64 replies to this topic

[EllieFeral]

Hi IMG, hope you don't mind me creating a new thread for this; but a lot of people have been asking for an update, and now that we have some I want to make sure it reaches the people who asked.

We know you are hotly anticipating Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on macOS. So we are pleased to confirm that not only are we now in the final stages of development, but also that Deus Ex: Mankind Divided will be polished with Apple’s Metal 2 graphics technology.

Please be aware that despite our best efforts, we couldn’t get Mankind Divided to run well enough on Intel and Nvidia graphics cards. Therefore, the initial release will support AMD graphics cards only.

The game is coming to the Feral Store and Steam. Full system requirements and a release date will be revealed closer to launch.

[Matt Diamond]

I guess Feral didn't get the memo that the Mac port was secretly cancelled long ago.

[jeannot]

Haven't you read the rules Ellie? You shall not discuss individual games here!

[Cougar]

Man, the nvidia graphics drivers must be real garbage.

I hope the new Mac Pro gets an nVidia option so if nothing else they will have to be improved.

[Janichsan]

jeannot, on 29 November 2017 - 12:05 PM, said:

Haven't you read the rules Ellie? You shall not discuss individual games here!

I don’t know what you are talking about. The thread is absolutely correctly posted in the "Action and Shooters" subforum...

[ipickert55]

Cougar, on 29 November 2017 - 02:02 PM, said:

Man, the nvidia graphics drivers must be real garbage.

I hope the new Mac Pro gets an nVidia option so if nothing else they will have to be improved.

Isn't Apple dumping nvidia cards again because AMD gave them a sweet deal?

[ozzy]

Ugh, this new AMD only trend is driving me nuts. Looks like I should’ve just bought it in the last steam sale given I’ll have to play it in Windows anyway...

[Cougar]

ipickert55, on 29 November 2017 - 05:57 PM, said:

Isn't Apple dumping nvidia cards again because AMD gave them a sweet deal?

Even if they aren't, nVidia support should be better if Apple wants to commit to e-GPU support and upgradability in the new Mac Pro.

[DirtyHarry50]

Go Feral!

[jeannot]

ipickert55, on 29 November 2017 - 05:57 PM, said:

Isn't Apple dumping nvidia cards again because AMD gave them a sweet deal?

I've read it was because Apple and nVidia had a dispute over patents (related to mobile GPUs).

[Camper-Hunter]

ozzy, on 29 November 2017 - 06:24 PM, said:

Ugh, this new AMD only trend is driving me nuts. Looks like I should’ve just bought it in the last steam sale given I’ll have to play it in Windows anyway...

The next Steam sale will be soon (Christmas holidays).

[Mr Pink]

AMD only is a bummer, seriously.
With HITMAN it was the same story.
How likely is it, those games will ever be updated with nVidia support, especially for older nVidia Macs, supporting Metal?

[elowel]

Mankind Divided is a very demanding game, so even if nVidia cards were "supported", you could hardly expect enjoyable framerates considering how old the 780M GTX is

[ozzy]

elowel, on 30 November 2017 - 05:06 PM, said:

Mankind Divided is a very demanding game, so even if nVidia cards were "supported", you could hardly expect enjoyable framerates considering how old the 780M GTX is

What about a brand new 1070 - think that can handle it!

[ipickert55]

jeannot, on 30 November 2017 - 12:58 AM, said:

I've read it was because Apple and nVidia had a dispute over patents (related to mobile GPUs).

You're probably right, I was talking out of my ass

[DirtyHarry50]

ipickert55, on 30 November 2017 - 06:24 PM, said:

You're probably right, I was talking out of my ass

That's what that was. I thought I heard ducks quackin'.

[marksatt]

I've got a few things to mention, in defence of Ellie and the rest of the staff at Feral and the folks at Aspyr:

1. The Nvidia 600 & 700 GPUs are now pretty old and the 680M & 780M apart are quite slow. I could imagine that even the 680M & 780M are marginal on performance for these very high-end games (Mafia 3, Hitman, DXMD) even assuming no software problems. Most of these games require a full-fat Nvidia 660 GTX which is now slow in the Windows world, but faster than a lot of Mac GPUs.

2. Understandably focus for driver development tends to be on the shipping and forthcoming GPUs - GPUs that last shipped three years ago aren't so Nvidia Kepler support is being maintained rather than fundamentally improved. As newer games demand fundamentally faster GPUs it will become less and less relevant to games developers.

3. Nvidia are still plugging away on the WebDriver but I suspect they aren't able to sell as many full-fat GPUs to Mac users as they did in the past as there is no traditional Mac Pro. Being an unofficial add-on can make it harder to support - I've never officially supported it for UE4 for example - because developers typically aren't allowed to build Hackintoshes and effort tends to focus on the typical users rather than outliers. If eGPUs are successful then this situation would change if lots of Mac users start running Nvidia GPUs again. Everyone who wants Nvidia to stick around should go out and buy an eGPU box and a Pascal GPU!

4. Apple haven't shipped any Nvidia parts even though Maxwell and Pascal have a >=2x performance per watt advantage over equivalent AMD parts. I'd be surprised if AMD were selling at such a steep discount that the performance per dollar was better for AMD parts. OTOH look at consoles and how that has played out for AMD vs. Nvidia. Ultimately Apple's reasoning is immaterial, they aren't shipping Nvidia parts and don't seem to plan on doing so in the short-term, so Nvidia driver support is dependent on Nvidia's goodwill which is not inexhaustible.

[Mr Pink]

No, I get it.
Apple seems to be only using AMD since 2015.
But how sure can we really be about the future?
Between 2012 and 2014 they were only going for nVidia graphics chips.
Who says that won't happen again?
The change of graphics chips every few years is kind of annoying.
To be honest, I'd rather have Apple build their own graphics chips for the Mac, like they do for the newest iPhones with their A11 chip.

[ipickert55]

Mr Pink, on 03 December 2017 - 01:28 PM, said:

No, I get it.
Apple seems to be only using AMD since 2015.
But how sure can we really be about the future?
Between 2012 and 2014 they were only going for nVidia graphics chips.
Who says that won't happen again?
The change of graphics chips every few years is kind of annoying.
To be honest, I'd rather have Apple build their own graphics chips for the Mac, like they do for the newest iPhones with their A11 chip.

Would that hurt the development process for porting games though? Another hardware milestone to break through? I don't know the answer genuinely wondering.

[marksatt]

Mr Pink, on 03 December 2017 - 01:28 PM, said:

No, I get it.
Apple seems to be only using AMD since 2015.
But how sure can we really be about the future?
Between 2012 and 2014 they were only going for nVidia graphics chips.
Who says that won't happen again?
The change of graphics chips every few years is kind of annoying.

First, apologies to Ellie for derailing her thread by trying to defend Feral & other developers against accusations that they aren't trying hard enough when they can't support the old Nvidia GPUs. I am delighted that their efforts on DXMD are finally being rewarded!

Second: I can only ask you to ponder the question "If a 2x performance/Watt advantage isn't enough for Apple to buy from Nvidia what would be?". There's plenty of speculation as to why. As a developer I do not expect the situation to change. As such Mac gaming needs AMD to design faster GPUs and for eGPU to become successful and viable for developers to target, esp. with regard to Nvidia GPUs.