlying graphics subsystem?

Imagine all that "Windows" code running faster than "OSX" !

This is amazing news.

Thanks for clearing that up Tomchu.

[lookmark]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Everyone else who got defensive: OS X ain't perfect. Live with it. In every single game comparison I've ever seen, Windows simply pushes better framerates. I realize that the popular excuse is always "But the game isn't optimized well!", but come on ... facts are facts.

Yeah, of course it isn't, and Windows runs games better, no question. Porting from DirectX isn't an optimal process, and OS X's OpenGL implementation needs to improve further.

Your thread title is still misleading bluster, though (games =! OS), and you seem to be ignoring the fact that the Mac version of WOW has a glitch with a particular visual effect that's bringing the FPS down if it's turned on. It's not an excuse, it's just the facts.

[Tomchu]

cringe

[jasong]

I thought Windows was three times as fast as OS X

[rhashem]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Since the graphics subsystem is a pretty deep one, and relies on many portions of the OS being well-designed, I'd say that saying "X is faster than Y" is justified when referring to OSes. It's not a catch-all, but it has only been proven time and time again that OS X doesn't do games as fast as Windows.

The speed of gaming has jack to do with the OS. It's almost entirely a function of the OpenGL implementation in use. That's the whole point of direct rendered OpenGL --- to take the OS out of the loop for increased performance. Basically, OpenGL data flow looks like this in most OSs:

libGL -> ioctl -> kernel video driver -> DMA operation -> GPU

The minute you do glVertex(), you're in the OpenGL stack. In there, your vertices are stuffed into command packets usable by the hardware. Once the command packet is full, the libGL does an ioctl to transfer it to the kernel driver. The kernel driver verifies the command packet, then queues a DMA operation on the PCI-Express or AGP bus. Once the command packet is in video memory, the kernel driver does a "kick" operation, instructing the GPU to process the packet and draw the scene.

Notice that the only place the OS is involved is transferring control from the ioctl to the kernel video driver. This operation is trivial. Everything else in the chain is either hardware or part of the OpenGL stack, including the libGL and the kernel video driver.

[lookmark]

Look at the latest Cinebench tests. They show (at least potentially -- Cinema 4D hasn't been updated just yet) that when apps have been well-optimized for Apple's OpenGL APIs, OS X can be as fast or even faster than Windows on the exact same hardware. Games are just one category (albeit an important one for the consumer market), and don't tell the whole story.

[rhashem]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

rhashem: I believe that ATI and NVIDIA both supply the OpenGL stacks for their corresponding drivers -- at the very least, they supply Apple with source code for their drivers.

Apple maintains their own OpenGL stack. They have ATI and NVIDIA's source code, but they don't use NVIDIA or ATI's GL stacks. This is unlike the situation between Windows and Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris, for example, where the NVIDIA OpenGL stack is 90% the same between all four platforms.

If you look at the extensions supported by Apple's NVIDIA driver, it's easy to see this. Apple's GL supports far fewer extensions than NVIDIA's unified GL drivers. Also, Apple's OpenGL implementation isn't thread-safe, while NVIDIA's has been thread-safe for awhile. That's because Apple's GL implementation is maintained seperately from NVIDIA's.

[Tomchu]

cringe

[sc_markt]

I've been reading that the clock speed of the graphic card in the MacBookPro has been reduced by Apple in order to reduce heat and save battery life. Perhaps when you boot into windows, the clock speed of the graphic card is normal which if true, may explain the difference.

Just a thought...

- Mark

[production_coordinator]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

I don't care anyone spins it -- that's a significant, ginormous difference in 3D performance.

Translation: I don't care what explanation you give... My ambiguous and inaccurate title is fact!

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Show me a 3D game that runs better in OS X than in Windows (given native, non-emulated execution), and maybe my statements will change.

3-D games ≠ Mac OS X.

You lose. Good day, sir.

[Tomchu]

cringe

[Chuckit]

It's not really defensiveness. You claimed that Windows is twice as fast as OS X. You have done nothing to prove it. I don't know what else to say.

[Tomchu]

cringe

[Chuckit]

I think "twice as fast" is an exaggeration in most cases (including this, which seems to be showing the bad full-screen glow behavior more than anything else). Most 3-D games probably are faster on Windows, though I question how much is because of the Mac's graphics capabilities and how much is because more effort is put into optimizing for DirectX.

[Tomchu]

Well, I guess we'll just have to see once more OpenGL benchmarks start popping up. :-)

I think some Doom 3/Quake 4 action would be a good indicator.

[chessplayer]

Very trollish, and absurd, to call people "zealots" just for objecting to your extremely misleading title and pointing out that 3D game performance is not the same thing as overall OS performance.

[Tomchu]

cringe

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

Edit: I guess this forum doesn't allow the changing of topic titles. Lame.

No, I'll tell you what's lame...you!

I can't believe this thread hasn't been locked yet...blatant trolling isn't allowed on MacNN. Take your name-calling elsewhere. ArsTechnica perhaps.

[guzzi]

With Intel Macs and Boot Camp or Parallel Windows booting software you could just stay gaming on Windows and use OS X for everthings else or whenever you deem necessary.
This is really old news for veteran Mac addicts.
Gaming on the Mac has always been a loong-time thorn in Apple's side.
It's far better than it used to be, but still doesn't compete well against Windows or dedicated gaming machines.
But the Mac vets are well informed here, though.
Apple's own version/implementation of Open GL for OS X is optimised toward use with pro (audio/video/graphic/design) applications and not really optimised for game use/play.
Not an apology or denial here. Just a fact.
If you don't like OS X at all, you can just continue to use a Mac to run your Windows OS.
It's confirmed that Windows runs substantially faster on the new Intel-Macs.
You just pay for the better hardware to run it.
That said, I would like the last 10 minutes of my life back from reviewing this thread in the first place

[rhashem]

Originally Posted by Tomchu

rhashem: Ahh, that's interesting about the drivers. I figured that OS X would be taking the best advantage that it can of the 3D hardware.

OS X's OpenGL stack has very different demands than Windows's one. For one, it has to integrate with the window compositor, and easily support multiple concurrently rendering applications. Vista's D3D stack has to do this, and you'll notice the 3D performance on Vista is pretty poor right now too. It's a difficult task to create a stack that can handle concurrent rendering like OS X's must do. Give it time, it'll get better, just as Vista's will.

]meaning that a statement like "Windows is twice as fast as OS X for games" isn't unjustified at all.

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.

Going into specifics is just fruitless pedantry. You risk looking like a sad Linux user if you can't defend the platform and simply fall back on to pedantics. :-P

I am a Linux user, and no, I'm not being pedantic. You said "Windows is twice as fast as OS X", when you meant, "Windows runs WoW twice as fast as OS X". That's like me saying you're impotent, but meaning that you're only impotent when drunk off your ass...

PS) I find it entertaining that Windows users will blame drivers for instability, saying they aren't part of the OS, but then take credit when better drivers lead to better performance, saying that "from the user's point of view, they're part of the OS!"

[rhashem]

To clarify the statement, Windows is twice as fast as OS X for 3D gaming, though threading performance is pretty bad too. ;-)

And VM and file I/O performance too, when you get down to it. But its mostly irrelevent. OS X is not a gaming platform, and its not a high-load server platform. It's a workstation platform, and low performance in these areas, unless its truely horrendous (which OS X's isn't), doesn't really matter.

I'll change the title so that people stop b*tching, because pedantry is obviously a big thing around here. :-|

"Pedant" is an epiteth wielded by those who cannot think precisely.

[eevyl]

Windows Viruses: bazillion, near infinitum
Mac OS X Virus: 1, debatable

Mac OS X is ZOMG BAZILLION times more secure than Windows.

</sarcasm>

[alphasubzero949]

I can really hear the IQ points falling through the floor in this thread. OS X is slow, Windows has more holes than swiss cheese, and Linux is still not ready for prime time. Bears sh!t in the woods, the sky is blue, and life goes on. Move along, nothing to see here.

[Gee4orce]

Games ?

Aren't those the things that children play on those Xbox things ?

[WOPR]

My dad is bigger than Tomchu's Dad.

Why? Because he's Chuck Norris.

* THREAD ENDS *

[angelmb]

Originally Posted by Gee4orce

Games ?

Aren't those the things that children play on those Xbox things ?

xbox?, only if you want to kill some guy @ the screen thinking it is certain macnn poster

I am gonna to play some Brain Age… it is gotta be worth after all this non sense… thanks God Nintento cares about my brain…

[msuper69]

Why do so many people feed the trolls? Not responding would work better. They want all this attention.