Gaming on the M1

[Ethosik]

Edit: sorry, the forum inserts emojis into the URLs automatically :/

LOL The random emojis in the URL just makes it hilarious!

Thanks for the links. I have searched but obviously didn't get to the right pages. So there really is no advantage to the M1 vs Intel's in regards to memory as both require programming changes to accomplish the same thing.

 

[leman]

LOL The random emojis in the URL just makes it hilarious!

Thanks for the links. I have searched but obviously didn't get to the right pages.

It's a really niche topic as well, so it's not that easy to find. Not to mention that consumer UMA systems are traditionally low-performance and thus of little interest to developers, so these topics are just not getting discussed.

And it does not help that many people indiscriminately praise M1, ascribing it almost magic-like properties. Don't get me wrong, I do think that A14/M1 is the best thing after hyderabadi biryani, but one should still do a proper job evaluating system's strength and weaknesses.

So there really is no advantage to the M1 vs Intel's in regards to memory as both require programming changes to accomplish the same thing.

I wouldn't say that. Memory copy is much faster on M1 because Apple does not limit per-core memory bandwidth, and Apple has first-class high-performance support for sparse resources, which other platform seems to lack. I am also unsure how one would use host-allocated memory for graphical resources using modern APIs such as DX12 or Vulkan (Vulkan has VK_EXT_external_memory_host, but I'm not sure whether it does what I think it does). Using host-allocated memory on Apple Silicon is really simple and straightforward in contrast.

 

[DiCaprioAngel]

The only computer game I play is the Sims 4 through Origin. I’ve installed it but haven’t had the chance to play it yet. I’ll definitely report back once I do to relay my experience with it. I know my old MacBook Pro (late 2013 15”) would run hot after a few minutes of playing.

 

[souko]

Has anyone tried/found if M1 Macs can play RDR2, Mafia remake, WRC8?

 

[herb666]

This is me also, I only play WoW casually and dip in and out of Retail/Classic when time permits. Played since 2006 but don't raid any more just enjoy some questing and wandering around the world.

Runs amazing on the M1 Mac Mini, in comparison to my previous 2014 and 2018 devices. 45-60 FPS on a 3440x1440 @ max settings with a slight adjustment to shadows, it barely gets warm and handles it just fine.

Do you have 8 or 16 GB of RAM and how much of it is used when you play WoW Classic?

 

[LeeW]

Do you have 8 or 16 GB of RAM

Both. I don't worry about RAM usage really. On the 8GB, it is all being used plus up to 1GB swap. But of course WoW is not the only thing running. No idea how much WoW specifically is using.

 

[herb666]

Both. I don't worry about RAM usage really. On the 8GB, it is all being used plus up to 1GB swap. But of course WoW is not the only thing running. No idea how much WoW specifically is using.

That sounds pretty good, I'm currently thinking about whether I should use 8 or 16 GB for the iMac 24

 

[LeeW]

That sounds pretty good, I'm currently thinking about whether I should use 8 or 16 GB for the iMac 24

Not saying you won't get by on just 8GB, but of course, more is not a bad thing. What I often find is that the longer you have a device the more you install, the more that runs in the background and therefore the RAM consumption goes up.

The other thing to consider if you are a regular WoW player is that addons use quite a bit of extra memory. Next month Burning Crusade Classic arrives, which will require a bit more as well.

For any regular gaming definitely go for 16GB.

 

[herb666]

Not saying you won't get by on just 8GB, but of course, more is not a bad thing. What I often find is that the longer you have a device the more you install, the more that runs in the background and therefore the RAM consumption goes up.

The other thing to consider if you are a regular WoW player is that addons use quite a bit of extra memory. Next month Burning Crusade Classic arrives, which will require a bit more as well.

For any regular gaming definitely go for 16GB.

I won't keep the Mac for long, when the successor comes I'll swap it.

I'm already thinking of Burning Crusade, but as I wrote in another thread, the upgrade to 16 GB RAM would cost me 539 € more in this case because I could get the standard model with 8 GB at a discount, but not the BTO :-(

I don't know how the M1 GPU works on the 4.5k display and therefore maybe even more RAM would be needed than normal.

 

[LeeW]

I don't know how the M1 GPU works on the 4.5k display and therefore maybe even more RAM would be needed than normal.

Indeed, that is something I am interested to see.

 

[doolar]

My friend messaged me the other day and asked "Wouldn't it be fun to play some Diablo 3 again, it's been half a decade since?". Of course I agreed, before realizing that I don't own any gaming computer any longer.

Will the Macbook Air M1 8/512 be able to run D3 I wondered. YES!! Is the answer. In full resolution and with most settings on "high" with a pretty steady 60 fps, sometimes dropping a few. Impressive, and it's all running in Rosetta 2 of course.

I have my M1 on a elevated stand, so I guess it helps with air flow. Just for fun I put a desktop oscillating fan next to it, it lowered the temps quite a bit, but no noticeable difference in-game.

Anywho - it's game on, let's see if the "new" necromancer is any fun!

 

[ha1o2surfer]

That is not how it works. Apple Silicon has access to any and all of the 16GB of RAM. There is no separate VRAM, but there still is for Intel iGPU.

Doesn't look like that to me. I have 32GB of ram and my Intel card reports 31.7 available for use

 

[Ethosik]

Doesn't look like that to me. I have 32GB of ram and my Intel card reports 31.7 available for use

It is determined in the BIOS. And Intel DOES have the feature to use shared RAM, but it requires a programming change. Besides, Intel iGPU are horrible and NVIDIA/AMD have their own memory.

 

[navaira]

The only computer game I play is the Sims 4 through Origin. I’ve installed it but haven’t had the chance to play it yet. I’ll definitely report back once I do to relay my experience with it. I know my old MacBook Pro (late 2013 15”) would run hot after a few minutes of playing.

I tried yesterday, actually. Origin has always been a hot mess and nothing changed, including the hot part. I had to lower graphics settings to medium. But it's not Sims that eats the CPU, it's Origin. On my old MBP Origin boiled the CPU without any game running at all.

If there is any way to run Sims 4 without Origin, I'm glad to pay for it again…

 

[leman]

It is determined in the BIOS. And Intel DOES have the feature to use shared RAM, but it requires a programming change.

The setting you are talking about is just the minimal RAM the system reserves for the GPU subsystem. The GPU itself has full access to the entirety of system RAM. There could be driver limitations on certain platforms, but that has nothing to do with the GPU itself.

Intel GPUs support unified memory in essentially the same scope as Apple does.

 

[Ethosik]

The setting you are talking about is just the minimal RAM the system reserves for the GPU subsystem. The GPU itself has full access to the entirety of system RAM. There could be driver limitations on certain platforms, but that has nothing to do with the GPU itself.

Intel GPUs support unified memory in essentially the same scope as Apple does.

Not without a coding change. It’s in Intels official documentation that you need to explicitly state you want to use shared memory.

Getting the Most from OpenCL™ 1.2: How to Increase Performance by...

Downloads Download Getting the Most from OpenCL™ 1.2: How to Increase Performance by Minimizing Buffer Copies on Intel® Proce

software.intel.com

 

[jdb8167]

Not without a coding change. It’s in Intels official documentation that you need to explicitly state you want to use shared memory.

Getting the Most from OpenCL™ 1.2: How to Increase Performance by...

Downloads Download Getting the Most from OpenCL™ 1.2: How to Increase Performance by Minimizing Buffer Copies on Intel® Proce

software.intel.com

Interesting that this document is for openCL and not a graphics driver or OpenGL. Not sure what that means for faster graphics with zero copy buffers.

 

[Thomas Davie]

M1 MBA 16 gb ram, 1 tb ssd

installed fallout 3 game of the year edition, and
steel division 2.

Both GOG games, installed under Win 10 arm64 under parallels. Windows 10 arm64 is unactivated and will remain so unless/u til I buy another Windows license. No issues So far. Game play is fluid.

So now I’m in the process of trying to install all of my PC wargames under Crossover. Those that fail I’ll just move the install files over to Win10arm64 and run from there.

I’ve got ~14 John Tiller titles, all turn based games and chess (HIARCS 4), the Field of Glory II series, Warplan and Warplan Pacific. The only game I’ve got which hasn’t worked under Crossover is The Operational Art of War IV.

That’s basically of my PC games. Fallout is a love from Xbox and I’ve never had a computer powerful enough to run Steel Division 2 (or Normandy). I don’t expect tonhave any trouble with Europa Universalis or Hearts of Iron IV.

Tom

 

[leman]

Not without a coding change. It’s in Intels official documentation that you need to explicitly state you want to use shared memory.

Getting the Most from OpenCL™ 1.2: How to Increase Performance by...

Downloads Download Getting the Most from OpenCL™ 1.2: How to Increase Performance by Minimizing Buffer Copies on Intel® Proce

software.intel.com

The memory is always shared. It’s just that you have to use an explicit API to share a memory allocation. If you use the default API, the driver will make a private memory allocation instead. But this allocation is still backed by the physical RAM, shared between the CPU and GPU.

Metal operates in the same way. Default API will give you opaque driver-side allocations. If you want to share your previous allocation with the GPU, yiu have to use a special API. Which is subject to the same constraints as Intel ones (page-boundary alignment and all that).

 

[leman]

Interesting that this document is for openCL and not a graphics driver or OpenGL. Not sure what that means for faster graphics with zero copy buffers.

It means that Intel decided not to bother exposing this functionality under OpenGL. Shared memory allocations are more useful for compute (at least in the traditional paradigm), and it’s not like someone would bother developing a gaming engine specifically for Intel iGPUs. Basically, on Intel and AMD iGPUs unified memory is a byproduct of a system designed for efficiency. These systems were never meant to deliver high performance, being more of a placeholder for a more powerful systems with dedicated graphics. On Apple devices however, unified memory will scale to GPUs with much higher performance, which in turn will enable novel applications.

 

[Ethosik]

The memory is always shared. It’s just that you have to use an explicit API to share a memory allocation. If you use the default API, the driver will make a private memory allocation instead. But this allocation is still backed by the physical RAM, shared between the CPU and GPU.

Metal operates in the same way. Default API will give you opaque driver-side allocations. If you want to share your previous allocation with the GPU, yiu have to use a special API. Which is subject to the same constraints as Intel ones (page-boundary alignment and all that).

No the memory is not always shared. This is why my 8GB RAM system says I only have 7.5GB usable. Where my 64GB system with no iGPU has 64GB useable. I don’t even see the x useable. And the more memory I give the Intel iGPU in BIOS, the less RAM is actually usable.

 

[leman]

No the memory is not always shared. This is why my 8GB RAM system says I only have 7.5GB usable.

I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve been trying to explain to you how these things actually work but apparently I’ve failed.

 

[Ethosik]

I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve been trying to explain to you how these things actually work but apparently I’ve failed.

Clearly the GPU has RAM. It’s confirmed in the BIOS and the more I give it, the less RAM I have available for actual programs.it’s taking a chunk of system RAM, so yes in that regard it’s “shared”, but that chunk can’t be used by anything other than the GPU.

 

[Thomas Davie]

The following games work perfectly under Win 10 Arm64. I only had a chance to test these before I started a late dialysis.

Panzer Battles: Kursk
Renaissance: The Seven Years War
The American Civil War:bCampaign Overland

I had backups of the installed games From a Windows 10 machine. All I had to do was copy the install folder from the backup drive, reinput my serial registrations and the games work.

Using this with an external 32 monitor (Samsung) and have windows set to fullscreen @ 3008x1892. I’ve already got Civilization VI (plus all DLC’s) for the OS X side of gaming (plus Dead Age) so I’m good to go for gaming for a while. There are a number of games I will copy over/reactivate.

When the battery went on my Dell about a month ago I thought I’d lost a lot of gaming. glad to find it is not so.

Tom

 

[jdb8167]

I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve been trying to explain to you how these things actually work but apparently I’ve failed.

I think we get it but you are ignoring the fact that the iGPU in Intel SoCs are emulating a discrete GPU at the driver level. That means that it really isn't using zero copy at runtime but acting more like a traditional dGPU. Unless you can show me where any Intel graphics driver uses zero copy then just the fact that the hardware supports a broader use of RAM really isn't very interesting.

I'm not particularly knowledgeable about this stuff so I'm prepared to be wrong but nothing I've seen so far says that the graphics drivers with Intel iGPUs allow the whole RAM space to be used for zero copy buffers. Like you said earlier, zero copy buffers are more useful for compute than for custom graphics engines which won't likely be written to specifically target Intel iGPUs.