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As a person who wants to play games on a Mac, sometimes I feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. But Apple's custom silicon has me hoping again. I

As a person who wants to play games on a Mac, sometimes I feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. But Apple's custom silicon has me hoping again. I keep seeing more and more stories like this where ported games don't just work "acceptably", but actually work better on M1 and M2 chips. Apple's hardware is unquestionably very good now, and their graphics APIs are actually seeing some uptake. The recent stories about Resident Evil Village especially sound positive.

db48x 4y ago
Be careful; the only performance comparison they made was between the x86_64 builds and the arm64 builds. Both were done on the same hardware, with the x86_64 build necessarily running in emulation. This only proves that the ported game runs better than the non–ported game run in emulation, not that it runs better on an M1 Mac than on other computers.
- neallindsay 4y ago
  Fair; I'll try to not get my hopes up too high.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Steam has a surprising amount of Mac games but I fear many will never receive a native M1 update.
  - joxel 4y ago
    Does protonDB work for Mac titles, or is it only for Windows? I've been able to play basically every game in my steam library on linux using protonDB. I have hundreds of games.
    - pdpi 4y ago
      Proton helps you run Windows games on Linux. A few years ago, the problem with Mac games on Steam was running 32-bit Mac games on 64-bit only macOS builds. Now, it's running x86 Mac games on arm64 Macs. Often, we're talking about those same 32-bit games that never got updated to 64-bits x86, let alone arm.
    - lloeki 4y ago
      Theoretically it could, although: > The main Proton issue is that it runs on DXVK, and MoltenVK is not always up to parity with implementing Vulkan API calls on Metal reliably. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/1344#issuecomment-1093053454 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/1344#issuecom... An alternative would be using CrossOver (which pulls from Wine and adds stuff like MoltenVK), which is what Proton does as well (pulling from Wine and adding stuff, but not MoltenVK) and vendors internally, Valve "just"† doesn't pull from the CrossOver changes nor expose Proton on macOS. † scare quotes because it may not be as easy as it seems
  - hypertexthero 4y ago
    Indeed! Here is a list of good games that run on the Mac: https://hypertexthero.com/mac-video-games-for-streaming/ https://hypertexthero.com/mac-video-games-for-streaming/ I try to keep it updated and suggestions are always welcome.
    - robaye 4y ago
      Here's another list to keep around. https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/Home https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/Home
  - lloeki 4y ago
    The current Steam problem on macOS is more about 32 bit games that never received 64 bit builds, which means they are not playable anymore since Catalina independently of the Intel vs Apple Silicon hardware, notably the first-party GoldSrc and Source engine games, and all of their third party derivatives. I would not really care if my game library was going through Rosetta 2, as I'd rather take a theoretical performance hit (vs a native arm64 build) than outright be unable to play.
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    Meanwhile I’ve been happy playing games in Parallels (virtual Windows arm64) like Against the Storm. Crusader Kings 3 has better perf in Parallels than the macOS build.
  - perryizgr8 4y ago
    At one point even intel macs broke compatibility with every game that was 3 years old or something stupid like that. I remember that my working game simply refused to execute after a macos version upgrade. Exact same machine, refusing to run my software overnight. This kind of attitude just isn't conducive for gaming, where people like to build libraries in steam and expect everything to keep working for a long time. On my PC, I can fire up games from 20 years ago and they work perfectly. Witcher 3, a 7 year old game, is getting an overhaul. I expect no problems in downloading it on steam from my library and playing it seamlessly on my relatively new PC.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Yep - they killed 32 bit compatibility and it’s annoying. IIRC win64 finally killed win16 support but that was rarely used for games and those games you can dosbox (which amusingly enough works fine on Mac in many cases).
- pkage 4y ago
  Some anecdata: I've played Factorio on both an Intel MBP (2018) and an M1 MBP (2021), the performance even under Rosetta blew away the Intel chipset. Being M1 native means even faster performance with a lower power impact.
- pdpi 4y ago
  The post actually mentions what map they used for benchmarking, and linked to a bunch of other benchmarks on the same map[0]. They quote around 200 UPS average. It's hard to compare to the linked benchmarks because those quote p75 numbers instead of average, but it seems like the results are in the same general ballpark as the Ryzen 9 5950x. 0. https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f16d6950f639be1d6f92984f24c0240de6335d3e161705504 https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f...
  - willis936 4y ago
    Wow thanks for this. I noticed the 13700k results are surprisingly lackluster. The highest speed memory kit there is 5600. I just got a 13700k with Hynix A-die (now clocked to 7200). I have an AIO arriving in the mail in a few days to replace my NH-D14. The 13700k has quite a bit of headroom when not thermally constrained. I think that the 13700k and 13900k with the same turbo ratio should perform almost the same in gaming workloads. The only difference should be in the 36 MB of LL cache vs. 30 MB. It's a modest difference, but factorio is memory subsystem performance sensitive. I'll add a benchmark to that page in a few days with a 5.8 GHz clocked 13700k to test the theory.
    - alexktz 4y ago
      A Noctua NH-D14 is considered "thermally constrained" for these 13th gen chips? Good lord. I'm looking forward to your test results though as I'm considering building a new desktop around 13th gen.
      - sirn 4y ago
        Not sure about the performance of NH-D14 and 13700K, but my NH-D15 (upgraded from NH-U12A) is running OK for 13700k with Intel's PL1/PL2 settings, hovering around 60~70c during full load at 25c ambient temperature. Unlimited PL2 is a different story and can go up to 100c during full load. My previous NH-U12A build ran at about 2-4c higher temperature under load. I've been experimenting with different settings and found that unlimited PL2 and undervolting the CPU by -150mV give the best temperature to performance at ~80c during full load. It has been running stable for few days, and I'm pretty happy with the result so far.
- less_less 4y ago
  Factorio runs quite well on the M1. The graphics system (FPS) is partially decoupled from the factory simulation side (updates per second, or UPS), so there are two components to performance. UPS mostly depends on how big and complex your entire factory is, and on what mods you're running, and FPS mainly depends on how many sprites are on screen. FPS is limited to be <= UPS, since there's no point in redrawing until the game state changes, but UPS can be greater. FPS: Despite being a 2D sprite game, sometimes it has trouble keeping FPS at 60, at least when running at max graphics and max zoom level with a graphically intensive mod. I would guess it's using OpenGL, and Apple's OpenGL stack isn't great. You can see the article mentioning the M1 Max only hitting 45 FPS in one of the tests, and this is without mods (but with a huge base and presumably a wide zoom level). In my experience, if you adjust the graphics settings appropriately (eg max sprite atlas size and max vram usage, since integrated graphics use unified memory), you can usually keep it at a smooth 60 FPS 99% of the time even in graphically-intensive setups with max or almost-max quality settings. UPS: Scoring 199 UPS on the flame_sla 10k base puts the M1 Max above any other laptop processor for that benchmark. This matches my experience: the simulation part of the game almost never lags, except for unavoidably heavy operations (eg generating new worlds when playing with mods that do that). See a comparison at: https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f16d6950f639be1d6f92984f24c0240de6335d3e161705504&vl=1.1.0&vh= https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f...
  - mnd999 4y ago
    > UPS: Scoring 199 UPS on the flame_sla 10k base puts the M1 Max above any other laptop processor for that benchmark. It puts it above an EPYC 7763! I presume it wasn't using all 64 cores though.
    - less_less 4y ago
      Yeah, Factorio is multithreaded, but in practice it usually only runs a few ways in parallel. Instead its performance is determined in large part by the memory subsystem, which is why the X3D processors do so well. It's probably also part of the M1's great performance: with a large cache and stacked DRAM, it has very competitive bandwidth and latency.
- lloeki 4y ago
  > with the x86_64 build necessarily running in emulation Rosetta 2 is not emulation, at all, it's AOT, static binary translation, backed by hardware that implements Intel specific behaviour from the latest chips down to the oldest 8080 or something. It's eerily fast. In fact, it happens that arm64-translated x86_64 running on Apple Silicon can often be faster than x86_64 running on the latest Macs with Intel processors. So you really have to ask two questions here: - does the x86_64 Factorio build run faster on Apple Silicon than on a comparable† Intel? - on Apple Silicon, does the arm64 Factorio build run faster than the x86_64 Factorio? † whatever that means
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Are there any 5nm Intel processors to compare with? I think an AMD chip might have a more comparable performance profile.
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    >Rosetta 2 is not emulation, at all, it's AOT, static binary translation, backed by hardware that implements Intel specific behaviour from the latest chips down to the oldest 8080 or something. So, it is hardware emulation.
    - brookst 4y ago
      No. Imagine you only speak English and you want to read a novel in French. Emulation: you hire a translator to read the novel to you. They translate each word while reading. Static translation: you hire a translator to transcribe the book from French to English. They give you a printed book purely in English. But simple French words like flâner and râler are expanded into lengthy passages because there is no simple English translation. Rosetta 2: you hire the translator to transcribe the book to English, but they leave in unique French words and teach you what they mean so you can understand them in an English phrase without even noticing that the word isn’t “real” English. Rosetta 2 isn’t emulation because no instruction is translated on the fly to a different ISA. It’s static translation plus ISA extensions. There is no lower level emulating anything.
- ilyt 4y ago
  IIRC from the benchmark M1 have some truly great single-core performance. Then again Apple stuff is so fucking expensive you can get faster for cheaper easily...
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    What laptop has comparable perf for much cheaper?
    - meepmorp 4y ago
      Or anything like the same battery life?
      - hombre_fatal 4y ago
        Is this the part where we find out they are comparing laptops to desktops?
candiddevmike 4y ago
From what I understand, Apple decided to force Metal upon everyone instead of using Vulkan like the rest of the industry. This causes friction with game development.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  That's part of the problem. MacOS actually had the same Proton compatibility layer as Linux a few years ago, but with Catalina Apple changed what you're allowed to run on your Mac and it broke completely. Neither Valve nor Codeweavers have gotten DXVK or Proton to run on MacOS since, IIRC.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    Apple depreciated 32-bit, a year before Apple Silicon came out, which allowed them to more precisely target 64-bit processor speed without legacy baggage. Apple Silicon on iOS had dropped 32-bit years before and they didn’t want to bring it back for macOS. Android is following with 32-bit deprecation this year, actually. Pixel 7 doesn’t support 32-bit apps.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Real shame, Diablo 2 still runs great on modern hardware.
  - sirn 4y ago
    That doesn't sound right. Codeweavers has been shipping fairly recent version of DXVK alongside with MoltenVK since CrossOver 20. On community side there's Gcenx/DXVK-macOS[1] that patched DXVK to work with some of Apple GPU quirks in some games and closely track upstream. [1]: https://github.com/Gcenx/DXVK-macOS https://github.com/Gcenx/DXVK-macOS
- mcphage 4y ago
  > From what I understand, Apple decided to force Metal upon everyone instead of using Vulkan like the rest of the industry Metal came out in 2014, Vulkan in 2016.
highwaylights 4y ago
I get the impression that the lack of releases on mac are generally down to non-technical reasons. Building for ARM is probably not a big challenge if you’re already building for Apple’s x86 toolset. Metal would be more of a challenge I imagine, but a bridge probably worth crossing all else being equal (or one that you don’t need to cross at all if you’re using something like unreal or unity). The Mac isn’t a games platform as Apple hasn’t shown much interest in the mainstream gaming market, and I can’t imagine major publishers are eager to fork over a third of their revenue on the App Store for sales they’ll probably pick up elsewhere without more work and cost. Sure theres Epic and Steam on Mac, but they’re ghost towns, and publishers are likely waiting to see what way the EU Digital Markets Act shakes out globally anyway (as other governments are pressured to provide the same freedoms). There was talk at one point of Apple working on a game console (a more powerful Apple TV) but who’s the market for that? They’ll not be cost-competitive with Xbox or content-competitive with PlayStation and Nintendo. At best they’d be likely to produce a similarly powered box with little content and a high price tag in a market already retailing hardware below cost price.
hedgehog 4y ago
Except for brief blips here and there Apple seems to not put any priority on gaming. It's a bit disappointing because they could have a really strong showing if they cared.
- foolfoolz 4y ago
  apple is in an active lawsuit with one the biggest gaming companies in the world. fortnite hasn’t been available on apple devices in 2 years. if they really cared they wouldn’t have shut down one of the most popular games of today from their devices
  - arecurrence 4y ago
    This comment doesn't make sense to me. Epic broke one of the major tenets of their contract with Apple. Apple faced losing a significant revenue stream if Epic's efforts were allowed to continue. In particular, since they intend to use the same model for future devices in other verticals, they would have also lost out on a simply colossal amount of future revenue. The business case on this was a slam dunk. Other companies running virtual product stores with similar terms would have done the same irrespective of how popular Epic's products were.
- sirn 4y ago
  FWIW, addition of MetalFX upscaling (comparable to DLSS/FSR 2) in Ventura has been a nice surprise and one of the biggest development on Mac gaming in recent memory. Digital Foundry did some review of MetalFX in Resident Evil Village[1] and was pretty positive about it. (From DF's findings, MetalFX has some problems with transparent texture, but details preservation/restoration are pretty good.) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iXx9lfe62w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iXx9lfe62w
  - hedgehog 4y ago
    It's not so much technical as business focus. There's a big issue with their app store cut on in-app purchases and whether they want to set a precedent on lowering/changing the rules to be compatible with games like Fortnite and the third party stores (like Steam and whatever Epic's is called). If they found a solution to that then they need high quality and timely ports, that's a whole organization of marketing, bizdev, devrel, etc people. At a technical level it seems like they could get more console-like levels of tuning for their platforms. Very few chips to support, only a handful of thermal targets, all chips have a common CPU/GPU architecture, all devices have very fast storage. Conceivably they could field a winning platform for competitive gaming. My guess is they look at Sony & Microsoft and don't see much value in reshuffling priorities to likely just be #3. Edit: hajile above convinces me that rather than concerns about spending money to be #3 they probably already are in the top few by gaming revenue and could have lots of reasons for not being more aggressive about taking more share.
ilyt 4y ago
Apple just asks gaming companies to put unreasonable extra effort by not supporting Vulkan so no wonder more and more decided to fuck that platform.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  False. iOS doesn’t support Vulkan, 40% of Android doesn’t support Vulkan, Windows does not officially support Vulkan, Nintendo Switch has a Vulkan implementation that is basically unusable, PlayStation doesn’t support Vulkan, Xbox doesn’t support Vulkan, shall I go on? Contrary to widespread opinion, Vulkan is not an industry standard. It’s a 3rd-party DirectX alternative for Windows, the best API for Linux, and a curiosity on Android. And that’s literally it, nothing else supports it (except Switch, but it is so slow, almost no games use it, opting for the proprietary NVN).
  - GamerUncle 4y ago
    saying "Windows does not officially support Vulkan" is a completely blatant cope by maclovers, nvidia and amd, the people that make the cards support it, and windows "supports" their cards, so let's stop being dishonest. "Vulkan is not an industry standard" I mean yeah, in the same way Microsoft word is not an standard. "except Switch, but it is so slow" again that seems to be a lie, doom eternal orks way, way better on it than it would be on similar software on a different API.
    - gjsman-1000 4y ago
      > saying "Windows does not officially support Vulkan" is a completely blatant cope by maclovers, nvidia and amd, the people that make the cards support it, and windows "supports" their cards, so let's stop being dishonest. It is completely honest. On a fresh install of Windows, if you don't have graphics drivers, you can't run Vulkan or OpenGL. Windows washes their hands of any responsibility. You can at least run DirectX with software rendering regardless of hardware support. It is also for this reason that the locked-down Xbox where Microsoft can assert more control has zero tolerance for OpenGL or Vulkan. > "Vulkan is not an industry standard" I mean yeah, in the same way Microsoft word is not an standard. Microsoft Word, and the DOCX format by extension, has >90% market share. Vulkan has almost no presence on consoles, presence on less than half of smartphones in use, and mixed presence on Desktop because MacOS doesn't have it. Word is more of a standard than Vulkan. > "except Switch, but it is so slow" again that seems to be a lie, doom eternal orks way, way better on it than it would be on similar software on a different API. DOOM Eternal is one of the few games that uses Vulkan. >90% of Switch games do not use Vulkan, and found it preferable to use the proprietary API. That developers would overwhelmingly opt not to use Vulkan on Switch tells you all you need to know about the state of it. If adding another graphics API (such as Metal) was such a big deal, why in the world would they do it if Vulkan was cross-platform and worked fine? It doesn't work as well as it needs to - and adding another graphics API isn't as much of a blocker as we like to think.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
I've found Rosetta games actually work better on my new M1Max, than on my old Intel (I have the top-of-the-line laptop of each).
EagnaIonat 4y ago
> Apple's hardware is unquestionably very good now. Honestly it doesn't matter. The whole "Macs can't game" has no basis in facts. The goalposts are continually moved. To give some examples of arguments. - Not enough games for it. There is actually more games in the Apple store than most other gaming stores. You can also play a lot of iOS games now. - The majority of games are terrible. The majority of games in other stores are terrible too (sadly). - It can't play [insert PC game]. Neither can a Nintendo switch but that doesn't mean it can't play games. - I can play [insert PC game] but doesn't count because it's too old. You can't win on this one. - It's not a real game unless it uses a GPU. There are countless games out there that don't meet this requirement. Really the only argument for Macs not being gaming machines is that the majority of buyers do so not to play games on it, but to get stuff done. Anyone who can afford a Mac is likely to have at least a console and/or PC Gaming rig.
- willis936 4y ago
  The goalposts haven't moved. Where are the games? Macs will game when macs can game. The gaming industry has chosen the APIs they are willing to support. When Apple meets them there then macs will be able to game.
  - GeekyBear 4y ago
    > The gaming industry has chosen the APIs they are willing to support. The gaming industry will go where the money is. The majority of the industry revenue is now on mobile and the lions share of mobile revenue is on iOS and Metal. I think Apple Silicon Macs will end up benefiting from studios having experience with Metal on iOS in the same way that XBox benefited from studios having experience with Direct3D on Windows.
  - EagnaIonat 4y ago
    > Where are the games? You have… - App Store (OSX and many IOS) - Steam - Epic Store - Blizzard Store - Crossover and Parallels to do some windows games. - Mame and it’s like exist. - You even have free games on GitHub. If you can’t find the games the issue isn’t with the Mac.
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jxdxbx 4y ago
For me one of the best things about PCs for gaming is access to lots of old games and long tail stuff...in fact I rarely play new graphically-demanding titles. That said OpenEmu on the Mac is the slickest emulation manager / front-end I've used on any platform and DOSBox-X runs fine on my iMac. But I still keep a gaming PC around.

db48x 4y ago

Be careful; the only performance comparison they made was between the x86_64 builds and the arm64 builds. Both were done on the same hardware, with the x86_64 build necessarily running in emulation. This only proves that the ported game runs better than the non–ported game run in emulation, not that it runs better on an M1 Mac than on other computers.

neallindsay 4y ago
Fair; I'll try to not get my hopes up too high.
bombcar 4y ago
Steam has a surprising amount of Mac games but I fear many will never receive a native M1 update.
- joxel 4y ago
  Does protonDB work for Mac titles, or is it only for Windows? I've been able to play basically every game in my steam library on linux using protonDB. I have hundreds of games.
  - pdpi 4y ago
    Proton helps you run Windows games on Linux. A few years ago, the problem with Mac games on Steam was running 32-bit Mac games on 64-bit only macOS builds. Now, it's running x86 Mac games on arm64 Macs. Often, we're talking about those same 32-bit games that never got updated to 64-bits x86, let alone arm.
  - lloeki 4y ago
    Theoretically it could, although: > The main Proton issue is that it runs on DXVK, and MoltenVK is not always up to parity with implementing Vulkan API calls on Metal reliably. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/1344#issuecomment-1093053454 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/1344#issuecom... An alternative would be using CrossOver (which pulls from Wine and adds stuff like MoltenVK), which is what Proton does as well (pulling from Wine and adding stuff, but not MoltenVK) and vendors internally, Valve "just"† doesn't pull from the CrossOver changes nor expose Proton on macOS. † scare quotes because it may not be as easy as it seems
- hypertexthero 4y ago
  Indeed! Here is a list of good games that run on the Mac: https://hypertexthero.com/mac-video-games-for-streaming/ https://hypertexthero.com/mac-video-games-for-streaming/ I try to keep it updated and suggestions are always welcome.
  - robaye 4y ago
    Here's another list to keep around. https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/Home https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/Home
- lloeki 4y ago
  The current Steam problem on macOS is more about 32 bit games that never received 64 bit builds, which means they are not playable anymore since Catalina independently of the Intel vs Apple Silicon hardware, notably the first-party GoldSrc and Source engine games, and all of their third party derivatives. I would not really care if my game library was going through Rosetta 2, as I'd rather take a theoretical performance hit (vs a native arm64 build) than outright be unable to play.
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  Meanwhile I’ve been happy playing games in Parallels (virtual Windows arm64) like Against the Storm. Crusader Kings 3 has better perf in Parallels than the macOS build.
- perryizgr8 4y ago
  At one point even intel macs broke compatibility with every game that was 3 years old or something stupid like that. I remember that my working game simply refused to execute after a macos version upgrade. Exact same machine, refusing to run my software overnight. This kind of attitude just isn't conducive for gaming, where people like to build libraries in steam and expect everything to keep working for a long time. On my PC, I can fire up games from 20 years ago and they work perfectly. Witcher 3, a 7 year old game, is getting an overhaul. I expect no problems in downloading it on steam from my library and playing it seamlessly on my relatively new PC.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yep - they killed 32 bit compatibility and it’s annoying. IIRC win64 finally killed win16 support but that was rarely used for games and those games you can dosbox (which amusingly enough works fine on Mac in many cases).
pkage 4y ago
Some anecdata: I've played Factorio on both an Intel MBP (2018) and an M1 MBP (2021), the performance even under Rosetta blew away the Intel chipset. Being M1 native means even faster performance with a lower power impact.
pdpi 4y ago
The post actually mentions what map they used for benchmarking, and linked to a bunch of other benchmarks on the same map[0]. They quote around 200 UPS average. It's hard to compare to the linked benchmarks because those quote p75 numbers instead of average, but it seems like the results are in the same general ballpark as the Ryzen 9 5950x. 0. https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f16d6950f639be1d6f92984f24c0240de6335d3e161705504 https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f...
- willis936 4y ago
  Wow thanks for this. I noticed the 13700k results are surprisingly lackluster. The highest speed memory kit there is 5600. I just got a 13700k with Hynix A-die (now clocked to 7200). I have an AIO arriving in the mail in a few days to replace my NH-D14. The 13700k has quite a bit of headroom when not thermally constrained. I think that the 13700k and 13900k with the same turbo ratio should perform almost the same in gaming workloads. The only difference should be in the 36 MB of LL cache vs. 30 MB. It's a modest difference, but factorio is memory subsystem performance sensitive. I'll add a benchmark to that page in a few days with a 5.8 GHz clocked 13700k to test the theory.
  - alexktz 4y ago
    A Noctua NH-D14 is considered "thermally constrained" for these 13th gen chips? Good lord. I'm looking forward to your test results though as I'm considering building a new desktop around 13th gen.
    - sirn 4y ago
      Not sure about the performance of NH-D14 and 13700K, but my NH-D15 (upgraded from NH-U12A) is running OK for 13700k with Intel's PL1/PL2 settings, hovering around 60~70c during full load at 25c ambient temperature. Unlimited PL2 is a different story and can go up to 100c during full load. My previous NH-U12A build ran at about 2-4c higher temperature under load. I've been experimenting with different settings and found that unlimited PL2 and undervolting the CPU by -150mV give the best temperature to performance at ~80c during full load. It has been running stable for few days, and I'm pretty happy with the result so far.
less_less 4y ago
Factorio runs quite well on the M1. The graphics system (FPS) is partially decoupled from the factory simulation side (updates per second, or UPS), so there are two components to performance. UPS mostly depends on how big and complex your entire factory is, and on what mods you're running, and FPS mainly depends on how many sprites are on screen. FPS is limited to be <= UPS, since there's no point in redrawing until the game state changes, but UPS can be greater. FPS: Despite being a 2D sprite game, sometimes it has trouble keeping FPS at 60, at least when running at max graphics and max zoom level with a graphically intensive mod. I would guess it's using OpenGL, and Apple's OpenGL stack isn't great. You can see the article mentioning the M1 Max only hitting 45 FPS in one of the tests, and this is without mods (but with a huge base and presumably a wide zoom level). In my experience, if you adjust the graphics settings appropriately (eg max sprite atlas size and max vram usage, since integrated graphics use unified memory), you can usually keep it at a smooth 60 FPS 99% of the time even in graphically-intensive setups with max or almost-max quality settings. UPS: Scoring 199 UPS on the flame_sla 10k base puts the M1 Max above any other laptop processor for that benchmark. This matches my experience: the simulation part of the game almost never lags, except for unavoidably heavy operations (eg generating new worlds when playing with mods that do that). See a comparison at: https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f16d6950f639be1d6f92984f24c0240de6335d3e161705504&vl=1.1.0&vh= https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f...
- mnd999 4y ago
  > UPS: Scoring 199 UPS on the flame_sla 10k base puts the M1 Max above any other laptop processor for that benchmark. It puts it above an EPYC 7763! I presume it wasn't using all 64 cores though.
  - less_less 4y ago
    Yeah, Factorio is multithreaded, but in practice it usually only runs a few ways in parallel. Instead its performance is determined in large part by the memory subsystem, which is why the X3D processors do so well. It's probably also part of the M1's great performance: with a large cache and stacked DRAM, it has very competitive bandwidth and latency.
lloeki 4y ago
> with the x86_64 build necessarily running in emulation Rosetta 2 is not emulation, at all, it's AOT, static binary translation, backed by hardware that implements Intel specific behaviour from the latest chips down to the oldest 8080 or something. It's eerily fast. In fact, it happens that arm64-translated x86_64 running on Apple Silicon can often be faster than x86_64 running on the latest Macs with Intel processors. So you really have to ask two questions here: - does the x86_64 Factorio build run faster on Apple Silicon than on a comparable† Intel? - on Apple Silicon, does the arm64 Factorio build run faster than the x86_64 Factorio? † whatever that means
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Are there any 5nm Intel processors to compare with? I think an AMD chip might have a more comparable performance profile.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  >Rosetta 2 is not emulation, at all, it's AOT, static binary translation, backed by hardware that implements Intel specific behaviour from the latest chips down to the oldest 8080 or something. So, it is hardware emulation.
  - brookst 4y ago
    No. Imagine you only speak English and you want to read a novel in French. Emulation: you hire a translator to read the novel to you. They translate each word while reading. Static translation: you hire a translator to transcribe the book from French to English. They give you a printed book purely in English. But simple French words like flâner and râler are expanded into lengthy passages because there is no simple English translation. Rosetta 2: you hire the translator to transcribe the book to English, but they leave in unique French words and teach you what they mean so you can understand them in an English phrase without even noticing that the word isn’t “real” English. Rosetta 2 isn’t emulation because no instruction is translated on the fly to a different ISA. It’s static translation plus ISA extensions. There is no lower level emulating anything.
ilyt 4y ago
IIRC from the benchmark M1 have some truly great single-core performance. Then again Apple stuff is so fucking expensive you can get faster for cheaper easily...
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  What laptop has comparable perf for much cheaper?
  - meepmorp 4y ago
    Or anything like the same battery life?
    - hombre_fatal 4y ago
      Is this the part where we find out they are comparing laptops to desktops?

candiddevmike 4y ago

From what I understand, Apple decided to force Metal upon everyone instead of using Vulkan like the rest of the industry. This causes friction with game development.

smoldesu 4y ago
That's part of the problem. MacOS actually had the same Proton compatibility layer as Linux a few years ago, but with Catalina Apple changed what you're allowed to run on your Mac and it broke completely. Neither Valve nor Codeweavers have gotten DXVK or Proton to run on MacOS since, IIRC.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Apple depreciated 32-bit, a year before Apple Silicon came out, which allowed them to more precisely target 64-bit processor speed without legacy baggage. Apple Silicon on iOS had dropped 32-bit years before and they didn’t want to bring it back for macOS. Android is following with 32-bit deprecation this year, actually. Pixel 7 doesn’t support 32-bit apps.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Real shame, Diablo 2 still runs great on modern hardware.
- sirn 4y ago
  That doesn't sound right. Codeweavers has been shipping fairly recent version of DXVK alongside with MoltenVK since CrossOver 20. On community side there's Gcenx/DXVK-macOS[1] that patched DXVK to work with some of Apple GPU quirks in some games and closely track upstream. [1]: https://github.com/Gcenx/DXVK-macOS https://github.com/Gcenx/DXVK-macOS
mcphage 4y ago
> From what I understand, Apple decided to force Metal upon everyone instead of using Vulkan like the rest of the industry Metal came out in 2014, Vulkan in 2016.

highwaylights 4y ago

I get the impression that the lack of releases on mac are generally down to non-technical reasons. Building for ARM is probably not a big challenge if you’re already building for Apple’s x86 toolset. Metal would be more of a challenge I imagine, but a bridge probably worth crossing all else being equal (or one that you don’t need to cross at all if you’re using something like unreal or unity). The Mac isn’t a games platform as Apple hasn’t shown much interest in the mainstream gaming market, and I can’t imagine major publishers are eager to fork over a third of their revenue on the App Store for sales they’ll probably pick up elsewhere without more work and cost. Sure theres Epic and Steam on Mac, but they’re ghost towns, and publishers are likely waiting to see what way the EU Digital Markets Act shakes out globally anyway (as other governments are pressured to provide the same freedoms). There was talk at one point of Apple working on a game console (a more powerful Apple TV) but who’s the market for that? They’ll not be cost-competitive with Xbox or content-competitive with PlayStation and Nintendo. At best they’d be likely to produce a similarly powered box with little content and a high price tag in a market already retailing hardware below cost price.

hedgehog 4y ago

Except for brief blips here and there Apple seems to not put any priority on gaming. It's a bit disappointing because they could have a really strong showing if they cared.

foolfoolz 4y ago
apple is in an active lawsuit with one the biggest gaming companies in the world. fortnite hasn’t been available on apple devices in 2 years. if they really cared they wouldn’t have shut down one of the most popular games of today from their devices
- arecurrence 4y ago
  This comment doesn't make sense to me. Epic broke one of the major tenets of their contract with Apple. Apple faced losing a significant revenue stream if Epic's efforts were allowed to continue. In particular, since they intend to use the same model for future devices in other verticals, they would have also lost out on a simply colossal amount of future revenue. The business case on this was a slam dunk. Other companies running virtual product stores with similar terms would have done the same irrespective of how popular Epic's products were.
sirn 4y ago
FWIW, addition of MetalFX upscaling (comparable to DLSS/FSR 2) in Ventura has been a nice surprise and one of the biggest development on Mac gaming in recent memory. Digital Foundry did some review of MetalFX in Resident Evil Village[1] and was pretty positive about it. (From DF's findings, MetalFX has some problems with transparent texture, but details preservation/restoration are pretty good.) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iXx9lfe62w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iXx9lfe62w
- hedgehog 4y ago
  It's not so much technical as business focus. There's a big issue with their app store cut on in-app purchases and whether they want to set a precedent on lowering/changing the rules to be compatible with games like Fortnite and the third party stores (like Steam and whatever Epic's is called). If they found a solution to that then they need high quality and timely ports, that's a whole organization of marketing, bizdev, devrel, etc people. At a technical level it seems like they could get more console-like levels of tuning for their platforms. Very few chips to support, only a handful of thermal targets, all chips have a common CPU/GPU architecture, all devices have very fast storage. Conceivably they could field a winning platform for competitive gaming. My guess is they look at Sony & Microsoft and don't see much value in reshuffling priorities to likely just be #3. Edit: hajile above convinces me that rather than concerns about spending money to be #3 they probably already are in the top few by gaming revenue and could have lots of reasons for not being more aggressive about taking more share.

ilyt 4y ago

Apple just asks gaming companies to put unreasonable extra effort by not supporting Vulkan so no wonder more and more decided to fuck that platform.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
False. iOS doesn’t support Vulkan, 40% of Android doesn’t support Vulkan, Windows does not officially support Vulkan, Nintendo Switch has a Vulkan implementation that is basically unusable, PlayStation doesn’t support Vulkan, Xbox doesn’t support Vulkan, shall I go on? Contrary to widespread opinion, Vulkan is not an industry standard. It’s a 3rd-party DirectX alternative for Windows, the best API for Linux, and a curiosity on Android. And that’s literally it, nothing else supports it (except Switch, but it is so slow, almost no games use it, opting for the proprietary NVN).
- GamerUncle 4y ago
  saying "Windows does not officially support Vulkan" is a completely blatant cope by maclovers, nvidia and amd, the people that make the cards support it, and windows "supports" their cards, so let's stop being dishonest. "Vulkan is not an industry standard" I mean yeah, in the same way Microsoft word is not an standard. "except Switch, but it is so slow" again that seems to be a lie, doom eternal orks way, way better on it than it would be on similar software on a different API.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    > saying "Windows does not officially support Vulkan" is a completely blatant cope by maclovers, nvidia and amd, the people that make the cards support it, and windows "supports" their cards, so let's stop being dishonest. It is completely honest. On a fresh install of Windows, if you don't have graphics drivers, you can't run Vulkan or OpenGL. Windows washes their hands of any responsibility. You can at least run DirectX with software rendering regardless of hardware support. It is also for this reason that the locked-down Xbox where Microsoft can assert more control has zero tolerance for OpenGL or Vulkan. > "Vulkan is not an industry standard" I mean yeah, in the same way Microsoft word is not an standard. Microsoft Word, and the DOCX format by extension, has >90% market share. Vulkan has almost no presence on consoles, presence on less than half of smartphones in use, and mixed presence on Desktop because MacOS doesn't have it. Word is more of a standard than Vulkan. > "except Switch, but it is so slow" again that seems to be a lie, doom eternal orks way, way better on it than it would be on similar software on a different API. DOOM Eternal is one of the few games that uses Vulkan. >90% of Switch games do not use Vulkan, and found it preferable to use the proprietary API. That developers would overwhelmingly opt not to use Vulkan on Switch tells you all you need to know about the state of it. If adding another graphics API (such as Metal) was such a big deal, why in the world would they do it if Vulkan was cross-platform and worked fine? It doesn't work as well as it needs to - and adding another graphics API isn't as much of a blocker as we like to think.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

I've found Rosetta games actually work better on my new M1Max, than on my old Intel (I have the top-of-the-line laptop of each).

EagnaIonat 4y ago

> Apple's hardware is unquestionably very good now. Honestly it doesn't matter. The whole "Macs can't game" has no basis in facts. The goalposts are continually moved. To give some examples of arguments. - Not enough games for it. There is actually more games in the Apple store than most other gaming stores. You can also play a lot of iOS games now. - The majority of games are terrible. The majority of games in other stores are terrible too (sadly). - It can't play [insert PC game]. Neither can a Nintendo switch but that doesn't mean it can't play games. - I can play [insert PC game] but doesn't count because it's too old. You can't win on this one. - It's not a real game unless it uses a GPU. There are countless games out there that don't meet this requirement. Really the only argument for Macs not being gaming machines is that the majority of buyers do so not to play games on it, but to get stuff done. Anyone who can afford a Mac is likely to have at least a console and/or PC Gaming rig.

willis936 4y ago
The goalposts haven't moved. Where are the games? Macs will game when macs can game. The gaming industry has chosen the APIs they are willing to support. When Apple meets them there then macs will be able to game.
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  > The gaming industry has chosen the APIs they are willing to support. The gaming industry will go where the money is. The majority of the industry revenue is now on mobile and the lions share of mobile revenue is on iOS and Metal. I think Apple Silicon Macs will end up benefiting from studios having experience with Metal on iOS in the same way that XBox benefited from studios having experience with Direct3D on Windows.
- EagnaIonat 4y ago
  > Where are the games? You have… - App Store (OSX and many IOS) - Steam - Epic Store - Blizzard Store - Crossover and Parallels to do some windows games. - Mame and it’s like exist. - You even have free games on GitHub. If you can’t find the games the issue isn’t with the Mac.

deleted 4y ago

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jxdxbx 4y ago

For me one of the best things about PCs for gaming is access to lots of old games and long tail stuff...in fact I rarely play new graphically-demanding titles. That said OpenEmu on the Mac is the slickest emulation manager / front-end I've used on any platform and DOSBox-X runs fine on my iMac. But I still keep a gaming PC around.