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Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

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Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#151
post #34

As John Siracusa discussed on this week's ATP[0], it's incredible how much effort Apple puts into this considering the result. Apple built it's own little parallel gaming stack world that works really well on their hardware and the hardware is also amazing for the power envelopes it is wrapped in. But then Apple doesn't ship devices with actually powerful GPUs, so it can never compete with the gaming PCs which are fa…

> Like how does all this Metal, compile-your-shaders, port-your-games stuff even get budgeted, when it's eventually dead on arrival? iOS gaming is the biggest and most profitable in the world. In fact, iOS is bigger than PS5, Xbox, and PC gaming. iOS uses Metal. Apple Silicon is mostly just a scaled up iPhone SoC. Macs basically get most things funded by iOS. The Game Porting Toolkit is the first Mac-only gaming tool…

> iOS gaming is the biggest and most profitable in the world. In fact, iOS is bigger than PS5, Xbox, and PC gaming.

Cos of micro transactions. Apple doesn’t stand to profit from other peoples games like Diablo 4 as it’s not the gate keeper for transactions.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#152
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These GPUs aren’t too bad. Theoretically, M2 Max peaks at 14.4 teraflops, and 400 GB/s memory bandwidth. M2 Ultra is too new, but Apple says it’s GPU is 30% faster (probably 18.7 teraflops then?), and that it has 800 GB/s memory bandwidth. The numbers for M2 Ultra are comparable to some powerful GPUs. The theoretical TFlops number is close to Radeon 6900 XT and GeForce 3070, theoretical memory bandwidth is close to R…

Practically speaking a $300 (often sold at $250) Xbox Series S would provide a much better gaming experience than this.

Sure? It's definitely never going to deliver you anything other than a gaming/video experience though. It also doesn't come with a battery or a display in case we're doing an apples to apples comparison of the Xbox Series S with an M1 MacBook Pro.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#153

Keep in mind, it's getting 15fps at 1440x900. It's not saying that Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 is a great experience. It's merely pointing out that it's technically possible (which is a massive achievement).

Ultra with 16gb of memory shared between cpu and gpu. Unlike a a traditional laptop or desktop with separate memory for both.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it when anchored to energy consumption? Sure you can put a powerful GPU in a laptop and make it effectively anchored to wall plug...

That's already true of the M1 Max. At maximum power from CPU+GPU it will barely last an hour. Edit: I wrote Ultra, but I meant Max.

> M1 Ultra

Do they put M1 Ultra in laptops tho?

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#155
post #120
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you need to spend $3k to get playable framerates, which are possible with a 3060 laptop, maybe even a 3050ti, as they can do 1080p, this just seems to be 900p.

Actually you can play these games with Xbox Series S at 1440p easily. I wonder if people would just simply buy a game console (if they don't already have one) for the more demanding titles. Most people don't need a processor that is nearly as powerful as M1 Max, and I doubt anyone is going to spend extra money on a computer just for its GPU that doesn't even play games as well as a $300 console.

>Actually you can play these games with Xbox Series S at 1440p easily.

The Xbox Series S version of Cyberpunk runs at 30 FPS with a dynamic resolution between 2304x1296 and 2560x1440 on quality mode and at 60 FPS with a dynamic resolution between 1410x800 and 1920x1080 on performance mode. If you were to run it with a fixed resolution of 1440p, then you'd definitely not be averaging 30 FPS.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's already true of the M1 Max. At maximum power from CPU+GPU it will barely last an hour. Edit: I wrote Ultra, but I meant Max.

> M1 Ultra Do they put M1 Ultra in laptops tho?

Yes. The MBP with an M1 Max will, at max performance, use enough power that it would discharge it's battery in less than an hour. I think Apple throttles it on battery, though.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's already true of the M1 Max. At maximum power from CPU+GPU it will barely last an hour. Edit: I wrote Ultra, but I meant Max.

> M1 Ultra Do they put M1 Ultra in laptops tho?

No. There does not exist an M1 Ultra laptop of any kind. Nor an M2 Ultra laptop for that matter. The only machines with Mn Ultra are the Mac Studio and Mac Pro.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1#Products_that_use_the...

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#158
post #120
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you need to spend $3k to get playable framerates, which are possible with a 3060 laptop, maybe even a 3050ti, as they can do 1080p, this just seems to be 900p.

Actually you can play these games with Xbox Series S at 1440p easily. I wonder if people would just simply buy a game console (if they don't already have one) for the more demanding titles. Most people don't need a processor that is nearly as powerful as M1 Max, and I doubt anyone is going to spend extra money on a computer just for its GPU that doesn't even play games as well as a $300 console.

There are options if you just want to play the game, yes, but Apple did the work here, and met developers the wrong half way IMO. If you just want to play with higher settings and fps on the computer you have, less emulation is better, as impressive as it might be. A Vulkan driver would be less emulation and more performance all around I think. Also, $300 can buy a lot of games if games can be made to run well with minimal work.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#160
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Metal itself is the parallel stack, no? Ah perhaps I interpreted the quote in the wrong way then. At first it read to me as if Apple did their own bespoke compatibility work, but it's a comment about the mostly artificial Apple Silicon GPU / Metal stack that is only available on Apple devices.

Worth noting that Apple poured a lot of resources into making WebGPU happen. WebGPU is, in a great many ways, Metal but cross-platform. The way this pays off is if game developers start targeting WebGPU instead of Vulkan or DX12. That could happen since WebGPU is a meant to be a lot easier to code against than Vulkan. This effort to port DX12 can probably be seen as more of a hedge than anything else. They know that…

Game developers are not going to start mass adopting a JavaScript API.
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