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Steam doesn't play well with 10.6.4

by Mike Schramm Jun 21st 2010 at 3:00PM

A warning for heavy users of Steam on the Mac: apparently the software doesn't play well with the recently-released 10.6.4 upgrade. Valve has told users that "the recent 10.6.4 update from Apple has noticeable performance issues for NVidia graphic chip owners running high performance games," and that unless 10.6.4 upgrade is necessary, users looking to avoid performance problems with their games should stay avoid it until the problem is fixed. If you've already updated and are experiencing the issue under Steam, it's time to hit up Apple Support and let them know.

It's interesting to hear that Apple still hasn't gotten the games thing down, even after the largest digital distribution platform around has made a high profile transition over to the operating system. Hopefully Apple will fix the issue soon and those who've updated to 10.6.4 can get back to gaming at full speed.

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A warning for heavy users of Steam on the Mac: apparently the software doesn't play well with the recently-released 10.6.4 upgrade. Valve...
 

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Jose

So there is no fix for this yet is there? I wanted to buys a game or two during the summer sale Valve has going on but the crappy performance put my impulse buy on check.

June 30 2010 at 10:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
EvinTheSwift

For the most part I haven't had any problem except for rainbow walls and floor in TF2.

June 22 2010 at 2:48 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to EvinTheSwift's comment
Joe

Sounds like a normal map getting rendered to the color channel. Nice.
My TF2 performance also became considerably more jenky.
Mid 09 Macbook, 2 GB RAM, Nvidia 9400m.
I only played once since the update. I'll have to check and see if anything has changed, but I don't imagine it has improved.
Thing that broils me about this, there was some dude on the Steam Powered User Forums going on about how 10.6.4 was going to bring significant performance boosts due to updated graphics drivers. So of course I applied that update with great zeal. All I gotta say is, I hope I never see that dude in real life...

Cuz, you know, I'll give him a strong talking to ;-)

June 22 2010 at 1:21 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Josh

I just got done playing Portal for an hour and the whole time I was making turrets cry with no problems on a unibody 2010 Macbook.

June 21 2010 at 11:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mandamus

I'm sorry to hear about your copy editor passing away, you have my condolences.

June 21 2010 at 5:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Justin

Would have been nice to know before I updated yesterday.

June 21 2010 at 5:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
DA360

I noticed this seems to be related to Mac Pros with the GTX 285, especally considering I have a desktop (hackintosh, I use it for things like encoding videos) has one and I had to roll back to 10.6.3. Everything I did, even installing nVidia's latest drivers for 10.6.4, and using the KEXTs from 10.6.3 didn't help. It dropped my performance in games like TF2 from 150+ FPS to under 30fps. This effect was also seen on other OpenGL programs as well.

But on my Late 2008 MacBook Pro, most OpenGL games/programs run BETTER than it did on 10.6.3. So as I mentioned, it seems to be mainly an issue with the GTX 285.

June 21 2010 at 5:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Stuart Carnie

I've noticed artifacts in Killing Floor that weren't there before too.

I have a MacPro (early 2008), 8-CPU, w/ NVidia GTX 285, 10GB RAM, so it's no slouch, but the GFX issues are frustrating, though at least not unplayable...

June 21 2010 at 5:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Janichsan

Definitely a misleading headline: it's not *Steam* that has the problems, it's the *Source engine games* – and possibly some others (though I haven't encountered one yet).

June 21 2010 at 4:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Arnan de Gans

It got worse than in 10.6.3? And i don't even have an Nvidia card to justify it... :(

Bah, steam! You should fix your client and engine stuff instead of blaming Apple...

June 21 2010 at 3:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Arnan de Gans's comment
Prometheus25

It's an issue with the display drivers, so there's really not much that Valve can do

June 21 2010 at 4:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dustin

Well, idk about the rest of you, but my Steam games are still playing fine. I'm on a mid 2010 MacBook Pro 15" Core i5. Not too sure what everyone else is experiencing.

Hopefully 10.6.5 or 10.7 will bring full graphics support and show that an Apple computer can run as good or better than an equivalent Windows PC.

June 21 2010 at 3:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Dustin's comment
Steve

It can definitely run better. Running games in Windows on my Macbook Pro is one of the best gaming experiences I've had.

Combine the potential of the hardware with the streamlined operating system of OS X, and it could be SOOOO much better than Windows gaming.

June 21 2010 at 5:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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