pound four pound these are some of the most powerful gaming computers on the
market but this man he won't let it happen
holding your own hardware hostage hey tim that's a cowardly move
what's the matter
are you scared of us
but for real though apple's most recent computers are
absolutely incredible their custom silicon has elevated ARM from mobile to
monstrous and it's an open secret that these m1 series chips have powerhouse
gpus in them so why don't they show off cool stuff anymore like playstation
emulators for mac again our goal is to have the best game machine in the world
why tim smack gaming really that bad well war
thunder sponsored this video today to help us explore that and we're going to
start with a look at a handful of games that were made with the mac in mind or
at least ported to the platform let's start off with the thin and light
category where we're going to compare the baseline m1 macbook air against an
hp envy x360 war thunder gives us one of
our best results which makes sense given that it was specifically made using
apple's own metal API we managed playable frame rates at 1200 p on high
though our poor m1 was reaching pretty scary temps and as expected it handily
beat our comparably priced and sized hp envy 360x a clear win for the m1
but getting into more graphically intensive aaa games like shadow of the
tomb raider and deus ex mankind divided we see the m1 7 GPU course start to
struggle just barely scraping together enough frames for these games to be
playable in fairness it still beats the hp but by a considerably smaller margin
probably owing to the air's lack of a cooling fan
another thing worth noting is that the m1 would get absolutely
dunked on by any comparably priced machine with discreet graphics but
those aren't exactly thin and light let's step up then to the 2 000 m1 pro
equipped macbook pro we chose the baseline model with an 8
core CPU and 14 core GPU since that's
the cheapest pro model that gives us extra GPU cores
and that translated to respectable numbers in war thunder then in deus ex
and shadow of the tomb raider we observed performance that was two times
and four times the passively cooled m1
respectively unfortunately these numbers do pale in comparison to a gaming
focused Windows machine like the 1850 lenovo legion 7i with a 3060 mobile GPU
the graphs kind of speak for themselves here
ouch now i can hear your cherry blues clicking
away clickbait i thought you said these were gaming machines but hear me out for
a second the baseline 14 inch macbook pro
might not get the most FPS per dollar but it is still one of if not the best
all-around machines on the market with an amazing screen trackpad and speakers
and it really says something that even running through translation layers and
with such low power consumption that these games run at all let alone at
playable frame rates it's a testament to the capability of apple silicon
capability that on the m1 ultra will match an rtx 3090 if apple is to be
believed spoiler we don't believe them
subscribe if you don't want to miss our coverage of the new hardware
the big issue here is support there just aren't that many games being developed
for mac specifically but there are some
very usable ways to fill in the gaps like game streaming stadia xcloud and
g-force now all work brilliantly in chromium-based browsers and the choice
really comes down to whether you prefer the rotating lineup and value of xbox
game pass or if you prefer to own your games more permanently like with
NVIDIA's service playstation now will also hopefully be a contender in the
future but that won't happen until sony releases a version of their app for ARM
or browsers the biggest considerations with
streaming games is your proximity to the nearest data center and the quality of
your internet connection also you'll probably want a usbc to
Ethernet dongle for the best experience and to sign up for a notification on
lttstore.com if you want to be the first to get our new screwdriver and backpack
for those who prefer their games running locally well there are surprisingly good
options there too starting with parallels which is the only way to run
Windows on these m1 chips at least until microsoft loosens the reins on Windows
on ARM the good news is that i was floored by the sheer number of games
that are working not just working but working well
even if you do end up leaving some performance on the table due to
virtualization limitations another option is crossover by codeweavers you
could think of it kind of like the Linux Windows compatibility intermediary
proton except for mac in fact codeweaver
has collaborated with valve to develop proton and are big sponsors of wine so
we really like what this company is doing the issue with both of these solutions
though is a that they're paid and b that
compatibility is spotty at best codeweavers at least will make special
game specific tweaks to help improve the situation but there are only so many
programs one company can support thankfully there are many incredible
games and experiences that do not require translation layers
let's go to adam's game corner and talk about native mac gaming
first up is apple arcade the program is more focused on touch screen based
experiences something that apple could better accommodate if they would just put a touch screen in their laptops but
there's still a ton of great games that you can get for the price like fantasian
a classic jrpg from hironobu sakaguchi the creator of final fantasy that takes
place on these handmade dioramas and it looks so beautiful or lego builders
journey a gorgeous puzzle platformer about creativity and parenthood how
about the addictive cartoon king of eliminate things on a grid style games
grindstone and honestly there's a lot more or you could
spend your time playing numerous incredible indie hits that have been ported to the platform like chicory a
colorful tale an adventure puzzler that explores the insecurities and self-doubt
that comes with being an artist oh discolysium man there's not a week that
goes by where i don't think about that philosophical alcoholic cop simulator or
how about tunic the one part zelda one part dark souls isometric adventure game
or wilder myth the procedurally generated tactical rpg wait
where where are you going um or timber born at six sim city but with beavers
and and oh and don't forget you can emulate on dolphin
obviously with the ability to play so many indies on mac the gaming situation
isn't as dire as apple's reputation would lead you to believe but it could
be much better could if it wasn't for one big obstacle apple themselves whose
apathy towards gaming on mac couldn't be more clear
it kind of makes sense though if you think about it what's in it for apple as
massive as the gaming industry has become 52 of the revenue comes from
mobile where the boys from cupertino already score 30 of all revenue on their
platform earning them more gaming profit than the biggest actual
gaming companies combined the truth is
this model is so profitable that if apple had their way you wouldn't be able
to get macOS apps and games outside of the app store either steam gone browser
apps nope and as far as i can tell apple
only allows this kind of freedom on the mac because it's an already existing
precedent for their computers but while it's partly about the money it's also
about control and when apple can't have
control well they can get pretty petty
you cannot use an NVIDIA GPU on your 50
000 mac pro just because of a long
lasting spat between the two companies apple actually went out of their way to
block NVIDIA's drivers now in fairness
NVIDIA is also notoriously difficult to work with and as far as i can tell
released those drivers just to spite apple but apple also stifles development
in other ways by continuously refusing to support
cross-platform apis all in the name of that precious precious control they
won't support vulcan and they deprecated opengl and opencl with macos mojave
leaving support for those standards standing as they were over a decade ago
so now your only option for games on m1 are games that can support or at least
be translated to apple's own proprietary metal API and that's done using a tool
like molten vk a compatibility layer between vulcan and metal a development
effort that we wouldn't need at all if apple would just support vulcan you
could argue that game studios should pick up the slack but frankly why should
a game developer spend the money to go through the expensive process of
converting their game to metal when the only people affected are 15 of the
market at best but in reality only a subset of those
users would have devices with the GPU horsepower to run a triple a game a
subset of those users are interested in gaming on their laptops and a subset of
those users wouldn't be happy with cloud gaming services or some of the other
things we've already talked about so really it's a story that's getting a bit
tired these days apple engineers incredible hardware sells at high prices
and finds new and inventive ways to make the experience worse for their customer
like non-user removable monitor power cables and SSD compatibility hijinks and
until apple decides that they want to make a real investment in opening their
platform i mean seriously rosetta 2 alongside vulcan would make developing
games for mac very approachable or a serious investment in devouring game
studios a la microsoft and sony kind of like what they've done with apple tv
plus then max will remain great gaming
devices whose potential will never be fully realized
there's potential to segue to our sponsor who is of course war thunder for
this video one of the few excellent competitive games that you can actually
play natively on the mac not to mention with great performance even all the way
down to the m1 based macbook air you guys can learn more about war thunder at
the link in the video description as much as this video might have been a
bit of a downer thanks for watching if you're interested in learning more about the performance of these laptops check
out our reviews of the m1 16-inch devices