Incredible that you guys could make this video without mentioning that you cannot currently run any games that only have DX12 renderers. That’s a pretty important piece of this puzzle, especially now that we’re pretty solidly into this generation of consoles.
@@destructodisk9074 Why as me developer should make my game run of minority systems? Plus directx is windows thing and will never be stupid apple silicone supported.
@@SnowTheKitsune "minority"? Apple sold tens of millions of M1 Macs (Macbooks, Mac mini, iMac etc) to this day and now lets not forget that Apple is also selling M1 iPads (iPad Air and Pro). There is a huge market that no one seems to want to tap into.
While true, not everyone plays the newest games. It would be amazing if devs started to port their old catalogue to M1 in general... M1 Air GPU is about as powerful as the old Xbox, so just port games with Xbox settings and make the software hardware aware so it runs at higher settings on the bigger SOCs. Kinda like games run on iOS/iPhones where the highest settings are greyed out when you are on an older iPhone. But for some reason devs avoid Apple Silicon macs... you can see this with mobile games already. The iOS version of Genshin runs perfectly fine on M1 iPads, yet it's not on the MacOS Appstore. It makes no sense to me.
If MacBooks had native support for videogames I would switch to a MacBook real quick. But with all that performance of M-chips, Apple are still not willing to invest anything into desctop game support. So frustrating.
@@Leonzkyhv Arm is actually much easier to optimize for, especially since if you develop for one arm device, it can run on most on the same generation.
@@MM-fu3cx there's no incentive to do so, apple does not pay these developers and apple makes up such a low portion of computer gamers. Apple has always been as advertised for business and they pushed for that exact image
I have been consistently impressed with my base model M2 MacBook Air for gaming, considering it wasn’t really designed for that purpose. That being said, it costs more than many mid-range gaming laptops.
8gb or 16gb of Ram? can you play games for many hours without overheating? macbook air has no fan. but hear different story on how that goes - macbook pro has a fan probably better for long term gaming?
Haven't used Mac since my 2010 iMac as I moved firmly back to windows a few years after, but grabbed an M1 Air for $800 this Christmas mostly for schoolwork as I already have an M17 R4 Alienware with a 2070 and wanted something lighter and easier to get around. I love it. It's no gaming PC but it definitely has a ton of potential as a secondary computer and I LOVE that it is fanless. I see that as it's number 1 feature, not introducing dust into your system is huge.
Literally my idea…. Saw a video of it that randomly popped onto my feed, and now I’m buying it for my girlfriend because of how ridiculously cheap and powerful it is.
@@massformationpsychosis7681 Apple may have actually made a run away hit with this one. The only problem I have with Apple hardware like this is the expensive upgrade options and no choice to upgrade later. I think 16 gigs should be the base but I have less experience with intense use or gaming on Macs.
@@JohnCiaccio 8 should be fine, all gaming my girlfriend will be doing is over the cloud anyways…. If/When she decides to learn CAD drawing for her career 8 might struggle, but should be fine
I've been game on my Mac for a years now, but I mostly play Civ and I've may had some problems when I updated to macos ventura but going from intel to the M1pro was a big step up
Waiting for Asahi Linux full on GPU support! FYI, Asahi Linux is a Linux distribution for Apple Silicon. The team is trying to get all things that these computers have to work. So far, the progress is great! On the GPU side, Asahi Linux can run 3D applications and games that need up to OpenGL ES 2.0 support. That means older games can run without a hitch! Also, Linux doesn't need to be all for gaming. There are various tests that show that CPU dependant operations are faster on Asahi Linux compared to macOS. Kudos to Asahi Linux team!
I’ve been gaming on the M1 Max, MBP for the last year. It’s no problem at all. Tons of games are available on Steam, Minecraft runs incredibly well, and X-Plane 12 actually has better performance than on my gaming PC with an i7 8700k and 1080ti GPU, at 1/5th the power consumption.
I play Warcraft on a MacBook Pro and 32” 4K monitor with medium settings. For the most part it runs pretty well. If games are written for ARM, they should run well. But I don’t think that developers will bother.
It's the base model M1 Air. If you take a look at LTT's video on the M1 Max MacBook Pro, they ran Deus Ex Mankind Divided on it at playable framerates with high settings. And Mankind Divided is pretty demanding
Inside of Parallels you can give your Windows install more RAM and CPU cores. If you do this again, I would highly recommend giving the VM more resources.
I’m a pc gamer at heart. But this year ive switched from a desktop to a ps5 and M1 Pro MacBook. My only regret is not doing this sooner. You start a game, you’re playing seconds later. Shut off your console and turn it back on and pick up right where you left off. And goodness, the 16 inch M1 Pro MacBook is the coolest piece of hardware I’ve ever used
Definitely not. It's a terrible mousepad. If you buy a Mac in order to play games, that's clearly crazy. But if you just prefer to use a Mac, and sometimes want to play a game, then you absolutely can (several caveats depending on what you'd like to play).
Really if i were apple right now i would be pushing hard to make sure unreal engine is optimized as hell for apple silicon builds since its going to be the platform a great deal of new modern games are going to be built on. Working with epic to get nanite and lumen running flawlessly on apple silicon would go a long way towards making macs actually viable for gaming, vulcan is passable now but still woefully insufficient.
If the game developers makes more games to support natively the ARM architecture on mac will be one of bast gaming device, I know it can run the games by rosetta with good performance but supporting natively will be the best, the PC in general still a choice for gaming without extra steps
Most of my games I play nowadays are mobile games (iOS based). It’s a shame I can’t play most if not any of them at all on an M-chip based computer, which would be excellent for saving my phone battery life.
Ive played METRO EXODUS on my m1 max laptop, and it works great, very playable, i think it was also thru rosetta though, but extreme settings with the highest settings for sampling, and what not, its a pretty heavy game I would say, that worked incredibly well.
Well, you need to understand that games that run on M1 or M2 are specifically made to run on those chips Cause originally those games are made to run on Cisc x86, non on arm chips So if apple allows you to play a certain game, it will most likely work well, because all they care about is marketing, they wouldn't let you play something that runs like shit And videos like this are what they want, lol Having to explain this in 2023 is kind of sad
@@thunderarch5951 thats not how rosetta works... any program that was written for x86 macos can be emulated without "permission" from apple because rosetta was designed as a general emulation layer for any 64bit x86 macos program. Its actually hilarious how confidently wrong you are. Unless apple and Adobe specifically wanted me to be able to run my pirated copy of Lightroom 2018 for marketing.
@@thunderarch5951 no, metro exodus was an intel game ported ofr amd graphics card (on mac), now it works perfectly trhough rosetta 2 translated... its useless to throw word to appear knowledgeable if you dont know what you are talking about
I played on an old Mac like that for 3 years and it was relatively fine, then I switched to a M2 chip 2023 Mac and it is even better, no lag, no fan sound, doesn't overheat at all and I can run multiple things at once.
I've been enjoying Austin's videos for years. This is probably the furthest he's strayed from "mainstream IT videos". He plays a whopping the least demanding 5 seconds of RE8, the most demanding game there, and said "yeah it's sooper playable guys". Tried a single one of the least demanding games on Dolphin for 5 seconds, mentioned "lil stuttery at 3x but eh moving on". 5 seconds of an extremely non-demanding game with zero combat running through Rosetta. All that effort Kinsey apparently went through, just for 5 seconds of the intro to Skyrim. On the Mac Mini, he tested one additional game for 5 seconds alongside RE8. And then bam, he tried Skyrim again on an M2 Pro. Cute vid, but one of his most shallow, rushed ones. I get the whole point wasn't a deep dive, but this could've been presented a LOT better.
RU-vidr Mumbo Jumbo got Minecraft Java to stay running with nearly 19,000 rendered entities on the ground (at about 0.5 fps)with the Studio. for context even the beefiest of PCs crash out at about 10,000. He also was able to keep a world of nothing but falling sand running without crashing at 32 chunk render distance.
That is where my frustration lies. The Apple Silicon and hardware teams got to computers right. The software teams got Metal 3, Metal FX, controller and steering wheel APIs. And to top it off, you're able to build a single game that will run on iOS, ipadOS, MacOS, and tvOS. Every single ingredient is there for Apple to be good at gaming. Yet Apple's developer relations are still the worst in the business. They mess up all the hard work that every other department at Apple is doing.
@@BenjaminRoethig Yes, but the problem lies exactly in investing resources into putting your games in apple's platforms. There's a teally small percentage of people actually gaming on mac, and few willingly to do so if things get better. Sure you could re-write your gamne to run on Apple Silicon, but that would mean re-writing it to work on metal, which is exclusive to apple platforms. Or you could use fewer resources to make a game that runs on Windows and DX12 or Vulkan. unless apple opens up a little and lets developers use Vulkan, the mac gaming scene won't prosper. Apple's only option would be to reach out to many game developers, like they did with capcom to release REVIII on mac, which is not optimal and very unlikely.
You need to watch other RU-vid videos where they actually play resident evil on a Mac. Evan is literally only showing you a cinematic film, not game play. It's not pleasant.
All you need is GeForce Now. Plays my steam library on my Mac. Windows or Mac games. Runs flawless. Also takes zero local storage to play my whole library. Nothing compares to it. Right now I am playing Cyberpunk 2077 on ultimate ray tracing settings, at 1440p averaging 70fps on a MacBook Air M1.
You don't have latency? I have 2 Gbps internet and cant even stream CP2077 from my Xbox to my Alienware M17r5 without the most stuttery POS you've ever seen lol
@@linuxes9681 having to run both devices through Ethernet for it to even be feasible is kind of redundant.... OnLive (currently PSNow) from a server worked better 10 years ago and I too have an M17R5 with the same issues, but it's not exclusive to that device. Game Streaming is pretty garbage on PC for the cost and setups you need to get it to work well. Definitely a luxury more than a commodity.
It does. Atleast, it does when doing intensive tasks (video export, Photoshop, etc) so I reckon it'll do the same with games. The MacBook Air is incredibly powerful, but also "just" for casual use. Writing documents, watching RU-vid and HBO Max and some occasional iMovie use. It doesn't have a single fan (which is crazy, right?), which means that it has a thermal limit. Like phones do, I guess.
Well PC build simulator is just not optimized enough but there are actually already a significant growed list of games there run pretty well on Apple Silicon Mac through Parallels Desltop. And you could adjust the Ram size slightly up to increase the performance. Also installing the game into your hard drive would increase the performance. Finally, don't forget, the games you are running in Parallels Desktop, might need another layer of translation from x86 to arm.
I would switch to macbook if they have native support for gaming. The last time I purchased my personal laptop, I nearly got myself a macbook Pro, but I bought a gaming laptop ( as I occasionally play games besides work), but I don't love it. The battery life has been awful. I will switch to a more professional laptop. But I wish macbook had the gaming support.
As someone who’s mainly a pc user also interested in a Mac mini because I like having all options 😉.. you can’t deny it’s impressive if Steam or someone else could do what Steam did for Linux . That be amazing
@@sd30001 apple locked the boot loader like they would on an iPhone literally only 1 linux distort Asahi has managed to boot on a Mac and still nothing works yet.
@@PanosPitsi I mean they have open GL 1.2 support I believe. They have a functioning desktop on M1 with some early stages of hardware acceleration. Vulkan is also being worked on but I don't know how far that is.
I have seen a couple videos on how a couple year old m1 mac's are good gaming machines. I pulled out my 2020 surface laptop 3 Ryzen 7/16gb ram and it runs pretty much everything better than this. Death stranding is definitely playable with 30+ fps. I got it for $480 open box from best buy.
I was just about to say you forgot Apple Arcade. My wife is addicted to Apple Arcade and I got her a MacBook Pro 14 and she loves playing them on a “large” high resolution screen, though she misses the touch.
As someone who plays league and RuneScape, mac is adequate. Where it starts to fail is when I need software for my accessories like my mouse that has 12+ programmable buttons. Need windows to program the mouse.
It is interesting but If you see Skyrim (2011) with medium and had around 40-50 fps, it is bad. Not the worst case, but still bad. With card like 1060 (6 years) you can easy in 1440p on max got around 100 fps. Same result as M2 chip, you will get with 4600g in some games:) So maybe M3 should be able to play games in better way.
Parallels is the slower way of running Windows games on Mac. WINE (with wrappers such as Crossover or Porting Kit) is generally faster. Also, M2 is a laptop chip w/ integrated graphics that barely uses any power at all. Built in Intel HD graphics often perform worse than M2 going through multiple layers of compatibility layers. The fact that it gets perfectly playable performance on games not even written for this hardware or software is impressive no matter how you think of it.
@@mbvglider For the cost of MacBook (staring from $999) you could get decent gaming laptop with more RAM and storage . And you could play infinitely more games. That is about it. Comparing MacBook with some $300-400 non-gaming laptop again wins no favors. Intel HD is way better than you expect, and could now run games from 2011 decently.
@@aleksazunjic9672 at being a portable device, gaming laptops are kinda bad though. For the one thing they’re good at, gaming, they’re specialized and pretty good at it. I’m comparing them to premium ultraportable PCs in the same price range, like the Dell XPS13, which is what they compete with. Those computers don’t have good graphics and aren’t expected to play much more than esports and old games at low settings.
the thing with lost of performance on the macbook air is the lack of a fan, which result in the CPU throttling after some times while gaming. A quick mod with thermal pads fix this issue. It's night and day on FFXIV.
I only have a macbook and a console. There are games that run quite well on the mac like Stardew, Minecraft, Spiritfarer, Borderlands, Subnautica and a few others. There isn't a lot of selection, but if you don't want to get an entirely new computer, it can be a good option for some games.
All of you are missing the main point, M1 and M2 chips are ARM Games are made mostly for x86 CISC architectures So the few games that are available, are actually made to run specifically on MacOS, so of course they'll run decently, otherwise they wouldn't have put them, it's all about marketing folks It's always been a out marketing with Apple, I'm surprised in 2023 there's still the need to say it, it's really sad
This shows that if developers put their time and effort on optimising games for Macs, the Mac player base will increase and some high level Macs might even be able to beat top external GPUs used on Windows… Love from India 🇮🇳
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This is such a shame - the ability to stick bootcamp/steam (etc) on a Mac device so it can be used for games (instead of having a separate Win/gaming machine) made Macs really great value IMO.
I just got an inexpensive windows 11 computer for school and with getting my kid game pass for Christmas for her Series S XBox I've really gotten into some gaming these days and it's been great. It also seems apple is offering a lot more compatibility for my apple ecosystem via the windows 11.
