Is Apple finally taking gaming on macOS seriously?

[Etern4l]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

Unusual GPU workloads like simulations, AI model build, or crypto mining could benefit from having 10’s of GBs available to the GPU.

Again, a lot depends on how memory bandwidth intensive those use cases (example: crypto would be mostly bandwidth dependent, therefore absolutely crawl on unified memory). Looks to me like this is mostly to enable those applications which require a lot of memory, but are not necessarily particularly compute-intensive, such as ML inference. Of course that does not necessarily require a GPU at all. As usual with Apple, buyer beware of marketing slight of hand.

[Bullit]

Quote

M3 Max with 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU (400GB/s memory bandwidth)

 From an Apple blurb. 

 

 

I am not falling for anything, i can buy a 64Gb system and +40GB can be used for GPU proposes. Of course this have the Apple tax, Apple upgrade tax etc... but those are other issues, not the miserable Nvidia crap where you have to buy a laptop with a 4090 to work properly in Unreal and even then has limitations of a 16GB VRAM.

[Bullit]

Dupe

[Etern4l]

1 hour ago, Bullit said:

 From an Apple blurb. 

 

 

I am not falling for anything, i can buy a 64Gb system and +40GB can be used for GPU proposes. Of course this have the Apple tax, Apple upgrade tax etc... but those are other issues, not the miserable Nvidia crap where you have to buy a laptop with a 4090 to work properly in Unreal and even then has limitations of a 16GB VRAM.

 

Yes, if the main issue the amount of RAM available to the GPU and performance is not a consideration then fine. Whether this setup will be viable in practice depends on the use case. For many heavy lifting kind of tasks, it would probably struggle - but if we are talking laptops then those aren't designed for really heavy compute lifts in the first place.

 

Do we have any independent benchmark results or those memory bandwidth specs for that stuff?

[Bullit]

You have here a review of a M3 Max laptop with 128GB unified memory and 8TB SSD, of course that measn +8000 cost

 

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2023-M3-Max-Review-M3-Max-challenges-HX-CPUs-from-AMD-Intel.766414.0.html

[kojack]

On 11/19/2023 at 7:40 PM, Bullit said:

You have here a review of a M3 Max laptop with 128GB unified memory and 8TB SSD, of course that measn +8000 cost

 

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-16-2023-M3-Max-Review-M3-Max-challenges-HX-CPUs-from-AMD-Intel.766414.0.html

From what I see, The Asus studio book 16 was faster in every metric except on specialized benchmark. Every other one, The studio book was faster.  If I was buying a MacBook now I would go M2 Max MacBook Pro. 

[saturnotaku]

I've been using my 12/18 M3 Pro 14, and this is a very impressive laptop. The screen and speakers are amazing as expected, but the performance has really surprised me. The fact that the Pro chip was downgraded to 6 performance/6 efficiency cores hasn't really dampened my experience. Apple put Resident Evil: Village on sale for like $16 a couple weeks ago so I grabbed it, and it performs amazingly on this hardware. 1080p with MetalFX upscaling set to quality is consistently over 100 fps and often times is at 120. Bumping up to 1440p at the same settings is in the 70-80 range. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided runs under Rosetta 2 and at 1080p, it's a pretty consistent 60 fps experience. I did some initial testing with Parallels because Deus Ex: Human Revolution runs best in that environment versus Crossover. It was easier to get going there than it was with my Core i9 Legion because there's a bug in UE3 that prevents a lot of games from running at all on CPUs with high core counts. After some initial shader compilation stutter, it played perfectly. The best part is that the laptop's fans were barely audible through all this testing. Cinebench 2024's 10-minute test has been about the only thing that's gotten the fans really humming, but it's a dull roar at worst. Easily the best blend of acoustics and behavior I have ever experienced in a laptop.

 

Out of curiosity, I picked up a 16-inch M3 Max 16 with the 14-core CPU and 30-core GPU. While the extra size is nice, I was supremely disappointed with its fans. They were very clearly audible when playing DX: MD - it was easily on par with my former RTX 4080-powered Legion at the same settings, and at some points the Lenovo was actually quieter. While performance was significantly better on the 16-inch (108 fps vs the M3 Pro's 60 in the benchmark), I will gladly take that hit for a quieter experience. I shudder to think what the 14-inch M3 Max would be like under similar operating conditions. When watching some videos about the 16-inch MacBook, I have to laugh at more than one person who said this model was "heavy." Coming from 6+ pound gaming laptops with their even heavier power bricks, the Apple machines are comparatively featherweight.

 

Most folks who are interested in these 14-inch MacBooks will be best served with the base 11 CPU/14 GPU model, but the 12/18 version has been amazing for my use case. I was worried about possibly needing the 36 GB RAM configuration for Parallels, but so far it hasn't been an issue. Plus, since I got my laptop from Best Buy, I was able to get $100 off at time of purchase plus another $50 off with a price match, which put the laptop within spitting distance of the MSRP for the 11/14 model had I got it directly from Apple, not to mention that I have up to two years of AppleCare+ included with my TotalTech membership.

[Aaron44126]

Nice. Like I’ve been saying, there are obviously issues with these things “as a PC” (lack of upgradeability, high SSD prices, software compatibility issues, not-quite-ideal keyboard layout that I’m still getting used to, etc.) but “as a laptop” it really offers an experience that can’t be beat by a Windows system.

 

The only times I have heard the fans in my M2 Max 16” are when running benchmarks or demanding 3D games. Gaming with ANC headphones makes it a non-issue (even though I think the fans are quieter than my Precisions were). They never make a peep in other workloads I have tried, including moderate ones like doing photo work in Lightroom or coding in Visual Studio. I now have a Windows and a Linux VM running at all times but that hasn’t done anything to wreck the silence or great battery life.

 

I did upgrade to macOS Sonoma recently but I haven’t had time to mess with D3DMetal gaming much yet, other than to confirm that it “works” by launching a couple of titles. I am encouraged by Apple’s apparent silent cooperation with CodeWeavers (GPTK 1.1 was available in a CrossOver 23.7 beta a few days before it showed up on the Apple developer web site, so there clearly is some side communication going on between them).

[saturnotaku]

I suppose I feel more misled than anything as all the videos I watched about the 16-inch M3 Max said the fans really weren't that bad when performing intensive tasks. However, they seemed to be comparable to my former Legion Pro 7i doing similar things in its default balanced performance mode, which kind of defeats the purpose.

[win32asmguy]

2 hours ago, saturnotaku said:

I suppose I feel more misled than anything as all the videos I watched about the 16-inch M3 Max said the fans really weren't that bad when performing intensive tasks. However, they seemed to be comparable to my former Legion Pro 7i doing similar things in its default balanced performance mode, which kind of defeats the purpose.

 

Maybe your unit just needs to be repasted? I am not sure what thermal measurement capabilities exist for apple silicon, but if you can see high core to core deltas under sustained load it might be worth it to swap for another machine.

 

On another note I noticed witcher 3 now has apple silicon support. Nice to see more titles supported and it should help make comparing macos vs windows in games a little easier. Notebookcheck always uses that title in their reviews.

[saturnotaku]

12 hours ago, win32asmguy said:

 

Maybe your unit just needs to be repasted? I am not sure what thermal measurement capabilities exist for apple silicon, but if you can see high core to core deltas under sustained load it might be worth it to swap for another machine.

 

On another note I noticed witcher 3 now has apple silicon support. Nice to see more titles supported and it should help make comparing macos vs windows in games a little easier. Notebookcheck always uses that title in their reviews.

 

The 16-inch M3 Max is boxed up awaiting return first thing next week once Black Friday crowds have died down. I'm not going to bother with attempting to troubleshoot why the fans on the specific unit I received were behaving the way they were. 

 

Also, Witcher 1 and 2 received Apple silicon ports. Not seeing any news about 3 getting the same treatment.

 

[saturnotaku]

I was able to retrieve the login credentials to my Parallels Desktop account from like a decade ago so I could get upgrade pricing on the latest version of the software. I'm impressed with how easy Windows 11 ARM is to set up and get running. While certainly a far cry from a native Windows machine, under emulation it's surprisingly usable. I also took advantage of CrossOver's Cyber Monday sale to pick up two years of service/support for less than $35. If all goes well with it, I may just end up buying the lifetime license at some point down the road, but I figured this was a small enough investment for me to get my toes wet. The new Half-Life 25th anniversary update works great with CrossOver. I won't be able to experiment with much more until December as I'm approaching my monthly Internet data cap. Come that time, though, I'm going to go all out because I've not used the amnesty month that Comcast gives capped customers every year. I look forward to seeing what these programs can really do.

[Aaron44126]

CrossOver 23.7 is out today with GPTK 1.1 and MSync built-in.  MSync is a new-ish Wine synchronization feature designed specifically for macOS and has been shown to drastically improve performance in some games (CPU-constrained games in particular, I think).  Here, Andrew Tsai shows Cyberpunk 2077 going from mid-30's FPS to 80+ FPS when MSync is turned on (but "more investigation required").  CodeWeavers has really been on a roll with their CrossOver 23.x release updates.

 

34 minutes ago, saturnotaku said:

If all goes well with it, I may just end up buying the lifetime license at some point down the road

 

I've thought about this, but they are known to offer good sales every year around Black Friday / Cyber Monday...  If you can get a one-year extension each year for ≈$10, I'll take that over paying hundreds for a lifetime license.

[saturnotaku]

The money isn't the point, it's more about providing full support for their mission of bringing as many games to the Mac as possible because you sure as heck can't count on Apple to do it, despite all the noise they've been making recently. 

[kojack]

If those solid state coolers are soon able to be purchased by the public (frore ssd chip coolers), I would try a maxed out spec MBA 15 inch. No throttling then. Would be an interesting system. 

[saturnotaku]

Games using the original Unreal engine are a pain to get working with Apple silicon, but I finally got Deus Ex 1 to a playable state under Parallels. It requires use of the Revision mod, but fortunately it has a mode that allows you to play the vanilla maps but with updated textures. There's occasional stutter, but at 1080p it's mostly a 60 fps experience. Maybe I'll try my luck with Unreal Gold next LOL. Human Revolution Director's Cut also runs reasonably well under Parallels - again not perfect but more than playable. Mudrunner recently received a Mac port, and it was on sale for $15 so I grabbed it. It's not really my type of driving game, but the developer deserves support for bringing one of their titles to the platform. I'll probably also pre-order RE: 4. The macOS release of Death Stranding was just delayed.

[saturnotaku]

Death Stranding Director's Cut is slated to launch on the MAS on January 31. They're offering a pre-order price of $20.

[Aaron44126]

Apple announced GPTK2 today.

https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/

 

People are still digging into it, but apparently it supports both AVX2 and ray tracing when running Windows apps on macOS.  AVX was previously a hard-blocker from running certain newer titles on any ARM system (Microsoft does not support it on Windows 11 ARM).

 

(I've been using GPTK under CrossOver to play through Horizon Zero Dawn, and while I have seen some small graphical bugs here and there, overall it works quite well and is super smooth.)