1. Kuaidang said Apple’s implementation of OpenGL sucks.
2. He said that with Intel Macs using the same chips, Apple’s OpenGL is the reason games are slower on the Mac. (paraphrasing).
3. I said that there is more to a game’s performance than just OpenGL and the hardware.
4. He laughed.
5. I proved that there is more to a game’s performance than just OpenGL and the hardware, and with Kuaidang’s own link too.

The drivers are part of “Apple’s OpenGL implementationâ€?.  Apple maintains extremely strict control over their video drivers and this causes their OPENGL to suck.

Yeah, no kidding, but that has nothing to do with the fact that video card drivers are separate from the OpenGL API and driver updates (on Windows and Mac) can affect performance.

I didn’t say the “OpenGL API” sucks on the Mac.  I said the “OpenGL implementation”.  Part of implementing OpenGL is supplying the correct drivers.  Apple’s drivers suck.  That’s only part of Apple’s “OpenGL implementation”.  It also includes the lack of hardware accelerated sound which further burdens the CPU.  Alos the inabilty for a game to completely monopolize the video card while gaming.  The desktop is always in the way (which is why you can run the game in a window).

If Quake 3 does really well on the Mac, which it does, that means OpenGL is not the reason Doom 3 doesn’t do as well. It’s the same OpenGL. You can’t say that OpenGL sucks on the Mac while looking at the Quake 3 benchmarks and it’s the same OpenGL Doom 3 is using.

No it’s not.  Quake 3 is a really old game that is no where near as graphically intensive as Doom 3.  It’s not using all the same calls.

Furthermore, on PC Quake 3’s SMP is completely broken (you can see this from the benchmarks).  It works just fine ont eh Mac, which is why a dual processor Mac can performa near a single processor or dual processor PC and why there’s very little performance difference between a single processor pc and a dual processor pc.

I’ve read at Barefeats that they gave it a genuine effort to optimize Quake, with AltiVec awareness amongst other things.

It’s also worth noting that Apple’s OpenGL implementation contains AltiVec optimizations as well.

Considering the well known fact that AltiVec is the by far best consumer vector processing unit, should Macs have screamed way past any x86 PCs running Windows with the introduction of the G4.

So the problem with slow software for Macs lies just there: Slow Software! Extra software-layer above the DirectX one and lazy developers, strong biases misplaced on the Windows PC (misplaced because they can make money on the Mac version too), and so on.

The drivers are part of “Apple’s OpenGL implementation�.

No, they aren’t. The video card drivers are completely separate.

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Co coa/Conceptual/CocoaFundamentals/Art/osx_functio nal.gif

I said the “OpenGL implementationâ€?.  Part of implementing OpenGL is supplying the correct drivers.

Ah, so now you are changing your argument from OpenGL to drivers. How typical of you.

Apple doesn’t supply all the drivers on the Mac. If I buy a retail ATI card, I get their drivers.

It also includes the lack of hardware accelerated sound which further burdens the CPU.

Which has nothing to do with OpenGL performance on Macs. You are creating straw men because you initial point (and you laughing at the notion that there’s more to the performance than the hardware and the OpenGL API) has been proven false.

Quake 3 is a really old game that is no where near as graphically intensive as Doom 3.  It’s not using all the same calls.

So now you are back to Apple’s OpenGL versus the drivers?

Those “calls” are the same on every system. It’s all OpenGL. You are pulling crap out of your ass again. And you are now arguing that the application affects the performance with OpenGL, which is what I told you.

http://www.barefeats.com/bootcamp.html

Same Intel-based Mac with Windows XP and OS X using Boot Camp.

OS X wins the HW OpenGL Cinebench 9.5 benchmark.

OS X wins the UT Flyby OpenGL.

Have you looked at the Doom 3 result?

Sys. req. for the Win PC: “3D Hardware Accelerator Card Required - 100% DirectXŽ 9.0b compatible 64MB Hardware”

Well duh that the Mac loses there.....