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Apple’s Snow Leopard Graphics Update 1.0 offers Mac users stunning performance gains

Saturday, August 21, 2010 · 11:52 am · 35 Comments

“When Apple announces a new product, the company spares no expense to extol its new features and benefits. But when Apple releases minor updates, it can often be terse about the magnitude of their importance,” David Chartier reports for Macworld. “Such is the case with this week’s Snow Leopard Graphics Update 1.0.”

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“Only three changes were listed for this update, among them one which ‘addresses frame rate issues occurring in Portal and Team Fortress 2 from Valve’ on a number of recent Macs with graphics cards from ATI or Nvidia,” Chartier reports. “Our Macworld lab ninjas should be able to go hands-on with testing next week, but a source at ATI reached out to explain just how significant of an update this is for Mac gaming.”

Chartier reports, “In a nutshell, the relevant Macs can now see up to three times higher frame rates in games, and not just in Valve’s titles… Tests from Bare Feats on… a 2009 iMac Core i7 saw Portal’s frame rate double to nearly 60 fps, and the older a machine is, the greater its potential performance gains… Considering the massive gains of this graphics performance update, the Mac’s gaming future looks pretty bright.”

Read more in the full article – recommended – here.

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Comment Feed

35 Comments

« Previous 1 2

EVO_FTW

Saturday, August 21, 2010 - 8:29 pm · Reply

I’m all for making my smoking fast Macbook Pro even faster. Kudos to Apple for the sweet update.
anonymous coward

Saturday, August 21, 2010 - 9:27 pm · Reply

“Your rhetoric is myopic and out of date. Have you spoken to anyone at Apple, in the few years, about their policies and values towards gaming and graphics?”

I don’t bother anymore because it’s the same old story, they get interested for a bit and then it wanes.

You see to get in to serious 3D gaming now means a console and Microsoft and Sony with their alternate incomes means no profit if Apple put out their own box.

For consumers, spending upwards of several thousand on a Mac tower gaming rig from Apple is ludicrous when a 9 core Cell PS3 is available for $300 AND it comes with a BlueRay DVD player.

In fact Sony supposedly just started turning a profit on PS3′s, think Apple would go that far for a console? Nope. Apple’s margin is twice the costs, so this way if a unit is returned they still make 33% profit!

The Dual G5 Tower, that was it, the last gaming box for Apple. And I sorely missed mine, but I got a good price just after the Intel announcement, so I took it, and off she went.
lukeskymac

Saturday, August 21, 2010 - 9:30 pm · Reply

@AC If you simply had written

“Now all we need is more high-end graphics cards from apple =/ …”

You wouldn’t have sound like the stinkin troll you are
anonymous coward

Saturday, August 21, 2010 - 9:31 pm · Reply

correction:

In fact Sony supposedly just started turning a profit on PS3′s, think Apple would go that far into the red for a console? Nope. Apple’s margin is twice the unit cost, so this way if a unit is defective and replaced with another they still make 33% profit!
anonymous coward

Saturday, August 21, 2010 - 9:51 pm · Reply

“”Now all we need is more high-end graphics cards from apple =/ …”

Apple doesn’t make the graphic cards in it’s boxes, Nvidia and ATI do, along with PC’s too to take advantage of economies of scale.

On a Windows PC, OS and hardware things are a bit more open for enhancement purposes for gaming, unlike a Mac.

And with the high cost of a Mac tower, a console is less expensive, so this means less towers are sold for gaming and less need for more graphic cards replacements over time.

Now most Mac towers only get the card it was sold with, hardly any upgrades are available anywhere. So no higher frame rates to keep up with the PC folks, and no using a new game on your slightly older hardware with a new graphics card. So if you get a Mac Tower, buy the muscle card right off and greatly extend your towers life gaming.

I’ve made 3 graphic card upgrades with my Dual G5 over the course of three years of gaming. Now it’s all dried up, consoles are a better way to go. $300 gets me the whole console instead of just a card.
lukeskymac

Saturday, August 21, 2010 - 10:12 pm · Reply

Aaaand consoles have the worst graphics. You forgot that part.

Obviously their one-configuration-only nature makes them much more efficient than PCs for gaming, but their hardware is nevertheless obsolete and will continue to be obsolete for at least 3 years now that Sony and M$ have stated that their motion controls will juice up their console’s live.

So let me correct that sentence

“Waaaa, waaa, we need a xMac NOW, waaa, waaaa”

Note that I am completely support the mythical xMac, but 1) I understand it’s not Apple’s top priority for the Mac and 2) No one really NEEDS it

And PC gaming is still alive and well, thank you. Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, World of Warcraft and The Old Republic are all living proof of that (Well, TOR and Diablo aren’t out yet, but you got the point)
KingMel

Sunday, August 22, 2010 - 12:27 am · Reply

Macs have always suffered from a limited selection of graphics cards, and the cards that are installed in new Macs are generally at least a bit behind the state of the art. And AC is actually correct about one thing – in my experience, very few Mac owners upgrade their graphics card during the life of their computer.

Apple has adopted or fostered many industry standards – PCI series buses, USB, RAM, etc. – but not in the area of graphics cards. I assume that is because PC graphics cards are designed around Windows DirectX. It might also have to do with the optimization of the thermal control design in Macs. Whatever the reason, Macs are seldom close to the cutting edge in terms of graphics performance. That is a compromise that I have come to accept in return for the many advantages of the Mac platform and Mac OS X software. But I still hope that this situation will improve in the future.
flappo

Sunday, August 22, 2010 - 4:00 am · Reply

the only reason i’d upgrade my mp’s card is noise issues with the x1900

apart from that it does everything i need ok

is the 4870 a lot quieter ?
almux

Sunday, August 22, 2010 - 5:21 am · Reply

Finally, will we be abble to use ANY Graphic Card sold in the market to run inside any Mac?!?!?
EVO_FTW

Sunday, August 22, 2010 - 10:24 am · Reply

I’m fortunate, in that I’ve got my 15″ Macbook Pro along with a 15″ Samsung laptop with a BlueRay player and a snappy graphics card that will play most current games sufficiently. However, I also use Bootcamp on my Macbook Pro, with Windows 7 Pro installed as an alternate boot OS, and I’ve got to tell you it runs blazing fast on my MBP. I bought mine late last summer, so it is only one generation behind. I’ve played Bioshock on it and it looks and runs superbly. I’m anxious now to see how well it plays with the graphics update.
anonymous coward

Sunday, August 22, 2010 - 11:55 am · Reply

Finally, will we be able to use ANY Graphic Card sold in the market to run inside any Mac?!?!?

Uh, no. Only in the Mac Pro as that’s the only one that a user can change the card. Also only if all those video cards are Open GL and Direct X compatible. Also if Apple allows all the things a PC can do in hardware and software.

@EVO_FTW

Uh, a Macbook Pro or a laptop isn’t really a gaming rig. Sure it might play present games just fine, but it’s no match to a tower. Also when new game engines come out requiring more powerful graphics cards you can’t replace them in a laptop like you can do in a tower.

Also if the MBP/laptop starts to get too hot, or you try to run on battery, the processors and graphics are hobbled to bring the temperature down. This affects frame rate and performance. Not to mention the slow 5,200 RPM drive in most laptops.

One really needs a RAID 0 to speed up loading between sections of the game, like in DOOM 3. One can best do this with a tower, internally, using the fastest connections to the drives.
anonymous coward

Sunday, August 22, 2010 - 12:02 pm · Reply

And consoles have the worst graphics. You forgot that part.

Obviously you haven’t played many PS3 games.

Consoles and computer graphics have evened out, with the console having the added ability of playing on a large HDTV.

In fact some games can split the HDTV screen and two players can play online at the same time with one console.
Karlv

Sunday, August 22, 2010 - 3:27 pm · Reply

Don’t buy games on Steam. It’s a DRMed Walled Garden with no way out if you change your mind. Lose your account, lose everything.
Dinjin201

Sunday, August 22, 2010 - 4:57 pm · Reply

I like the efforts, but currently, I’m perfectly happy with console games just because consoles have caught up to all BUT the highest end PC’s and Macs, which can cost up to 10 TIMES more… So for now, Console gaming (PS3 or Xbox) is the way to go… I ignorantly got an Xbox a few years ago, but then, after some RROD and crashes, and learning that microsoft cant even do consoles right, i got the PS3 which is pretty much use as a multimedia and gaming center.

I cant wait for crysis 2 on PS3. Even Crytek said that it looks and performs better on the PS3 than the Xbox…
EVO_FTW

Monday, August 23, 2010 - 10:42 am · Reply

Uh, anonymous coward, why do you talk to people as if they are stupid? I never said my Macbook Pro is better than a tower for gaming. I realize that a tower can have more powerful and more quantity of the internals of a system (cpu, memory, disks, etc.). What I said was that my Macbook Pro plays most current games sufficiently, and that I play Bioshock on my Windows 7 partition without issue. I didn’t say I play them at the highest possible frame rates necessarily. Read what people say before you slam them. My Macbook Pro is a great rig for me, and it does everything I want it to. Were I to be a hard core gamer like I used to be, I’d have a tower, or at least a gaming laptop. Now I see clearly why people call you a troll.