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Metal will be a competitor or alternative to DirectX (hopefully, eventually), but there's simply no software for it yet. If you want to run current games, they're all written for DirectX and/or OpenGL. And the mac OpenGL implementation is pretty poor in terms of game performance.
Metal will not speed up anything currently out there unless the games are patched/re-written for Metal.
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It's not just the rebooting. It's the additional disk space, and the fact that i'm installing a copy of Windows at all.
Every time i'd reboot into it (sometimes not for weeks/months), it would want to do a heap of windows updates, steam updates, etc.
Running games in the OS you boot into every day is far more convenient.
That's what Apple is hoping for, I'm not a real gamer so I can't comment how much better that API/platform improves the Macs chances on getting newer games, but people are seemingly excited for it. Seems kind of cool to me, regardless that I don't play much games on my computer.
It sounds like you don't game enough!
I hear you on the updates, but it's pretty infrequent for me since I boot into Windows to game 4-5 times a week. The performance is worth it for sure, even on the games that are on both platforms.
It sounds like you don't game enough!
I hear you on the updates, but it's pretty infrequent for me since I boot into Windows to game 4-5 times a week. The performance is worth it for sure, even on the games that are on both platforms.
I was dual booting windows for the stuff that needed it and making do with the lesser performance than in Windows unless the game really suffered for it. But yes, not gaming as much as I used to.
Also, at the moment, there's no Elite Dangerous Horizons for Mac due to the lack of compute shaders which kinda sucks, so that box is running Windows full time again.
Temperature may be an issue here. When I'm running my Trainz game in OS X the GPU temperature ramps up to 99C, fan blows at around 1600RPM and the rear of my iMac feels really hot to the touch after a while.
The temperature isn't nearly as high when running exactly the same game (same settings) in BootCamp Windows 10. So, it appears that the Windows drivers for the M395X GPU do a better job.
The temperature isn't nearly as high when running exactly the same game (same settings) in BootCamp Windows 10. So, it appears that the Windows drivers for the M395X GPU do a better job.
Eh. Open GL/Open CL still suffers due to Apple focusing on Metal, but if your game supports Metal performance is decent and Metal 2 looks to be bringing more capabilities.