Mac Pro performance problems

Just installed Unreal 4 Editor on:

Mac Pro 2009
OSX Mavericks
2x 2.26 Ghz Quad-Core
32 GB Ram
ATI Radeon HD 5870

The initial impression was good with some of the starter kits (like first person shooter blueprint).

However, when opening the various content examples (Shooter Game, Mobile Temple, Effects Cave etc.) the system is brought to it’s knees immediately. It’s not a frame rate issue even it’s an overtaking of all usability of the computer. I managed to change the Engine and Texture quality to Low in the shooter game and even then it would not run smoothly. For example if I fired the gun the whole machine would freeze for a while.

I am wondering what the timeline for improving the Mac performance is.

Or - maybe there is some issue I need to address which I would love to know.

I just tried shooter game and effects cave with my Mac Pro (2008), and those works fine (I don’t expect 100fps or anything like that with 6 years old machine). My graphics card is Nvidia GTX670 (card is not officially supported by apple but it works fine in mavericks).

HD5870 is very old graphics card and I think it might cause some performance problems in your case. Btw, did you noticed that system requirements for UE4 requires HD6870 or higher?

I guess this card is the culprit. I didn’t realize it isn’t even OpenGl 4.x.

Thanks.

I was so excited to finally run Unreal Editor on my mac I think I must have misread the system requirements.

Im a litle surprised that the hd5870 doesn put a fight.In the compatibility list there is someone whit a GTX 285 and he has a good framerate(and i hope he hasnt lied)I cdont have the ue4 but does it have a option to switch between dx9 dx11?If so try to start it in dx9 mode.From what i read on the forums things like that are more related to the engine ptimization and not your gpu so much.I realy hope that epic will optimize the engine more for current gpus and not wait for the new ones to come out and start from there.

It’s entirely possible that the OpenGL side of things needs a bit more optimization. It also doesn’t help that OS X’s graphics drivers are a bit on the slow side when compared to its Linux and Windows counterparts.

Same problem, but mine has a 780 GTX (flashed). Runs smooth as butter (pegged 60fps usually) in windows on same machine, but always under 30fps in OSX. Other games run fine at max/ultra settings in OSX, so I don’t think it’s just a driver issue, unless unreal is using driver features that most games don’t touch. I’ve noticed that if i combine every editor panel/tab into one single window (move all tabs together for material editor, etc) i get mildly better performance, but still nowhere near what it should be.