Update to Mavericks?

[SwissCyul]

This post goes out to all Apple users who have updated to OSX Mavericks!!

I currently have Mountain Lion 10.8 and i am considering of updating to Mavericks. I read that it increases on HD4000 intel computers the graphics memory from 512mb to 1024mb. Is this true? Did anyone experience this? If yes it should be an increase in X Plane's performance, or? 

 

Is it really worth it, because there are very different reviews of Mavericks on the web. Some say it's awesome and some say it slows down you computer extremely… 

 

Greetings,

 

SwissCyul 

[Ironmaiden]

when i had the Mavericks hackintosh it worked perfectly. But i am on a Dedicated Nvidia hence cannot comment much about the HD4000 

[SwissCyul]

Ok, so no slowness or anything?

[ktomais]

I have a very positive experience with Mavericks. The experience of OS X installs however indeed varies, but in my opinion this variation in experience quality comes down to proper maintenance of the software and hardware (i.e. if you keep updating the OS and never clean-install it's generally not a very good idea). 

 

Now to your point. The Intel embedded graphics indeed have more VRAM available to them if necessary. Basically what Mavericks does is that it boots with a bare minimum and then distributes as needed. However keep in mind that the VRAM comes from your RAM, therefore if it's available Mavericks will use it. If your computer is about to crash it's going to take it away from VRAM or compress it and assign it as RAM either to the OS or the app running. 

 

In a few words if you have 8GB RAM or more go for it, otherwise I don't think you'll ever see your VRAM at 1GB. If you would like to install Mavericks anyways I think it's a good release. Hope this helps.

Edited May 11, 2014 by ktomais

[SwissCyul]

Alright thanks for that!!! I have 8Gb of ram, so it hopefully helps my performance…  

[ktomais]

You might want to wait for 10.9.3 to be released. It's expected within the week. 

[SwissCyul]

Ah, thanks for the info

[SwissCyul]

I updated anyway...

Mavericks is awesome!!! Got 1024mb Graphics memory now, going to try out X Plane and i will report my results in FPS

[SwissCyul]

Well, i tested X Plane now and the result is not really that great...

Before i always had FPS at around 35 and on a cloudy day with pay ware planes around 20-25. Now i am getting at no clouds and pay ware plane around 15-19 FPS... With clouds 10-15. So not really an improvement. I am using 7.99Gb of my 8GB memory and the frames are worse then before. I got to figure out how to get better frame rate with X Plane now.

[alfletcher]

Try to run X-Plane with all render setting to minimum first, using the same aircraft, same airport, time, weather and note your average frame rate.

 

Then increase render setting quality gradually until your hardware gives your the desire frame rate. Try to modify one or two parameter at the time. You may need to restart X-Plane after modifying some of them though. It’s a time consuming task.

 

Good luck

Alan

Edited May 12, 2014 by alfletcher

[ktomais]

Well, i tested X Plane now and the result is not really that great...

Before i always had FPS at around 35 and on a cloudy day with pay ware planes around 20-25. Now i am getting at no clouds and pay ware plane around 15-19 FPS... With clouds 10-15. So not really an improvement. I am using 7.99Gb of my 8GB memory and the frames are worse then before. I got to figure out how to get better frame rate with X Plane now.

 

Do not pay much attention to the general reading in Activity Monitor in regards to memory usage in Mavericks. Several techs that were introduced with the OS release may show borderline RAM usage but that's not really the case. In my MBP sometimes with Safari, Skype and Mail open it shows that I'm using 6GB of RAM, which obviously can't be realistic. If you can find the app process on the table it'll probably tell you more accurately what it's using. Otherwise on the bottom right of the Activity Monitor panel you can see App Memory (the actual active RAM), Cached Apps (Apps that have been opened and are kept in memory for fast launch), and wired memory. Those three make your total to 7.99 but the system is not actively using 7.99. It can purge cached apps to use in the active ones if needed. Therefore your performance issues should not be caused by memory capacity.

 

If the above solution by alfletcher yields no results, 10.9.3 beta testing also focused around graphics drivers. I believe we'll see improvements soon. That being said I don't have any issues with X-Plane under Mavericks. MBP early 2011. 

Edited May 12, 2014 by ktomais

[psanker]

Mavericks actually has increased memory usage improvements than the previous OS. The "7.99 GB" used, as ktomais mentioned, is not real. The "wired" memory is the real "active" one. OSX stores (and in some cases compresses) application data in case you accidentally close an app (e.g. accidentally close Chrome whilst reading a newspaper article); thus, the reboot time for the app is quicker than opening it straight from startup. There are some memory cleaning apps out there, but I'm not too keen on them as they have the potential to slow your system down and/or break processes. However, what they do well is indicate a better approximation of memory usage.

 

The 15-19 fps is odd and has happened to me before. Generally, a system reboot fixes it.

[SwissCyul]

Alright guys,

thanks for all your answers!!!! Thats why i love this forum

Sadly the weekend is over now, and i have to get back into the "real" world(working...).

I will try out the tips you gave me next weekend and report again my results. This will hopefully not take that many hours since i want to really fly and not only test out settings I hope my frames will get better after all that, because i want to enjoy my recently bought 757+Sky Maxx Pro!!!

 

Thanks again and i will report my results next Friday/Saturday/Sunday,

 

SwissCyul

[ktomais]

You might find this helpful to better understand how to read RAM in Activity Monitor.

Edited May 12, 2014 by ktomais

[Ironmaiden]

Ok, so no slowness or anything?

 

 

Well I never had trouble. But it would be a bit faster on the Mac as mine was a hackintosh.  And XPX was working perfectly on it.

 

Hmmm HD 4000 with XPX i am not sure how the GPU would perform. 

 

But Mavericks is stable , I had it updated till 10.9.2, but i am now back to windows for some other reason as I need to carry work home at times and for that MS is needed.

Edited May 12, 2014 by Ironmaiden

[AeroPictor]

 

I am very happy with Mavericks 10.9.2 on my mid 2011 iMac 27' with 16 GB RAM and the AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB. X-Plane runs smoothly with settings closer to the top then to the bottom.

[SwissCyul]

With mountain lion i didn't have any Fps problems, so i hope with Mavericks it stays the same. Well thanks again for all you answers

[SwissCyul]

Had some time right now and i did some testing. My Fps are fine again. Just like the usual Fps between 30-40. Performance is better with Pay Ware airports then with freeware airports... Don't know exactly why, but i get around 60 Fps at Aerosoft Zurich and 20-25 with FreeZ Zurich. 

Another thing is that i am not using the full capacity of my computer. The memory is not even close of being all used and my CPU has still 70% on idle when i have X plane running. But i can't turn the specs up because then my Fps is dropping... Kind of strange.

 

Do you guys know how to "tell" the computer that i want to use the full capacity? 

[AeroPictor]

 

 

Do you guys know how to "tell" the computer that i want to use the full capacity? 

That is a matter of coding I think … as I am not a programmer I would not dare to elaborate on that field. 

[SwissCyul]

Yeah, i searched a bit in the web and you have to be really good with computers to do something like that. 

[ephendi]

Maverics update 10.9.3 is released

Edited May 15, 2014 by ephendi

[SwissCyul]

Yes, already updated Thanks for the info.