The Mac OS X Client's absymal performance is a joke.

[Alef]

What version of OS X are most of you using? Is anyone using the latest El Capitan beta and does that help/hinder performance at all?

Why would El Capitan help ? I know Appel introduce Metal in it, but the FFXIV client is a just a wrapper and does not use Metal ? I guess to benefit from Metal, that would mean SE develops a new client isn't it ?

Best
Alef

[KisaiTenshi]

Why would El Capitan help ? I know Appel introduce Metal in it, but the FFXIV client is a just a wrapper and does not use Metal ? I guess to benefit from Metal, that would mean SE develops a new client isn't it ?

Best
Alef

Either SE would have to specifically design a Mac Client (eg like there is a separate PS4 client) or the third party would have to get the wrapper software to use Metal instead. There's been some comments that the DX11 client works somewhat better, but AFAIK it seems like the third party developer was way too naieve to think they could use the same technique used on some other MMORPG's that have low GPU requirements. (I mean really, FFXIV -IS- the one with the highest GPU requirements. Everything else I've ever played, except for Wizardry Online (which was specific to one dungeon) never required a video card upgrade from what was generally a 99$ GPU)

FFXIV requires a much higher minimum requirement, even V1.0 made systems cry.

[Cyrin]

Why would El Capitan help ? I know Appel introduce Metal in it, but the FFXIV client is a just a wrapper and does not use Metal ? I guess to benefit from Metal, that would mean SE develops a new client isn't it ?

Best
Alef

El Capitan itself wouldn't help unless, like others noted, it meant the client was rewritten to utilize Metal. Since we know that isn't the case, I was asking from a graphic driver perspective. The newer OS Beta could have a newer display driver not found on Yosemite. This could potentially cause a difference in performance between the two versions. However, judging from other observations, it seems like the client is doing a terrible job utilizing any 3d hardware technology so graphic driver version is essentially a moot point.

[Delily]

El Capitan itself wouldn't help unless, like others noted, it meant the client was rewritten to utilize Metal. Since we know that isn't the case, I was asking from a graphic driver perspective. The newer OS Beta could have a newer display driver not found on Yosemite. This could potentially cause a difference in performance between the two versions. However, judging from other observations, it seems like the client is doing a terrible job utilizing any 3d hardware technology so graphic driver version is essentially a moot point.

Sadly, I doubt Square is going to invest the time and money into building a native Metal client. More than likely, nVidia will need to update Cider to target Metal and not OpenGL. The other factor, as mentioned is that SE believes it can get better performance by using the DirectX 11 client and not the Direct9 client.

[KisaiTenshi]

Sadly, I doubt Square is going to invest the time and money into building a native Metal client. More than likely, nVidia will need to update Cider to target Metal and not OpenGL. The other factor, as mentioned is that SE believes it can get better performance by using the DirectX 11 client and not the Direct9 client.

I think you mean nVidia will have to update the Gameworks libraries to recognize it's running on Cider. nVidia has nothing to do with Cider.

[Delily]

I think you mean nVidia will have to update the Gameworks libraries to recognize it's running on Cider. nVidia has nothing to do with Cider.

https://www.transgaming.com/news/nvi...ity-technology

nVidia bought the Cider division.

[KisaiTenshi]

https://www.transgaming.com/news/nvi...ity-technology

nVidia bought the Cider division.

But that does explain why all the Cider data is not accessible from their front page, only through a search engine. The Transgaming and FFXIV announcement was March 8th (edit: had to go check the date Transgaming sale closed, which was the 16th of June)

I imagine nVidia has absolutely no incentive to make Cider support Metal. They bought Transgaming to develop games for their Shield console. Really, about the closest alternative for SE is to use CrossOver.

Any improvement made to WINE by this acquisition is a plus, but nVidia's track record for Linux is worse than AMD's and Intel's combined. AMD at least gives the Open Source community the data they need to develop Linux-native drivers. nVidia is binary-blob-hell... if you don't have the exact Linux kernel to go with the blob, the driver doesn't work.

But as for what this means for the Mac platform... likely nothing. Consider that CUDA is available on the Mac Platform, if nVidia were to "fix" cider, so to speak, it may make Apple prefer nVidia parts in future Mac's, but that's wishful thinking IMO.

[Macbrush]

I left FFXIV for it's lack of Mac support, and been waiting for months for this to came out. And to my surprise, I felt like a second class. Why did I pay for a full game (including the original game which I paid for on Windows) and got a ½ ass virtual port?

I have a Mac running on i7 3770, 32GB RAM, GTx 980. Although I didn't expect the game ran as smooth as on Windows side, but it really disguised me to found out that I could only run on 1080 resolution with desktop normal setting, let's forget about high settings on any resolution. With my configs, I was expecting max out on a 4K monitor and still get 20 fps-ish.

This is simply appalling! Square might as well tell Mac users to keep their money and keep playing WoW.