UE4 runs significantly better on my windows 8.1 drive than my OSX Mavericks drive ( I run a hackintosh and can boot into either one). Framerate is better on all projects, no screen tearing, more responsive interface, and much more responsive mouse control. I was curious how much of a hassle it would be to develop on Windows 8.1 and move my projects over to OSX with an external drive for when I need to build to the device using Xcode.
I haven’t had any issues doing this. It is more of a hassle since you are moving files, but I mainly work on a windows machine and move to my macbook to re-rebuild and test. One thing you might want to consider is version control system ( even if you are a single developer ). This has made my life so much easier when it comes to working on 2 separate machines and not having tons of extra files laying around.
Hi unphasable, I’d be interested if you could forward on your machine’s specifications (CPU, RAM, OS Version, GPU Name, GPU VRAM) and rough performance numbers from any Epic samples where you see these big performance differences between OS X and Windows. As I’ve said on other threads, that’s the kind of data I need to help me identify performance problems on OS X.
As I’ve already posted here: OS X Performance - Community & Industry Discussion - Epic Developer Community Forums on the Mac I have both OS X & Windows installed on currently there’s not much difference in like-for-like OpenGL Shader Model 4 testing. That’s what I’d expect to see on modern Nvidia cards and large deviation is something I’d like to investigate. I’ve yet to compare my AMD cards directly so any feedback there would be gratefully received.
“That’s what I’d expect to see on modern Nvidia cards and large deviation is something I’d like to investigate” I fall under this category. But I feel mobile temple shouldn’t have frame drops on OSX since it runs fine on my iPhone 5s…
I’m running an EVGA GTX 770 SuperClocked with 2GB of VRAM and a 4770k overclocked to 4.2Ghz, 16GB of 2200Mhz DD3 and an SSD on the OSX side. Currently on projects like Mobile temple I get 120 capped FPS on windows. But between 55-90 on OSX. I’m getting ~38fps on “Shooter Game” in the editor window which just doesn’t seem right for a GTX 770. I’m running the latest Nvidia Web Drivers on 10.9.2. I also get A LOT of screen tearing on the OSX build and none on the windows side. If you have any tools where I could export logs or be of any support please let me know. I’d be willing to help you with anything you need to increase performance on Mac. Having to boot back and forth between Win 8.1 and Mavericks really is a hassle.
Edit: I’m also getting some pixels flickering when lowering the “Resolution Scale” both on Windows and OSX. I’ts not detrimental to a workflow, but it is there and only disappears at 100% resolution. I could upload a video if this problem is not well-documented.
That’t hardly a fair comparison - the iPhone uses a simpler, forward-only renderer with far fewer and less complex effects. The OS X render path is chugging through a lot more work, sadly with far fewer available OpenGL features than on Windows as OS X is a number of GL versions behind.
Thanks for the specs that’s good to know. For the comparison I assume you compared Windows default to OS X default? If so that’s comparing D3D11 Shader Model 5 with OS X’s OpenGL 4.1 which is equivalent to D3D10 Shader Model 4. That’s useful data for working with Apple & the GPU vendors, as I can’t update OS X’s OpenGL to the same feature set as D3D11 SM5 myself. I can endeavour to make Mac OpenGL 3.3-4.1 run as well as Windows OpenGL 3.3-4.1 though.
Can I ask you to re-run your editor test with the -opengl command-line option on Windows also ask check that both Windows and OS X are set to use the same Engine Scalability Settings (in the Quick Settings toolbar item) and that both are rendering a realtime viewport (the down arrow in the top-left of the main viewport)? This will ensure that you are running the same OpenGL render path on both - Windows also automatically scales rendering features and OS X currently does not.
Can you give me numbers for both Mac and Windows for ShooterGameEditor as well please? Same deal as before the Windows Default, OS X and Windows with -opengl.
ShooterGame is a graphically intense project, so even on Windows with D3D11 I wouldn’t actually expect you to get a really high frame-rate.
The editor runs without V-Sync by default. Inevitably that leads to screen tearing when the GL refresh isn’t aligned with the display. I’m not au-fait with the Windows refresh code to know why Windows isn’t susceptible.
I don’t think I have anything appropriate right now. A full System Profiler report would be really useful, but I’ve no idea how well that would work on your machine. If you could re-run those tests as I’ve mentioned above that we be excellent.
I completely understand. You’ll have to bare with us as we improve the OS X version of UE4 as much as we can. Unfortunately at present OS X doesn’t have any Shader Model 5 rendering support at all because OS X only supports OpenGL 4.1 and the necessary extensions were only added in GL 4.2 and 4.3 which Apple don’t provide. I’ve no idea when or even if Apple will provide that support (or something equivalent), so for the foreseeable future the Windows version will have more rendering features and might run some scenes a bit faster since D3D11 does have those features.
Resolution scaling will result in some small graphical artefacts - it is rendering the scene at a lower resolution and then stretching it to fill the viewport, some rendering effects, particularly those that rely on sampling depth, can cause such pixel flickering. Your 770 should be capable of rendering at 100% Resolution, provided your not trying to fill a 4k monitor.
I’ve just done some testing here and I’m seeing a similar performance gap between MobileTempleEditor running under Windows D3D11 vs. Windows OpenGL on an Nvidia GTX 670. Windows default (D3D11) is ~95fps/10.5ms and Windows -opengl is ~65fps/15.2ms. That suggests the issue isn’t OS X specific and we should be pretty close to the Windows -opengl performance on your machine. Windows -opengl4 should be closer to D3D11 in performance terms as well as features, but as I’ve said before we don’t have the necessary features from Apple on OS X to support that.
Didn’t NVidia make some significant updates to their Direct3D driver recently that caused a performance boost in many DX11 games? Could it have something to do with the performance difference?
Also, is it possible to test the D3D RHI in DX10 level?
Windows’ desktop compositor makes a copy of the back buffer when swapping the back and front buffers, which is displayed when the desktop refreshes, so there’s no tearing if you have desktop composition enabled and it can have a slightly faster response time than actual triple buffering. I assume OSX does it’s desktop composition at a lower level, probably reading directly from whatever buffer is on front so a buffer swap mid update causes a tear.
You can run UE4 with the -d3d10 command line.
Sorry it took me a few days to get back to you.
On windows I ran with the command line prompt -opengl I also ran with t.MaxFPS 300 command. I turned off Smooth FPS in the Project Settings and changed on MSAA to 8x.
Scalability and resolution scale are both maxed out. On windows with shooter game i was getting 75-80fps running around the map. I tested these in a “New Editor Window” at 1080p with the same settings on 10.9.2 Mavericks, and Windows 8.1.
On OSX I got 28-32 FPS running around the map.
There is also this bug that sometimes shows up where if I boot up UE4 on OSX i hover around 30 fps, but if i open chrome and browse a few pages and come back the editor is now at a higher fps. Happens every time I boot up 4.2.
hope this is of some help. let me know if there’s anything else you need to know.