OSX users - better hold out on Snow Leopard for now

[MC SE7EN]

I tried running it from the Terminal and that didn't work. In fact, Terminal didn't even do anything...

[The mysterious Mr. 4m]

Nexuiz should be in the repository, so you can install it with the package manager. Then it will be in the menu and you can run it by typing "nexuiz" in the terminal or command launcher.

Other than that, i would recommend OpenSUSE over Ubuntu. (Personally, i use Sabayon.)

[MC SE7EN]

I got it running, but even on the lowest settings I only get about 20 fps on both versions. It's actually smoother on Leopard....

[Samual]

Brilliant how Apple just keeps making it WORSE AND WORSE to develop games for the Mac. (If any of you have EVER worked with programming on a Mac, you know it's hell++)

[Lixi]

(If any of you have EVER worked with programming on a Mac, you know it's hell++)

Riiiiight.

EDIT: As for the topic at hand, I've noticed a bit of a drop in frames using SDL. AGL has definitely taken a significant hit. I can't say that I'm particularly surprised on the latter, though I'm curious as to the reason of the former.

Darkplaces on Mac OS X has never been particularly impressive, for a variety of reasons, I'm sure, but I'm curious why OpenArena hasn't suffered from a similar performance hit. I suspect there's more than the obligatory "Apple's drivers suck" (which they do) and "Mac OS X sucks" (which is injecting unnecessary inflammatory fanboyism into the topic).

[divVerent]

Yes, OpenArena doesn't use ANY advanced renderer features but it's a mostly unchanged renderer from 1999.

It's really not DarkPlaces's fault, it's just using OpenGL like it should. However, it isn't in any way optimized for running well on OS X (by maybe not using the OpenGL features that work really badly there), due to there being no OS X developer working on DP. This was different in case of id software and quake 3, as they made an official Mac client, they also had people develop and test there, and sure did make some decisions to leave out graphics features because they suck on OS X.

[Yoda almighty]

so my dad did get 10.6 as it turns out. I am going to try and play it on his computer and see how it runs, but I have to wait until he's not paying attention (he doesn't like it when i mess with his computer :p)

[Lixi]

Yes, OpenArena doesn't use ANY advanced renderer features but it's a mostly unchanged renderer from 1999.

Indeed that's what I figured. Having never played OpenArena, however, I had no idea.

It's really not DarkPlaces's fault, it's just using OpenGL like it should. However, it isn't in any way optimized for running well on OS X (by maybe not using the OpenGL features that work really badly there), due to there being no OS X developer working on DP. This was different in case of id software and quake 3, as they made an official Mac client, they also had people develop and test there, and sure did make some decisions to leave out graphics features because they suck on OS X.

I understand, and I agree. It wasn't my intention to state that Darkplaces was terrible on Mac OS X. Mine was intended to be a subtle expression of opinion that AGL should really be considered obsolete, and if anyone picks up a Mac OS X native OpenGL implementation, I would think CGL would probably offer a more expansive array of optimisation options. Considering I've never offered to assist, I've never personally complained about Darkplace's performance on Mac OS X. It and Nexuiz perform acceptably well for me in SDL. Not outstanding, but acceptable -- for which I entirely blame Apple, mainly in regard to driver implementations. Likewise, I can't make any guarantee that CGL would be better than AGL in terms of performance; it's just that it's a lower-level API atop which AGL resides.

But, in everything I can see, AGL is where the regressions that the article is stating are most acute. While I have yet to perform some comparison timedemo's between 10.5 and 10.6, I'm now barely able to eek out 20 fps in AGL (Nexuiz.app) vs 60-120 in SDL (Nexuiz-SDL.app)@1024x768/medium preset. That's definitely a regression on Apple's part. SDL has only produced slightly lower framerates for me. Granted I use a better discrete 9600M GT than the integrated GMA 950 (which has always been abysmal) and 9400M being tested.

Having said that, every time I come here, which is infrequently and regarding an Apple topic I stumbled upon, I see at least a few flamebaits. My original off-topic point was to say that fanboyism of any kind should be far removed from a rational and honest discussion, in my opinion. In other words, if you have nothing relevant or useful to say...

[merlijn]

My old macbook is still on the GMA950 chip, which is fine since I don't use it for gaming anyway. In my case though, SDL gives me no boost in speed at all in Snow Leopard - both AGL and SDL are so slow that I can literally count the frames on timedemo demos/bench1.dem.

And I agree that performance always was pretty bad on that machine, but in Leopard I used to get at least 20-30 FPS.

I really hope Apple will address this issue and get 10.6.1 out soon.

[Lixi]

OK, so I finally managed to go ahead and run some equivalence timedemo tests on my hardware. I have a C2D MacBook Pro, and a CD MacBook, so before I paste in my results, let me break down the environment and caveats. First, just a quick response to merlijn for a matter of curiosity.

In my case though, SDL gives me no boost in speed at all in Snow Leopard - both AGL and SDL are so slow that I can literally count the frames on timedemo demos/bench1.dem.

Which makes sense, considering it's a 32 player match. How many of those do you play? I played on a GMA 950 for a year and a half, I know what it's like. It sucks. And that's entirely in the realm of Intel and Apple for making the decision to use that hardware. I rarely was able to play with a stable framerate in matches above 8v8.

And I agree that performance always was pretty bad on that machine, but in Leopard I used to get at least 20-30 FPS.

But did you receive 20-30 FPS in demos/bench1.dem on Leopard?

Anyroad, here are my results. No significant regressions on the hardware I used, see "Caveats" for further thoughts.

Hardware:
9400M and 9600MGT:
2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB DDR3 PC3-8500
256MB 9400M integrated GPU
and 256MB 9600M GT discrete GPU
7200RPM SATA2 250gb hard drive.

Tested drive: 7200RPM PATA drive booted over USB 2.0

GMA950:
2GHz Intel Core Duo
1GB DDR2 PC2-6400
64MB Intel GMA 950
7200RPM SATA hard drive (I don't even remember its capacity or anything else).

Environment:
1. For the higher resolutions, I tested both medium and low presets. For the lower resolutions(800x600 and 640x480), I simply tested low.cfg.

2. I tested native resolution, default (1024x768), and lowest resolutions to have a pragmatic test for laptop gaming.

3. A clean copy of nexuiz-251.zip on a fresh user.

Caveats:
1. For all the tests, sans the GMA 950, these were conducted on clean installs of Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6 running off a external hard drive. 10.5 was upgraded to 10.5.8 with all associated software updates installed. As I was uncertain if divVerent still used the MacBook, I didn't want to touch it. Maybe merlijn can run similar tests on his SL install and see how they jive with my numbers.

I had to boot off an external because my MBP is my vital machine, and I had no time nor will to dink around with my current workflow. I might invest in a swappable 2.5 sata drive in the near future, which would help immensely for this.

2. timedemo and darkplaces as a whole, I think, is not really meant to be a strict system-wide benchmark. Plus bench1.dem seems like a worst case scenario of a 32 person match. But it does provide, at the very least, a snapshot of how actual gaming experience should be.

3. I haven't made a pretty graph on these. Only ascii table for now.

4. I'd like to know more about Phoronix Test Suite, since its numbers vary so wildly from Darkplaces.

(L and SL stand for Leopard and Snow Leopard)
(/m stands for med.cfg and /l stands for low.cfg)

Code: Select all


      ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       |                      9400M                  |                    9600M GT                 |
       |          AGL         |          SDL         |          AGL         |          SDL         |
       |   L   |   SL   | +/- |   L   |   SL   | +/- |   L   |   SL   | +/- |   L   |   SL   | +/- |
1440/m |   25  |   23   | -2  |   34  |   29   | -5  |   26  |   27   | +1  |   37  |   37   | +0  |
1440/l |   37  |   28   | -9  |   43  |   39   | -4  |   41  |   42   | +1  |   52  |   51   | -1  |
1024/m |   27  |   25   | -2  |   37  |   33   | -4  |   27  |   28   | +1  |   39  |   37   | -2  |
1024/l |   40  |   38   | -2  |   49  |   46   | -3  |   43  |   44   | +1  |   55  |   55   | +0  |
800/l  |   43  |   41   | -2  |   49  |   52   | +3  |   43  |   45   | +2  |   57  |   56   | -1  |
640/l  |   44  |   43   | -1  |   53  |   54   | +1  |   44  |   45   | +1  |   56  |   57   | -1  |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Avg    |   36  |   33   | -3  |   44  |   42   | -2  |   37  |   39   | +1  |   49  |   48   |  -1 |

Code: Select all

       -----------------------------------------------
       |                      GMA950                 |
       |          AGL         |          SDL         |
       |   L   |   SL   | +/- |   L   |   SL   | +/- |
1280/m |   4   |        |     |   5   |        |     |
1280/l |   9   |        |     |   7   |        |     |
1024/m |   6   |        |     |   5   |        |     |
1024/l |   11  |        |     |   11  |        |     |
800/l  |   13  |        |     |   11  |        |     |
640/l  |   13  |        |     |   19  |        |     |
------------------------------------------------------
Avg    |   9   |        |     |   10  |        |     |


I was slightly surprised by these numbers, to say the least, as AGL has always felt slower than SDL. Likewise, I could have sworn that, by just feel, Snow Leopard did feel slightly slower. I do plan on getting around to doing equivalent timedemos on Windows SDL and WGL builds and, if I can, some SDL and GLX timedemos in Linux on my MBP once I get an internal drive.

I would expect that these numbers will be higher in Windows across the board -- I'm not certain about Linux, that will probably depend upon a few factors. Namely proprietary vs open source drivers.

For reference here are all my captures from each test instance:

composite list: http://pastie.org/private/47oowugwaed7n9ziubkq
Leopard GMA950 AGL http://pastie.org/private/xskq6iwaoqa1nrbzfgqsa
Leopard GMA950 SDL http://pastie.org/private/xkltr72kkxcgoowbygkwuw
Leopard 9400M AGL http://pastie.org/private/mrnmutvstwleugeznhdea
Leopard 9400M SDL http://pastie.org/private/kxd2d8opyiotrpogex0pq
Leopard 9600M GT AGL http://pastie.org/private/flmjfnh4kbfiigr4iy0q
Leopard 9600M GT SDL http://pastie.org/private/naulcuinu1thhfs9dnjk5w
Snow Leopard 9400M AGL http://pastie.org/private/zfwmipcgtjhwve8vqxr6g
Snow Leopard 9400M SDL http://pastie.org/private/bsr0ztoirsnrzmkkhzza9q
Snow Leopard 9600M GT AGL http://pastie.org/private/uzxo5ppvs08fqk9b7hlhmw
Snow Leopard 9600M GT SDL http://pastie.org/private/hljamx4cteymqodgqevkjw