WEBVTT

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pound four pound these are some of the most powerful gaming computers on the

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market but this man he won't let it happen

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holding your own hardware hostage hey tim that's a cowardly move

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what's the matter

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are you scared of us

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but for real though apple's most recent computers are

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absolutely incredible their custom silicon has elevated ARM from mobile to

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monstrous and it's an open secret that these m1 series chips have powerhouse

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gpus in them so why don't they show off cool stuff anymore like playstation

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emulators for mac again our goal is to have the best game machine in the world

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why tim smack gaming really that bad well war

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thunder sponsored this video today to help us explore that and we're going to

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start with a look at a handful of games that were made with the mac in mind or

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at least ported to the platform let's start off with the thin and light

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category where we're going to compare the baseline m1 macbook air against an

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hp envy x360 war thunder gives us one of

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our best results which makes sense given that it was specifically made using

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apple's own metal API we managed playable frame rates at 1200 p on high

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though our poor m1 was reaching pretty scary temps and as expected it handily

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beat our comparably priced and sized hp envy 360x a clear win for the m1

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but getting into more graphically intensive aaa games like shadow of the

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tomb raider and deus ex mankind divided we see the m1 7 GPU course start to

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struggle just barely scraping together enough frames for these games to be

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playable in fairness it still beats the hp but by a considerably smaller margin

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probably owing to the air's lack of a cooling fan

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another thing worth noting is that the m1 would get absolutely

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dunked on by any comparably priced machine with discreet graphics but

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those aren't exactly thin and light let's step up then to the 2 000 m1 pro

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equipped macbook pro we chose the baseline model with an 8

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core CPU and 14 core GPU since that's

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the cheapest pro model that gives us extra GPU cores

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and that translated to respectable numbers in war thunder then in deus ex

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and shadow of the tomb raider we observed performance that was two times

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and four times the passively cooled m1

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respectively unfortunately these numbers do pale in comparison to a gaming

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focused Windows machine like the 1850 lenovo legion 7i with a 3060 mobile GPU

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the graphs kind of speak for themselves here

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ouch now i can hear your cherry blues clicking

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away clickbait i thought you said these were gaming machines but hear me out for

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a second the baseline 14 inch macbook pro

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might not get the most FPS per dollar but it is still one of if not the best

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all-around machines on the market with an amazing screen trackpad and speakers

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and it really says something that even running through translation layers and

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with such low power consumption that these games run at all let alone at

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playable frame rates it's a testament to the capability of apple silicon

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capability that on the m1 ultra will match an rtx 3090 if apple is to be

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believed spoiler we don't believe them

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subscribe if you don't want to miss our coverage of the new hardware

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the big issue here is support there just aren't that many games being developed

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for mac specifically but there are some

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very usable ways to fill in the gaps like game streaming stadia xcloud and

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g-force now all work brilliantly in chromium-based browsers and the choice

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really comes down to whether you prefer the rotating lineup and value of xbox

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game pass or if you prefer to own your games more permanently like with

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NVIDIA's service playstation now will also hopefully be a contender in the

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future but that won't happen until sony releases a version of their app for ARM

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or browsers the biggest considerations with

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streaming games is your proximity to the nearest data center and the quality of

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your internet connection also you'll probably want a usbc to

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Ethernet dongle for the best experience and to sign up for a notification on

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lttstore.com if you want to be the first to get our new screwdriver and backpack

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for those who prefer their games running locally well there are surprisingly good

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options there too starting with parallels which is the only way to run

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Windows on these m1 chips at least until microsoft loosens the reins on Windows

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on ARM the good news is that i was floored by the sheer number of games

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that are working not just working but working well

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even if you do end up leaving some performance on the table due to

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virtualization limitations another option is crossover by codeweavers you

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could think of it kind of like the Linux Windows compatibility intermediary

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proton except for mac in fact codeweaver

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has collaborated with valve to develop proton and are big sponsors of wine so

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we really like what this company is doing the issue with both of these solutions

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though is a that they're paid and b that

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compatibility is spotty at best codeweavers at least will make special

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game specific tweaks to help improve the situation but there are only so many

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programs one company can support thankfully there are many incredible

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games and experiences that do not require translation layers

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let's go to adam's game corner and talk about native mac gaming

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first up is apple arcade the program is more focused on touch screen based

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experiences something that apple could better accommodate if they would just put a touch screen in their laptops but

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there's still a ton of great games that you can get for the price like fantasian

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a classic jrpg from hironobu sakaguchi the creator of final fantasy that takes

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place on these handmade dioramas and it looks so beautiful or lego builders

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journey a gorgeous puzzle platformer about creativity and parenthood how

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about the addictive cartoon king of eliminate things on a grid style games

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grindstone and honestly there's a lot more or you could

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spend your time playing numerous incredible indie hits that have been ported to the platform like chicory a

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colorful tale an adventure puzzler that explores the insecurities and self-doubt

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that comes with being an artist oh discolysium man there's not a week that

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goes by where i don't think about that philosophical alcoholic cop simulator or

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how about tunic the one part zelda one part dark souls isometric adventure game

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or wilder myth the procedurally generated tactical rpg wait

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where where are you going um or timber born at six sim city but with beavers

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and and oh and don't forget you can emulate on dolphin

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obviously with the ability to play so many indies on mac the gaming situation

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isn't as dire as apple's reputation would lead you to believe but it could

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be much better could if it wasn't for one big obstacle apple themselves whose

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apathy towards gaming on mac couldn't be more clear

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it kind of makes sense though if you think about it what's in it for apple as

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massive as the gaming industry has become 52 of the revenue comes from

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mobile where the boys from cupertino already score 30 of all revenue on their

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platform earning them more gaming profit than the biggest actual

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gaming companies combined the truth is

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this model is so profitable that if apple had their way you wouldn't be able

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to get macOS apps and games outside of the app store either steam gone browser

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apps nope and as far as i can tell apple

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only allows this kind of freedom on the mac because it's an already existing

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precedent for their computers but while it's partly about the money it's also

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about control and when apple can't have

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control well they can get pretty petty

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you cannot use an NVIDIA GPU on your 50

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000 mac pro just because of a long

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lasting spat between the two companies apple actually went out of their way to

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block NVIDIA's drivers now in fairness

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NVIDIA is also notoriously difficult to work with and as far as i can tell

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released those drivers just to spite apple but apple also stifles development

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in other ways by continuously refusing to support

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cross-platform apis all in the name of that precious precious control they

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won't support vulcan and they deprecated opengl and opencl with macos mojave

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leaving support for those standards standing as they were over a decade ago

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so now your only option for games on m1 are games that can support or at least

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be translated to apple's own proprietary metal API and that's done using a tool

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like molten vk a compatibility layer between vulcan and metal a development

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effort that we wouldn't need at all if apple would just support vulcan you

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could argue that game studios should pick up the slack but frankly why should

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a game developer spend the money to go through the expensive process of

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converting their game to metal when the only people affected are 15 of the

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market at best but in reality only a subset of those

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users would have devices with the GPU horsepower to run a triple a game a

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subset of those users are interested in gaming on their laptops and a subset of

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those users wouldn't be happy with cloud gaming services or some of the other

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things we've already talked about so really it's a story that's getting a bit

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tired these days apple engineers incredible hardware sells at high prices

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and finds new and inventive ways to make the experience worse for their customer

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like non-user removable monitor power cables and SSD compatibility hijinks and

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until apple decides that they want to make a real investment in opening their

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platform i mean seriously rosetta 2 alongside vulcan would make developing

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games for mac very approachable or a serious investment in devouring game

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studios a la microsoft and sony kind of like what they've done with apple tv

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plus then max will remain great gaming

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devices whose potential will never be fully realized

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there's potential to segue to our sponsor who is of course war thunder for

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this video one of the few excellent competitive games that you can actually

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play natively on the mac not to mention with great performance even all the way

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down to the m1 based macbook air you guys can learn more about war thunder at

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the link in the video description as much as this video might have been a

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bit of a downer thanks for watching if you're interested in learning more about the performance of these laptops check

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out our reviews of the m1 16-inch devices