M1 Pro/Max's GPU performance for gaming is quite poor.

[throAU]

Windows drivers contain game-specific optimizations (low level tweaks and rewrite shaders that will be injected into app) to make them run faster. I can't imagine Apple doing it. Of course, the hope is that modern APIs make these kind of hacks unnecessary, that's also why Metal is so much closer to DX/Vulkan than OpenGL was.

Agreed, apple won't do it. But still. Given the macOS drivers aren't 1 gig in size and full of game-specific performance hackery, running GAMES within 50% of a top flight game optimised PC GPU in less power is impressive - and people poo-pooing that level of performance need a reality check.

 

[quarkysg]

Windows drivers contain game-specific optimizations (low level tweaks and rewrite shaders that will be injected into app) to make them run faster. I can't imagine Apple doing it. Of course, the hope is that modern APIs make these kind of hacks unnecessary, that's also why Metal is so much closer to DX/Vulkan than OpenGL was.

Isn't the graphic card drivers sitting below the DX/Vulkan drivers? Optimising for specific app/games sounds like not very optimal tho., and sometimes may cause performance regressions for other apps/games?

From my understanding, lower level drivers should be as lean as possible.

 

[leman]

The problem is... is Apple really interested in VR gaming headsets, or even VR gaming in general? Or are they more interested in making AR/VR general purpose frameworks for applications (not specific to gaming) on iPhones and iPads? I think we already have an answer to that.

Why does it matter? If Apple is the first to ship a low-power, cost-efficient VR solution, games will follow.

If Apple is and has worked with major game studios, either these don't really get anywhere, or they are taking an awfully long time to get anywhere.

Again, the lack of any mention of gaming during the announcement of these new MacBooks is... a sign. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it's very clear that this generation of Apple Silicon is not meant for gaming, even though they are capable of some decent amount of it.

This was a pro-focused event. Apple mentions games during their consumer-focused events. The Pro Macs are impressive machines, but their price is prohibitive to the average customer. Apple's "gaming horse" is the vanilla M series. So far they mentioned working with 4A (Metro Exodus) and Larian (Baldur's gates 3).

Don't expect any of the "heavyweight" studios (EA, Rockstar) on the Mac any time soon. These are unwieldy corporate monsters who sit on a moneymaking machine, they are not interested in experiments.

It depends on what you define as "AAA." Is it just... cutting edge graphics? Truly, no gaming console can ever have graphics as good as top-end gaming PCs. Most console games are running at anywhere between low to medium, or occasionally high, settings compared to any PC. And yet these console games can be classified as "AAA" all the same.

I find the concept of "AAA" highly awkward, which is also why I put it into quotation marks. From me discussing these issues with people here and on Reddit it seems that the common definition of an AAA game is a "high budget game that runs on Windows but not on macOS". Any time one mentioned a high-budget game that does run on macOS, the reply is "ah, but that's not really AAA". Go figure.

Does the Switch have "AAA" games? I'd argue it does. Compare the Switch to the PS3 and Xbox 360, and it's clear many Switch games, especially 1st party Nintendo games, can be considered "AAA". Because it's not graphics that dictate how "AAA" a game is, it's the gaming experience, isn't it?

What I was trying to say is that Switch does not have any of the desktop games people are interested in playing. Personally, I don't care about Mario or other Nintendo games. I want to play latest role playing and strategy games. This is not possible on the Switch. These games are available on macOS however.

I'm not sure how much more explicit Apple has to be about this. It's not like they prevent gaming, but thus far, they have not really pushed the Mac much as a gaming platform. Mac is still primarily marketed and directed toward content creators and developers as far as I can see. That's really all that it does. Beyond that, anything else is just "nice to have" but not a main focus.

Apple has two levels of precuts: consumer and professional. As I wrote in my previous post, they mention gaming in the context of the consumer products. But I agree that these are half-hearted efforts at best.

In contrast, Microsoft does push gaming on Windows. It's not just the fact that they specifically made DirectX for gaming, but it's also that they created their own gaming brand (the XBox), bought game studios, made their own games, made their own consoles, and heck, they now have their own game streaming service. Apple... hasn't even started on making a gaming brand.

I find it unlikely that Apple would be interested in making a gaming brand. Nor is it necessary to have good, quality gaming on Mac.

 

[UBS28]

Agreed, apple won't do it. But still. Given the macOS drivers aren't 1 gig in size and full of game-specific performance hackery, running GAMES within 50% of a top flight game optimised PC GPU in less power is impressive - and people poo-pooing that level of performance need a reality check.

You need a reality check. Apple has been selling these GPU’s as being on the level of the RTX 3080. Apple has been lying.

Now I didn’t order the 16“ M1 Max for gaming (because I know how much MAC sucks for gaming), but Apple has been spreading misinformation and Apple should be held accountable for it.

 

[leman]

Agreed, apple won't do it. But still. Given the macOS drivers aren't 1 gig in size and full of game-specific performance hackery, running GAMES within 50% of a top flight game optimised PC GPU in less power is impressive - and people poo-pooing that level of performance need a reality check.

And even more, if the game is actually optimized for Apple Silicon it will get ahead (we can see it with BG3 reaching 3050 level performance on M1)

Isn't the graphic card drivers sitting below the DX/Vulkan drivers? Optimising for specific app/games sounds like not very optimal tho., and sometimes may cause performance regressions for other apps/games?

From my understanding, lower level drivers should be as lean as possible.

Graphics card drivers are DX/Vulkan drivers. Microsoft specifies some sort of DX driver interface (not sure what it is), IHVs have to implement it. Vulkan support is completely implemented by the IHVs. Basically, the IHVs on Windows ship four or even more drivers: DX(11/12 might be a separate driver, no idea), Vulkan, OpenGL, OpenCL. And all of these contain app-specific optimizations. Why do you think a Windows graphic driver weights half a gigabyte

And yes, you are right, this is messy, disgusting and incredibly hacky. Welcome to the GPU business.

 

[bill-p]

I find it unlikely that Apple would be interested in making a gaming brand. Nor is it necessary to have good, quality gaming on Mac.

I won't respond to the other things because I do agree with you and I think those have also been discussed to death elsewhere, but this is the gist of the problem, I think.

You may not think the lack of a gaming brand is necessary to have good, quality gaming on Mac. But... personally, I believe that to be the entire reason why gaming on Mac has not taken off for decades. Nintendo has... themselves as the gaming brand. Pretty much. Sony has PlayStation. Microsoft has Xbox and Games for Windows. I think you can kind of guess where I am going with this. Gaming used to be the wild west before 2000, and any brand could have some sort of gaming identity to go with it. But shortly after that, all of the major players established their own brands, with their own specific directions, and the rest is history now.

Apple hasn't gotten out of that mindset yet, or... perhaps they don't even care, and that's the problem. Gaming has become all about identity now. The reason why people would associate AAA games as PC games (not Mac games) is just because they have and want a sense of... identity. To many, a Mac computer cannot be associated with gaming, either because of performance, or because of lack of games, or because Apple doesn't care... etc... but whatever reason it is, it's clear the Mac lacks what can be described as a "gaming identity."

And because Mac lacks a "gaming identity", I don't think it'll ever take off. Developers won't just flock to the Mac now just because M1 beats a bunch of chips in performance and efficiency, or because it's easier to develop high-performance graphics. In the end, I think a gaming identity is more important than it looks.

But of course, that's just what I think. Maybe you are right, we may see more well-developed games on Mac in the future. I'll be happy when that happens, but for now, I'm not holding out hope that my ultra-powerful M1 Pro device is capable of any meaningful gaming.

 

[leman]

You need a reality check. Apple has been selling these GPU’s as being on the level of the RTX 3080. Apple has been lying.

Synthetic gaming benchmarks back up their claims. Never mind that they were talking about productivity apps.

Nobody expected these chips to be as fast as they are. My best hopes was 3060 mobile level at the high end. They have far surpassed it.

 

[leman]

You may not think the lack of a gaming brand is necessary to have good, quality gaming on Mac. But... personally, I believe that to be the entire reason why gaming on Mac has not taken off for decades. Nintendo has... themselves as the gaming brand. Pretty much. Sony has PlayStation. Microsoft has Xbox and Games for Windows. I think you can kind of guess where I am going with this. Gaming used to be the wild west before 2000, and any brand could have some sort of gaming identity to go with it. But shortly after that, all of the major players established their own brands, with their own specific directions, and the rest is history now.

But most popular games are not associated with any brand or product except their publisher/studio. Yes, they run on Windows, because that's the mainstream user platform and because it has the best hardware support for gaming. But they have nothing to do with Xbox branding. Game like Crysis, Witcher Series, Rockstar games (GTA/Red Dead) etc. — they are just "PC games". Not Nintendo/Sony/XBox/Microsoft games.

In this sense, Apple does not need to build up a gaming identity. The identity already exists — "PC gamers". For gaming on Macs to improve, Macs need to be seen as a particular "premium" kind of "mobile PC gaming".

 

[Pressure]

You need a reality check. Apple has been selling these GPU’s as being on the level of the RTX 3080. Apple has been lying.

Now I didn’t order the 16“ M1 Max for gaming (because I know how much MAC sucks for gaming), but Apple has been spreading misinformation and Apple should be held accountable for it.

The comparison were to industry leading applications. We don't know which ones exactly so it is hard to refute them. Gaming wasn't even mentioned.

Synthetic benchmarks which have seen the same optimisation that NVIDIA and AMD have enjoyed in Windows seem to back up their claims and content creation applications definitely do.

DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro, Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher as well as others have had optimised applications ready out of the gate and performance to show for it.

Basically anything that take advantage of the M1 hardware all shows great performance improvements across the board.

 

[thunng8]

You need a reality check. Apple has been selling these GPU’s as being on the level of the RTX 3080. Apple has been lying.

Now I didn’t order the 16“ M1 Max for gaming (because I know how much MAC sucks for gaming), but Apple has been spreading misinformation and Apple should be held accountable for it.

I think you need a reality check. They never even mentioned gaming in their keynote or even on their website. There have been multiple real world applications tests that has shown the m1 max far exceeding the rtx3080.

 

[quarkysg]

And yes, you are right, this is messy, disgusting and incredibly hacky. Welcome to the GPU business.

Now I understand why Apple prefer writing their own graphic card drivers.

 

[UBS28]

I think you need a reality check. They never even mentioned gaming in their keynote or even on their website. There have been multiple real world applications tests that has shown the m1 max far exceeding the rtx3080.

In their keynote, they said it performed like a RTX 3080. They didn’t say only under scenario A it might peform like a RTX 3080. It was misinformation Apple was spreading during the keynote.

People are in their right to call out Apple on this.

 

[thenewperson]

Frankly, I was also surprised that Apple would do TV shows, but we all have seen how that is going: these shows are absolutely terrible

Well if those shows are terrible I definitely want to see terrible Apple-owned games then.

 

[vir]

Pros use Quadro cards.

 

[leman]

Now I understand why Apple prefer writing their own graphic card drivers.

Apples model is similar to DX on windows: Apple writes the interface, vendor ships the driver. This is all over with Apple silicon.

In their keynote, they said it performed like a RTX 3080. They didn’t say only under scenario A it might peform like a RTX 3080. It was misinformation Apple was spreading during the keynote.

People are in their right to call out Apple on this.

Stop trolling. It performs as they advertized in industry standard benchmarks. Both for productivity and gaming. It’s your problem that you prefer to cherry pick unoptimized software for comparison.

Well if those shows are terrible I definitely want to see terrible Apple-owned games then.

I’ve watched For all mankind, Foundation and Invasion. Terrible acting, terrible directing, terrible writing, very cringey, very forced. Invasion was at least funny. We laughed to tears.

 

[jinnyman]

Well. I know I’m pretty late at this party.. but my takes on this whole gaming topic.

It all depends on Apple’s willingness. Apple is one of the richest company existing.
Look at how much $$$ they are throwing at TV+ to get in to entertainment and streaming service.
The same tactic will be pretty effective if Apple can do the followings :

1. Buy a major gaming studio with famous AAA titles.
2. Introduce an Apple gaming console with AS in it.
3. Sponser enough 3rd party studios so that multi-platform titles can be supplied to Apple console.
4. Provide concrete support and assurance in API and development environment

With all titles running in the same environment, people can get to play pc like & higher setting games in more expensive Macs, while stable gaming experience can be provided by the console.

Otherwise, with no footing in a gaming studio, I believe Apple’s not really serious about increasing their foothold in gaming industry yet.

 

[thenewperson]

In their keynote, they said it performed like a RTX 3080. They didn’t say only under scenario A it might peform like a RTX 3080. It was misinformation Apple was spreading during the keynote.

People are in their right to call out Apple on this.

Eh, they kind of did in the small print. It was very vague though.

 

[UBS28]

Apples model is similar to DX on windows: Apple writes the interface, vendor ships the driver. This is all over with Apple silicon.



Stop trolling. It performs as they advertized in industry standard benchmarks. Both for productivity and gaming. It’s your problem that you prefer to cherry pick unoptimized software for comparison.

Stop simping for Apple. Their presentation was very misleading and a few youtube reviewers already called out the claims by Apple as very unlikely.

 

[leman]

Stop simping for Apple. Their presentation was very misleading and a few youtube reviewers already called out the claims by Apple as very unlikely.

"Very unlikely". There are benchmarks available. What's "unlikely" about that? M1 Max scores around 20k in Wild Life Extreme, 3080 mobile scores 25k. This is the gaming potential of the chip. It's up to the devs to harness it.

And please don't come with a "but Tomb Raider has lower FPS" or "GTA barely runs under Crossover".

 

[jmho]

Everyone desiring a comparison to a consumer grade GeForce card has already betrayed their interest in gaming. You generally use Quadro cards and Radeon Pro cards for professional content creation.

As a 3d graphics programmer with a number of professional 3d artist friends I've never seen a Quadro or Radeon Pro card in real life. I don't know anyone who has one and I would never buy one personally either.

 

[leman]

Everyone desiring a comparison to a consumer grade GeForce card has already betrayed their interest in gaming. You generally use Quadro cards and Radeon Pro cards for professional content creation.

Penny counting as usual. Quadro cards have the same (or lower) performance. Almost nobody uses them. What practical difference does it makes? They are comparing with available hardware that is commonly used. We have a bunch of people heavily invested in ML workflows here, do you think they use Quadros? No, they have ASUS gaming laptops for prototyping and a supercomputer for production.

 

[UBS28]

"Very unlikely". There are benchmarks available. What's "unlikely" about that? M1 Max scores around 20k in Wild Life Extreme, 3080 mobile scores 25k. This is the gaming potential of the chip. It's up to the devs to harness it.

And please don't come with a "but Tomb Raider has lower FPS" or "GTA barely runs under Crossover".

Did you even watch the keynote? What benchmarks did Apple show besides vague claims?

 

[diamond.g]

And even more, if the game is actually optimized for Apple Silicon it will get ahead (we can see it with BG3 reaching 3050 level performance on M1)




Graphics card drivers are DX/Vulkan drivers. Microsoft specifies some sort of DX driver interface (not sure what it is), IHVs have to implement it. Vulkan support is completely implemented by the IHVs. Basically, the IHVs on Windows ship four or even more drivers: DX(11/12 might be a separate driver, no idea), Vulkan, OpenGL, OpenCL. And all of these contain app-specific optimizations. Why do you think a Windows graphic driver weights half a gigabyte

And yes, you are right, this is messy, disgusting and incredibly hacky. Welcome to the GPU business.

The actual display driver isn’t a half gig. You don’t actually need all the other stuff the drivers come with to play a games.

 

[quarkysg]

And please don't come with a "but Tomb Raider has lower FPS"

Actually there was a YouTube video shared in this thread earlier showing the 16" M1 Max MacBook benching higher FPS compared to a RTX 3080 Mobile notebook running the SoTR benchmark.

 

[leman]

Did you even watch the keynote? What benchmarks did Apple show besides vague claims?

Why are you deflecting? And when did Apple ever show anything else but vague claims? The point is that their claims are supported by third-party reviewers.