Performance comparison between Windows and Mac on Myst IV?

[Cognitron]

Have any of you played this game on both Mac and Windows? Can you say anything about the performance?

I was getting frustrated with the lag between screen updates -- which seemed to be a second or two after each move. This was on my Mac. Now my Mac will no longer play 32-bit games. So I'm considering restoring my old Mac and using it with MacOS El Capitan, or possibly, installing Windows on it. I installed ubuntu linux on it, and that works great, and a friend is gung-ho about running Windows in VirtualBox on linux. But I suspect that will have sub-par graphics speed. Have any of you tried it? This is for an early 2008 Mac Pro with 22 GB RAM, 8 CPU cores, a 480 GB SSD, and the video is an ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1 GB. My newer computer is a 2017 iMac.

Thanks! This is such a cool game. I want to get back to it. As much as I dislike Windoze, I'm actually wondering if getting a Windows computer for games would make sense.

[Virgile]

I've not played on Mac, but I can tell you performance were bad on pc ( 1070, SSD, 16Go RAM) sometimes more than 3seconds transitions between screens.

[Ghidrah1]

I've been playing iv since 05 always on pc, (xp, w7 and w10 after purchasing from steam) it always seemed an acceptable transition span to me.

Are you using zip mode?
Do you have tonza junk running in the background?
Is your GPU driver up to date?
Did it start dragging after a GPU update?

[Cognitron]

Interesting. I've only played on Macs. I didn't object to the performance on my old Mac Pro tower, in 2008. When I played on my 2017 iMac, with a much more capable graphics card, the lag bothered me. I didn't have tons of junk in the background, and Mac folks don't even look at drivers. But the code was some 'unity' version, I think, made to run on the new system. I bought the new Steam version thinking I'd lose the lag, but there was still a lag. Very soon after, I allowed the update to Catalina, and I've been unable to play any 32-bit games on my Mac. So I'm thinking of either installing an older macOS in a separate APFS volume (and a little paranoid about the damage if I botch it), (2) running Windows10 on my old Mac Pro tower (giving it its own drive in the case, and a new graphics card, and it has 8 CPU cores, 22 GB RAM, and a nice 30" Cinema Display), or just jettisoning the old and buying a mid-range Windows gaming PC (which I probably would criticize for not living up to my standards for the Mac). Still waffling.

If it turned out that the lag was eliminated by playing in Windows, I would do that. But maybe it's okay, and maybe I'll decide to not fight this battle.

[Ghidrah1]

Not that I'm knowledgeable regarding drivers for mac or PC, but what I do know is that era games depend on the directx available at the time and that many games will only render correctly with that program.

In the odd chance we're not speaking apples to apples, junk running in the background can be like your AV program, or any one that takes up cpu and or gpu energy. Not sure where you would look on your Mac for program processes to see which if any are hogging power. Many today want to be the 1st thing activated on start up whether you need them or not.

If you have a section for programs and features maybe look in there and dump any you don't want or use anymore to free up power usage.

[tech_hutch]

I'm playing on Windows (10), and the lag is kinda bad