“In my review of Mac OS X 10.6, I noted that my biggest disappointment in Snow Leopard was the apparently reduced speed of the graphics drivers for the hot EVGA GeForce 285 GTX graphics card for the Mac. So following its release, I tested 10.6.1 but there was no change. Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.2 in early November with an even newer set of graphics drivers (1.6.6 vs 1.6.2) but I had not yet speed-tested them,” Bill Fox reports for Macs Only! “Could it be that the performance of the GeForce 285 GTX had at least increased to the level achieved under Leopard 10.5.7?”
Fox reports, “The OpenGL scores increased slightly in Xbench and a little more in Quake III Arena but the scores are still much lower than under Leopard. However, the score for Halo increased over 34 percent to the fastest level I have tested at these settings. Apparently, Apple engineers found and fixed a significant bottleneck in OpenGL performance that affected Halo and, perhaps, other 3D games.”
Full article, with benchmarks chart, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
Hmmm, could it be that the games software is where any slow down is located???
Just a thought.
en
Does that mean Apple has put on some reading glasses to see the request for better speed in gaming as well?
It would be a nice consideration!
So many wasted words…
All he needed to say is that it’s snappier.
I would love to see apple update drivers more frequently. Frankly, it is with video cards and gaming that Macs lag behind PCs….
yeah, I’d love to see some speed here… Upgrade means better usually.
Agreed. Apple always seems to lag in video cards. I’d like to see increased emphasis in this area.
Apple has fostered or adopted many industry standards and eliminated most of the proprietary bits. Why do Macs still use “special” video cards?
Uh… Old news?
Blizz has talked about this for months- And coinciding with WoW’s new backend, even Dalaran is *somewhat* more tolerable.
@KingMel;
Apple no longer uses “special” video cards.
Video card manufacturers cater to Direct X, and Apple can’t support that.
It’s no longer a hardware issue-It’s purely software, and even though millions of people use Macs at home (as opposed to 10’s of millions of PC’s in the office or POS’s that’ll NEVER run 3D apps), driver authors don’t consider OGL and the like viable.
Sad but true!
Quake 3?????
That game is 10 years old. Is that what current Macs are benchmarked using?
NOT IMPRESSED
http://www.bing.com When it comes to decisions that matter, Bing & Decide
I’m not impressed with bing. And I don’t need all caps to say so.
If you wanna game, buy a PS3. If you want to get stuff done, buy a Mac.
“If you wanna game, buy a PS3. If you want to get stuff done, buy a Mac.”
Or you could install Windows, which can get the most out of all that expensive hardware you have in your Mac.
@me
stirring up an ants’ nest with statements like that! lol…