Frame rate drop on Mac

Development Programming & Scripting
1

Hi,

On a iMac 27" mid-2011 with AMD Radeon HD6770M, the perspective viewport shows a strange behaviour on performances:

  1. create a blank new project;
  2. the perspective viewport is the only viewport shown;
  3. in the “Viewport options”, enable “Show FPS”;
  4. frame rate is at ~7fps (BTW, with the editor not much usable);
  5. click the “Maximize or restore this viewport” button to reduce it;
  6. save the project & quit the editor;
  7. re-open the project;
  8. frame rate of perspective viewport is ~25fps;
  9. click the “Maximize or restore this viewport” button to maximize it;
  10. frame rate goes to ~7fps;
  11. click the “Maximize or restore this viewport” button to reduce it;
  12. frame rate remains to ~7fps (so it’s not directly related to the viewport size).
2

Hi Kafu,

It appears that you are just below the minimum specs. I checked some our other Macs and could not repro your issue on them. The Unreal Editor can run on some lower spec systems, but it is most likely not going to be a very good experience. To cope with the low resolution, you can enable small icons, and use the editor’s tab system to combine the tabs on the left and right sides of the screen together. Be prepared to switch tabs frequently.

Thank you though for informing us of this issue!

-Max B.

3

Thanks Max for your reply. I don’t understand the reference to “low resolution”: my iMac has a 27" display running at 2560x1440. Is it not sufficient?

BTW - as reference - can you kindly share what sort of Macs are you currently using for development?

Thanks,
Daniele

4

I grabbed a snippet from our documentation that was more for the suggestions on getting some better performance with a lower spec system, not so much about your resolution. Sorry for the confusion! Unfortunately that graphics card is below what we test with, if you like to look at our recommended specs you can find them on our documentation website here!

Hope that helps,

-Max B.

5

Hi Max! The website, also if the title use “recommended hardware”, in reality reports the “minimum” specs. But what are the real “recommended” specs for Mac? :slight_smile: (I have to buy new machines to use UE4, so I’m really interested)

6

We actually do not list a “Minimum” anywhere, because it is a vague area to determine, and we want our users to have a good experience while running the editor, and not a terrible but technically functional experience.

That page does list our “recommended”. But if you are curious about an “ideal” system, you can view the hardware recommended on (this post) and then research to find comparable for Mac.

Cheers!