Macs, PCs, or Consoles For Gaming?

[Renzatic]

I have given up on consoles. I don't get to play much, but if I have 15 minutes before the wife is ready to watch something, I would fire up the XBox and play something. Usually some driving game.

GET A STEAM DECK!

 

[gollum]

GET A STEAM DECK!

I don't think that's something you can get any time soon. The current estimates state "After Q3 2022" I'd guess 2023 is more reasonable.

I wouldn't mind the steam deck myself but not enough to overpay on eBay or wait until 2023.

 

[Colstan]

I realize that the Mac isn't an ideal platform for gaming, but all Apple Silicon Macs now ship with GPUs that are powerful enough to handle modern games, assuming devs put the effort into making a Mac version. I am fortunate in that 90% of the computer games that I play are isometric turn-based RPGs, and almost 100% of those have a Mac version. When I want to play a different genre, I haven't had too much difficulty finding something worth playing. I realize that I play a specific niche, but that allows me to have a Mac as my only gaming device. I've considered building a gaming PC on the side, but I am not sure I can justify it. Besides cost, there are factors like noise, heat and having to deal with Windows. I currently use an Intel Mac mini with an eGPU, so I still get by with what I have, and can boot Windows if I need to. That will soon come to an end as Intel Macs age out.

Regardless, Mac gaming is now fully transitioning over to Apple Silicon. Feral just announced Total War: Warhammer III and it's Apple Silicon only. That's not the only game that is exclusive to the M-series. We can expect this to become more common, according to the Steam survey from April, 39% of Mac gamers are now using Apple Silicon Macs. This transition is happening faster than I had expected, the clock is clearly ticking on x86 Macs, but it's good to see game developers starting to optimize for the Mac's future.

 

[Cmaier]

I realize that the Mac isn't an ideal platform for gaming, but all Apple Silicon Macs now ship with GPUs that are powerful enough to handle modern games, assuming devs put the effort into making a Mac version. I am fortunate in that 90% of the computer games that I play are isometric turn-based RPGs, and almost 100% of those have a Mac version. When I want to play a different genre, I haven't had too much difficulty finding something worth playing. I realize that I play a specific niche, but that allows me to have a Mac as my only gaming device. I've considered building a gaming PC on the side, but I am not sure I can justify it. Besides cost, there are factors like noise, heat and having to deal with Windows. I currently use an Intel Mac mini with an eGPU, so I still get by with what I have, and can boot Windows if I need to. That will soon come to an end as Intel Macs age out.

Regardless, Mac gaming is now fully transitioning over to Apple Silicon. Feral just announced Total War: Warhammer III and it's Apple Silicon only. That's not the only game that is exclusive to the M-series. We can expect this to become more common, according to the Steam survey from April, 39% of Mac gamers are now using Apple Silicon Macs. This transition is happening faster than I had expected, the clock is clearly ticking on x86 Macs, but it's good to see game developers starting to optimize for the Mac's future.

I pretty much only play civilization, so mac is good enough for me. Heck, iPad works great.

 

[Colstan]

I pretty much only play civilization, so mac is good enough for me. Heck, iPad works great.

You've probably mentioned this before @Cmaier, and I just don't recall, but what Mac do you use? I know we're both envious of the Mac Studio, and I've bloviated about my history with various Mac minis, but I'm not familiar with what computer(s) you use, if you don't mind me asking.

 

[Cmaier]

You've probably mentioned this before @Cmaier, and I just don't recall, but what Mac do you use? I know we're both envious of the Mac Studio, and I've bloviated about my history with various Mac minis, but I'm not familiar with what computer(s) you use, if you don't mind me asking.

Primarily a MacBook Pro (M1 16”, with M1 Max). I still have “in service” a very old 11” macbook air, a 2016 15” MBP, and a pretty old imac I inherited. My wife and daughter each use M1 MacBook airs. So there are a lot of macs floating around the house

I also have a collection of out-of-service macbook pros, MacBooks, and MacBook airs dating back to the Leopard days. And a franken-box in the garage which was from my days at Exponential Technology and which I never used.

 

[Colstan]

Primarily a MacBook Pro (M1 16”, with M1 Max). I still have “in service” a very old 11” macbook air, a 2016 15” MBP, and a pretty old imac I inherited. My wife and daughter each use M1 MacBook airs. So there are a lot of macs floating around the house

I admit I find it amusing that an Opteron architect who worked on the draft for x86-64, who clearly had a major impact on x86 and AMD as a company, is a Mac guy, and now an ARM guy, too. (Yes, I know you chose to work on RISC designs, it's just AMD where you apparently had the most impact on the entire PC market.) Before I got my first Mac mini, I was all-in on PCs. On a whim I installed the Intel beta of Tiger on my PC, got my first Mac in 2005, and left PCs behind. Back when I was young and stupid, I hated Apple and the Mac, and even owned stock in Intel and Microsoft. Now that I've grown to be old and stupid, I have a hard time swallowing the concept of building a PC, even if just for gaming.

I know you like to tell your "vim story", as I call it, from back in the day. Didn't you also work on SPARC, @Cmaier, or at least interview with them? I could never get a handle on Sun. I had a meeting with a Sun Microsystems representative, at the FOSE trade show, where they were showing off the latest and greatest from their labs. Instead of concentrating on the company's latest workstations, the rep kept trying to sell me on classic Mac OS emulation on Solaris. The only reason I remember this, or indeed that they built a Mac OS emulator, was because the lady who was peddling Sun's wares kept insisting that it's "emulation, but it's fast!". Somehow, she took it as a personal affront that I was skeptical that emulating Mac OS on Solaris wasn't performant enough, and she felt it necessary to convince me otherwise. I had no need for the emulator, the meeting was a waste, but it made an impact, because I still remember it to this day.

 

[Cmaier]

I admit I find it amusing that an Opteron architect who worked on the draft for x86-64, who clearly had a major impact on x86 and AMD as a company, is a Mac guy, and now an ARM guy, too. (Yes, I know you chose to work on RISC designs, it's just AMD where you apparently had the most impact on the entire PC market.) Before I got my first Mac mini, I was all-in on PCs. On a whim I installed the Intel beta of Tiger on my PC, got my first Mac in 2005, and left PCs behind. Back when I was young and stupid, I hated Apple and the Mac, and even owned stock in Intel and Microsoft. Now that I've grown to be old and stupid, I have a hard time swallowing the concept of building a PC, even if just for gaming.

I know you like to tell your "vim story", as I call it, from back in the day. Didn't you also work on SPARC, @Cmaier, or at least interview with them? I could never get a handle on Sun. I had a meeting with a Sun Microsystems representative, at the FOSE trade show, where they were showing off the latest and greatest from their labs. Instead of concentrating on the company's latest workstations, the rep kept trying to sell me on classic Mac OS emulation on Solaris. The only reason I remember this, or indeed that they built a Mac OS emulator, was because the lady who was peddling Sun's wares kept insisting that it's "emulation, but it's fast!". Somehow, she took it as a personal affront that I was skeptical that emulating Mac OS on Solaris wasn't performant enough, and she felt it necessary to convince me otherwise. I had no need for the emulator, the meeting was a waste, but it made an impact, because I still remember it to this day.

Yes, I worked at Sun Microelectronics (the CPU subsidiary) for 3 months - I gave notice after 2, on the same day I won the “Millenium Falcon” award for my contributions to Millenium (UltraSparc V), which mostly had to do with me getting tired of nobody being able to design how we were supposed to design the chip so I just wrote my own program to start doing part of it. Prior to that I worked on PowerPC’s at Exponential.

I fondly remember those SPARC pizza-box machines. I used them in my PhD program (and, of course, at Sun, where we were also all given “java stations” which were piles of garbage). We even used them for about half the time I was at AMD, though eventually we ended up with linux boxes on our own chips (which were much faster than SPARC). We also had a lot of SPARCs in the compute farm, and we could use lof to launch tools to whatever machine we wanted - sometimes SPARC was necessary for compatibility.

 

[Citysnaps]

Though it's not a game, rather a real and extremely accurate flight simulator, I'm looking forward to the release of X-Plane 12 and then purchasing either a Mini or Studio to run it. I suspect it will be a Studio because I need the ports ( a couple displays, yoke, rudder pedals, switches, Stream (not Steam) Deck, etc).

Last year I was very impressed being able to run X-Plane 11 (non M1 native) with a decent amount on scenery/objects/texture/antialiasing/FPS on my M1 MBA which was also driving an iPad (navigation and mapping via WiFi), and 4K 75" TV via an HDMI adapter.

 

[Colstan]

Over at "the other place", they did a short interview with Feral Interactive about the future of Mac gaming and the capabilities that the switch to Apple Silicon offers developers. Feral is quite bullish about games for the Mac, now that they don't have to work around Intel's integrated graphics. Also, it's notable that Apple made changes to Metal specifically at the request of Feral's developers. We often hear the complaint that Apple doesn't care about computer games, but that's simply not true. It isn't a focus for the company, but they will work with friendly companies that want to work with them. Apple hasn't just modified Metal based upon feedback from Feral, but helped 4A optimize Metro Exodus for Rosetta 2, and worked with Larian to optimize their games. Larian even had Touch Bar support for DOS2 and have had assistance with Baldur's Gate 3, which is the first ARM native "AAA" title. Apple regularly demos the Unity Engine, and has showcased BG3 in their presentations.

Of course, the MR crowd has taken a decidedly negative view, as is tradition. However, I think these are positive signs, since all M-series Macs have powerful hardware, unlike the x86 era, where Intel integrated graphics were the norm.

 

[Andropov]

Over at "the other place", they did a short interview with Feral Interactive about the future of Mac gaming and the capabilities that the switch to Apple Silicon offers developers. Feral is quite bullish about games for the Mac, now that they don't have to work around Intel's integrated graphics. Also, it's notable that Apple made changes to Metal specifically at the request of Feral's developers. We often hear the complaint that Apple doesn't care about computer games, but that's simply not true. It isn't a focus for the company, but they will work with friendly companies that want to work with them. Apple hasn't just modified Metal based upon feedback from Feral, but helped 4A optimize Metro Exodus for Rosetta 2, and worked with Larian to optimize their games. Larian even had Touch Bar support for DOS2 and have had assistance with Baldur's Gate 3, which is the first ARM native "AAA" title. Apple regularly demos the Unity Engine, and has showcased BG3 in their presentations.

Of course, the MR crowd has taken a decidedly negative view, as is tradition. However, I think these are positive signs, since all M-series Macs have powerful hardware, unlike the x86 era, where Intel integrated graphics were the norm.

Given how Sony and Microsoft are buying every single third party studio out there, I'm afraid no matter how powerful Mac chips are, there's not going to be any studio left to develop games for them. Also, while the chips are more powerful, to fully utilise the hardware capabilities (TBDR, UMA...) extra development effort is going to be required compared to porting to Intel based Macs. We'll see if the (massive) upgrade in GPU performance to the popular Mac models is enough to drive game developers in.

In the meantime, I just bough a PS5

 

[Cmaier]

Given how Sony and Microsoft are buying every single third party studio out there, I'm afraid no matter how powerful Mac chips are, there's not going to be any studio left to develop games for them. Also, while the chips are more powerful, to fully utilise the hardware capabilities (TBDR, UMA...) extra development effort is going to be required compared to porting to Intel based Macs. We'll see if the (massive) upgrade in GPU performance to the popular Mac models is enough to drive game developers in.

In the meantime, I just bough a PS5

I have it on good authority that something is afoot re: AAA games and studios, but I know no more than that. Apple is trying.

 

[diamond.g]

I have it on good authority that something is afoot re: AAA games and studios, but I know no more than that. Apple is trying.

Lots of studios for sale these days…

 

[JayMysteri0]

GET A STEAM DECK!

The problem with the Steam Deck is if you are NOT an avid PC player, perhaps many of your select games aren't Steam verified. I currently only have 2 games on Deck that will work. I was interested in one Star Wars game that was on sale May 4th, only to discover I had no way of knowing if it would work on the Deck. So now I've been looking at emulation ( Dolphin ) to play some old games that are no longer available to be played.

I have it on good authority that something is afoot re: AAA games and studios, but I know no more than that. Apple is trying.

Please don't let this involve Squenix or the IPs they just shed.

 

[Renzatic]

The problem with the Steam Deck is if you are NOT an avid PC player, perhaps many of your select games aren't Steam verified. I currently only have 2 games on Deck that will work. I was interested in one Star Wars game that was on sale May 4th, only to discover I had no way of knowing if it would work on the Deck. So now I've been looking at emulation ( Dolphin ) to play some old games that are no longer available to be played.

Have you tried playing any to confirm they don't work, or are you simply going off their verified status?

If it's the latter, the best thing you can do is try it out. I'm on Linux these days, and I play the occasional game through WINE here and there, and there's only a small handful of games I either haven't been able to get to work, or have had performance issues. I'd say that, based off my street maff guesstimation, a good 85% of my Steam library works perfectly on Linux.

Go to places like r/SteamDeck, and you'll see that people run across games that run perfectly, but aren't verified all the time.

 

[JayMysteri0]

Have you tried playing any to confirm they don't work, or are you simply going off their verified status?

If it's the latter, the best thing you can do is try it out. I'm on Linux these days, and I play the occasional game through WINE here and there, and there's only a small handful of games I either haven't been able to get to work, or have had performance issues. I'd say that, based off my street maff guesstimation, a good 85% of my Steam library works perfectly on Linux.

Go to places like r/SteamDeck, and you'll see that people run across games that run perfectly, but aren't verified all the time.

Since I hadn't been a PC gamer for quite some time I only have a handful of games. Fortunately the games I do have our popular enough that there are Youtube vids showing their poor performance or lack thereof. On newer games like WWE 2k22, people have already reported they couldn't get it started. Other games seem to be a bit iffy if they recognize the Steam Deck have controller support. So I've tended to rely on whether a game is Steam verified, because I have so few games it makes it easier to go by their recommendations.

I am excited about the fan controls currently in the beta. Much needed.

 

[Renzatic]

Since I hadn't been a PC gamer for quite some time I only have a handful of games. Fortunately the games I do have our popular enough that there are Youtube vids showing their poor performance or lack thereof. On newer games like WWE 2k22, people have already reported they couldn't get it started. Other games seem to be a bit iffy if they recognize the Steam Deck have controller support. So I've tended to rely on whether a game is Steam verified, because I have so few games it makes it easier to go by their recommendations.

I am excited about the fan controls currently in the beta. Much needed.

If you want a good heads up on what works and what doesn't, and don't want to have to scour through Reddit posts looking for info, then check out...

...The Proton Database!

 

[JayMysteri0]

If you want a good heads up on what works and what doesn't, and don't want to have to scour through Reddit posts looking for info, then check out...

...The Proton Database!

Appreciate it.

As I said though, if get the time I think I would like to join the many who've made the Steam Deck the emulation machine of choice.

 

[throAU]

Without a doubt, PCs are better suited for gaming. Developers are actively developing for PC/Consoles. The Mac OS at best is an afterthought.

That said, Macs for all serious computing, generally speaking they are more trouble free, more user friendly, at least in my experience. My PC is a better gaming machine, but I find myself cursing it semi-regularly, so there is a price to be paid.

I game on all three.

• PC for simulations primarily
• PS5 for arcade type games
• Mac/iOS for casual stuff

All 3 platforms have a healthy game library; a lot of the PCMR types will say that Apple and gaming is not a thing, but it depends on what type of games you want.

I really think that apple will take off as a gaming platform when their VR headset arrives. I spend probably 30-40% of my gaming time now with the Quest 2, and the only reason for that is because its the only decent standalone device. As soon as there's a reasonable non-facebook alternative i'm on it...


All that said.

If you haven't tried gaming on an iPad with a controller - there's a decent amount of stuff that supports controllers now.

Its a reasonable gaming platform, and with the supply issues with the current consoles, etc. I'm surprised its not more popular.

 

[throAU]

Oh, also.

Apple Silicon is going to help gaming on mac massively.

You can actually run games on a Macbook now without going nuts with the fan noise.

Portables are the bulk of Apple's Mac sales - now they don't suck so bad for running 3d workloads in terms of noise, i think they'll be a lot more practical for gaming moving forward.