Graphics gripes

BreacaT · March 2016

OK, so I only use my Mac to get a little playtime done on lunch breaks at work as opposed to main-time-gaming on my PC at home, so 'ultimate' gfx aren't majorly important, but since the patch they are horrendous. Whilst I haven't experienced any 'pink' stuff, the pop-in is awful and the edges of landscapes and stuff is really 'rough' with clearly defined edges either pixlated or in odd colors....

My settings...

I run the gfx settings pretty low since it's not the most powerful Mac, but this is really poor and really detracts from the enjoyment of playing the game.

Mac specs..
iMac 27-inch Mid 2011
Yosemite 10.10.5
CPU 2.7 i5
Ram 12GB
GFX AMD Radon HD6770M 512MB <- (geez is that all it is? Never looked before, a little different to the 3gb 7970 at home!)

Is there something I'm missing or are they really screwed now?

Chris

BreacaT · March 2016

Following my other post on the drop in gfx quality since the patch, what the heck is going on with shadows? The way they 'grow and spread' as you approach the shadowed area is just plain messed up!

See the unshadowed are at the foot of the cliffs, they should be in full shadow. If you approach it then the shadow spreads backwards towards the cliff which is just wrong wrong wrong!

Trying to refrain from appearing to rant or use any four-lettered-expletives, but in this case, it's just frackin' dire!

KhajitFurTrader · March 2016

From Wikipedia:

AMD has confirmed that the HD 6700 cards use the Juniper XT and Juniper Pro cores from the HD 5700 series, and therefore they are not formally Northern Islands GPUs. Thus 6770 and 6750 are essentially the 5770 and 5750 respectively, with label being the main difference.

So, effectively we have a 7 year old GPU architecture, and very little VRAM to work with. I'm sorry to say, but these iMacs don't quite cut the mustard anymore. While the graphics look absolutely gorgeous now in Ultra-High quality on a 3 year old 27" iMac featuring the GTX 780M w/ 4 GB VRAM, Macs in general aren't build to be high-end gaming machines, due to limiting space and thermal budgeting factors. This, and the fact that Macs can less and less be customized by their users, lets them age faster in terms of being able to play current (or updated, in this case) games.

BreacaT · March 2016

KhajitFurTrader wrote: »

From Wikipedia:

AMD has confirmed that the HD 6700 cards use the Juniper XT and Juniper Pro cores from the HD 5700 series, and therefore they are not formally Northern Islands GPUs. Thus 6770 and 6750 are essentially the 5770 and 5750 respectively, with label being the main difference.

So, effectively we have a 7 year old GPU architecture, and very little VRAM to work with. I'm sorry to say, but these iMacs don't quite cut the mustard anymore. While the graphics look absolutely gorgeous now in Ultra-High quality on a 3 year old 27" iMac featuring the GTX 780M w/ 4 GB VRAM, Macs in general aren't build to be high-end gaming machines, due to limiting space and thermal budgeting factors. This, and the fact that Macs can less and less be customized by their users, lets them age faster in terms of being able to play current (or updated, in this case) games.

Oh, I whole heartedly agree with you, it's old and underpowered, but it worked fine before the patch and not now.

And at the risk of starting mac vs pc, and since I use both I feel I can say that imo, Macs only have two things going for them, aesthetics and the way VMFusion works with multiple desktops and don't get me started on the quirky OS! Fortunately, I only use that mac at work.

Cheers!

j.frank.nicholsb14_ESO · March 2016

I am sorry to say you represent a very small demographic. A game can not support everyone. I run a Mac (actually Hackintosh) - and I compare the two (since I can dual boot into Windows) and the Mac version is very playable, not leading edge as the PC version, but very nice, better than most other games I play. I commend Zenimax for the excellent support they are putting into OSX.

Sadly, for you, the latest update moved from a 32 bit client to a 64 bit client. The result will be continued excellent support for more modern OS X machines, but older machines like yours will start to feel the pain of trying to keep up.

Frank

KhajitFurTrader · March 2016

BreacaT wrote: »

Oh, I whole heartedly agree with you, it's old and underpowered, but it worked fine before the patch and not now.

The switch to OpenGL 4.1 and a 64-bit binary with the latest patch are big changes in and by themselves, but other aspects (like improved texture quality) are more taxing on the hardware as well.

BreacaT wrote: »

And at the risk of starting mac vs pc, and since I use both I feel I can say that imo, Macs only have two things going for them, aesthetics and the way VMFusion works with multiple desktops and don't get me started on the quirky OS! Fortunately, I only use that mac at work.

Haha, I've switched to exclusively using Macs at home 9 years ago, because at work I only get to wrestle with Windows, and I thought the aesthetics of the first aluminum iMacs to be very pleasing. While I've built my own PCs for almost three decades (first one was a PC/AT clone with an Am286 CPU -- 20 MHz! -- and a C&T NEAT chipset), I find Macs and OS X much more laid back and relaxing now. Love VMware Fusion as well, wouldn't want to miss it.