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Will the M1x MacBook pros be gaming worthy?
- Thread starter im_Jared
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What's amusing to me is that my 2017/2018 Omen by HP i7700HQ with GTX1050 isn't that much faster than my mid-2012 MacBook Pro with 3rd generation quad-core i7 and GeForce 650M. I'm sure that the numbers say it is much faster, but in reality, it's just okay.
At this point, the GTX1660 Ti is a step up, but the numbers say it's a much bigger step up. As quickly as the GTX20xx has become last year's hero, the industry is still working on a way to remove the heat quietly.
The good thing is that you can't boil water with these newer machines but you could with my mid-2012 MacBook Pro as it can be at 100 degrees C regularly while processing images or video.
Maybe, but which M1X? The base model that is a minor spec bump to the current version or the one that has massively improved GPU power? Surely not the latter.
Asus and Razer come to mind, depending on config. I have a 15" Razer with RTX5000 in addition to my fully specced MBP16. It's a good machine. I'm thinking of grabbing a Blade 14.
3080 is $699 and 3090 $1499. So $700 + cheap CPU/mainboard/RAM/SSD, PSU and Case. Are you so far away from something Apple offers with the performance of 3080/3070? That's what Apple will put into the Mac Mini Pro, which is placed between the normal Mac Mini and the Mac Pro which starts at $6k.
I'm talking retail. You might have to wait a little, but you can still get retail prices from your local dealer that you've supported over the years. I bought several laptops / desktop components this year for regular prices, but had to wait. Same for Dell systems, but the ones I bought are more in the $30k to $40k range anyway, but they were not more than before. If you want some GPU tomorrow, you have to pay the higher price. I'm fine with waiting.
If you're talking laptops, Razer Blade 14 has 3060 for $1.8k, 3070 for $2.2k and 3080 for $2.8k, all retail before potential discount. Asus G series is cheaper. Much more interesting is, how good the next Apple chips will be.
All that won't change that game developers won't support macOS for AAA games though.
The Blade 14 looks amazing. Hopefully, it's everything Razer has stated. Cooking a laptop computer isn't a good thing. Razer gets the most grief, followed closely by ASUS, so I always know where to go for a laptop machine.
My guess is the sometimes seemingly odd configs were more a result of difficulty getting the balance. Depending on generation, Intel desktop CPUs just weren’t efficient enough, but the mobile-focused variants were a significant step down in performance. The mini’s chassis size allowed for HDDs, although, at some point (even at the lower product price range) Apple knew there was enough demand for faster main drive options. It’s really the same challenge of “where can/do I compromise?” when assembling any SFF PC — a much blurrier line than even laptop component choices.
Indeed. I have a SFF system with Ryzen 5600X / 32GB / 960GB / RTX 3080 FE from an SI purchased early this summer and it was $3k+. The listed price is still about the same as of today.
I was okay with waiting too. However, prices certainly were not MSRP rather 10 to 50% market —which is fine versus the scalper 100%+. Unfortunately, wait times were weeks to months and those were estimates, not promises.
Using bots was/is the only way of getting MSRP that I’ve read, and that’s only via some outlets.
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Let's set aside software (where Windows is going to be far superior at least for the near future), and just talk hardware. And let's divide gamers into these four categories.
[TLDR: If you want an all-around computer (either laptop or desktop) that plays games reasonably well, the AS Macs will be fine (and, IMO, give you a much better all-round experience than a PC). But if you want a gaming-focused laptop or desktop, PC's will offer superior value and performance.]
I. Laptop buyers
1) Those that want an all-around laptop that can play games reasonably well. Here, the Macs will be fine. Indeed, if you don't mind the cost, a top-end MBP with a 32-core GPU may give performance roughly equal to a 3070 RTX laptop GPU, which, while not bleeding edge, is pretty high-end.
2) Those that want a gaming-focused laptop. If you mostly care about gaming, PC laptops offer vastly superior value. For $2000 you can get a Ryzen Alienware X15 with GPU performance that may roughly equal a top-end 32-core GPU MBP (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8GB GDDR6), and a far better display for gaming than the Mac's (though much worse for all-around use): 15.6" QHD (2560 x 1440) 240Hz 2ms. By constrast, a 32-core GPU MBP would probably be $3000+. Granted, the Ryzen CPU (AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX) will lag the M1X, but is the effect the CPU difference has on gaming worth paying 50% more, and also giving up the gaming-focused monitor?
II. Desktop buyers
1) Those that want an all-around desktop rig that can play games reasonably well. Here the Mini will be fine. And you can pair it with a gaming monitor if you wish.
2) Those that want a gaming-focused desktop rig. Here you can buy a gaming monitor, which removes that as a gaming downside for the Mini. Nevertheless, as with laptops, PC is the clear choice here. Even if you buy a Mini with a top-end 32-core GPU, you're only going to get performance roughly equivalent to the RTX 3070 laptop GPU. That gives you only *half* the performance of the 3070 desktop GPU. And a Ryzen desktop rig with an RTX 3070 isn't going to cost much more than a Mini with a 32-core GPU (or you could drop down to a 3060, and still have much more GPU performance than a 32-core Mini).
[TLDR: If you want an all-around computer (either laptop or desktop) that plays games reasonably well, the AS Macs will be fine (and, IMO, give you a much better all-round experience than a PC). But if you want a gaming-focused laptop or desktop, PC's will offer superior value and performance.]
I. Laptop buyers
1) Those that want an all-around laptop that can play games reasonably well. Here, the Macs will be fine. Indeed, if you don't mind the cost, a top-end MBP with a 32-core GPU may give performance roughly equal to a 3070 RTX laptop GPU, which, while not bleeding edge, is pretty high-end.
2) Those that want a gaming-focused laptop. If you mostly care about gaming, PC laptops offer vastly superior value. For $2000 you can get a Ryzen Alienware X15 with GPU performance that may roughly equal a top-end 32-core GPU MBP (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 8GB GDDR6), and a far better display for gaming than the Mac's (though much worse for all-around use): 15.6" QHD (2560 x 1440) 240Hz 2ms. By constrast, a 32-core GPU MBP would probably be $3000+. Granted, the Ryzen CPU (AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX) will lag the M1X, but is the effect the CPU difference has on gaming worth paying 50% more, and also giving up the gaming-focused monitor?
II. Desktop buyers
1) Those that want an all-around desktop rig that can play games reasonably well. Here the Mini will be fine. And you can pair it with a gaming monitor if you wish.
2) Those that want a gaming-focused desktop rig. Here you can buy a gaming monitor, which removes that as a gaming downside for the Mini. Nevertheless, as with laptops, PC is the clear choice here. Even if you buy a Mini with a top-end 32-core GPU, you're only going to get performance roughly equivalent to the RTX 3070 laptop GPU. That gives you only *half* the performance of the 3070 desktop GPU. And a Ryzen desktop rig with an RTX 3070 isn't going to cost much more than a Mini with a 32-core GPU (or you could drop down to a 3060, and still have much more GPU performance than a 32-core Mini).
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Put simply, this conversation is premature. We don’t yet have enough data, a single Mac SOC, to make any credible conclusions regarding hardware predictions and/or recommendations.
While I certainly appreciate the desire to be careful, note that the site's name is MacRumors. The whole point of this is to have fun speculating. It's only a problem when people forget that they're speculating, and treat their predicitions/opinions as fact.
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What I mean is this seems more of an “I hope/wish/want…” discussion — and that’s fine. However, speculation isn’t even possible at this point. When the second M-series chip is (officially) released, we’ll have at least some ability to respectfully say “The next Apple Silicon MBP/iMac/Mm/… will probably…” I mainly bring it up because of the title question and also the majority tone in this conversation — trying to make comparisons.
Some speculation is possible. We know what an 8-core AS GPU can do and, assuming linear scaling (not a terrible assumption when it comes to GPU's), we can do a rough extrapolation to what 16-core and 32-core AS GPU's might do. If the GPU cores on the "M1X" are faster than those on the M1, then our extrapolation may be overly conservative, but that's OK.
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We want to have our cake and eat it too.
Are you saying we dont have enough information to extrapolate the next chip because we only have M1? If so, we can also look at A14 and the X-varients of previous years to see how apple silicon scales to some degree. So it's not just shots in the dark here.
I've heard there will be two versions of the M1x - one with 16 GPU cores (double M1) and one with 32 GPU cores (quadruple M1).
Not sure what you're talking about ... what could possibly be in the $30k or $40k price range?
As the population pool of Apple Silicon machines grows, you would think that AAA developers would take notice.
I remain unconvinced that gaming is nailed to any one platform - when you have a large enough population of gaming capable computers, some of the users of those computers will buy more expensive and immersive games.
I think the number of users who buy computers exclusively to game is and always has been a pretty small part of any computer owning population.
While hardcore gamers form a large plurality of AAA game sales, by no means do I think they are the majority. Most customers are probably simply users who have enough oomph in their systems to successfully game, and they buy a game or two for recreation.
We should see in the next one or two months.
Precision workstations. Xeon CPUs single or dual, 512GB/1TB/2TB RAM, storage, single or multiple RTX8000 GPUs, whatever you need. Max out the current Mac Pro and you’re at $50k as well. The Nvidia DGX is selling in the 6-figure range, so nothing to exotic really.
They are aware of it, they just don’t care. I’ve talked to several people in the past few month about gaming on Mac, at GTC and outside. No one is willing to make the jump if they’re not already involved. I can’t blame anyone, I recently had to give up macOS support for two of my multi-platform projects as well. One was Unity based, the other Unreal Engine. Too much work keeping macOS support up and running, just not worth it.
Actually we do have a single Mac SoC, and you own one: the M1 SoC.
We just don't have the M1x yet.
I disagree. Apple G13 performance is a known quantity and it’s a fairly straightforward extrapolation exercise to predict the lower performance bounds of various configurations. Of course, upcoming prosumer GPUs will likely be based on an updated architecture which should make them even faster.
Even with the base 16 GPU cores you are talking about a doubling of the M1 GPU performance. That's massive alright.
EDIT: I see VArase made that point already.
Aren't all the rumours pointing to the same G13 cores used? I do hope they're newer cores though.
There were mentions of a new GPU revision with codename “Lifuka”. Also, I doubt very much that Apple will still be using the same A14-based tech a year after. The delays most likely mean that we will see a substantial hardware revision. On the GPU side, I expect at least hardware ray tracing and larger register files/caches, possibly also double FP16 throughput.