Early Doom3 Benchmarks for Mac OS X

Early Doom3 Benchmarks for Mac OS X
Posted :: Mar 4, 2005 by Antares

This is the first in a series of short articles on the State of Mac Gaming. Enjoy!

-- Antares

Macworld has published the first benchmarks of Doom 3 on the Macintosh using the gold master release from Aspyr Media. Aspyr ports some of the most popular PC releases, including Call of Duty, The Sims and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

The tests were conducted using a Dual 2.5 G5 PowerMac with 2.5 GB of memory and the X800 XT. It is unclear why Macworld chose this card, as opposed to the better performing nVidia 6800 Ultra.

The results are roughly comparable to similar PC setups, with the exception of higher performance PC rigs that have significant leads on the PowerMac. According to Macworld, id Software did not have much to gain in optimizing the code for dual processors. However, Quake 3 Arena saw increases of over 100 FPS from this optimization, so it may be an option for the future. The PowerMac line is well known for its innovation in dual-processing technology, and boasts the industries fastest front side bus (1.25 GHz for each processor).

It is important to note that Apple releases the drivers for all Macintosh graphics cards, and games often require the updates contained in OS X point releases to see performance gains and bug fixes. Mac development teams usually consist of a handful of people, and fixes can take weeks or even months.

It is rumored that the PowerMac line will see a much-needed update over the next few months. The 64-bit code in Tiger may also increase performance.

For more information, view the full article by clicking here.