Graphic Performance of ARM Mac's - Steam/Cities Skylines

[jeanlain]

I'm pretty sure it won't run better on an Apple GPU if (a) it isn't written for Metal and (b) the app in question isn't optimized for their GPUs. That was the whole point of the WWDC20 videos I watched at least.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs 3x faster on the new MacBook Pro compared to the previous 13" model, despite running on emulation and not being optimized for Apple GPUs.

 

[bossy22]

Actually, we can make educated guesses...

From Apple's event, the 8-core GPU in the M1 chip has these specs:
2.6 teraflops
82 gigatexels/second
41 gigapixels/second

That's comparable to about this:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Specs

NVIDIA GM206, 1178 MHz, 1024 Cores, 64 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 2048 MB GDDR5, 1753 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

Or it is comparable to a radeon 560x.
The Specs there:
Pixel Rate: 20.40 GPixel/s
Texture Rate: 81.60 GTexel/s
2.611 TFLOPS

That is much better than an intel iris. But not a great performance.
It is the performance of a 5 year old MacBook..

 

[omenatarhuri]

You're missing the point. Having two Macs, let alone with a top notch mouse, display, and keyboard between them is pricey. Otherwise, no one would give ten craps about the loss of Boot Camp because we'd all be rocking an M1 Mac and a Gaming PC.

Sorry I didn’t make myself very clear.

The point was exactly that if these M1 machines are such beasts as they are they are made out to be, you can get a powerful Mac for the low price of a mini or MBA. That leaves plenty budget for the gaming PC and accessories (for some anyway). But yeah, that was my point that’s all.

 

[Shivetya]

I have a near complete library of Paradox Games and I certainly won't go to AS if I have to give them up. I am not a believer in having two machines to do what one should do. So I am waiting to see what reviews bring. I would hope Big Sur has a method to ID programs that should work or won't work while still on Intel

 

[jinnyman]

As a left-field observation - XCOM2 has just been released for iOS this week. Whilst this isn’t a super current, twitch game it is a game that my i7 Mini with 16GB RAM struggled to run without an eGPU. The iPad (2018 Pro) runs the full game, with quicker load times and high graphics fidelity versus the macOS version.

So, the optimisation available to the M1 could mean it far outperforms its on-paper specs.

As a side note, I only played xcom2 on my highend PC and ipad, and no ipad version is not even close in graphic fidelity.
I never played it on mac, but I'd put a blame on mac port rather than platform. My PC and ipad setup are in my signature.

It loads quicker yes.

 

[Tafkaeken]

I have a near complete library of Paradox Games and I certainly won't go to AS if I have to give them up. I am not a believer in having two machines to do what one should do. So I am waiting to see what reviews bring. I would hope Big Sur has a method to ID programs that should work or won't work while still.

I also only play paradox games and total war but my understanding is that most of these are updated for 64 bit.
There is a list here. https://www.macgamerhq.com/opinion/32-bit-mac-games/

 

[theSeb]

Of course is their low end mac chip...since from the macbook air you can go only up (since their is no longer an 12" macbook)
So the bigger macbook pro , imacs and mac pro will have better chips with custom made gpu
But again, the line here is, for an entry level mac chip is very impressive

They even called it their entry level low power chip towards the beginning of the presentation.

 

[AltecX]

The rea

Or it is comparable to a radeon 560x.
The Specs there:
Pixel Rate: 20.40 GPixel/s
Texture Rate: 81.60 GTexel/s
2.611 TFLOPS

That is much better than an intel iris. But not a great performance.
It is the performance of a 5 year old MacBook..

That would mean it will also benchmark similar to Intels new Xe graphics.

 

[danmart]

As a side note, I only played xcom2 on my highend PC and ipad, and no ipad version is not even close in graphic fidelity.

That isn’t relevant to the question of whether an M1 Mac will compare to an Intel Mac with an eGPU (which is what I am running), though?

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see...

 

[pshufd]

That isn’t relevant to the question of whether an M1 Mac will compare to an Intel Mac with an eGPU (which is what I am running), though?

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see...

Some people here have ordered them so we will find out in a week as to how good they are.

 

[Homy]

BG 3 at Ultra settings 1080p on M1 in this video at 6:45: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/tech-talks/10859/

Intel UHD Graphics 630 in Mac Mini 2018: 3.150 GPixel/s, 25.20 GTexel/s, FP32 403.2 GFLOPS

M1 Mac Mini 2020: 41 GPixel/s, 82 GTexel/s, FP32 2.6 TFLOPS

A12Z FP32 1.1 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 560X 2.056 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5300M 3.2 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 5300 4.2 TFLOPS
Radeon Pro 580X 5.530 TFLOPS

 

[bill-p]

Or it is comparable to a radeon 560x.
The Specs there:
Pixel Rate: 20.40 GPixel/s
Texture Rate: 81.60 GTexel/s
2.611 TFLOPS

That is much better than an intel iris. But not a great performance.
It is the performance of a 5 year old MacBook..

Well, not quite. M1 still has twice the fillrate at 41 GPixels/s.

So I don't think it'll be similar to a 560X at all. Might be a bit faster, even.

 

[AltecX]

Why no transparency about clock speed? Does clock speed not matter anymore with this new design?

Clockspeed has never mattered between architectures. You can't compare clock speed between Qualcomm, PowerPC, Apple Silicon, Intel and AMD. the exact same clock speed can mean completely different performance numbers. All could be 3.0GHz and they can have very different performance in actual world situations. Even between a 15w, 7w and 25w 3.0GHz Intels will NOT be comparable for performance due to many other factors.

 

[aednichols]

As expected.

This is a definitely a drawback of Apple Silicon, but I don’t think there was a way around it. M1 brings unified memory and much improved GPU programming model with a set of assumptions you can rely upon. Third-party eGPUs would mess it up.

At the same time, it’s not too big of a loss in practical terms. The eGPU was most useful for people doing creative work and with advances in M1 you just dint need it anymore. Since there is no Windows support, gaming also pretty much falls out of the window (pun intended). The remaining target group is very small...

I'm not sure this is a foundational limitation of Apple Silicon.

The M1 chip seems to have limited IO, based on the small number of ports and low RAM limit. Wouldn't be surprised if this somehow translated to eGPU exclusion also.

 

[leman]

I'm not sure this is a foundational limitation of Apple Silicon.

The M1 chip seems to have limited IO, based on the small number of ports and low RAM limit. Wouldn't be surprised if this somehow translated to eGPU exclusion also.

That might also be a reason, but my argument is that dropping eGPU is more of a political decision. The eGPUs break Apple's clean architecture.

 

[aednichols]

That might also be a reason, but my argument is that dropping eGPU is more of a political decision. The eGPUs break Apple's clean architecture.

Yeah, I can definitely understand how this could be a technical burr in the side of the system architecture.

That said, eGPU support was only added in 2018 by which point Apple surely knew the transition was happening. Seems odd to ship a major OS feature that only has a 2-3 year lifetime.

 

[leman]

That said, eGPU support was only added in 2018 by which point Apple surely knew the transition was happening. Seems odd to ship a major OS feature that only has a 2-3 year lifetime.

There might be a simple explanation here. Adding eGPU support was most likely a low hanging fruit — the drivers were there, the external PCI-express ports were there, the only thing lacking was some basic GPU hot swapping support in the OS. And Apple was under a lot of pressure as the professionals were complaining about the lack of performance and their unhappiness with Mac Pro. The eGPU might have been a short-lived bandaid to appease those users. But who knows. Maybe Apple will update DriverKit to support eGPUs and maybe AMD or Nvidia would be interested in writing drivers for it.

 

[grrrz]

you won't get adobe anything before next year on a mac arm. People need to understand this is a new architecture with almost nothing running natively on it.
Obviously theorically applications could run emulated but it's not sure at all they run flawlessly and they will get a big performance hit doing so; so that's just a waste of money getting a new computer for this. And I would not hold my breath for games being ported for mac arm; not before long.
For now these machines are glorified internet/multimedia machines; and even if you're a final cut pro X user only it's not guaranteed it'll work flawlessly. People needing anything more should wait at least a few months; or go intel; or buy second hand. as someone using DAW I know I won't even consider this before 4-5 years.

 

[aednichols]

There might be a simple explanation here. Adding eGPU support was most likely a low hanging fruit — the drivers were there, the external PCI-express ports were there, the only thing lacking was some basic GPU hot swapping support in the OS. And Apple was under a lot of pressure as the professionals were complaining about the lack of performance and their unhappiness with Mac Pro. The eGPU might have been a short-lived bandaid to appease those users. But who knows. Maybe Apple will update DriverKit to support eGPUs and maybe AMD or Nvidia would be interested in writing drivers for it.

Sounds plausible, thanks for the comment.

That said, there is more to product strategy than, "can we do this easily?"

In this case, the trouble is "will users who bought an eGPU be mad when we render it obsolete?"

 

[pshufd]

you won't get adobe anything before next year on a mac arm. People need to understand this is a new architecture with almost nothing running natively on it.
Obviously theorically applications could run emulated but it's not sure at all they run flawlessly and they will get a big performance hit doing so; so that's just a waste of money getting a new computer for this. And I would not hold my breath for games being ported for mac arm; not before long.
For now these machines are glorified internet/multimedia machines; and even if you're a final cut pro X user only it's not guaranteed it'll work flawlessly. People needing anything more should wait at least a few months; or go intel; or buy second hand. as someone using DAW I know I won't even consider this before 4-5 years.

They have office programs too.

If they have conferencing software, then this system could be quite useful.

 

[leman]

you won't get adobe anything before next year on a mac arm.

Next year is in one month

Obviously theorically applications could run emulated but it's not sure at all they run flawlessly and they will get a big performance hit doing so; so that's just a waste of money getting a new computer for this.

Given how much faster these new machines are compared to ones they replace, I am fairly certain the transpiled Intel applications would run faster than on comparable Intel processors. M1 contains specialized hardware to emulate x86 environment, it’s not a half-assed emulation like the one on ARM windows

And I would not hold my breath for games being ported for mac arm; not before long.

At least one AAA game port is already announced and was demoed running natively. Other games will run under Rosetta. Again with a GPU that’s 4 to 5 fines faster, they will run better than on Intel Macs they replace.

 

[leman]

In this case, the trouble is "will users who bought an eGPU be mad when we render it obsolete?"

Well, I sold mine few months ago as I have anticipated that new Macs won’t support it

 

[bill-p]

I'm not sure this is a foundational limitation of Apple Silicon.

The M1 chip seems to have limited IO, based on the small number of ports and low RAM limit. Wouldn't be surprised if this somehow translated to eGPU exclusion also.

I'd think lack of eGPU is more due to lack of drivers.

AMD needs to rewrite the drivers for all of their past GPUs, plus any that's going to be released, specifically for Apple Silicon, for something that they won't directly earn any money on.

That's a hard sale.

Drivers are not the same as high-level apps that can be recompiled in 10 minutes.

 

[grrrz]

Next year is in one month


Given how much faster these new machines are compared to ones they replace, I am fairly certain the transpiled Intel applications would run faster than on comparable Intel processors. M1 contains specialized hardware to emulate x86 environment, it’s not a half-assed emulation like the one on ARM windows



At least one AAA game port is already announced and was demoed running natively. Other games will run under Rosetta. Again with a GPU that’s 4 to 5 fines faster, they will run better than on Intel Macs they replace.

I mean I get these forums are full of enthusiastic people that want the latest and shiniest but as of now we don't know how these machines behaves in real-world with emulation; and we don't even know their actual performances. All we can figure is they're probably gonna be a bit quieter and more energy-efficient. seems kinda crazy to me to go all in on it. A good bet right now would be to buy last gen intel model on the refurb. Apple is not gonna stop supporting intel macs anytime soon anyway.

 

[leman]

I mean I get these forums are full of enthusiastic people that want the latest and shiniest but as of now we don't know how these machines behaves in real-world with emulation; and we don't even know their actual performances. All we can figure is they're probably gonna be a bit quieter and more energy-efficient. seems kinda crazy to me to go all in on it. A good bet right now would be to buy last gen intel model on the refurb. Apple is not gonna stop supporting intel macs anytime soon anyway.

I have been following Apples progress in chip making for a while, I have educated myself on the technology behind it and I have both read tests done by some very smart people and run some test on Apples mobile chips myself. It’s not that difficult to extrapolate the worst-case expectations for M1 from there.

Based on my experience, I believe that many people are still completely oblivious to the significance of what happened yesterday. Apple has just redefined the base level of the personal computing. You will probably see when the reviews come in and Apple’s passively cooled Air will outperform all the premium 13” laptops based on latest x86 chips.

As far as x86 “emulation” goes, I have outlined an efficient way how to do it on these forums probably over a year ago. Rosetta 2 does exactly what I had in mind. The technology behind it has been there for many years - it’s called LLVM. All Apple needed is smart logic switches in their chips that would emulate the behavior of x86 CPU to get the semantic right 100% of the time. They did it with M1.