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In 3 years, 50% of all computers capable of playing AAA games will be Macs

diamond.g said:
MetalFX isn't good enough?
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No.

Unfortunately the era of rasterised performance is behind us. Going forwards, software(AI upscaling) will be as if not more important than the hardware(raw compute and watt consumption).

For Metal FX to succeed it needs two things:
1. Great and consistent performance
2. Support by gaming studios

If it's lacking in either, it will fail. Handheld devices need AI upscaling even more than consoles/computers due to thermal and physical limits. Switch 2 would not have been capable of its performance without DLSS. Apple is best off knocking heads with AMD or Nvidia to support their super sampling algorithms rather than trying to go at it alone.
 
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Macalicious2011 said:
No.

Unfortunately the era of rasterised performance is behind us. Going forwards, software(AI upscaling) will be as if not more important than the hardware(raw compute and watt consumption).

For Metal FX to succeed it needs two things:
1. Great and consistent performance
2. Support by gaming studios

If it's lacking in either, it will fail. Handheld devices need AI upscaling even more than consoles/computers due to thermal and physical limits. Switch 2 would not have been capable of its performance without DLSS. Apple is best off knocking heads with AMD or Nvidia to support their super sampling algorithms rather than trying to go at it alone.
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What makes you think MetalFX doesn’t do what you want?
 
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Isengardtom said:
as long as there is no support by gaming studios, it's going to stay niche.
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It is a shame that MetalFX isn't a dylib so that you can do an override on older implementations to get the newer improvements/features (think DLSS 4 Transformer model vs CNN override, or FSR 3.1 to 4 override for 9000 series GPU's)
 
MAC’s won’t be able to play ****. Especially now that Rosetta 2 will be removed.

Valve did it the right way, which is making PC games run on Linux. And PC games run faster on Linux despite the games being written for Windows.

If game developers can’t be bothered to make Linux games for Valve, who has the biggest AAA gaming library on the planet, they sure as hell won’t make games for MAC.
 
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diamond.g said:
Since WWDC has come and gone, how do we feel about the thread subject title these days?
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Aged like milk, though even high end PCs struggle with modern AAA titles.

Plus there’s been only slow progress since it was made, and in a rapidly changing industry that’s a real problem.
 
A new significant problem for Mac gaming at the moment is the unified RAM situation and general low standard RAM on most Macs. Lots of console ports are beginning to look really rough without 12GB of dedicated VRAM on the card, and you need a very top end set of upgrades on a Mac to give that.
 
unless Apple comes out with a cheaper Mac that is also upgradeable I don't see this happening.
Gamers love to tweak their rigs. Not all gamers do this, but a big part of PC gaming is approaching the PC as if it's a stock Honda Civic.
 
Apple should develop its own AAA Mac games.

Genre entertainment titles like Invasion would have more value as content for Apple if they were crafted as well-made original Mac games (rather than TV shows).

Hopefully Apple pivots in this direction.
 
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throAU said:
Nothing is really out that pushes it yet so there's no evidence either way.

Cyberpunk, presumably does but it isn't out yet on Mac.
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The proof is in the pudding. This is why Nvidia are able to charge a premium for their GPUs, DLSS works brilliantly on new and older hardware. Now it's even proven itself on the Switch 2 where upscaling is happening from a very low resolution on a 10watt device. This is in contrast to rival upscaling technologies that show off demos that don't reflect how poorly the technology performs in the majority of situations.

Apple Silicon is magical and has impressive raw performance. A partnership with AMD on upscaling algorithms would be fab.
 
Macalicious2011 said:
Is there any evidence that MetalFX delivers consistently across Mac and at several different resolutions, with and without VRR, Ray Tracing, Global illumination and more?
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Metalfx upscaling yes. It’s been out for a couple of years and works well. Digital foundry reviewed it when it first came out and thought the temporal upscaler was very good.

Frame gen is new.

I’m confused whether you think it doesn’t or whether you just don’t know.
 
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MRMSFC said:
Aged like milk, though even high end PCs struggle with modern AAA titles.

Plus there’s been only slow progress since it was made, and in a rapidly changing industry that’s a real problem.
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I agree that the title/topic has not aged all that well.

While computationally Apple M processors are incredible and extremely potent, the GPU innovation is lagging further and further behind. From googling around, the M4 Pro Mini's GPU performance is equivalent to a RTX 4060 mobile. The non-pro Mini seems to be aligning towards a RTX 1650.

This does not bode well for current AAA titles. Doing my own tests, my RX7800XT which I consider a mid-tier GPU (maybe an upper mid-tier) is significantly faster then my M4 Pro Mini.
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This I believe ties directly into the slow progress of mac native games. Current AAA games will perform significantly slower then a typical PC - publishers just don't see AAA games on the mac as huge profit center. Of all the talk of Cyberpunk coming to the mac, the fact remains its a 5 year old game.
 
Progress, slow or otherwise is determined overwhelmingly by the addressable market. Not dlss and not super powerful gpus.
 
I don't think it's the hardware that's holding Apple gaming back as such.

All those AAA games people talk about will probably come to the Nintendo Switch 2. The 2021 iPad Pro with the M1 SoC has a better CPU, GPU and faster storage (compared to the handheld mode of the Nintendo Switch 2).
 
Pressure said:
I don't think it's the hardware that's holding Apple gaming back as such.

All those AAA games people talk about will probably come to the Nintendo Switch 2. The 2021 iPad Pro with the M1 SoC has a better CPU, GPU and faster storage (compared to the handheld mode of the Nintendo Switch 2).
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Nobody is going to make a special downgraded port for the tiny gamer user base of macOS. It's not big enough to attract as is ports in many cases already and it definitely isn't big enough for custom ones that require a bunch of changes to run well. And we all know if they did something like port the Switch 2 version there would be a whole bunch of complaints about why it isn't up to par with the PC/PS5 releases.
 
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Pressure said:
All those AAA games people talk about will probably come to the Nintendo Switch 2
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And yet this thread is 5 years old and needle on Mac gaming has barely moved, as I mentioned improvments to GPUs and the supporting software has taken leaps and bounds these 5 years but Apple's GPU and software hasn't kept pace.

I see more publishers lining up to have their games on the switch 2 then on Macs. I think one reason for that disparity is that the switch 2 is a gaming handheld, it does one thing and one thing only - gaming.

Food for thought CDPR announced in October 2024, that cybepunk will be coming to the Mac - it still hasn't, where as its available today on the switch 2. the publisher opted to publish the game on a dedicated gaming device where 100% of the owners play games, vs. a significant subset of Mac users are interested in gaming.

Steam's Hardware Survey indicates around 1.6% of its users are on macOS - so does CDPR produce a game for 1.6% or 100%?
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maflynn said:
I agree that the title/topic has not aged all that well.

While computationally Apple M processors are incredible and extremely potent, the GPU innovation is lagging further and further behind. From googling around, the M4 Pro Mini's GPU performance is equivalent to a RTX 4060 mobile. The non-pro Mini seems to be aligning towards a RTX 1650.

This does not bode well for current AAA titles. Doing my own tests, my RX7800XT which I consider a mid-tier GPU (maybe an upper mid-tier) is significantly faster then my M4 Pro Mini.
View attachment 2521090

This I believe ties directly into the slow progress of mac native games. Current AAA games will perform significantly slower then a typical PC - publishers just don't see AAA games on the mac as huge profit center. Of all the talk of Cyberpunk coming to the mac, the fact remains its a 5 year old game.
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I somewhat agree with you, but on the other hand I don’t believe big AAA singleplayer titles (and by extension the horsepower to run them) is a winning strategy here.

I know I sound like a broken record, but I believe that popular multiplayer games is what Apple should aim for rather than ports of big titles that are past their “hype period”.

For example, if Apple were to just go to the developers of the biggest multiplayer Steam titles, most of which don’t require top notch hardware to run, and say “we will bankroll and support a native port in exchange for you making a big deal out of your game coming to Mac”, it would be less effort for more impact than their current strategy of “We will bankroll and support a port of your year-old singe player title so long as it’s only sold on our App Store”.

At the very least it would be easier than trying to make a 200 watt SoC that can go toe to toe with a gpu that’s drawing 600 watts by itself.
 
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