FFXIV Performance On An iMac

I'm posting in General because this isn't a ticket issue.

I use a late 2013 iMac to play FFXIV. My typical frame rate is approximately 30.

Now, I've read somewhere that running the Mac version of FFXIV is slower than running the Windows version of FFXIV through Boot Camp or a program like that. Is this true?

How much better is the performance? I appreciate any information you can provide.

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Originally Posted by Kacho_Nacho

I'm posting in General because this isn't a ticket issue.

I use a late 2013 iMac to play FFXIV. My typical frame rate is approximately 30.

Now, I've read somewhere that running the Mac version of FFXIV is slower than running the Windows version of FFXIV through Boot Camp or a program like that. Is this true?

How much better is the performance? I appreciate any information you can provide.

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Not sure , but in general playing on mac is never better than on a windows pc. Time to switch to actual window gaming pc or laptop. Lol

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Originally Posted by RayddenPrime

Not sure , but in general playing on mac is never better than on a windows pc. Time to switch to actual window gaming pc or laptop. Lol

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When I posted my question I thought, "you wanna bet the first response will be to switch to a Windows PC." You didn't disappoint.

Being on disability, I don't have a lot of cash. Buying a Windows gaming PC just to play FFXIV isn't going to happen.

Moving on.

So, the 2013 iMac has an Nvidia GeForce 775M, if I remember right. That's a bit of an older card, but FFXIV only requires a GeForce 400 series. That'd be more than sufficient for running FFXIV on Windows as well. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you offhand what the exact performance improvement will be, but there will be an improvement. To elaborate (feel free to skip the rest of this post if you prefer)...

The 'Mac' version of FFXIV actually is the Windows version, running through Crossover. Crossover is a translation layer that lets Windows applications run on Mac. To elaborate, the 'brain' of a Windows installation and a Mac installation—the CPU on which it runs—is the same; the two operating systems are like different languages, and the programs are like books. If the computers were people, then everyone has a brain (we assume), but they don't always speak the same language.

If you have a book in Japanese and a reader who only speaks English, they need someone to translate it for them. That's what Crossover does.

The problem is, just like having someone translate a book for you takes longer than just reading it, the Crossover layer does introduce a little bit of overhead to each call. And that does have a performance impact. If I ask the DirectX graphics system on Windows to do something, that request just goes right to DirectX. With Crossover running a Windows application, the request goes to Crossover, which turns it into one appropriate for a Mac. (Or, in this case, it uses DXVK to turn it into a Vulkan call, which uses MoltenVK to turn it into a macOS Metal call...)

If you use Boot Camp, all that does really is provide a bootloader that lets you boot between Windows and macOS, and the drivers/software so you can access your files in both operating systems. In effect, your computer becomes bilingual; booting into Windows means the program just runs without any extra effort. The upshot of which is, yes, there will definitely be a performance gain running on Windows.

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Originally Posted by Packetdancer

So, the 2013 iMac has an Nvidia GeForce 775M, if I remember right. That's a bit of an older card, but FFXIV only requires a GeForce 400 series. That'd be more than sufficient for running FFXIV on Windows as well. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you offhand what the exact performance improvement will be, but there will be an improvement. To elaborate (feel free to skip the rest of this post if you prefer)...

The 'Mac' version of FFXIV actually is the Windows version, running through Crossover. Crossover is a translation layer that lets Windows applications run on Mac. To elaborate, the 'brain' of a Windows installation and a Mac installation—the CPU on which it runs—is the same; the two operating systems are like different languages, and the programs are like books. If the computers were people, then everyone has a brain (we assume), but they don't always speak the same language.

If you have a book in Japanese and a reader who only speaks English, they need someone to translate it for them. That's what Crossover does.

The problem is, just like having someone translate a book for you takes longer than just reading it, the Crossover layer does introduce a little bit of overhead to each call. And that does have a performance impact. If I ask the DirectX graphics system on Windows to do something, that request just goes right to DirectX. With Crossover running a Windows application, the request goes to Crossover, which turns it into one appropriate for a Mac. (Or, in this case, it uses DXVK to turn it into a Vulkan call, which uses MoltenVK to turn it into a macOS Metal call...)

If you use Boot Camp, all that does really is provide a bootloader that lets you boot between Windows and macOS, and the drivers/software so you can access your files in both operating systems. In effect, your computer becomes bilingual; booting into Windows means the program just runs without any extra effort. The upshot of which is, yes, there will definitely be a performance gain running on Windows.

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Thank you! That's exactly what I needed to know.

The Mac client is not really a Mac client at all now - its basically the PC client in a Wine wrapper so it performs worse than it would on the same Mac than a native PC client in Bootcamp.

If you can go bootcamp that is best choice, performance-wise.

How much better, you can check yourself using the benchmark: run it on both with same settings, and compare results.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

If you can go bootcamp that is best choice, performance-wise.

How much better, you can check yourself using the benchmark: run it on both with same settings, and compare results.

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^this

I get about double the frame rate in boot camp. However if I reduce graphical settings (especially resolution) the macOS client (which seems to use the codeweavers middleware and custom WINE version) is certainly playable, just at about 50% of the frame rate on the same machine using boot camp.

It is nice not to have to reboot just to check your retainers.