Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple CAN’T do AAA gaming [Merged Megathread]
- Thread starter Admiralbison
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Yes you are right the 6900XT isn't limiting the game in the example you posted, the CPU is. Which means with a faster/better CPU the average frame rate should be higher than 64FPS.
This is just the reference card, AIB boards are faster.
Hey just for ***** and giggles, my gaming PC 
Maybe I should upgrade...one day. Though I do have the option to upgrade the GPU on this old beast.
I think most of those high end frames will be lost doing nothing.
The GPU bound spec is kinda interesting to see the difference between the 3 systems posted here.
Maybe I should upgrade...one day. Though I do have the option to upgrade the GPU on this old beast.
I think most of those high end frames will be lost doing nothing.
The GPU bound spec is kinda interesting to see the difference between the 3 systems posted here.
Last edited:
It would allow you to turn up quality settings. Though in your case I think your CPU would hold back anything much faster than a 3060 (though I could be wrong).Hey just for ***** and giggles, my gaming PC
View attachment 2025837
Maybe I should upgrade...one day. Though I do have the option to upgrade the GPU on this old beast.
I think most of those high end frames will be lost doing nothing.
I actually lowered my setting to match what the other posted did. I play on a 30" monitor, which is only 60hz max. Most games run well enough and I doubt more frames would make a difference. Though yes, better visuals would be nice.
Last edited:
Yes, I know. I posted the image just to show the GPU usage, not the fps. In my previous posts I found the fps to be around 90 too.Yes you are right the 6900XT isn't limiting the game in the example you posted, the CPU is. Which means with a faster/better CPU the average frame rate should be higher than 64FPS.
This is just the reference card, AIB boards are faster.
The annoying part about PC GPU's is the product binning. The FE/Reference cards are rarely the fastest of the bunch (and usually are less available than AIB units). So that makes comparisons harder without specifying what model you are using. That is nice about Apple stuff, no overclocking so every like model will have the same performance.
Yes you are right the 6900XT isn't limiting the game in the example you posted, the CPU is. Which means with a faster/better CPU the average frame rate should be higher than 64FPS.
This is just the reference card, AIB boards are faster.
Meaningless without stating the graphical settings.
Plus, how are you going to upgrade to AMD CPU on 2019 Mac Pro that he linked?
Moral of the story is don't spend $7K on base 2019 Mac Pro with 6900xt to get lesser frame rate than a PC with 6800 for almost a fourth of the cost.
Moral of the story is that anybody buying a Mac Pro with 6900 XT does it for other reasons than playing games and is fully aware of what they're buying so they would hardly be interested in your suggested PC. If you really were interested in the settings you could easily have found them in his link instead of saying his post is meaningless.
Last edited:
Interesting that Techpowerup gets 96 fps with i9-9900K, 16 GB RAM and 6900 XT but Hardware Unboxed gets 78 fps with Rysen 7 5800X 3D and 32 GB RAM.
Exactly. It makes comparisons hard. It could have been drivers, or the 5800X3D really needs SAM to get better frame rates.
Moral of the story is PC hackintosh for best of all worlds.
That description of settings is meaningless. For non-noobs we prefer screenshot of in-game settings because highest on MacOS isn't necessarily the same as on Windows. I'll let you spot the difference and learn which is a lower setting on MacOS that gives it ~10% unfair advantage.
SotTR highest on MacOS
SotTR highest on Windows
Hey just for ***** and giggles, my gaming PC
View attachment 2025837
Maybe I should upgrade...one day. Though I do have the option to upgrade the GPU on this old beast.
I think most of those high end frames will be lost doing nothing.
The GPU bound spec is kinda interesting to see the difference between the 3 systems posted here.
Oy!
It just goes to show you what everyone knows: Old PCs suck for gaming, and you should put it out to pasture!
HBAO vs BTAO is like a 4 frame difference. (On my rig at 1440p)
Moral of the story is PC hackintosh for best of all worlds.
That description of settings is meaningless. For non-noobs we prefer screenshot of in-game settings because highest on MacOS isn't necessarily the same as on Windows. I'll let you spot the difference and learn which is a lower setting on MacOS that gives it ~10% unfair advantage.
SotTR highest on MacOS
View attachment 2025890
SotTR highest on Windows
View attachment 2025893
Nice I'm also a Hack user myself, great systems super flexible. But I have 2 separate systems instead of rebooting. Threadripper is very tempting. But my lowly haswells are still going well enough and don't suck up too much energy.Moral of the story is PC hackintosh for best of all worlds.
That description of settings is meaningless. For non-noobs we prefer screenshot of in-game settings because highest on MacOS isn't necessarily the same as on Windows. I'll let you spot the difference and learn which is a lower setting on MacOS that gives it ~10% unfair advantage.
SotTR highest on MacOS
View attachment 2025890
SotTR highest on Windows
View attachment 2025893
We'll see what the future of intel for MacOS is, once Apple reveals what is in store for the MacPro next as that will be very definiate.
At 4K which was what we were discussing it's ~10 to 11% difference. And, it's GPU limited since it doesn't matter if I run base or boosted clock.
HBAO+
BTAO
Moral of the story is PC hackintosh for best of all worlds.
That description of settings is meaningless. For non-noobs we prefer screenshot of in-game settings because highest on MacOS isn't necessarily the same as on Windows. I'll let you spot the difference and learn which is a lower setting on MacOS that gives it ~10% unfair advantage.
SotTR highest on MacOS
View attachment 2025890
SotTR highest on Windows
View attachment 2025893
Sure, use what you like! It wouldn’t hurt though if you tried to be more clear about what you’re talking about early in the discussion because it’s not always easy to follow your reasoning when you shift focus from one topic to another and it leads to unnecessary posts. Which description are you calling meaningless? First you call LTT’s test invalid. Then you call the numbers from Techpowerup meaningless. Those numbers are for PC and Win. There are no Mac results there so why are you talking about 10% unfair advantage for Mac related to that post? Are you talking about my previous post about The Verge?
Finally after several posts it appears that you’re talking about SOTTR on the Mac Pro with 6900 XT in MacOS vs Win. Yes, I’m aware of BTAO and HBAO+ so no noob here but I assume that people take that into consideration and change the Win setting to BTAO when testing despite not showing the settings. I mean such things can also be easily manipulated so showing the settings is not a guarantee. Not even LTT or the Verge showed the game settings when comparing Mac to PC. I guess it’s not a problem as long as the PC wins but when the results are in favor of the Mac that becomes a thing.
Fair enough but I don’t see you complain about the unfair disadvantage for M1 Macs in unoptimized games in such tests. There we are talking about up to 100% lower performance like it was with Beyond a Steel Sky before it got an update. Neither do you talk about the unfair advantage the PC GPUs get from higher power usage. There you can have 200-500% advantage over Mac. You complain about others not showing the game settings but again post screenshots where we can’t see the resolution or AA? Are those from your own PC or do you have a link to a video?
Anyway I took a closer look at the Chinese? video and he uses AMD FidelityFX. On the other hand he uses SMAAT2x which is more demanding than TAA. I also found another video with SOTTR on i9-1200K and 6900 Xt where the GPU is maxed out at 4K.
If we compare M1 GPU which is laptop class to other mobile GPUs the results can suddenly be reverse. Here is a Lenovo Legion X1 Extreme G4 with 100W RTX 3080 against MBP M1 Max 32c in SOTTR. The M1 GPU uses only around 40W at max. The game settings are exactly the same at 1080p, both with BTAO and connected to power outlet. Lenovo 3080 gets 75 fps, M1 Max 91 fps in a non-native game.
Regarding the original discussion about Tomb Raider in MacOS vs Win on the same HW and AMD GPUs I found two other videos. The first one is TR 2013 on iMac with Nvidia GTX 775M, not AMD. No settings shown.
The other one is SOTTR on a MBP with Radeon Pro 5500M with the same settings and BTAO.
Another game mentioned with a good Mac port compared to Win was Batman: Arkham City which gets the same 60 fps in both MacOS and Win on a MBP Radeon Pro 560X VSYNC Off. Make what you want of it.
One last interesting thing is that none of those two images you shared shows the highest settings in SOTTR on either system. You can turn Shadow quality and Level of detail to Ultra and Screen Space Contact Shadows to High if you want to max out everything.
Last edited:
Suggest you go watch YouTube videos (not Max Tech garbage) to understand basic fundamentals like what GPU limited means then come back. You're just throwing a bunch of random bits at the wall without understanding any of it.
Another amateur mistake if not BS is turning down the graphics settings. Here's the proper way at highest settings.
~$1200 70W 3060 laptop
$3299 M1 Max ~60W 32GPU (lower right corner)
You might have guessed this was showing up!
Hmmm now I know what settings to use, here is my lowly Haswell from 2014 with a Nivida 970 also from 2014
Seems like this systems still holds up! Beating some of Apples latest offerings.
I know I know, dedicated gpu, driver optimizations for nivida, direct x might be a tad more advance then metal.
But still not bad for a 8 year old system.
Hmmm now I know what settings to use, here is my lowly Haswell from 2014 with a Nivida 970 also from 2014
Seems like this systems still holds up! Beating some of Apples latest offerings.
I know I know, dedicated gpu, driver optimizations for nivida, direct x might be a tad more advance then metal.
But still not bad for a 8 year old system.
Last edited:
That's a classic sign of forgetting to turn off vsync. For a decade old game at medium it should be a lot higher. Don't waste time on that YouTube channel.
For comparison, 70W 3060 laptop @ 1080p medium.
5950x + 6800 @ 1080p medium
Last edited:
That was when it was running on OpenGL, before the Metal backend update. Frame rates have increased massively since then, especially on AMD. I'll get some benchmarks on my intel MacBook Pro when I get time to re-install windows. I deleted it a while back.
Why are you comparing a 560X to a 3060?.... That's not going to show anything useful.
"Oy!
It just goes to show you what everyone knows: New Macbooks and Macs still suck for gaming, and you should put it out to pasture!"
It just goes to show you what everyone knows: New Macbooks and Macs still suck for gaming, and you should put it out to pasture!"