Halo Performance
Over the past few days, there have been a number of excellent Halo for Macintosh reviews (Inside Mac Games probably has the most comprehensive reviews available). The problem is that none of these reviews give a good idea how well Halo runs on the Mac. While some mention some subjective results, none provide any numbers. Since what’s acceptable in terms of performance varies from person to person, this has left a lot of people wondering just how well (or how poorly) Halo for Macintosh will run on their Mac.
We thought we’d address this by providing some performance numbers from the two systems we have available: a Power Mac G5 1.6GHz and a PowerBook G4 1.25GHz.
Understanding the Results
We ran the Halo Time Demo at two resolutions (640×480 and 1024×768), with vertex shaders or vertex and pixel shaders enabled (if available), using a variety of “texture quality” and “model detail” settings. For each test, we provide two numbers: the first number is the average frame rate of the test, while the second number is the percentage of frames that were rendered at a rate below 30 frames per second.
“Texture quality” refers to the settings for decals, particles, and texture quality. * “High” means decals are on, particles are set to high, and texture quality is set to high. * “Medium” means decals are off, particles are on set to low, and texture quality is set to medium. * “Low” means decals are off, particles are off, and texture quality is set to low.
“Model detail” refers to the settings for lens flares and model detail. * “High” means both lens flares and model detail are set to high. * “Medium” means both lens flares and model detail are set to medium. * “Low” means both lens flares and model detail are set to low.
While all of the tests below were done with Mac OS X 10.3.1, we re-did some of the test with Mac OS X 10.3.2 to see if there was much of a difference with the new nVidia and ATi drivers. We found there wasn’t much of a difference in performance between 10.3.1 and 10.3.2 (maybe an extra frame or two per second in some of the tests).
Power Mac G5
Configuration:
- Power Mac G5 1.6GHz
- 768MB DDR333 RAM
- nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra w 64MB
- Mac OS X 10.3.1
Halo runs quite well on the Power Mac G5; it’s possible to run Halo at 1024×768 with most of the eye candy turned on and still have an average frame rate above 30fps. It’s also possible to push Halo above 60fps on this machine by lowering the resolution and disabling some of the eye candy. So, if you’re willing to choose between great graphics or high framerates, Halo will not disappoint you on this machine.
Unfortunately, pixel shaders are not supported on the GeForce FX 5200 Ultra, which means some of the (best) eye candy is not available. For some reason Westlake Interactive chose to support pixel shaders only in the Radeon 9600 and 9800. Owners of other cards (like the GeForce 4 Ti and the GeForce FX 5200) are out of luck.
Anyway, here are the results for the Power Mac G5:
Power Mac G5: 640×480 with Vertex Shaders
| Model Detail | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | Medium | Low | ||
| Texture Quality | High | 42fps, 21% | 56fps, 8% | 58fps, 8% |
| Medium | 48fps, 18% | 64fps, 7% | 67fps, 7% | |
| Low | 49fps, 17% | 67fps, 7% | 70fps, 7% | |
Power Mac G5: 1024×768 with Vertex Shaders
| Model Detail | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | Medium | Low | ||
| Texture Quality | High | 31fps, 58% | 36fps, 45% | 38fps, 42% |
| Medium | 37fps, 37% | 43fps, 22% | 45fps, 16% | |
| Low | 40fps, 31% | 44fps, 15% | 46fps, 10% | |
PowerBook G4
Configuration:
- PowerBook G4 1.25GHz
- 512MB DDR333 RAM
- ATi Radeon Mobility 9600 w 64MB
- Mac OS X 10.3.1
Unlike the Power Mac G5 above, this PowerBook G4 does support pixel shaders, so we were able to see all of the eye candy that Halo has to offer. Unfortunately, Halo doesn’t run very well on this PowerBook with all of the eye candy turned on (especially at higher resolutions). Disabling some of the eye candy and lowering the resolution makes Halo quite playable on this PowerBook G4, although we were never able to push the average frame rate above 41fps.
Here are the results for the PowerBook G4:
PowerBook G4: 640×480 with Vertex and Pixel Shaders
| Model Detail | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | Medium | Low | ||
| Texture Quality | High | 19fps, 90% | 21fps, 87% | 22fps, 84% |
| Medium | 22fps, 85% | 24fps, 78% | 26fps, 72% | |
| Low | 24fps, 84% | 26fps, 73% | 27fps, 69% | |
PowerBook G4: 640×480 with Vertex Shaders
| Model Detail | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | Medium | Low | ||
| Texture Quality | High | 28fps, 62% | 33fps, 41% | 33fps, 40% |
| Medium | 33fps, 52% | 40fps, 30% | 37fps, 36% | |
| Low | 33fps, 51% | 40fps, 31% | 41fps, 31% | |
PowerBook G4: 1024×768 with Vertex and Pixel Shaders
| Model Detail | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | Medium | Low | ||
| Texture Quality | High | 14fps, 96% | 15fps, 95% | 15fps, 94% |
| Medium | 14fps, 95% | 17fps, 94% | 16fps, 94% | |
| Low | 15fps, 94% | 17fps, 92% | 17fps, 94% | |
PowerBook G4: 1024×768 with Vertex Shaders
| Model Detail | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | Medium | Low | ||
| Texture Quality | High | 25fps, 73% | 31fps, 52% | 32fps, 52% |
| Medium | 28fps, 67% | 39fps, 30% | 39fps, 31% | |
| Low | 29fps, 65% | 40fps, 29% | 41fps, 28% | |
Conclusions
While both of the systems we tested exceed the recommended system requirements, we imagine that any recent Power Mac or PowerBook with a good video card (say a Radeon 9000 or a GeForce 4 Ti or later) will be able to run Halo reasonably well (especially if you’re willing to sacrifice some eye candy).
OS X 10.3.2 Released
Apple released OS X 10.3.2 via Software Update today. The update includes improved file sharing and directory services for mixed Mac and PC networks, improved font management, new ATI and nVidia graphics drivers, updated Mail and Address Book applications, as well as previous security updates. Detailed information about the update can be found at http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n25652.
SpamSieve 2.1 released
Michael Tsai has updated his fantastic Spam filtering application SpamSieve to version 2.1.
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