Unexpectedly worse performance on 14” MBP vs 27” iMac (2017)

[mciarlo]

This is a very specific use case but hear me out:

My 27” iMac gets ~60 FPS running an older game from 2003 in 4K using CrossOver.

I used Migration Assistant and ran the same game on my MBP M1Pro 10/16 and it ran at 7FPS. I reconfigured the graphics in-game thinking it needed to adapt to the new hardware and got the same result.

I would have expected the new machine to at least match the iMac. Curious what people think might be going on here. Seems like it could be an understatement how these new chips aren’t designed for gaming.

 

[badsimian]

What is the game and what graphics card is in your iMac? There is an additional translation layer going on with the M1 as you will have Rosetta as well as the WINE translation calls happening whereas the iMac is native x86/64 so all you have is the WINE layer.
Now that is just the CPU side, on the graphics side Crossover uses something called MoltenVK to translate to Metal. Apparently older games can be problematic and a bit hit and miss if they make esoteric calls that newer games don't - although if this was a problem it would affect both the M1 and your iMac.

 

[mciarlo]

The iMac has a Radeon Pro 580 8GB. The game is NASCAR Racing 2003 Season. I’m pretty befuddled but these results.