Valve says Apple, NVIDIA and ATI are working to improve Mac gaming performance
By Donald Melanson 
posted June 17th 2010 8:40PM
posted June 17th 2010 8:40PM
posted June 17th 2010 8:40PM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
You mean they're going to provide modular and upgradeable hardware? No.. I didn't think so.
Now now, they already do. Starting at just $2,499.
@koehler83 Hahaha, exactly. I'm saddened valve gave into the dark world of gaming for macs, blasphemous. But oh well. They still don't have L4D (although I wish they did allow.so I could pwn them), think its funny, my mac friends think they're up to par with me. Not. I still laugh at mac zombies who think games will.be able to run on their crappy hardware. Apple doesn't care about their computers anymore, the real $$ is from itunes and iPhone
@Bshaw1090 and PS3. They've really sold out.
For science.
The monsters.
@koehler83 I know, just last week I upgraded the GPU for my PS3.
Now it's rendering 1080p at 1000 fps.
@koehler83 Look on the bright side, "Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!" looks like a good title to run.
@koehler83
It's neeeeeeeever gonna happen.
@Eternal Density
portal reference win
@koehler83
What evidence says steam is more powerful on mac? Sounds very interesting.
@BrownSound
It's not that Steam itself is more powerful, it's that the average Mac running Steam is more powerful than the average PC. Which is the most obvious statement of obviousness in the history of obvious.
@Engadget "As Valve's Rob Barris has confirmed on the company's forums, Apple, ATI and NVIDIA are all "involved" in improving Mac gaming performance, and that "performance is going to improve as drivers are updated."
This has been done before though. It takes Apple forever to update drivers and it's always a mixed bag with most people seeing no improvement at all. They need to get their act together.
People are having major issues with Steam right now and 10.6.4 was expected to fix them but it didn't. So now it's a wait for 10.6.5 in 3 months?
@Bshaw1090
And Mac users laugh at people like you, who don't realize computers are used for more than just games.
@Joao Cagao
Everybody laughs at you who thought computers are solely for work. I can't imagine living a life like you... Boring.
Yawn
Performance goodness for all!!
Given that Macs essentially use the same hardware as their PC counterparts, I don't think there's any concern from a "what's under the hood" perspective. Clearly the operating system and drivers need to be optimized. Whether or not OSX actually has the underpinnings to be equally capable (or more capable) than a Windows machine remains to be seen. At this point, though, it seems almost certain that the drivers could stand to be significantly improved.
Btw, the sentence, "evidence that Macs running Steam are generally more powerful than PCs..." seems a touch misleading. Maybe more accurate to say, "most Macs running Steam generally have higher end/more powerful hardware than most PCs..." There's nothing inherent to either platform's hardware, certainly, and the software is obviously behind at the moment for Macs.
@cgalyon Macs tend to use way diffrent parts, most mac desktops are made of notebook parts and then some in true desktop fashion uses "special hardware" ever seen how much a "Mac edition EVGA GTX 285" costs
@cgalyon
anandtech did tests that show that OS X's OpenGL capabilities are not up to par with how the Source Engine runs on Windows, and that anyone who plays enough games on a Mac should should keep Windows. And Valve's charts already show that the average Mac have more powerful hardware then the average PC, the divide is probably even greater overall, it's expected because while Macs certainly are expensive, none of them have low-end hardware
@cge10
I'm pretty sure they're a way to get Mac users' (who generally have bigger wallets than PC users) money, the same as how Quadro and FireGL cards are many folds more expensive then their GeForce and Radeon varient because those look for super stable chips will pony up. I'm sure if Apple wanted to they could allow regular PC hardware to work
@cgalyon agreed. That statement in the article is nothing short of misleading.
@JeremyBenthem I call C2D low-end hardware, sorry, but everything is relative and this is low-end these days. Also, Steam saying this is indicative of a bad sampling. As of today, Macs actually need the higher end hardware available to game with any decent rez & FR. So, if you have the lower-end hardware, you might not even be bothering, so you're already eliminating the older Macs from the study, unlike PCs.
@cgalyon
Other GL games seem to bear out the performance discrepancies between identically-configured OSX and Windows hardware. Starcraft II runs anywhere from 30-50% slower in OS X than in Boot Camp, and Blizzard has stated that, among other things, you need twice the texture memory in OS X as in Windows. They also say that real performance gains are in Apple's hands re. updated drivers.
Crossing my fingers that this article is accurate and that we see some improvements in the near future.
@cgalyon
I've been wondering the sentence:"We've already seen some evidence that Macs running Steam are generally more powerful than PCs running Steam"
As curren mac hardware is about same as what pc:s are like. The low end pc:s are compensated by the hardcore gamers pc:s that have hardware not available in macs.
This would mean that people use PC:s longer than macs for gaming. This goes completely contrary to the mantra that macs are good value to money as you get longer use from them.
@newone
What you seem to not realize is that it's only been since the intel switch in 2006 that macs run the same hardware as pcs. Thus only those built since 2006 can run steam. They're only pointing out that windows based pcs could be running older graphics cards or processors. That being said a circa 2006 pc will spank a 2006 Mac. This is coming from a current MacBook pro user and former windows user.
I third that sentiment. The article seems to imply Macs are faster than the "equivalent" PC, suggesting something else (OS?) is responsible. Not very good wording.
@juanvaldez
I'm sure you have much higher standards, but again if you look at the big picture, the Mac Mini with a P8600 and GeForce 320M, Apple's cheapest computer, it's still a heck of a lot better than what most PC users even on Steam have, it doesn't really take that much to play Counter-Strike Source or any other fairly aged and popular game on Steam
@newone
Personally my custom gaming PC would be considered a pretty low-end gaming pc (core 2 Duo 2.66 mhz). However, I upgrade parts semi-often (per year, maybe more often). I added 1 Gig ram then another gig and then changed graphics cards twice.
This means my PC has been in use for several years as it's far more powerful than the processor itself would allude to. If I told a gamer I had those specs without saying what else I had under the hood, he'd probably LOL (rightly so).
That means even a modern day Mac would have a tough time beating the performance I get out of my several years old machine for gaming.
@ounkeo
How about a break down on how much your computer ended up costing you for all these constant upgrades? I am just curious since people here are always complaining that Macs cost so much more.
but can they run crysis 2?
no they can't. nor can anything else. this comment is pointless and i command all of you to downrank it into oblivion. NOW!
@dedparrot you get what you ask for...
@dedparrot
I actually laughed. +1
@kapanak
lol irony
@dedparrot
I won't listen to you hahahahahahaha
@dedparrot
I was just laughing so damn hard; I found it impossible to down-vote....sorry, you must strictly be up-voted, LOL.
LOL. FLAMEBAIT POST BY ENGADGET.
@kb24istrash
So far it seems civil and there's actual thought out conversations going on.
Engadget, there's hope for you yet!
Hopefully we'll see full support for OpenGL 3.0 soon (Yes, OpenGL 3.0 isn't even fully supported yet), and better performance.
@HikaKao
And HTML5?
STOP saying macs are generally more powerful than PCs. The number of insanely specced out PCs in the world dwarfs the entire lineup of OSX devices, even ones that arent included in the steam hardware survey.
@fel
you never learned stats have you?
what they are saying is that the average mac sampled by steam is faster than the average windows machine sampled by steam. quantities don't matter in this, as they are talking averages. all this means is that for every windows machine more powerful than a mac, there is more than 1 less powerful than a mac.
@onemadrssn
quantities dont matter when you are looking at averages but lets be realistic here. The mac install base is tiny.
@fel
sure, for every mac out there in the USA there are 9 windows machines. (more like 20 when talking worldwide). but how is that at all relevant to the article? it's not like gaming is helped by distributed computing worldwide by platform. your neighbors PC doesn't help you anymore than my neighbors mac helps me.
in my opinion, the way to interpret that statistic is that the average mac user has more disposable income and has bought a new computer more recently than the average windows user. that is also justified by the statistic that says that although in the US macs only make up 9% of all computers, they make up 90% of all computer sales over $1000.
@onemadrssn
Yeah and Macs generally lack decent GPUs which is, you know, the most important piece of hardware for gaming.
@onemadrssn The word "generally" is the misleading part. Nothing wrong with "average" but then they should use it and make it clear.
The average of a thousand samples from a platform that is not a gaming platform and thus subsequently contains mostly people with better spec'ed macs is bound to look better than the average of 10+ million samples of a platform that can be 5+ years old and still somewhat good for gaming. Try that with a mac of the same age..
@Bahumbug
well a mac thats 5+ years old doesn't run on an x86 platform, so it's a pretty moot point. gpu is become less and less relevant. first of all, the macbook pro lines have good enough gpus. I am running HL2 with all settings on "high" at native res on my macbook pro. it runs perfectly. i couldn't be happier about it, and isn't that all that matters?
also, since mac users tend to have more disposable income and are willing to spend $1000+ on a computer, then they are also more likely to spend money within steam. and thats what matters to the developers.
not to mention the most profitable games are very simple not graphically intensive games such as world-of-goo. how does your fancy quad-gpu setup help you there?
@fel yes the MAc instal base is considerably smaller than the Windows base but the majority of those Windows machines can't play games for two very important reasons. 1. They are sat on an office desktop and playing games is probably a sackable offence. 2. They are sat on an office desktop and thus have such miserably low specs that they can't render anything more complicated than Solitare.
That huge instal base isn't that relevant to this particular issue, ie. gaming.
They have taken a great step BUT they still need to work with the developers to get that software support. If they build the games, the drivers will come.
@HektikLyfe, that's not true it could be an ATI card. Oh I kid, these jokes are still funny for the next few years as they make back their cred in the gaming world.
Any reason this article neglects to mention that gaming performance has been benchmarked as superior on the same Mac HW when running other OSes (specifically Windows)? That is the reason they are working to improve it, because MacOS+OGL lags rather substantially behind Windows+DX.
It's funny that you throw in the positive (Macs on Steam are generally more powerful) without pointing out the related negative that on that same HW the perf is better in Windows. Why is that? What about commentary on the relative performance of OGL vs. DX, etc? Is this really all just "driver issues"?
This whole blurb feels candy coated and it seems that with the breathless coverage of Steam on Mac here the niggling perf issues that MacOS+Steam have were largely glossed over or outright ignored.
@doubleyewdee: Another reason Macs are probably more powerful than the average PC in the statistics is that Valve's games aren't exactly demanding. The two most consistently popular games on Steam (Counter-Strike: Source and Counter-Strike) are from 2004 and *1999*, respectively. Even CS:S is from before Apple was even making Intel Macs.