I didn't know about that, that's pretty cool. The hardware requirements to run some of those games is pretty nuts though - hah. Maybe virtualizing it on ARM natively will be better than emulating it.
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The final blow for real gaming on the Mac, or the beginning of a new era?
- Thread starter Frankied22
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I understand that it's been quantified that Apple has created great a great general purpose CPU; even though it's a mobile CPU, it has been measured to compete with existing low to mid range PC desktops and scaling by adding cores and cooling should be able to compete with higher end desktop CPUs. With the low power and low heat, the benefit that it can compete and possibly exceed full on desktop CPUs but exist in a laptop is perfect for most Mac users.
However, if we narrow the definition of "gaming" to "AAA gaming on high quality settings and smooth frame rates"
I don't understand is what the basis for the belief that this the Apple GPU scales the same way as the CPU to play these games? It's pretty clear based on what is demo'd for the PS5 and what the actual, officially released technical specs are that PS4 level and existing low end PC hardware is going to be completely ill equipped for the large leap coming this fall/winter for AAA gaming (big navi RDNA2 Ampere which are 100%-150% faster than current gen based on a good amount of existing data (which are already much much better than late cycle consoles, even accounting for the overhead of being on a general purpose OS)
Also, how could a Mac developer be creating the future of AAA games for Mac on the current developer kit that is available? (is there behind the scenes collaboration happening with developers who have access to adequate apple hardware?)
(Also since the PS5 can be plugged in, there's no reason to believe it's 8 core Zen 2 CPU cores, not running a general purpose OS under it, is actually going to have practical speeds greater than much of the apple silicon line running MacOS - and CPU clock speed is relevant in gaming)
Again not based on inferences about existing hardware but actual released specs for hardware that has been in the hands of gaming developers to make future games on, not on the Apple hardware that has the power that would have been state of the art in 2015.
Also, in order to power future games, nvidia and AMD gpus require large amounts of power and cooling even though they are/will be using 7nm process. Not intel with 14nm on x86 cisc, but dedicated, efficient GPUs built in collaboration with console makers and game developers.
If i'm missing something as to what technical reasons exist that allow apple to have the advantage in terms of cost, power, heat and teraflops over the coming nvidia and AMD GPUs i would like to know?
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That won't compete with PS5 or X Box Series X, and that level of desktop GPU power is going to cost $150 by this winter. is it worth worrying about the ability to play a AAA game if it's going to be at a low standard if it's ported at all?
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Rockstar would either lose a lot of money or make Apple a lot of money. I think the former makes more sense to me at the moment
But what if Apple took a small piece of it's Scrooge McDuck piles of cash, secured a three month exclusive & gave away a free copy of GTA VI with every AS Mac purchased in that time period?
Rockstar gets to watch wheelbarrows full of money roll in & Apple sells a whole bunch of AS Macs, we the consumers get GTA VI on the Mac; win, Win, WIN...!?!
That would be nice, but realistically it’d still probably just be a win for you (i.e the GTA gamer that wants an AS mac) and not much of a win for Apple or Rockstar.
I agree, that’s really silly of them. They should do a nice graphical demo to show off the performance of their GPUs.
Games designed to run at 4K will need more detailed textures, but that’s not really an issue because Apple GPUs use the system memory anyway. Although, I wonder how the increased bandwidth would affect the performance. I’m not sure that 4K gaming would be Apples forte. Then again , 4K is just around 20-30 MB of data, if texture access is properly optimized, modern DDR might be able to handle it.
I'm wondering if Apple will use low power cores on the desktop CPUs because it's probably unnecessary.
Switch only uses A57 big cores, and 1 core is reserved for the OS so Switch games only utliizes 3 Big cores.
Can they be ported over to MacOS? Technically, it won't be difficult at all. So it will be up to software companies.
I can confidently say there is 0% chance that will happen.
There’s a place for low power cores in a desktop. They’ll make less heat. Plus even desktop cpus still only have a finite amount if power (watts) available to them, so there is a reason to be efficient.
You can offload routine or low priority background OS tasks to those cores, where they’ll generate less heat and leave more watts available for the high power cores.
As I said before, whaht would happen really? Apple is combining Mac and iOS.
Currently, there are two big kinds of games existing in Apple world. AAA games ported to Mac, aka ‘Mac games’. Then, iOS games developed or ported primarily for usage in iOS, aka ‘Mobile games’.
1. We will see more occurrences of ‘Mac games’ ported to Mac compared to Intel Mac utilizing iOS friendly environment so that it will minimize concurrent development option for iOS version much easier. This is pretty much ‘Mac games’ like game that will make developers more easier option for future iOS version
2. We will see more occurrences of ‘Mobile games’ with options for running in Arm MacOS environment.
I bet what we’d see is more to #2 than #1. And by doing that, ‘Mobile games’ with MacOS options will be 1) graphically less appealing than what w’d see from #1 way and 2) with Frankenstein user interfaces and game experiences optimal for mobile platform awkwardly running in MacOS.
Think about it. Mobile market is already much bigger than Mac market. Now with combined ISA environment, what would developer do? I sense more tendency to #2 options.
What would lead to #1 instead of #2? Arm MacOS as a platform must be attractive enough to self survive by providing substantial performance/easier to develop/stable API&SDK for gaming industry to have trust on.
Let’s see and hope for #1.
Currently, there are two big kinds of games existing in Apple world. AAA games ported to Mac, aka ‘Mac games’. Then, iOS games developed or ported primarily for usage in iOS, aka ‘Mobile games’.
1. We will see more occurrences of ‘Mac games’ ported to Mac compared to Intel Mac utilizing iOS friendly environment so that it will minimize concurrent development option for iOS version much easier. This is pretty much ‘Mac games’ like game that will make developers more easier option for future iOS version
2. We will see more occurrences of ‘Mobile games’ with options for running in Arm MacOS environment.
I bet what we’d see is more to #2 than #1. And by doing that, ‘Mobile games’ with MacOS options will be 1) graphically less appealing than what w’d see from #1 way and 2) with Frankenstein user interfaces and game experiences optimal for mobile platform awkwardly running in MacOS.
Think about it. Mobile market is already much bigger than Mac market. Now with combined ISA environment, what would developer do? I sense more tendency to #2 options.
What would lead to #1 instead of #2? Arm MacOS as a platform must be attractive enough to self survive by providing substantial performance/easier to develop/stable API&SDK for gaming industry to have trust on.
Let’s see and hope for #1.
It is confirmed by Apple that their desktop CPUs will have both performance and efficiency cores. There are certainly benefits of having additional cores specialized to running low priority tasks - more performance to what actually matters.
I find your lack of faith (among other things) disturbing. I suppose I’ll have to delete my Steam library full of AAA games like Divinity Original Sin 2 or Total War series.
Most Steam games don’t work on Mac. Maybe your library is fine, but others not so much. Forget any 32bit game you’ve purchased. Popularity wise, click on OS on this poll. It might give some introspective:
tldr: Steam mac gamers consist of ~3.5%. Windows has ~96%.
Unnecessary.
The only benefit would be if it could run both performance and low power at the same time, but it's based on ARM's big.LITTLE pretty much like Tegra.
Also, in order to get any benefit from that they'd need to increase the memory on the SoC, even in another scenario where...
...they could free up space and add two "Vortex" cores on the same die space currently used for the Tempest cores.
Again, the iMac is always plugged in and has zero concerns for battery life.
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They can run both performance and efficiency cores at the same time.
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And you are as factually correct as is this fact irrelevant. I was replying to a poster claiming that there are no games for Mac. Depending on what genres you like, Mac gaming can be very viable. If you are into first person shooters, not so much. If you are into grand strategy games or RPGs, most of the recent games have good Mac ports.
And yes, I tend not to buy a game if it doesn’t offer a Mac version. Most games I am interested in do.
Depends on thermal headroom, IMO. The low power cores aren't going to be throwing off as much heat, meaning that they're easier to squeeze into any given thermal profile. I would guess that most Macs will a few have low power cores, with the only exceptions being iMac Pro (if it isn't discontinued or absorbed into the iMac) and Mac Pro, because those two will have a ridiculous amount of thermal breathing room assuming their cooling remains unchanged compared to their Intel counterparts.
Yep, I have a dedicated gaming PC for a very limited set of games that I will be replacing with the 2019 Mac Pro soon. I don't play games often, the only games I play a lot of are Persona 4 Golden which runs on a potato PC, DBZ Kakarot, Satisfactory and Minecraft (Windows 10 edition because its so much faster). On the Mac I play games like Factorio, Terraria and Stardew Valley. The Mac is more than enough to handle these games! I wish Satisfactory was on macOS because I am playing that game heavily at the moment.
about as good of a Mac port that people still play some of those games in bootcamp
Very true, but main reason for this is the lackluster performance (due to mediocre Intel iGPU - 25% driver tax) in many Apple models. For example, Civ 6 runs much better in bootcamp than under macOS on an Air or a Pro 13". With the healthy boost Apple Silicon will provide howler, this gap will disappear.
A good article from a reliable source that seems to indicate the 12z bionic gpu is indeed far from compelling in an absolute sense. Even a 2x or 5x or even 10x whatever isn’t going to be enough.
www.anandtech.com
while Apple silicon is going to kick ass for everything else, I am yet to see evidence that it’s going to be useful for specialized 3D work or AAA gaming.
One other thought - the Mac ultra high resolution displays are not optimal either. AAA games are best on a 1440p 144 hz at native resolution. 4K at 120+ is coming, but a high resolution Mac, even if it had 120hz would require a gpu that exceeds even rdna2 big navi ampere to best a PC in terms of overall experience.
it’s ok if your computer is only amazing at being a computer!
The 2018 Apple iPad Pro (11-Inch) Review: Doubling Down On Performance
while Apple silicon is going to kick ass for everything else, I am yet to see evidence that it’s going to be useful for specialized 3D work or AAA gaming.
One other thought - the Mac ultra high resolution displays are not optimal either. AAA games are best on a 1440p 144 hz at native resolution. 4K at 120+ is coming, but a high resolution Mac, even if it had 120hz would require a gpu that exceeds even rdna2 big navi ampere to best a PC in terms of overall experience.
it’s ok if your computer is only amazing at being a computer!
144hz+ is only really needed for some types of competitive stuff, though. For other genres it's a nice-to-have but hardly essential. Games like Witcher III, Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption II, Persona 5, and Breath of the Wild among many others are just fine at 60FPS and are often played at only 30FPS.
There’s fine and then there’s what already exists for any enthusiast spending more than $800 on a gaming PC
Once you’ve had it, there’s no going back. And on a PC it means spending about $150 more on your screen and using a $300+ video card.
The specialized competitive stuff is 240hz non-ips 1080p.
I don’t think this is a “final blow” for gaming on the Mac.
I don’t expect the Mac to reach parity with the PC by any means. Not anytime soon at least.
Apple is making Metal tools available for Windows today. Unreal is already on board for Apple Silicon. Unity I think already has support for Metal.
It’s my understanding that anything written for Metal “just works” with the x86 instructions being recompiled at launch.
This all comes down to whether or not Apple hardware on it’s own can make a compelling case for games to be made for the Mac. That’s a tougher question all together.
If Apple can create hardware that is competitive with the other players, and if the tool sets support it, it seems like a no brainer to me for publishers to reach the audience.
I don’t expect the Mac to reach parity with the PC by any means. Not anytime soon at least.
Apple is making Metal tools available for Windows today. Unreal is already on board for Apple Silicon. Unity I think already has support for Metal.
It’s my understanding that anything written for Metal “just works” with the x86 instructions being recompiled at launch.
This all comes down to whether or not Apple hardware on it’s own can make a compelling case for games to be made for the Mac. That’s a tougher question all together.
If Apple can create hardware that is competitive with the other players, and if the tool sets support it, it seems like a no brainer to me for publishers to reach the audience.