Your Experience/Performance on the Mac

jwbell93

Hi guys,

Just asking before buying the game! How is your experience playing on the mac and what type of settings can you play at without any major disruptions/lag? Anyone with the same mac specs would be most helpful.

My Mid-2012 Macbook Pro 13" specs:
Processor: 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024 MB
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 4 MB

Thanks guys!

chris.dillman

Hi jwbell93,

The bottle neck on that Mac will be the GPU.

You should start at Medium settings and then turn shadows to low or off for starters.

Gix

I have the luxury of playing this on a Mac Pro:

Quad-Core and Dual GPU
3.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor
12GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory
Dual AMD FirePro D300
with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM each

Running like a dream with everything set to Max (not Ultra, I start to lose frames in PvP).

With that said, I also have a late 2011 15" Macbook Pro (with similar specs as yours) and it runs great with Medium settings. You'd get about 15fps in large scale PvP but you'd get a solid averate of 50fps everywhere else.

chris.dillman

Hi Gix,

PVP is super particle heavy in large battles and this saturates the pixel fill rate on GPUs.
Basically having to draw a ton of large transparent textures over each other.
The GPUs can only handle so much.

The AMD FirePro D300 is actually a low end desktop GPU now.
ESO can only use 1 of the GPUs anyhow.
Apple never opened up using both for games, theres no SLI on Mac.

GreySix

Well, gameplay on my dual-processor Mac Pro (2009 version) was glassy-smooth, with a crash only after around two hours of play.

After the latest update, the client crashed three times in 45 minutes.

henrycupcakerwb17_ESO

chris.dillman wrote: »

Hi jwbell93,

The bottle neck on that Mac will be the GPU.

You should start at Medium settings and then turn shadows to low or off for starters.

i was playing on ultra settings with AA on with gtx 780 M 4GB video ram and it crashed every 5- 10 mins during pvp

after 3 hours of crashing i play on minimum settings and it didnt crash for few hours straight...but my eyes sore from looking that piece of *** with minimum setting, the pixels the blur.. LOL

btw, does adding more rams to the mac helps or not??

KhajitFurTrader

henrycupcakerwb17_ESO wrote: »

i was playing on ultra settings with AA on with gtx 780 M 4GB video ram and it crashed every 5- 10 mins during pvp

after 3 hours of crashing i play on minimum settings and it didnt crash for few hours straight...but my eyes sore from looking that piece of *** with minimum setting, the pixels the blur.. LOL

btw, does adding more rams to the mac helps or not??

Only with general system performance, if you're sitting at 4 GB RAM. ESO is a 32-bit process, meaning that its address space is limited to 4 GB of memory. Any machine with at least 8 GB RAM has ample memory to (exclusively) run ESO without having to swap pages out.

Btw, I have the same GC, and ESO can run for hours on adjusted Ultra-High settings (Shadow/Water Reflection on Medium, particle-related settings at their lowest, View Distance at its default 37. Everything else is ON, except VSYNC). But then again, I don't PvP much and haven't once since 1.6.5 hit live. If I change my activity profile to jumping around a lot via Wayshrine, and/or hanging out in busy cities, I can provoke crashes in a much shorter time span, but this is expected.

So until the new IOKit behavior in OS X 10.10 get addressed, it's either tuning graphics way down, or switching back to 10.9 to get extended uptimes.

GreySix

henrycupcakerwb17_ESO wrote: »

btw, does adding more rams to the mac helps or not??

My Mac Pro has 48GB of RAM, so no. The 32-bit client limits how much ram can be used, so if you have beyond 4GB in your machine, it won't matter.

chris.dillman

henrycupcakerwb17_ESO wrote: »

chris.dillman wrote: »

Hi jwbell93,

The bottle neck on that Mac will be the GPU.

You should start at Medium settings and then turn shadows to low or off for starters.

i was playing on ultra settings with AA on with gtx 780 M 4GB video ram and it crashed every 5- 10 mins during pvp

after 3 hours of crashing i play on minimum settings and it didnt crash for few hours straight...but my eyes sore from looking that piece of *** with minimum setting, the pixels the blur.. LOL

btw, does adding more rams to the mac helps or not??

Hi henrycupcakerwb17_ESO

Try medium settings?

also if you are running on low you can turn off the screen resolution / subsampling as that one setting won't make a huge difference to ram usage.

Gix

chris.dillman wrote: »

Hi Gix,

PVP is super particle heavy in large battles and this saturates the pixel fill rate on GPUs.
Basically having to draw a ton of large transparent textures over each other.
The GPUs can only handle so much.

The AMD FirePro D300 is actually a low end desktop GPU now.
ESO can only use 1 of the GPUs anyhow.
Apple never opened up using both for games, theres no SLI on Mac.

I'm well aware but it doesn't change the fact that ESO runs great on it.

Gaulomatic

PLEASE - make it run more smooth on Mac OS X. I have a GTX 960 with a Core i7 4770 on Windows which drives the game much more smoothly than my main Computer with a 4790K and a GTX 780 on OS X. Even streaming the game from the Windows to the OS X box is performing better than native OS X. It's so great that this game is running on OS X, please tune it a little bit more

chris.dillman

Gaulomatic wrote: »

PLEASE - make it run more smooth on Mac OS X. I have a GTX 960 with a Core i7 4770 on Windows which drives the game much more smoothly than my main Computer with a 4790K and a GTX 780 on OS X. Even streaming the game from the Windows to the OS X box is performing better than native OS X. It's so great that this game is running on OS X, please tune it a little bit more

HI Gaulomatic,

We will try our best.

Can you tell us what kind of mac you are running on? iMac,Old Style mac pro, Hackintosh etc?
We can't tell from the specs.

Can you explain what you mean by smooth?
Is the average FPS not high enough?
Or are you seeing some other kind of behavior.

Do either of these machines have SSD drives?

If you want to compare the PC build to the Mac build you need to run the PC in OpenGL mode.
Normally the OpenGL frame rates are about the same between the 2 OSes.

If you want to try…

Edit your UserSettings.txt

SET GraphicsDriver.7 "OPENGL"

Tell us if the PC act more like the Mac if you get a chance?

Neryuslu

Hello chris.dillman,

I would like to do some comments on this too.

I have the following machine: iMac late 2013, i5 processor, 780M Nvidia graphics card, 16 GB RAM and an SSD drive.

On my machine, the Windows client runs twice as fast. On the high presets, I get 60-70 FPS on the native resolution (2560x1440). On the Mac OS X client, my machine can only get to 30-35 FPS... Which is literally only half...

I tried your suggestion to compare to the OpenGL version on Windows, but the game menu and graphics are super glitchy, so I thought this would not make too much sense.

PS: I might be wrong, but I think on Mac OS X 10.9 the game ran better than now on Yosemite 10.10. I'm not sure, since it has been almost a year ago...

I'd be happy to help out on this thread and follow instructions you give. I could also make some comparing videos of different settings if this would help you guys out!

TiberiusTryton

I have been playing on the lowest graphics possible since launch because if I don't I will crash almost anytime I get close to a fight in AvA. Sometimes I turn the ulta on just to see what the game looks like.... I play a glorified runescape most of the time here's my setup if you think you can help me.

iMac
27-inch, Mid 2011
Processor 3.1 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 12 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6970M 1024 MB
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63)

I want to play the game in pretty mode!!1

KhajitFurTrader

Neryuslu wrote: »

I have the following machine: iMac late 2013, i5 processor, 780M Nvidia graphics card, 16 GB RAM and an SSD drive.

On my machine, the Windows client runs twice as fast. On the high presets, I get 60-70 FPS on the native resolution (2560x1440). On the Mac OS X client, my machine can only get to 30-35 FPS... Which is literally only half...

I have the same 27" machine and the same GC, but the Core i7. On the Mac client I get everything between 20 and 60 FPS, it really, really depends on how much other players are in the area (even those that aren't near are counting). Starting from the Default settings (Settings, Video, press X), I made the following adjustments in Fullscreen mode:

Vertical Sync: OFF
Anti-Aliasing: ON (default)

VSYNC will easily cut your frame rate in half if the game can't be rendered at display refresh rate (60 Hz). Switching off AA may help with frame rates, I think the jagged edges are not too noticeable on the iMac's display resolution.

Texture Quality: High (default)
SubSampling Quality: High (default)

These are the default values and don't need to be changed. N.B. if you see client uptime declining due to activity (e.g. PVP, moving often between zones), you should try setting them to Medium. A fix for the recent stability issues introduced with Yosemite is in the works.

Shadow Quality: Medium
Water Reflection Quality: Medium

Both settings have a huge impact on performance. The lower, the faster, but also the uglier. It depends a bit on personal taste, but Medium setting is my sweet spot. Definitely play around with them, they don't need to be too high for ESO to still look gorgeous! Water reflection is even set to off in its default setting on the GTX 780M.

Maximum Particle Distance: 768 (lowest)
Particle Suppression Distance: 35 (lowest)

These have the potential of negatively impacting performance if set too high, depending on the environment you're in (PVP in Cyrodiil readily comes to mind). As far as I understand them, you will always see the particle systems that you cause (by casting spells etc.), and those that can affect you, no matter what their setting actually is.

View Distance: 37 (default)

Higher settings of this will gobble up more memory, because there's more stuff visible in the distance. More memory needed to render a scene means more data loaded and discarded per unit of time, so I tend to go with the default, since I cannot really discern a big difference most of the time anyway.

Ambient Occlusion: ON (default is OFF)

This is a tricky one. Of course it costs a veritable chunk of performance, but with it enabled, dark scenes look even darker and more gloomy, while bright scenes look more pronounced and edgier. I like it, so I keep it on, but it definitely not needed.

Everything else is ON, with the exception of Magelight Lighning. I have it off on my sorcerer, because she runs around a lot with activated Magelight; all my other chars keep it on, except when they stumble across Magelight City...

chris.dillman

TiberiusTryton wrote: »

I have been playing on the lowest graphics possible since launch because if I don't I will crash almost anytime I get close to a fight in AvA. Sometimes I turn the ulta on just to see what the game looks like.... I play a glorified runescape most of the time here's my setup if you think you can help me.

iMac
27-inch, Mid 2011
Processor 3.1 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory 12 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6970M 1024 MB
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 (11G63)

I want to play the game in pretty mode!!1

Hi TiberiusTryton
The games running out of memory in AVA.

We are currently working with all teams bring memory usage down.

ESO 2.0 Added a ton of content, aka uses a lot more ram.

You should see a patch this week attempting to address this more.

Also do not update this iMac to 10.10…
It has access to even less RAM and will make AVA worse.

chris.dillman

Neryuslu wrote: »

Hello chris.dillman,

I would like to do some comments on this too.

I have the following machine: iMac late 2013, i5 processor, 780M Nvidia graphics card, 16 GB RAM and an SSD drive.

On my machine, the Windows client runs twice as fast. On the high presets, I get 60-70 FPS on the native resolution (2560x1440). On the Mac OS X client, my machine can only get to 30-35 FPS... Which is literally only half...

I tried your suggestion to compare to the OpenGL version on Windows, but the game menu and graphics are super glitchy, so I thought this would not make too much sense.

PS: I might be wrong, but I think on Mac OS X 10.9 the game ran better than now on Yosemite 10.10. I'm not sure, since it has been almost a year ago...

I'd be happy to help out on this thread and follow instructions you give. I could also make some comparing videos of different settings if this would help you guys out!

Hi Neryuslu,

We have random reports of 10.10 having worse performance.
We have also had reports of it mostly having better performance.

So far theres not been a clear way to reproduce this.

Did you turn VSynch off on Mac?
and you are playing full screen?

Also DX11 and OpenGL are very different rendering paths.
DX11 can be faster because it just works different, has more advanced features.
It should not be double the speed.

It is not comparing Apples to Apples.

You could try turning on DX9 in ESO thats also much closer to OpenGL.

The performance different on your mac is probably due to GPU drivers, OSX OpengL stack
possibly even GPU clock speed is turned down when running OSX.

How do the fans sound when you run the game?

Apple commonly turns down the clock speed on GPUs to make the machines silent or control heat better.
This happens in many Apple Laptops for instance.

Games on OSX generally run about 20% slower then Windows no matter what.

Atlan_daGonozal

Gix wrote: »

I have the luxury of playing this on a Mac Pro:

I too have a Mac Pro. Works like a charm. Apart from the patch download. That just takes forever.

Neryuslu

chris.dillman wrote: »

The performance different on your mac is probably due to GPU drivers, OSX OpengL stack
possibly even GPU clock speed is turned down when running OSX.

How do the fans sound when you run the game?

Apple commonly turns down the clock speed on GPUs to make the machines silent or control heat better.
This happens in many Apple Laptops for instance.

Games on OSX generally run about 20% slower then Windows no matter what.

Hi crhis,

This might be the reason. When I run the game in Windows, the fans start to run at a higher speed and I can clearly hear them. In OS X, they stay silent, so the GPU seems to run at a lower clock speed.

Is there any way to change this? I know that the game will never run as good on OS X as on Windows, but 50% of performance decrease is a bit frustrating.

So do we have a possibility to clock the GPU to normal speed? Unfortunately the official drivers from NVIDIA only work for the desktop cards, not for the built-in mobile cards in the iMacs, so I have to stick with the standard drivers Apple provides.

KhajitFurTrader

Neryuslu wrote: »

Unfortunately the official drivers from NVIDIA only work for the desktop cards, not for the built-in mobile cards in the iMacs, so I have to stick with the standard drivers Apple provides.

Go to http://www.geforce.com/drivers

[Edit: image below]

Click Search, then download the newest driver below. Install in Boot Camp.

Driver works fine in my setting, even updates itself.

N.B. I used to use my Boot Camp partition primarily to play WildStar (no Mac client, no wonder they lost customers left and right ). Haven't gotten around to deleting it yet, since everything else I could want from a Windows system at home I can do in VMs.

KhajitFurTrader

Neryuslu

Hi KhajitFurTrader,

I was talking about the OS X drivers. In Bootcamp I do have the newest drivers installed, and the game runs very smooth.

I might have found a solution for the GPU throtteling in OS X, I'll report back when I get home from work.

KhajitFurTrader

Ah, sorry that I misunderstood.

AFAIK, Nvidia only ever offered dedicated OS X drivers for the GPUs found in the Mac Pro. And that was only under the maxim of "use on your own risk".

swiftoholic

i am on a MacBook Pro Retina 15" with the Nvidia 750m.
Performance is on mid-settings acceptable but on ultra-settings the framerate drops under 30 fps. In cities it is even less.
Tomorrow i will try on the bootcamp partition under Windows 8.1. I'm curious about the difference and I will report as soon as I can.

chris.dillman

Neryuslu wrote: »

chris.dillman wrote: »

The performance different on your mac is probably due to GPU drivers, OSX OpengL stack
possibly even GPU clock speed is turned down when running OSX.

How do the fans sound when you run the game?

Apple commonly turns down the clock speed on GPUs to make the machines silent or control heat better.
This happens in many Apple Laptops for instance.

Games on OSX generally run about 20% slower then Windows no matter what.

Hi crhis,

This might be the reason. When I run the game in Windows, the fans start to run at a higher speed and I can clearly hear them. In OS X, they stay silent, so the GPU seems to run at a lower clock speed.

Is there any way to change this? I know that the game will never run as good on OS X as on Windows, but 50% of performance decrease is a bit frustrating.

So do we have a possibility to clock the GPU to normal speed? Unfortunately the official drivers from NVIDIA only work for the desktop cards, not for the built-in mobile cards in the iMacs, so I have to stick with the standard drivers Apple provides.

There is no way to change the GPU clock speed on most macs.
3rd party GPUs for Mac Pros might be the one exception.

Did you ever run the game under windows + opengl and compare performance there?

swiftoholic

so as I said, i've tried.
The performance is much more better under Bootcamp and Direct X 11. Everything feels snappier.
I can play under Ultra-Settings with the same or 20% more fps than under OS X with mid-settings.
So my suggestion is to play under Bootcamp if you have enough storage.

swiftoholic

What i forgot to mention is that the launcher is so tiny, it looks horrible.
Its because the higher dpi-rate because of the MacBook Retina.
i tried to use this less DPI-option but it didn't change anything

Neryuslu

chris.dillman wrote: »

There is no way to change the GPU clock speed on most macs.
3rd party GPUs for Mac Pros might be the one exception.

Did you ever run the game under windows + opengl and compare performance there?

I tried OpenGL and DirectX 9 on Windows. OpenGL is very glitchy and runs with 8 FPS, DirectX 9 runs very smooth with 60+ FPS. Again, on OpenGL on my Mac it runs with less then 30 FPS. This is far from normal! I tried it on 10.9 and 10.10, no difference between both OS...

KhajitFurTrader

Neryuslu wrote: »

I tried OpenGL and DirectX 9 on Windows. OpenGL is very glitchy and runs with 8 FPS, DirectX 9 runs very smooth with 60+ FPS. Again, on OpenGL on my Mac it runs with less then 30 FPS. This is far from normal! I tried it on 10.9 and 10.10, no difference between both OS...

A few years back, the nVidia OpenGL drivers for Windows were notorious for their lack of quality and optimization. I don't know whether they have improved much since then, because I have stopped building and using Windows-PCs ever since I switched to Macs 8 years ago. The games I used to play in Boot Camp didn't have OpenGL support.

chris.dillman

Neryuslu wrote: »

There is no way to change the GPU clock speed on most macs.
3rd party GPUs for Mac Pros might be the one exception.

Did you ever run the game under windows + opengl and compare performance there?

I tried OpenGL and DirectX 9 on Windows. OpenGL is very glitchy and runs with 8 FPS, DirectX 9 runs very smooth with 60+ FPS. Again, on OpenGL on my Mac it runs with less then 30 FPS. This is far from normal! I tried it on 10.9 and 10.10, no difference between both OS...

Hi Neryuslu

We think your windows GL drivers are simply bad or are not full drivers.

Might be a boot camp driver issue?

We have seen this a few times on the windows forums.


Anyhow what you are seeing is normal for an iMac under OSX.

Under OSX that GPU runs at maybe 1/2 the clock speed as windows.

If you run ESO on Windows you can watch the the CPU / GPU temps go up.

When running under OSX the the temps are about 1/2 what they are under Windows.

Meaning that under OSX the iMac GPU is doing a lot less work.

skyrimb16_ESO6

chris.dillman wrote: »

The games running out of memory in AVA.

Why doesn't it run out of memory on Windows?

chris.dillman wrote: »

We are currently working with all teams bring memory usage down.

Yeah, since 1 year. What's the damn problem?