How to get the most gaming performance out of OS X and my rig?

[Koalaman]

Hello all, I am running an EVGA GTX 680 Superclocked Edition along with an i5 3570K OC's to 4.5Ghz. But performance in games is a little... skippy, and I'm only at 1600x900 ATM. I've installed the Nvidia 304 drivers as well as the CUDA drivers, and have even set the steam launch options to "-high" (I don't know 100% if that works in OSX).

And you see my main issue is that in games such as Portal 2 and the Witcher 2, there are these slight "hiccups" and the game stutters. Is there any possible way to fix this?


On a side note, is there anyway I can set my i5 to run at 4.5GHz all the time without speedstep? I tried in the bios with no success. Thank you for any help or information.

 

[MacGamer]

You have a pretty nice rig there! Indeed, with that graphics card, you should be able to have great performance.

I would suggest installing a SSDT that matches your processor the better (this greatly increased my performance and Geekbench some months ago).
Also, some suggest changing the profile kext (such as iMac x.x for example). I need to try this but a close friend tells me using the latest iMac profile improved his Borderlands 2 performance.

Hope this helps!

Cheers!

 

[Dr_Oh]

I would recommend playing games solely in a windows partition/drive. Most of the current big/larger title games for OS X are ports, and they never run as well as they do naitively in windows. With a 680 and the OC'ed i5 you shouldn't be having issues playing any current games. I run into this problem all the time, and it is the sole reason I have a windows drive. For example, while playing Borderlands 2 in windows (with a 660ti) I can get ~100+ fps with all settings on the highest while I struggle to get consistently get 60 fps in OS X with just high settings.

 

[Koalaman]

Thanks for the responses. I will try the iMac thing! And I'm afraid I hare dualbooting...I don't know why, but I hate it. lol -KoalaMan

 

[Koalaman]

Thank you guys! The iMac12.2 did improve borderlands 2! But I heard 13.1 has issues with speed stepping, or I'd try that one...lol

 

[PJALM]

iMac 13,x won't work correctly till 10.8.3 come out also IB PM needs special setup.

 

[Koalaman]

iMac 13,x won't work correctly till 10.8.3 come out also IB PM needs special setup.

I don't understand. What benefit would IB PM have for me? Speed step works (18,18,34,45). Would I see any difference?

 

[PJALM]

SB PM will work fine on a IB processor but IB PM is a lot more efficient.

Read here http://www.tonymacx86.com/mountain-...tive-ivy-bridge-cpu-gpu-power-management.html

 

[Koalaman]

Okay you guys, I've reverted back to MacPro3.1 due to terrible audio popping in 12.2. The game's still run the same, I think my original issues were because I was didn't have the latest patch.

 

[Kudagra]

Sorry to revive such an old thread, but I can't PM quite yet. What exactly did you patch to solve your problem? I am having the same stuttering problems in SC2 and Borderlands 2 (graphically light games) with a 3930k and GTX 770, wheres I can play them on my windows side flawlessly, along with BF 3 and Crysis 3.