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It's not a function of capability. I spent $4,000 on a 2019 MBP, including $750 for a Vega 20. It plays Elder Scrolls Online WORSE than a friend's 2020 with INT

It's not a function of capability. I spent $4,000 on a 2019 MBP, including $750 for a Vega 20. It plays Elder Scrolls Online WORSE than a friend's 2020 with INTEGRATED graphics. (I guess Bethesda gave some love to the integrated chipset, and didn't optimize for the Vega. It hitches badly every couple of seconds like it's texture thrashing.) Whatever AAA games that might have gotten some love on the Mac (and there are some), it's going to be even harder to get game companies to commit to proper support to the M1 models. Bethesda has said they won't even compile ESO for M1. So I will continue to run it on a 12-year-old computer running an ATHLON 64 and a nVidia 9xx-series video card. (This works surprising well, making the fact that my Mac effectively can't play it all the more galling.) I'm never going to try tricking out a Mac for gaming again. I should have learned my lesson with eGPU's, but no. I thought, if I want a proper GPU, it's going to be built in. Well, that doesn't work either. I've wasted a lot of money in this arena.

modulusshift 5y ago
Well, Apple is selling M1 Macs like hotcakes, so it won't be too long until it'll be stupid not to support them. Also, texture thrashing isn't really an issue when you've got a shared CPU/GPU memory with 64 GB of space. Just cache like half the game in it lol
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Apple had a shot at making Mac gaming a reality around 2019. They decided to axe 32-bit library support though, which instantly disqualifies the lion's share of PC games. You could still theoretically update these titles to run on MacOS, but I have little hope that any of these developers would care enough to completely rewrite their codebase to be compatible with 15% of the desktop market share.
  - TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
    Yeah, I was living with gaming on a Mac when that happened, and watched 2/3rds of my Steam library get greyed out.
    - WantonQuantum 5y ago
      That's why the 2015 Macbook Pro I'm writing this on is still running Mojave.
  - modulusshift 5y ago
    Yeah, and they also deprecated OpenGL, which would have wiped out most of those games even if the 32-bit support didn't. I'm not expecting to see much backwards compatibility, I'm expecting forwards compatibility, and we're starting to see new titles come out with native Apple Silicon support, slowly, but surely.
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      I wouldn't hold your breath. Metal is still a second-class citizen in the GPU world, and there's not much Apple can do to change that. Having powerful hardware alone isn't enough to justify porting software, otherwise I'd be playing Star Citizen on a decommissioned POWER9 mainframe right now.
      - wolrah 5y ago
        The major factor Apple has working in their favor with regards to the future of gaming on Macs is iOS. Any game or game engine that wants to support iPhone or iPad devices is going to be most of the way to supporting ARM Macs for "free". My older Intel Macs I'm sure are more or less SOL but they were never intended to be gaming machines.
        smoldesu 5y ago
        That won't get the top 10 Steam games running on MacOS. There's just too great of a disparity in the tooling, a 'convergence' like you're describing would take the better half of a decade, conservatively speaking. And even if they did converge, that's only guaranteeing you a portion of the mobile market, and just the new games at that. Triple-A titles will still be targeting x86 first for at least the next 5 years, and everything after that is still a toss-up. There's just too much uncertainty in the Mac ecosystem for most games developers to care, which is why it's a shame that Proton doesn't run on Macs anymore. Apple's greatest shot at a gaming Mac was when MacOS had 32-bit support. Your older Intel Macs are probably just fine for gaming, too. I play lots of games on my 2016 Thinkpad's integrated graphics, Minecraft, Noita, Bloons Tower Defense 6, all of these titles work perfectly fine, even running in translation with Proton. If you've got a machine with decent Linux support, it's worth a try.
- Thaxll 5y ago
  There is 0% chance that game dev supports mac, it's a dead platform for gaming. The downvote police is there, am I missing something? are they any modern game on mac? https://applesilicongames.com/ https://applesilicongames.com/
  - dlivingston 5y ago
    EVE Online now supports M1. But regardless, now that MacBooks are capable gaming machines (definitely not the case in the past), and a core demographic of Mac users overlap with the gaming demographics (20-40 yo), I really think it’s just a matter of time now.
    - TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
      I would argue that Macs with PC-shared Intel CPU's and AMD GPU's should have been much EASIER to support than the new, completely-different architecture, and that hasn't really happened.
- willis936 5y ago
  Sure, it's candy for tech people, but the average person is going to scoff at a $2000 laptop. They can buy a functional laptop and a better gaming for that price. It's not going to change the gaming market.
gremloni 5y ago
I love that game. Wonder why it gets some much hate online.
Aperocky 5y ago
Dedicated GPUs has always been just selling point. The real limit is the thermal throughput. There has never been a reason to put separate GPU into a laptop, because a laptop can only handle so much juice before frying itself.
Miraste 5y ago
After committing to Metal and then killing 32-bit support and then switching to ARM, Apple has made it clear that video games are dead on MacOS. I don't know what people are going to do with these new GPUs but it's not going to be gaming.

modulusshift 5y ago

Well, Apple is selling M1 Macs like hotcakes, so it won't be too long until it'll be stupid not to support them. Also, texture thrashing isn't really an issue when you've got a shared CPU/GPU memory with 64 GB of space. Just cache like half the game in it lol

smoldesu 5y ago
Apple had a shot at making Mac gaming a reality around 2019. They decided to axe 32-bit library support though, which instantly disqualifies the lion's share of PC games. You could still theoretically update these titles to run on MacOS, but I have little hope that any of these developers would care enough to completely rewrite their codebase to be compatible with 15% of the desktop market share.
- TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
  Yeah, I was living with gaming on a Mac when that happened, and watched 2/3rds of my Steam library get greyed out.
  - WantonQuantum 5y ago
    That's why the 2015 Macbook Pro I'm writing this on is still running Mojave.
- modulusshift 5y ago
  Yeah, and they also deprecated OpenGL, which would have wiped out most of those games even if the 32-bit support didn't. I'm not expecting to see much backwards compatibility, I'm expecting forwards compatibility, and we're starting to see new titles come out with native Apple Silicon support, slowly, but surely.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    I wouldn't hold your breath. Metal is still a second-class citizen in the GPU world, and there's not much Apple can do to change that. Having powerful hardware alone isn't enough to justify porting software, otherwise I'd be playing Star Citizen on a decommissioned POWER9 mainframe right now.
    - wolrah 5y ago
      The major factor Apple has working in their favor with regards to the future of gaming on Macs is iOS. Any game or game engine that wants to support iPhone or iPad devices is going to be most of the way to supporting ARM Macs for "free". My older Intel Macs I'm sure are more or less SOL but they were never intended to be gaming machines.
      - smoldesu 5y ago
        That won't get the top 10 Steam games running on MacOS. There's just too great of a disparity in the tooling, a 'convergence' like you're describing would take the better half of a decade, conservatively speaking. And even if they did converge, that's only guaranteeing you a portion of the mobile market, and just the new games at that. Triple-A titles will still be targeting x86 first for at least the next 5 years, and everything after that is still a toss-up. There's just too much uncertainty in the Mac ecosystem for most games developers to care, which is why it's a shame that Proton doesn't run on Macs anymore. Apple's greatest shot at a gaming Mac was when MacOS had 32-bit support. Your older Intel Macs are probably just fine for gaming, too. I play lots of games on my 2016 Thinkpad's integrated graphics, Minecraft, Noita, Bloons Tower Defense 6, all of these titles work perfectly fine, even running in translation with Proton. If you've got a machine with decent Linux support, it's worth a try.
Thaxll 5y ago
There is 0% chance that game dev supports mac, it's a dead platform for gaming. The downvote police is there, am I missing something? are they any modern game on mac? https://applesilicongames.com/ https://applesilicongames.com/
- dlivingston 5y ago
  EVE Online now supports M1. But regardless, now that MacBooks are capable gaming machines (definitely not the case in the past), and a core demographic of Mac users overlap with the gaming demographics (20-40 yo), I really think it’s just a matter of time now.
  - TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
    I would argue that Macs with PC-shared Intel CPU's and AMD GPU's should have been much EASIER to support than the new, completely-different architecture, and that hasn't really happened.
willis936 5y ago
Sure, it's candy for tech people, but the average person is going to scoff at a $2000 laptop. They can buy a functional laptop and a better gaming for that price. It's not going to change the gaming market.

gremloni 5y ago

I love that game. Wonder why it gets some much hate online.

Aperocky 5y ago

Dedicated GPUs has always been just selling point. The real limit is the thermal throughput. There has never been a reason to put separate GPU into a laptop, because a laptop can only handle so much juice before frying itself.

Miraste 5y ago

After committing to Metal and then killing 32-bit support and then switching to ARM, Apple has made it clear that video games are dead on MacOS. I don't know what people are going to do with these new GPUs but it's not going to be gaming.