Maintenance for the week of March 30:
• [COMPLETE] ESO Store and Account System for maintenance – April 1, 1:00PM EDT (17:00 UTC) - 5:00PM EDT (21:00 UTC)
• [COMPLETE] ESO Store and Account System for maintenance – April 1, 1:00PM EDT (17:00 UTC) - 5:00PM EDT (21:00 UTC)
Catch-22 for performance on a Vega-equipped Mac
Elowen_Starveil
✭✭✭✭✭
The recent announcement of the new M2-based MacBook Pro's has brought up the sore (to me) point that the Mac client is basically in limbo. I have a 2019 MBP with an i9, 32GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, and I paid an extra $750 for the Vega 20 GPU upgrade, bringing the total to $4,000. I didn't want a TouchBar version, but my wife was open to spending the money, so I jumped. I had hoped that by spending extra on the configuration, it would run the couple of PC games I play, at least decently. I've been at this for 27 years or so; I wasn't expecting miracles. Civilization V runs _OK_ on it.
Imagine my surprise, though, when I found out that ESO stutters every couple of seconds while running around, like it's texture thrashing. I gave up on it. Then, a buddy of mine bought a 2020 MBP with just integrated graphics. Now imagine my surprise to see that ESO runs... pretty well on his configuration. Apparently Zenimax gave some love to the integrated graphics, and never optimized the Vega series. This surprises and disappoints me, given that it's an AMD chipset, which shouldn't be that far off similar chips in the PC desktop lineup. I did finally figure out that I could force my machine to run on the integrated graphics, but that only works on the internal display, and I want to play on my external monitor.
I've read that ZOS will not be supporting the Mx-based architecture at all, not that it would help me, because I'm very likely years away from being able to upgrade again. But it's surprising, since WoW has already been ported.
So I continue to play ESO on a 12-year-old PC with an Athlon64 and an nVidia 9xx-based video card. With a little tweaking it actually runs pretty well at 60 FPS. Which makes the fact that my $4,000 MBP basically can't run it all the more galling. And I fully realize that there could be a bit of anti-empathy here, given how much I've spent, but it's still an awesome machine, which I use all day, every day for my work. I just wish someone at ZOS would take an optimization pass to the Vega chipset, though I know that's a lost cause, especially now.
Imagine my surprise, though, when I found out that ESO stutters every couple of seconds while running around, like it's texture thrashing. I gave up on it. Then, a buddy of mine bought a 2020 MBP with just integrated graphics. Now imagine my surprise to see that ESO runs... pretty well on his configuration. Apparently Zenimax gave some love to the integrated graphics, and never optimized the Vega series. This surprises and disappoints me, given that it's an AMD chipset, which shouldn't be that far off similar chips in the PC desktop lineup. I did finally figure out that I could force my machine to run on the integrated graphics, but that only works on the internal display, and I want to play on my external monitor.
I've read that ZOS will not be supporting the Mx-based architecture at all, not that it would help me, because I'm very likely years away from being able to upgrade again. But it's surprising, since WoW has already been ported.
So I continue to play ESO on a 12-year-old PC with an Athlon64 and an nVidia 9xx-based video card. With a little tweaking it actually runs pretty well at 60 FPS. Which makes the fact that my $4,000 MBP basically can't run it all the more galling. And I fully realize that there could be a bit of anti-empathy here, given how much I've spent, but it's still an awesome machine, which I use all day, every day for my work. I just wish someone at ZOS would take an optimization pass to the Vega chipset, though I know that's a lost cause, especially now.
1
-
MEBengalsFan2001✭✭✭✭✭The issue that most games are optimized to play better on windows OS vs. Mac. It is quite disappointing that companies haven't optimized more games to play on Macs with higher end graphic cards.1
-
BlueRaven✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭The new macs introduced yesterday are just absolute monsters compared to anything else in the market.
https://youtu.be/VpXLX0xF2rM
But the eso Mac port is essentially phoned in.
It’s just a lazy port and not a true native client that Mac users should get. Mac users pay the same price as anyone else, the Mac icon is shown just as prominently as the other engines, yet it feels regulated to a third class status.
There appears to be no customer support. And absolute silence on long term issues with the badly ported client.2