Apple released the Snow Leopard Graphics Update the other day to fix issues experienced by some users when playing high-performance games on a system with Mac OS X 10.6.4 installed. Valve Corporation was the original entity that brought this issue to Apple’s attention, while also telling their customers to hold off on upgrading to 10.6.4 until Apple fixed the issue.
In the weeks since, Valve had been working with Apple and hardware companies to resolve the issue for their Mac-based customers. Valve has now released a note fraught with technical jargon explaining what they did to improve frame rates for their customers. With all that said, some customers have could see anywhere from 15% to 120% in frame rate performance.
We are seeing dramatic performance improvements on iMac (Late 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac mini (Early 2009 and Mid 2010), Mac Pro (Early 2009), MacBook (Early 2009 and Mid 2010) and MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010) and MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010) models. Depending on the game, video settings and the hardware, we have measured frame rate improvements from 15% to 120% on these systems. On older systems, we are generally already operating at the limits of the hardware, so it is not obvious that any significant performance improvements can be achieved in the future.
What a world of change, just last April, the gaming community on the Mac was essentially nonexistent. Now, Valve has put all of their high profile games on the platform, and opened up their Steam online store to any developer who wishes to do the same.
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