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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

#181

Fantastic would be 25fps, this isn't there yet.

That is on an M1 laptop. No dedicated GPU, not even an M1 Max. Just plain M1. Of course, it's not running super fast on Ultra settings, but imagine how slow it would be on a comparable Intel laptop with onboard graphics eating through your battery. Especially considering it only costs $1,299, which is not a lot for this kind of performance. And then it's not even an x86 CPU, for which Cyberpunk was developed. So yes,…

No Apple hardware has a "dedicated GPU".

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

#182
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking only for myself, I use Macs to get work done. The lack of games is actually a plus, as I can get compulsive with games. It's funny, when people denigrate the worst gaming platform in the world as a "toy computer." People get Macs, that want to get work done. As noted previously, there's really nothing that can beat a well-built PC gaming rig. I don't really think Apple has ever cared about the Mac as a gamin…

I don’t know, you say that but there are plenty of triple A games in the App Store and Apple did put in the effort into getting their game subscription to work on their desktops. Let’s be real, we might all be getting more work done as a result but that’s because Apple dropped the ball, hard. They came out with the metal api but refused to support any others, even letting open GL fester. The fact that they couldn’t k…

I'm curious if Apple dropped the ball or if there is still something of an anti-gaming culture inside Apple since I know that the company was de facto anti-gaming in the late 90s going forward. In that era they actively killed off relationships with gaming companies, e.g. the game that eventually became Halo was originally a Macintosh exclusive. More recent things like the legal theatrics with Epic Games gives one a picture of a company that is still not necessarily super keen on fully embracing the gaming scene.

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

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is on an M1 laptop. No dedicated GPU, not even an M1 Max. Just plain M1. Of course, it's not running super fast on Ultra settings, but imagine how slow it would be on a comparable Intel laptop with onboard graphics eating through your battery. Especially considering it only costs $1,299, which is not a lot for this kind of performance. And then it's not even an x86 CPU, for which Cyberpunk was developed. So yes,…

If you want to set the bar that low for fantastic, be my guest. Fps per dollar, any metric I can think of is lousy. You've not convinced me. Was impressed by Rosetta, but not this game porting toolkit, for the record.

This not only does DX12 -> Metal, it also does X86 -> ARM, and still manages to give you decent performance if you lower the graphics settings, you can manage easily 30fps, wich is enough on a laptop, considering it runs with a battery

So for 2020 laptop chip, it's pretty great achievement I'd say!

I don't know of any project that does X86 -> ARM this well

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

#185
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most used GPU according to Steam survey is the 1650 -- a low-midrange card from 2019.

Yeah and those people aren't going to pay significantly more money for a Mac M2 Max.

I think you'd be surprised. I just checked, and my desktop gaming GPU is only 31% faster than that nvidia, and I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro M2 Max.

I bought the laptop and the video card because they are quiet and their price/performance is better than the high end stuff anyway.

I just tried running steam on the macbook, and was very disappointed. My Linux gaming desktop will live on for another few years, I guess.

edit: I think I got the GPU in ~ 2019, though it was released in 2015.

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

#186

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).

I'm not sure - Apple's marketing claimed that the M1 was beating top end PC parts. This isn't even close.

Do keep in mind this script was marketed as a way for game developers to judge the viability to port to using native apis and native isa.

I would imagine that not running through this codeweavers patch and through rosetta would have better performance.

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

#187
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who's supposed to be impressed by getting middling performance on Death Stranding 4 years after it came out? Literal definition of "also ran". Plenty of people are impressed at 3060/3070 performance in a 25W system-power envelope . You literally can't even run the memory chips for a 3070 in that power budget let alone the whole APU. Like I'd love to see the AMD equivalent APU to that "also-ran 3070 performance" mac…

That's neat and impressive, but that's all they have. They don't have a high end. For $3000 you can get a top end gaming PC. There's no amount of money you can spend on a Mac to equal that. I think you're missing the point that parent (and Siracusa) made - Apple invests a signficant into the software and graphics stack, only to fumble it at the last minute by not having high-end graphics hardware, and caring enough t…

Apple silicon wins on performance per watt but not in performance outright and suddenly everyone cares about power consumption. Whichever spec everyone's favorite fruit company excels at gets put on a pedestal.

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

#188
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…

> it can never compete with the gaming PCs which are far less expensive and far more powerfull graphics-wise I don't think Apple is chasing the "dedicated gaming machine" crowd here. They want casual gamers to be able to load up a couple of games on the machine they're buying for non-gaming reasons. I'm exactly one of those people: I rarely play video games these days but when the pandemic hit I ended up installing B…

Mobile gaming and PC gaming are somewhat different markets. In particular, mobile game development companies don't have any choice but to work with Apple and Google, whereas AAA PC gaming companies have another outlet already.

I like Apple and I like their products but I think if you talk to any sizable mobile developer they'd be able to tell you stories about the difficulties of working with Apple.

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

#189

This is the entry level M1. 15fps at 1400x900 isn't great (or even playable), but it's very impressive that it runs at all without any changes, let alone on ultra settings.

Yes, thank you. I mean, let's have a bit of context. I'm Mac based (well, my computing is, I'm still biological ;) ) and I took an interest in what's happening in the AI space. Knowing that RAM and CPU would be bottlenecks but that there would be open source ways to run stuff, I got a Mac Studio, which is M1 Ultra and 128G of RAM, which then becomes also GPU RAM because on M1 the architecture is like that. So I'm abl…

A lot of us with the financial means to buy a Mac Studio are also old and are "PatientGamers" and fire up games like Skyrim from time-to-time and don't chase after the latest AAA titles. Even 10-15 years ago I used to a have a $200 limit on graphics cards and roughly $100 limit on CPUs and would wait to play games on highest resolution until it was a few years later and I went through a hardware refresh cycle, always staying about 2 years behind. I've never bought a $1000 GPU for a gaming rig.

At the same time I find this interesting that Apple is clearly starting to notice the PC gaming market. Makes me wonder if they're going to start a more serious push soon, and if we might see some changes and repair the relationship that Apple has with AAA studios.

[Edit: And another thought is that with virtual iPhone saturation in the US market, Apple may be facing the economic reality that in order to grow they need to enter into other markets like gaming, and this may as well be a necessary part of the long-term Vision Pro strategy]

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

#190
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking only for myself, I use Macs to get work done. The lack of games is actually a plus, as I can get compulsive with games. It's funny, when people denigrate the worst gaming platform in the world as a "toy computer." People get Macs, that want to get work done. As noted previously, there's really nothing that can beat a well-built PC gaming rig. I don't really think Apple has ever cared about the Mac as a gamin…

> It's funny, when people denigrate the worst gaming platform in the world as a "toy computer." Unless you're developing iOS apps or MacOS apps, it's pretty terrible as a work platform too. I guess iWork is OK, but no one uses it, so it's not helpful for collaboration. Maybe people use it for media production? Doesn't the big rendering still happen on Linux though, and hasn't windows caught up? Having said that, Mac…

Well, I write MacOS/iOS/WatchOS/iPadOS/visionOS stuff, so I'm dependent on it.

Like most tools, we get used to our main one, and can sometimes get a bit "sneery" about alternate ones.

The Mac is a particularly rich target, because the "snootiness" is actually a deliberate brand ploy by Apple, and pretty much "leads with the chin," so we have that.

I've never been "snooty" about Apple, but it's been my platform for over 30 years, so I'm used to it, and I get a lot done with my Mac.

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