macOS Performance

I decided to install the game in macOS this morning after the patch after playing all evening and a good chunk of the morning in Windows.

Here are my system Specs:

2017 5K iMac
Intel i7 7700k
16gb 2400mHz RAM
Radeon Pro 580 w/ 8gb DDR5 VRAM
Configured with PCIe 500gb Flash drive
macOS High Sierra 10.13.1

Running the game at 1440p
App called Macs Fan running to get the system fan to kick on sooner and avoid any heat issues.

Running in macOS, I was getting >20fps when I got a new character to Blood River Outskirts. That was just sitting there at night. I didn't even try to play more than that in macOS this morning because frankly anything under 30fps is horrible. Dropping the resolution down to 1080p doesn't have any real effect.

Interestingly:

I have Windows 10 installed via Boot Camp. It is installed on a 500gb external SSD connected via USB-C so it is essentially the same as a SATA3 internal SSD. I'm also running Bootcampdrivers.com Radeon drivers, and they are far more up-to-date than the Apple approved ones.

In Boot Camp Windows 10, in the same areas with the same graphics settings, I average 45 - 55 FPS. I have Macs Fan for windows running there too.

 

Two things:

1) OpenGL will always be slower than DirectX; especially the outdated OpenGL that Mac OS X runs on. Metal is much, much better and runs on par with DirectX but it's not currently supported by Portalarium (and Unity) yet.

2) R48 DESTROYED the Mac client's performance. In 47, I'd be running with an average 50fps (similar to what you're experiencing in Windows) at 1600x900. 30fps at 2560x1440 and now I can barely managed to get above 10fps with c~ cons~ constant h~ hi~ const~ constant hitch~ hitching.

It's SO BAD, that the game is UNPLAYABLE unless I drop the screen resolution down to 1280x720 and now everything is working smoothly. 1600x900? Won't run unless I turn every graphic option off. 1280x720? I can get 60fps with everything maxed.

There's something really messed up with R48. There's a huge delay when I swap "spaces" now and there was one instance where OS X just... logged me out of my profile... could still hear the game running (with music) while I was entering my user (OSX) password and once I got back into the Finder, the game was nowhere to be found despite the sound.

... I had to kill SotA and relaunch.

 

I'm glad I'm not alone in this. I totally understand about OpenGL and that's why 90% of the time I just boot to Windows for games. I'm "trying" to make this iMac a feasible replacement for my gaming PC. Really I'm just trying to see if it's possible to do that. I haven't dropped the cash on a eGPU yet, but this Radeon (I've ALWAYS been an Nvidia guy) definitely doesn't seem up to snuff. Which is also understandable since it's really designed for "Pro Stuff" not gaming. I love doing EVERYTHING else in macOS, and I'd love to be able to just game there too, but I'm a realist. I just got this shiny new iMac so I'm trying to put it through its paces. Ultimately, I may just have to pull out my Benq monitor and hook my gaming PC back up. It's an i5 7600k with a GTX 1070 in it.

Unfortunately, I didn't really play with SotA pre-R48 in macOS, so I don't know how it did. It's really been a LONG time since I played as it is. I would install to check it out here and there, but now it's at a point where I really want to get into it. I tried dropping the res down, both in macOS and in Win10, but anything below 1440p looks like dookie on this 5k screen.

Hopefully the Dev's will take note that, as you say, R48 isn't doing so hot on Macs.

 

they've been building with other rendering options available with command-line flags, but those are not really ready for use yet.

 

Nice! Worth a try anyway! Worst case, it will just be unstable and a restart will need to happen. Hell, even if I have to re-download the client, it's only like 6gb. Thanks Alley!

 

Yeah, I just couldn't get the game to launch with "-force-metal"; the terminal just prints out an error about invalid options when I add that command line.

My computer supports Metal.

I play on the OSX client almost exclusively and, unless there's a hotfix coming out soon, R48 is a giant "avoid at all cost" for OSX users.

I'm glad that they've finally caught up with Unity 2017.2 but they seriously need to patch some stuff.

 

If you play SotA via Steam, you can put it in the "Set Launch Options" box for SotA. With the Mac Launcher, I wouldn't even know where to begin. May be something similar like a windows shortcut, but my knowledge of macOS doesn't run that deep yet.

On that note, there was just another Steam patch for both Mac and PC versions. Mac seems to be running a bit better, but still not as good as the Windows version. That said, -force-metal in the SotA launch options in Steam worked but didn't really make much of a difference on my machine. It does seem to be a mostly steady 30fps wondering around Aerie though.

 

Yeah, it's pretty bad right now. It seems like every time we start seeing some performance improvements, a subsequent release takes some steps back.

I have played this on a new Windows machine which does great. (Of course, it has a Kaby Lake i7, a GTX 1080 GPU, 32 GB of RAM and an NVMe SSD, so it better!)

I've also played this on Windows through the Boot Camp side of my Mac and it does pretty well. (Admittedly the Mac is fairly low end -- a late 2012 Mini with a quad i7, but with a 2.6 GHz processor, 16 GB of RAM, an SSD and an external GPU with Radeon RX580. Still I can get 40+ FPS in "good" setting on the Windows side of my Boot Camp Mac at 1080p, and usually about 15 FPS on the Mac side. (It is, understandably, unplayable using the integrated graphics.) In larger, busier cities, it's almost unusable, less than 10 FPS many times.

I'm never going to suggest that this marginal Mac is ever going to pull the coveted 60 FPS at 1080p at medium settings or better, but the same hardware is getting roughly half the FPS just by booting the Mac side rather than the Windows side.

 

Yeah, I think I'm going to hook my gaming PC back up and see how it does there. My buddy is running it maxed at 4k on his PC and he said it rarely drops below 60fps. It's not pegged there, but might as well be. I live in an RV and space is an issue. That's why I was hoping this iMac would be "good enough." Really, with its specs, it should be if I'm in Windows..

 

MacOSX graphic drivers are hardly optimized for performance; they're set for visual quality and/or battery life.

You could probably modify their settings through the terminal but I wouldn’t recommend it... and you’d still have to deal with OpenGL being slower

EDIT: I don't know what they did with the latest hotfix but everything is running better than ever now.

 

Yep. Things are definitely better. I ended up just dusting off my Gaming PC. Better FPS than the Mac, but still not what I expected given its specs. Guess it's time to start a PC parts wish list lol. I still have the client installed on the Mac so I can test it here and there with new builds.

 

Certainly better than a few days ago. It's somewhat playable now on my configuration. Curiously, it doesn't matter too much whether I have graphics on "Fastest" or on "Good" -- frame rates are similar. Now I'm usually getting around 30 FPS in either setting, though still 10-20 in some busier areas. Lots to still be done (they say frame rates are a goal for Release 49), but better than R48 was when it first came out. Still need to get my PC gaming rig fixed, though.