OS X The 60 FPS Thread

[Irishman]

Back in the spring of this year, I thought it would be fun to make a thread to answer the question put to me about Macs and gaming - "can you run it on Ultra Settings?" https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-ultra-settings-thread.1974637/


While that was a cool little experiment, it didn't draw as many substantive replies as I'd hoped. Maybe this thread will. As gamers, we are sophisticated enough to know that games run at wildly varying performance levels, depending on how well your Mac meets or exceeds the requirements of a given game. Playing a modern game on max (or Ultra) settings means that it will usually look gorgeous.

Usually, that is, unless your frame rate stutters, or worse, degrades into a slideshow. Pretty much all of us have had to make compromises to balance visual quality with smooth framerate. But, what if you went the other way with it, moving the needle from ultra settings and eye candy to performance and pure frame rate?

What would it take to eke out the most frames per seconds in the same games that I tested in my Ultra Settings Thread?

Here's what I've found out. (Once again, for reference, my mac is a late 2012 21.5" iMac with 2.9Ghz i5 CPU, 8GB RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 512 MB. My native resolution is 1920 x 1080).



Borderlands 2 - Everything set to low or off, at 1024 x 576 (between 49 fps - in Sawtooth Cauldron and 120 fps - in Control Core Angel)

Borderlands the Pre Sequel - Everything set to low or off, at 1024 x 576 (between 50 and 122 fps)

Batman: Arkham City - Everything set to low or off, at 800 x 600 - 62 fps on the included benchmark

Bioshock Infinite - Everything set to low or off, 72 fps in in outdoor combat areas at 1024 x 576

Counterstrike Global Offensive - Ultra @ 60 fps (no changes were needed to achieve 60 fps or greater)

Dead Island - Everything set to low or off, 35 fps in outdoor combat areas at 1024 x 576

Half-Life 2 Update - Ultra @138 fps (no changes were needed to achieve 60 fps or greater)

Left 4 Dead 2 - Ultra @ 85 fps (no changes were needed to achieve 60 fps or greater)

Metro 2033 Redux - Everything set to low or off, at 1920 x 1080 in the Cursed mission - 45 fps

Outlast - Everything set to low or off at 800 x 600 in basement generator mission - 62 fps

Shadow Warrior - Everything set to low or off at 1024 x 576 - 65 fps in mission at Lo Wang’s home

Star Wars The Force Unleashed - the game seems capped at 30 fps

Team Fortress 2 - Ultra @ 93 fps (no changes were needed to achieve 60 fps or greater)

Tomb Raider - Everything set to on or medium at 800 x 600, 59.4 fps on included benchmark

Doom 3 - Ultra @ 60 fps (game seems capped at 60 fps) (no changes were needed to achieve 60 fps)


I've added three games to this experiment that I didn't measure on the Ultra Settings Thread. Something for another time, I guess.

Brainbread 2 - Everything set to on or high, 60 fps in Barracks map at 1920 x 1080

Paladins - Everything set to off or low, 48 fps at 1344 x 756

Red Crucible Firestorm - Everything set to on or high, 62 fps in outdoor combat areas of the Autobahn map at 1024 x 576



The following games I'm having to hold off on until I can decide whether or not I want to turn off SIP in Sierra to allow Count It to run. (If anyone has any insight for me to make that decision easier one way or another, please jump in):

Rage
Call of Duty 4. I don't think CoD4 will need much work to get to 60 fps, because it was already giving me 49 fps on Ultra/Max settings at 1920 x 1080.

I hope that I've given you some food for thought. As with my other threads, please jump in to give us your performance numbers, including resolution, settings, (some like to include screen shots, and that's cool, too), and most importantly, your Mac's specs and Mac OS version. Please don't mix in Windows or Linux games in this thread, okay?

 

[kaioshade]

This is a good idea. I would be glad to test some games and settings. I have about 100 games in my steam library and could dedicate some time to getting some benchmarks submitted.

 

[Irishman]

This is a good idea. I would be glad to test some games and settings. I have about 100 games in my steam library and could dedicate some time to getting some benchmarks submitted.

I look forward to anything you're able to submit.

 

[casperes1996]

These results are rather unimpressive I'd say. And whilst I have a vastly different machine, with an R9 M295X and an i7 4790K, it still seems peculiar to me, how small the difference really is between maxing the settings and having it all at minimum. For me, the performance difference (aside from resolution changes) usually is around 5FPS.

 

[Irishman]

These results are rather unimpressive I'd say. And whilst I have a vastly different machine, with an R9 M295X and an i7 4790K, it still seems peculiar to me, how small the difference really is between maxing the settings and having it all at minimum. For me, the performance difference (aside from resolution changes) usually is around 5FPS.

Well, the results that I've posted are meant to be informational, not to impress.

What are the specs of your Mac, by the way?

Brian

 

[casperes1996]

Well, the results that I've posted are meant to be informational, not to impress.

What are the specs of your Mac, by the way?

Brian

Well, my point wasn't the impressiveness of the system, I realise I may have phrased myself a bit weirdly. I was talking about the software optimisation. The hardware should definitely be able to do better I'd think.
My iMac is the top end iMac 5k from 2014. Aside from RAM which is 16GB and storage which is just the 1TB Fusion. But my intent was not to comment on the performance of your system, but rather comment on the state of the software. See, my observation is that there rarely is that great a difference between max and min settings on OS X, versus Windows, where the gap can be much bigger, and this is not on the positive side, since min Mac usually runs like max Win. Civ 6 is a great example of this, where I on Windows run 3840x2160 Medium high, and get around 30FPS. macOS I run minimum 2560x1440 and get around 15-20

Oh, and as "top end 5k iMac from 2014" probably isn't that informational anyway
R9 M295X 4GB GPU @850MHz
i7 4790K @4.0-4.4GHz
16GB 1600MHz RAM (I believe Apple used CL12?)
1TB Fusion Drive
macOS Sierra + Win10 - Civilization numbers from above are with DX12, but the results are extremely close with DX11 - I basically opt out of high-res textures, and BAM results are identical to DX12 frames wise.
Oh, and my Sierra is the latest beta.

 

[Irishman]

Well, my point wasn't the impressiveness of the system, I realise I may have phrased myself a bit weirdly. I was talking about the software optimisation. The hardware should definitely be able to do better I'd think.
My iMac is the top end iMac 5k from 2014. Aside from RAM which is 16GB and storage which is just the 1TB Fusion. But my intent was not to comment on the performance of your system, but rather comment on the state of the software. See, my observation is that there rarely is that great a difference between max and min settings on OS X, versus Windows, where the gap can be much bigger, and this is not on the positive side, since min Mac usually runs like max Win. Civ 6 is a great example of this, where I on Windows run 3840x2160 Medium high, and get around 30FPS. macOS I run minimum 2560x1440 and get around 15-20

Oh, and as "top end 5k iMac from 2014" probably isn't that informational anyway
R9 M295X 4GB GPU @850MHz
i7 4790K @4.0-4.4GHz
16GB 1600MHz RAM (I believe Apple used CL12?)
1TB Fusion Drive
macOS Sierra + Win10 - Civilization numbers from above are with DX12, but the results are extremely close with DX11 - I basically opt out of high-res textures, and BAM results are identical to DX12 frames wise.
Oh, and my Sierra is the latest beta.

Are you on the Sierra beta program so that you can get Metal updates ASAP?