M1 machines are OK baseline gaming machines. And Apple has been working hard the last couple of years to improve their software environment for game development. With these new Macs, I am fairly optimistic about the future of gaming on the platform. It will still take a couple of years to properly lift off, but there are already a number of titles in development and new ports are being released at a steady rate.
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iMac M1: Benchmarking
- Thread starter jido
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M1 machines are OK baseline gaming machines. And Apple has been working hard the last couple of years to improve their software environment for game development. With these new Macs, I am fairly optimistic about the future of gaming on the platform. It will still take a couple of years to properly lift off, but there are already a number of titles in development and new ports are being released at a steady rate.
I'm much less optimistic. On one hand, people like to play old games, but backward compatibility has never been a priority for Apple. On the other hand, the M1 Macs are effectively previous-generation hardware for AAA gaming.
Both PS5 and Xbox Series X have a ~4x more powerful GPU than the M1, 16 GB unified memory, and 1 TB SSD. Even the cheap low-end Xbox Series S has a ~50% faster GPU, 10 GB unified memory, and 512 GB SSD. Any system with lesser specs will soon be left behind, because supporting them would require too many compromises.
Are you claiming that current consoles will obsolete 80% of the gaming PC market? Because most gaming laptops to there are using a GTX 1650 or the like.
Besides, I though about getting a console, but I just don't see why I would bother. There are like 1 or 2 PS-exclusive games that I am interested in. Xbox has nothing for me at all. I am not spending $600 (console + games) just to play a single game...
That's what normally happens after the release of a new console generation. The requirements jump during the first couple of years and then remain steady for the next five years or so.
People with new hardware buy more AAA games than people with old hardware. They are also more likely to choose games designed for their new hardware than ones that make compromises to run on legacy hardware. Once the new console generation is sufficiently widespread, supporting old hardware often means more work for lower sales in the AAA segment.
Maybe I’m a glass half-full kind of person, and also not a gamer.
I guess game developer will target younger demographics with the Macs going forward with new releases.
As has been said countless times, M1 is a first-gen SoC. Its integrated graphics are many times more powerful than what Intel provided with it's own chips, and therefore for the vast majority of tasks that the 'M1 demographic' are completing, it provides more than enough resources.
Also to your point, you're not considering the ratio of software titles that actually take full advantage of the said hardware, compared to those that only use a fraction. Compared to the past, fewer games today actually stress a console's hardware since the development has become so time consuming and expensive. That's not to say that those titles in question aren't popular, far from it, but there are many more titles that are using smaller footprints/resources and happen to sell incredibly well.
Nintendo has proven this time and time again. Switch has roughly half the computational power of even the M1, but it's now sold more than 80 million units and is on course to be one of the best selling videos games consoles of all time. Coincidence? No.
The question is not whether Mac would be an adequate platform for some games. Nobody wants an adequate gaming device. People want something that is clearly better than any alternative in the kind of gaming they are interested in.
Consoles are a cost-effective way of playing games on a big screen. PCs can offer both extreme performance and extreme backward compatibility. Mobile games can be played anywhere. Switch is a cheap device that combines the convenience of mobile gaming with a dedicated controller. What would be the niche where expensive Macs clearly beat the competition?
My guess is that this will depend on how Apple approaches the M2/M1X. The products that would potentially appeal most to hobbyist gamers would be the iMac (Pro) and 16" MacBook Pro, and there is some evidence that Apple could at least offer a dedicated GPU option.
But also, given how limited the upgrades from Intel were and the returns (often in the region of 10%), I'd guess that any BTO options will have some dramatic performance improvements.
I don't see it this way, but I read a bunch of comments and I see I might be the only one.
It's not Gen 1 for me, as in : It's certainly new to use it in desktops/laptops, but it's far from being a brand new technology we're facing. They just expanded the A processor line. Apple's been doing their own processors since the iPhone 5 I think, which goes back to 8-9 years ago.
There are two things here :
1. The M1 has strict limitations because the A14 chip was designed for mobile devices first and foremost. Apple doesn't use more than 1 display in their iOS/iPadOS devices, doesn't really have I/O and uses around 3X as less memory as competitors yet still manages to be the king of performance.
2. macOS has been designed for x86 for the last 15 years. Big Sur, the software companion of the new M line, IS a Gen 1 for me. While they do share a lot of frameworks with iOS, macOS still relies on quite a few Next Step frameworks. But as the software evolves, crashes/panics will fade away. The software being unstable does not mean the hardware is unstable.
Anyway. It does not change the fact that M1 has limitations. It does not change the fact that some might find Big Sur unstable (which is not the case for me).
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I wonder how the current shortage will affect gaming. Sure, the new consoles are powerful - if you can get one. If I were a game dev, I would reconsider making a title exclusive to a console that isn't readily available for consumers. Ditto with current and next gen GPUs from AMD and Nvidia. Hell, you could almost get a whole iMac for the price a midrange GPU is going for these days. Game developers are going to need to adapt, unless they want to build titles that only a select few can run, significantly limiting potential sales.
As for the stats around GPU performance in non-gaming apps, How much of that could be due to the Neural Engine in the M1?
As for the stats around GPU performance in non-gaming apps, How much of that could be due to the Neural Engine in the M1?
This is not entirely accurate IMO. Both iOS and macOS build on the OS X foundation, and they use the same kernel, fundamental frameworks, NeXTSTEP etc. So development was really carried on for ARM and x86 in parallel, with iOS often being used to test out new features before they were added to macOS (like much of the low-level graphical subsystem). The only "big" difference between iOS and macOS is the user interface framework, but that is a fairly small part of the OS itself and also one that becomes more blurred out with SwiftUI.
If you are running computation on the GPU, you are not running it on the neural engine... it's not really clear what the Neural Engine can do anyway and the only way to use it is via Apple's own (somewhat limited) ML API.
This part of the shortage is mostly caused by increased demand. Both PS5 and Xbox Series X sell faster than their predecessors, and Nvidia also reports record sales for gaming GPUs. If anything, the transition to current-generation-only games may happen faster this time.
Apparently, macOS controller support is pretty lacking beyond PS and Xbox controllers. Even Linux does much better than macOS, according to a Feral developper.
Apparently Adobe is using it in photoshop for a new enhance feature. Someone posted this video showing the feature taking 11 seconds on a base M1 MacBook Air and 10 minutes on a Tiger Lake i7.
About 13:10. Very funny.
Not agree. The PS5 and Xbox targeting 4K resolution, so they spread all that power just for a better pic. And looks like, what IMac should be the same power if the same game runs at 1080p. If I'm correct, iMac is able to run any modern game at the same frame rate as current-gen consoles, just at reduced res. And this is the jam
That's very Apple-like way of thinking.
4k resolution on a 55" TV is more than just a better-looking version of 1080p resolution on a 24" monitor. A larger display often means a larger field of view. Games designed for large displays with a sufficient resolution can show more meaningful information to the player. If you try playing them on a small screen, you may not be able to see the details you are supposed to see.
Actually, you also have to take into consideration how far you are from the screen.
As I mentioned, "A larger display often means a larger field of view." The ideal distance depends both on display size and pixel density.
Most folks would sit quite a lot further back from a 55” TV compared to a 23.5” monitor. For the same 4K image, I would think a user would see more details on the 23.5” compared to the 55” TV from their respective normal viewing distance.
I would think a 1080p image on a 23.5” HiDPI monitor would look roughly similar to a 4K image on a 55” TV when viewed using the normal viewing distance.
The new iMac isn't really marketed toward gaming. Apple doesn't even mention it on the product page. If Apple does decide to make a play for gamers, M1 isn't it, and that's OK. It is a low power chip that can handle gaming better than most others in its class. It seems like there's plenty of headroom for future iMacs to have decent performance. Apple will always favor stability and image quality over frame rates.
Gamers are huge paypigs, so I doubt it will change much if at all, the companies will just change more. The only real thing holding back cross platform development is DRM. Modern engines are largely designed to be cross platform.
Gamers are hugely anti-Apple biased. Check the comments in anything Apple related on a gaming website or YouTube. It would take many years of effort on Apple’s part to break that barrier, and Apple doesn’t “get” gaming.
The "normal" viewing distance depends on the type of content. A game designed for 4k assumes a shorter distance than one designed for 1080p with the same display, because the developers want to give a more immersive experience and show more details. Using the higher resolution only to show a better version of the same image would waste the potential of the 4k console.
Some anecdotal evidence from my personal habits:
- Gaming on a 24" 1080p display: 50-80 cm.
- Normal desktop use on a 27" 5k iMac: 50-90 cm.
- New 4k TV shows on a 55" TV: 120-140 cm.
- Old TV shows on a 55" TV: 120-250 cm.
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I am very late to this thread, but I finally have some space.
So let me first agree with you a bit - there is pretty much no (gaming) niche where expensive Macs beat their (gaming) competition.
Where I mainly disagree is "Nobody wants an adequate gaming device." I’d contend that a lot of people are perfectly happy with an adequate gaming device, if the content is there. Hell, they are more than OK with that even for a dedicated gaming device, or the Switch wouldn’t outsell everything in the console market. And Macs aren’t dedicated gaming devices, gaming is just one of their potential uses.
So, IF the games were available for the Macs, they should do as well as on any other non-gaming focussed device such as, say, iPads. Better, arguably, since Mac buyers can’t be the most cash strapped clientele. The question is whether developing iOS/MacOS or Windows/MacOS titles offer sufficient ROI to justify supporting MacOS and their AS graphics architecture.
Just as with any entertainment content, that is bound to vary from title to title, and there are beancounters who will make guesses and put those into spreadsheets, and present the results at board meetings. A problem for MacOS gaming is the uncertainty of those guesses - how many AS Macs will be sold? To what demographic? What will their interest be in title X? The cost side of things is much easier to predict.
I’m quite convinced that for instance Baldurs Gate 3 will pay for itself nicely. As would Diablo 4, or Civilization X. Would Nier:Automata, GTA X, xSouls y, et cetera? Well that would require a lot more risk taking.
I think the baseline gaming capabilities that Apple has established for their AS Macs is quite robust, very roughly on par with the PS4, and thus adequate for just about any current and most upcoming content. However, the big game publishers are not known for taking risks, so for the next couple of years I wouldn’t be surprised to see more titles originating from iOS focused developers/publishers than from the traditional console/PC side.