Bad Performance under Mac OS X Yosemite

axsatr

Hello Everyone,

I'm using a 2012 MacBook Pro Retina (2.3 GHz i7, 8GB RAM, GT650M 1GB) and it seems that the performance with ESO under Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10.3) is really appalling. Previously, I ran ESO under Bootcamp with the same machine under Windows 8.1 64-bit with Medium (Resolution: 1920 x 1200) settings and I obtained FPS ranging from 40-70. However, under Yosemite, at the Lowest setting available (Resolution: 1280 x 800, Everything set to lowest or Off), and I can't seem to even pass 30FPS. Is this a know issue? Are there any workarounds that I could attempt? Currently I'm reinstalling the whole game to check if that alleviates the issue.

P/S: I removed my bootcamp installation because of the SSD space constraints and the fact that Windows doesn't support the Mac's Headphone/Mic combo jack thingamajig for the Apple EarPods. Also for some odd reason, the game only allows a max resolution of 1440x900 and even then I still can't get anywhere over 30 FPS and I'm also noticing thing like the blue wayshrine fire takes 5 seconds or so to load after approaching a wayshrine and once it's loaded my FPS will further plummet to 20-ish.

Also, I opened a support ticket (# 150527-000627) and they said that this behaviour is normal and should be expected and I found that answer to be rather unsatisfactory.

Thanks

chris.dillman

Hi axsatr

The ESO Mac Client performance is actually really good for OSX.
But OSX + OpenGL 2 is slower then Windows + DX11 on the same hardware.

It is also very possible that the CPU/GPU is not even running at the same clock speed when you run under Windows vs OSX.

Apple tunes their machines to run quiet and save battery, that means adjusting GPU clock speed downwards.

OpenGL 2.1 also needs to do additional work to draw the ground and shadows.

Ground is drawn x2 for example.

The shadow shader is just slow.
Turning down shadow quality can be a big win on mac.

Anyhow the answer is if you want to try and compare Apples to Apples
you need to run the OpenGL version of ESO on Windows to compare performance.



If you really need the Extra speed run ESO under Windows.



The FPS you see on mac sound slow for 10.3 on that laptop.

On a MBPR 15 + 650m
ESO set to medium at the default 1440x res
Vsynch off

We see 40-60 FPS when looking at blue wayshrine fire in Cyrodiil

Now if you are in a busy city you might get much lower FPS
at that point the game is mostly CPU bound animating lots of walking NPCs etc.


Make sure you that the 650m GPU is actually running the game and not the Intel 4000.
To do this … Run ESO… enter windowed mode and then look at the about this mac in the finder.
It should list the currently active GPU.

There was a firmware bug in these machines after launch that sometimes stopped the 650 from turning on.
Apple did try and fix this with some updates… but it is worth checking incase it got stuck.

On that laptop you should run ESO on medium at the apple suggested desktop res of 1440x.

ESO can run at higher res you just need to set the desk top res before starting ESO up.

Nudoru

Informative @chris.dillman !

I just purchased the game and I have a top spec'd '14 15" MBP. I'm seeing all kinds of stuttering issues that are mitigated by turning down the GFX settings a bit but it's still choppy at times.