M1 Max with Unreal 5 Running a Large Project - Performance Demo 

Honestly, this machine is extra enjoyable. The fact it can run these types of project via Rosetta with the level of performance we are seeing is mind blowing. I think as long as you are not making games for super high end PC's you are good ta go

Thanks so much for reaching out. I've been using unreal with the Mac for awhile now and I would say I wouldn't recommend it as a main machine but as more of a portable setup it can be ok as long as you need need some of the new features in Unreal 5. Because you mentioned AAA I am thinking you may need to have access to Nanite or Lumen which isn't available on the M1. So I would just check what your usecase is first

@@EnovairStudios when nanite and lumen are going to be available for M1 max?

@@victorcheg4556 Unreal Engine should be compatible with Apple Silicone and include Nanite and Lumen in the next update (5.1). It’s currently available as a beta.

@@world_production thank you

I am happy that I could help. This is hands down the best machine I have ever owned. I think you will have no problems running what you want on it and may even find that you don't need the windows laptop

@@EnovairStudios perhaps we could start a small community on discord or something specifically for Unreal devs on the M1s. I anticipate having to deal with a lot of workarounds compared to working in windows. Would be nice to pool the knowledge.

That's a great idea! I created one here, of course it will take awhile to grow but should be really helpful in the long run discord.gg/HaxtfeNcGe Let me know when you join and I'll make you an admin. Thanks again for the suggestion

@@EnovairStudios how is the fan noise when running ue5? Is it similar to the intel macs?

Anytime! Happy it was helpful

Anytime!

Hey thanks for the comment. I'll be doing more videos on gamedev using the m1 max. Right now UE4.27 works but I still have more testing to do. UE5 works too but it isn't production ready so I wouldn't recommend it for either windows or mac

At the time none of the ue5 tech demo would work let alone install. Even when I forced installed it still would not work due to the dependencies and the M1’s lack of compatibility with nanite etc. I’ve taken a long break due to some personal issues so I have tried recently.

Anytime. In this test I am using UE5 directly without parallells. I am going to post a new video with some results while using parallells, short story is it doesn't work, and lumen and nanite also don't work

@@EnovairStudios word yeah i just saw your post on reddit talking about it, do you know anything about possibly running it in Crossover 21? I have a 14 32 64 max so im gonna try it out today

I haven't tried crossover yet. If it works let me know, if it works similar to parallels they it may not work. For me it acted as if I didn't have a GPU in parallels

Hey, I honestly don't know but I'm not sure it will be possible. I believe nanite and lumen make use of specific calls on Nvidia and AMD 3000 series or equivalent GPUs. I actually made a video on why I think that while these new features are amazing, they aren't for the typical indie game devs.

My pleasure!

It's rather impressive as is, just imagine a native version it would be "unreal". I think when it's a production release most of the remaining issues will be worked out

Thank you!

Anytime. I have more videos coming soon with more tests

I’ve rendered 4K videos in no time flat but not an unreal architecture scene. Let me see if I can find one of the demos and try

Hey I just finished recording the video testing this and should post it in a few days. It won't work because I believe it's looking for something specific from Nvidia / AMD. Right now I think if you "need" UE5 then PC is the only way to go. The big question is if it's really needed. I don't think nanite is something that indies will use because the game file sizes and hardware requirements would be much too larger for a typical end user / consumer to use. That said luman is amazing and something everyone would use. I hope there is a way to support it in the future but right now if it is a must the mac won't work. I am hoping to also do a video on my thoughts of what indies need vs want to see if the M1 max meets most of the needs

@@EnovairStudios wow thanks so much! At least there's someone testing those things for us gamedevs before we decide to buy it. In my case it's mostly about using Lumen for cinematic shorts and having a powerful mobile workstation since I travel a lot. I was on Mac before and went to windows for gamedev but I don't like this os. Seems like the only thing now is to wait and see if Epic will support Apple Silicon for the editor in the future. Tim Sweeney said on Twitter that they work on it but he hasn't been very clear if it's for the editor or just for game compiling. Again thanks a lot! Great job.

Anytime happy to help. I really hope Epic will give full support for the M1 but I don't know how much of a priority it would be for them given the Apple vs Epic thing. I am sure if it was fully supported it would only help to sell more M1's

@@EnovairStudios we as a community should give Epic the feedback that we wish Lumen to work on M1 :)

@@tivtag I completely agree!

Thanks for reaching out. Like baking is very fast when I compare it to my Dell XPS. But I will say this as both a windows and Mac user. For unreal if you want maximum compatibility, go PC, you can't build a PC project on the M1 max. So while everything seems to work fine (there are some issues but generally it's ok) PC for unreal is the way to go. Now I also have a custom built PC with an Ryzen 5950x and RTX 3080, and I would say that build is perfect but you could also do a Ryzen 5800 and RTX 3070 And get by just fine. That would save you enough money that if down the road you wanted to get a mac you could get one of the lower versions

Thanks for the comment. Which version are you thinking (how many GPU cores)? I wouldn't go below 32gb, remember with a dedicated GPU there is vRam built in and the ram for these systems is shared so for me 32gb would be the minimum.

@@EnovairStudios I was thinking about the M1Pro 16” with 10 CPU and 16 GPU and 16 GB of RAM

I think for Unreal that might be a bit too light, Unity that might work though. I think the 24GPU and 32GB ram would work just fine. Also, Nanite and Lumen don't work (i don't think its needed for Indie Game Dev but just want to make sure you are aware)

@@EnovairStudios I wont be using it for building games, I would be using it for product/system design where I would make renderings of a product or structure in environments. Do you think M1Pro could handle this?

I think you would be just fine. What's good is you can buy it, test and if it doesn't work return it. But I think you will be fine, if you could jump the ram I would get a bit more ram. Also make sure you don't need nanite and lumen.

Hi, Thanks for the comment. I haven't because Nanite and Lumen don't work on M1 Max. They actually don't work properly unless you have a high-end GPU (3000 RTX series for example). I did a video on this and why for most indie game dev's Nanite and Lumen aren't needed and should actually be avoided. The long and short of it are that the end-user needs to have a high-end PC or PS5 / Xbox to use this tech, it's really designed for AAA and cinematic videos which the typical indie game dev doesn't do. So while it's groundbreaking, it really isn't for 80 - 90% of indie dev teams.

There are countless videos describing UE4 and UE5 with both pre and post hw accel RT gfx cards on RU-vid already. The only difference you would get here would be specific performance on M1 Max which could probably be inferred from other benchmarks already shown. All told I'd wait a generation for RT hw which is almost certainly round the corner for all ARM platform based gfx IP.

Hey thanks for reaching out, prayers going out to you and the whole country. What features do you need? And what version of unreal are you using? I have tested using both my desktop and MacBook at the same time and it seemed to work and in fact helped me to catch an error I had with doing something that updated based on tick (not time dependent). Let me know and if I can I’ll test it out. If you really want to make sure it will work then a pc laptop is the best bet

Honestly you can try ue4 but i would consider unity which works better on a mac. That way you save some money instead of buying a new pc

For that price I would do a custom built PC

The only time it gets hot is when charging and by hot it was Luke warm. I have heard the fans ones I think

Nice, I got my custom rig with an RTX 3080 with Ryzen 5950x and it works flawlessly on that. For unreal game Dev I recommend something like that for sure

Hey thanks for the comment. The performance so far of the MBP is amazing but I wouldn't compare it to a desktop. With a desktop you can build a PC to give you the performance you want, your not worried about thermal throttling and power consumption. So using a desktop RTX 3080ti should give better performance over the MBP. If I didn't need something portable I would have build a desktop PC, in the laptop space of you are ok with some compatibility issues then the MBP in my opinion is the best all rounder

@@EnovairStudios thank you!

Anytime!

For triple a I would get a pc desktop, I’ve found that laptops tent to run too hot and don’t last as long and aren’t as powerful.

@@EnovairStudios hi I have a desktop computer, but I need a laptop, I’m going to be moving around abroad

What features do you need? Nanite and Lumen don't work on the M1 Max, it's not really needed for indie games though. If you need something that for sure will work on everything, then I'd get the PC instead of the Mac. If you know the exact features you need then the mac may work.

@@EnovairStudios don't laugh i don't do that kind of gpu cpu intensive job actually my work is data entry but now i want to learn graphic designing web development software designer i know lil bit programming just lokking to extend my skill and get more good payed jobs so i want to buy laptop for next 6 7 year i need reliability at the same time performance.

Hey, nothing to laugh at. For your use case because you aren't doing anything too intensive I think the M1 max would be over kill. M1 pro should be more than enough, will give you good battery life, build quality is excellent and should last a good while. Any laptop with a RTX 3080 is going to have poor battery life and unless you use an external fan, you run the risk of burning the motherboard. Im on my 3rd XPS in 5 years (lower end GPU than a 3080). And I would recommend the M1 pro over the regular M1 due to the extra ports, more GPU, and ability to have more ram

Next gen games i think PC ur best bet

Good question, I honestly don't know, compiling shaders has always been one of those things you just hit compile, go have lunch and hope it's done when your back even on a PC

That's for the comment, if you read the title and listened to the video and watched the entire video you would see the purpose of the video is to see how Unreal performs on the mac m1 max with a small demo project and a larger demo project because people have questions about being able to use unreal on the M1 max.

@@EnovairStudios The Elemental Demo is not some "bigger" project, I was running that demo a few years back even on a GTX 970!

Haven't heard a fan at all

32gpu, 64ram, 4tb ssd

@@EnovairStudios Is that in the 14" or 16" chassis? I have a similar build in the 14" and and alarmed by how intensely the fans are running in UE5 when trying to take the "getting started" course (total newbie) which uses an ArchVis template to start with. I'm concerned it's going to fry a very new, very $ laptop. Also, thoughts on the latest Razer Blade 15 for UE 4/5? Thanks for the videos.

I'd say windows because you need maximum compatibility

@@EnovairStudios thank you so much!

Hey, because you want to use it for gaming, vfx etc the only option right now is PC. Mac doesn't have good game capability. In general macs last longer but right now PC is the only option. You can buy one of those external coolers to help extend the life of your laptop. I'm on my 3rd PC laptops in 5 years so it's kinda part of the game

High are you looking at how to get a UE4 project to work in UE5, all you need to do is download a copy of the engine that the project works for, then download the project, then when you try to open the project open it with UE5, it will ask you to make a copy, do that and it should open, compile shaders and run

Windows for capability reasons. With a strong enough GPU you will get access to all the features

So the M1 Max for UE4 works perfectly so far. UE5 is still early access and under active development. Even on a PC I wouldn't say it's working the best yet. I have seen Unity break things with the non-lts release which is one of the reasons why I like UE over Unity.

Thanks for the comment. I would say generally yes but it depends on the amount of cores you have and if your app is heavy on the GPU. So far performance has been amazing

@@EnovairStudios wow what a fast answer! Well I just bought the 2000 model, maybe I should have picked the 2300 with 16 gpu cores, but a lot of reviewers showed the difference was pretty small. Have you heard any news of ue5 getting native?

I've been checking and even went to look at some of the code on GitHub. Haven't seen anything material yet. I did see a comment from the CEO that they are working on it "whole heartedly" but not really sure if we will see anything soon. I know Unity has a native version in tech release but I have seen from others that it may have some issues. For your specs, I'd likely use Unity because it should run perfectly smooth

16 Max loaded except 4tb not 8tb ssd

Hey, I haven't done this yet but it's on my list. I will test it out and post a video soon!

16inch loaded except 4tb SSD instead of the 8tb

It looks amazing to be honest. Makes you want to use it!

It wasn't that bad