15 ms·

> Up to 2x faster gaming performance with ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition when compared to Mac mini with M4. Interesting that Apple quotes perf

by abricq 1mo ago

> Up to 2x faster gaming performance with ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition when compared to Mac mini with M4. Interesting that Apple quotes performances when playing Cyberpunk 2077 ! Maybe they will want to care more about gaming ? And while i'm at it, I was wondering a few weeks ago if I should try this game on my M3 pro. Anyone has played it on Apple and has feedback ?

mcphage 1mo ago
> Interesting that Apple quotes performances when playing Cyberpunk 2077 ! Maybe they will want to care more about gaming ? They include game metrics in their marketing often, because they know their customers care about gaming. But no—for whatever reason, it never translates into Apple caring about gaming. I don't get it, but that's the way it has been for a long time.
- wlesieutre 1mo ago
  With the “game mode” and “game porting toolkit” in recent history, I think there’s one person at Apple who cares about gaming and every couple of years he escapes from the basement where they keep him locked up and manages to sneak something into the release branch They’ve also said when they pull Rosetta for intel compatibility, it will still be available for old games to use, which is a huge improvement from their usual stance of “that game studio that hasn’t existed since 2008 should dust off their code and update it to our new architecture.”
- efficax 1mo ago
  they've done a bunch to make macs a better gaming platform, including the very nice game porting toolkit (https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/ https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/) which you can use yourself to run pc games on the mac. All macs since m1 have very nice gpus that can handle most games made today, and the newer ones can run the latest AAA ones with good detail. At this point it's more that game publishers/studios don't care about the mac
andrewingram 1mo ago
I play quite a few games on my Mac Mini via Crossover, but rarely anything particularly graphically intensive. Though I do see occasional buzz about improvements in the game porting toolkit leading to significant perf improvements when they make their way into Crossover.
swozey 1mo ago
cp2077 sits permanently at 60fps and looks great on my m1 max 64gb. I used to play it on my 4090, but once I figured out how to do redmods on macos I quit using it and play it on my mac to save power (I'm 100% solar powered and barely generate 600w, 4090 consumes 500+). In apples infinite wisdom they don't support egpus, so my 4090 egpu will never work with my mac, which was a really disappointing thing to discover.
- russelg 1mo ago
  It could work but that would require NVIDIA to release an arm64 macOS driver. Safe to say this will never happen.
- benoau 1mo ago
  Someone actually got an eGPU to pass-through to a Linux VM - with a steep performance penalty anyway. If you are gaming at 4K a 4090 will still be better even with the performance hit. Although obviously this will blow your solar budget! https://scottjg.com/posts/2026-05-05-egpu-mac-gaming/ https://scottjg.com/posts/2026-05-05-egpu-mac-gaming/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48137145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48137145
bodge5000 1mo ago
From what I've seen they do care quite a bit about gaming, but not to the point where they're willing to actually do much about it, so I wouldn't expect a proton style compatibility layer anytime soon unfortunately
- LetsGetTechnicl 1mo ago
  You can get Proton through CrossOver at least. I haven't done much testing but I know some people use it to do some basic gaming.
- dragonwriter 1mo ago
  > From what I've seen they do care quite a bit about gaming, but not to the point where they're willing to actually do much about it If they aren't willing to do much about it, they don't—however much they might pretend as long as it costs them nothing of value to do so—actually “care quite a bit” about it.
  - bodge5000 29d ago
    I wouldnt quite agree with that, gaming featured fairly prominently at least years WWDC, thats competing with a lot of other software and announcements for limited time. Pretending to care at an event where you can pretend to care about so many things is as close to caring as you get. But I think it comes down to the wording a bit. At their core, the only single thing Apple cares about is making money. They only pretend to care about their computers, phones, everything they do is just an act, but we all know that so caring about something is relative, when we say they care about their computers its more that they put more resources into that than they do other things which we'd say they dont care about.
    - deleted 28d ago
      [deleted]
VCFundedGenYer 1mo ago
Apple does this thing where they pick a very old game and then boast about how well it runs. It's so bizarre. Not like Mac gaming is good anyway...they have "Game Porting Toolkit" but it's not free and open like Proton so nobody will use it unless Apple pushes them. Removing Rosetta doesn't help either.
- thewebguyd 1mo ago
  Apple also just can't give up the idea of selling games through the AppStore either and you end up with situations like with AC: Shadows where it was ported, but you must buy the macport via the app store. Your copy on steam does not include the mac port, so if you wan to play on both your Windows/Linux desktop and Mac, you have to buy it twice. So stupid.
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
- wpm 1mo ago
  In fairness, Cyberpunk 2077 might be 5 years old but it is the modern day "Can it run Crysis". It is absolutely still a hard game to run.
  - frollogaston 1mo ago
    Also "will it run Minecraft with shaders"
  - bigyabai 1mo ago
    In fairness, Cyberpunk 2077 is playable through Wine translation on a $400 base model Steam Deck. The game gets a bad rap for the last-gen console performance, but even 2020's iGPUs could handle it: https://youtu.be/oUm5GmJcBPA https://youtu.be/oUm5GmJcBPA
    - 0xc133 1mo ago
      The cheapest Steam Deck available now is $789.
rldjbpin 1mo ago
it happens to be a title well-known but also natively supported. for a wide sea of games and their hostility towards open standards such as vulkan, we get a handful of games supported in their platform through partnerships. in the end of the day don't hold your breath for their involvement unless the game publisher does all the work.

by abricq 1mo ago

mcphage 1mo ago

> Interesting that Apple quotes performances when playing Cyberpunk 2077 ! Maybe they will want to care more about gaming ? They include game metrics in their marketing often, because they know their customers care about gaming. But no—for whatever reason, it never translates into Apple caring about gaming. I don't get it, but that's the way it has been for a long time.

wlesieutre 1mo ago
With the “game mode” and “game porting toolkit” in recent history, I think there’s one person at Apple who cares about gaming and every couple of years he escapes from the basement where they keep him locked up and manages to sneak something into the release branch They’ve also said when they pull Rosetta for intel compatibility, it will still be available for old games to use, which is a huge improvement from their usual stance of “that game studio that hasn’t existed since 2008 should dust off their code and update it to our new architecture.”
efficax 1mo ago
they've done a bunch to make macs a better gaming platform, including the very nice game porting toolkit (https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/ https://developer.apple.com/games/game-porting-toolkit/) which you can use yourself to run pc games on the mac. All macs since m1 have very nice gpus that can handle most games made today, and the newer ones can run the latest AAA ones with good detail. At this point it's more that game publishers/studios don't care about the mac

andrewingram 1mo ago

I play quite a few games on my Mac Mini via Crossover, but rarely anything particularly graphically intensive. Though I do see occasional buzz about improvements in the game porting toolkit leading to significant perf improvements when they make their way into Crossover.

swozey 1mo ago

cp2077 sits permanently at 60fps and looks great on my m1 max 64gb. I used to play it on my 4090, but once I figured out how to do redmods on macos I quit using it and play it on my mac to save power (I'm 100% solar powered and barely generate 600w, 4090 consumes 500+). In apples infinite wisdom they don't support egpus, so my 4090 egpu will never work with my mac, which was a really disappointing thing to discover.

russelg 1mo ago
It could work but that would require NVIDIA to release an arm64 macOS driver. Safe to say this will never happen.
benoau 1mo ago
Someone actually got an eGPU to pass-through to a Linux VM - with a steep performance penalty anyway. If you are gaming at 4K a 4090 will still be better even with the performance hit. Although obviously this will blow your solar budget! https://scottjg.com/posts/2026-05-05-egpu-mac-gaming/ https://scottjg.com/posts/2026-05-05-egpu-mac-gaming/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48137145 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48137145

bodge5000 1mo ago

From what I've seen they do care quite a bit about gaming, but not to the point where they're willing to actually do much about it, so I wouldn't expect a proton style compatibility layer anytime soon unfortunately

LetsGetTechnicl 1mo ago
You can get Proton through CrossOver at least. I haven't done much testing but I know some people use it to do some basic gaming.
dragonwriter 1mo ago
> From what I've seen they do care quite a bit about gaming, but not to the point where they're willing to actually do much about it If they aren't willing to do much about it, they don't—however much they might pretend as long as it costs them nothing of value to do so—actually “care quite a bit” about it.
- bodge5000 29d ago
  I wouldnt quite agree with that, gaming featured fairly prominently at least years WWDC, thats competing with a lot of other software and announcements for limited time. Pretending to care at an event where you can pretend to care about so many things is as close to caring as you get. But I think it comes down to the wording a bit. At their core, the only single thing Apple cares about is making money. They only pretend to care about their computers, phones, everything they do is just an act, but we all know that so caring about something is relative, when we say they care about their computers its more that they put more resources into that than they do other things which we'd say they dont care about.
  - deleted 28d ago
    [deleted]

VCFundedGenYer 1mo ago

Apple does this thing where they pick a very old game and then boast about how well it runs. It's so bizarre. Not like Mac gaming is good anyway...they have "Game Porting Toolkit" but it's not free and open like Proton so nobody will use it unless Apple pushes them. Removing Rosetta doesn't help either.

thewebguyd 1mo ago
Apple also just can't give up the idea of selling games through the AppStore either and you end up with situations like with AC: Shadows where it was ported, but you must buy the macport via the app store. Your copy on steam does not include the mac port, so if you wan to play on both your Windows/Linux desktop and Mac, you have to buy it twice. So stupid.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
wpm 1mo ago
In fairness, Cyberpunk 2077 might be 5 years old but it is the modern day "Can it run Crysis". It is absolutely still a hard game to run.
- frollogaston 1mo ago
  Also "will it run Minecraft with shaders"
- bigyabai 1mo ago
  In fairness, Cyberpunk 2077 is playable through Wine translation on a $400 base model Steam Deck. The game gets a bad rap for the last-gen console performance, but even 2020's iGPUs could handle it: https://youtu.be/oUm5GmJcBPA https://youtu.be/oUm5GmJcBPA
  - 0xc133 1mo ago
    The cheapest Steam Deck available now is $789.

rldjbpin 1mo ago

it happens to be a title well-known but also natively supported. for a wide sea of games and their hostility towards open standards such as vulkan, we get a handful of games supported in their platform through partnerships. in the end of the day don't hold your breath for their involvement unless the game publisher does all the work.