Ask HN: State of gaming and it's developement on Apple Silicon
11 comments
Perhaps we'll hear some progress on the Mac gaming front, but I think Apple's bread and butter continues to be iOS gaming.
They don't even seem to know what to do with AppleTV, which (like the Mac) is a pretty functional Apple Arcade system once you add a couple of game controllers (such as the PS5's DualSense.)
They don't even seem to know what to do with AppleTV, which (like the Mac) is a pretty functional Apple Arcade system once you add a couple of game controllers (such as the PS5's DualSense.)
Don't buy a Mac with the intent of gaming on it. It's just not there. Apple is not really effective as improving gaming, despite what their marketing department wants you to believe.
I bought an M3 Max with the intent of blowing cash, having good LLM performance, and maybe gaming.
I certainly blew cash and it has good LLM performance, but the gaming is very meh. I even tried the Steam Link thing from my gaming PC and that was of dubious quality (graphics artifacting and latency). IIRC, Steam Link was running over Rosetta, because an Apple Silicon build wasn't available.
There's a couple games, like Baldur's Gate 3 or whatever, but the Mac support forums for those games are full of bug complaints.
I ended up building a ~$672 gaming PC (i3-13100 + RX 6600 on sales) last month and it's been great and I don't think about gaming on my Mac anymore. I supposed I should try Steam Link play as the i3 is surprisingly performant -- hopefully it's not the Mac's fault entirely.
I bought an M3 Max with the intent of blowing cash, having good LLM performance, and maybe gaming.
I certainly blew cash and it has good LLM performance, but the gaming is very meh. I even tried the Steam Link thing from my gaming PC and that was of dubious quality (graphics artifacting and latency). IIRC, Steam Link was running over Rosetta, because an Apple Silicon build wasn't available.
There's a couple games, like Baldur's Gate 3 or whatever, but the Mac support forums for those games are full of bug complaints.
I ended up building a ~$672 gaming PC (i3-13100 + RX 6600 on sales) last month and it's been great and I don't think about gaming on my Mac anymore. I supposed I should try Steam Link play as the i3 is surprisingly performant -- hopefully it's not the Mac's fault entirely.
If you don't mind streaming games, Geforce Now works WAY better than SteamLink in my experience, even when the two computers are in the same apartment. (Also, with either, using a landline ethernet cable works much much better than WiFi, FWIW).
Thanks, I do plan on trying Geforce Now at some point. Although with rural (albeit cable not DSL) Internet, I'm not holding my breath. But I still want to see it for myself, as well as XBox Cloud or whatever it's called.
I live in a semi-rural area too. All you need is 25 Mbps for 4k streaming, less for 1080p. (What would probably matter more is how far you are from a GFN data center: https://status.geforcenow.com/
Microsoft's XBox cloud is terrible because they stream from actual Xbox consoles (which are much weaker than a 4080). BUT you can also play a subset of PC Game Pass games on GFN with your Microsoft subscription, which will then stream from Nvidia's much better GPUs instead.
Microsoft's XBox cloud is terrible because they stream from actual Xbox consoles (which are much weaker than a 4080). BUT you can also play a subset of PC Game Pass games on GFN with your Microsoft subscription, which will then stream from Nvidia's much better GPUs instead.
Moonlight + sunshine also works great! Give it a shot. I believe sunshine has a Apple silicon build.
I don't think Apple really does much, at least nothing they've announced publicly.
However, Codeweavers (the company) makes Crossover, which can utilize GPT in its recent versions: https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover/ They have a compatibility DB which isn't very well maintained, because for some reason they closed down submissions (don't understand this, but isn't my service): https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility
There is also Whisky, a FOSS app that uses Wine and GPT: https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky/ (unlike Crossover, it doesn't have per-game profiles, so you just have to look at its wiki and issues and try to get games to run on your own).
In my experience, neither is very good, and both are way more difficult to use than a real PC. I was playing Diablo 4 on both for a while, but it keeps breaking on updates (and is still broken for several weeks now, I think). Eventually I just gave up; wasn't worth all the tinkering just to play a game.
For non-GPU games (like indie 2D games), you can also try it in Parallels running Windows for ARM, which has its own built-in x86 emulation layer (that Microsoft provides, not Apple or Parallels).
And old x86 Mac games can still be emulated by Rosetta, but my experience with that has been even worse than GPT.
In my experience, native Apple Silicon games run acceptably on medium graphics -- for games like Stray that optimize for it. It's still not the same as a proper PC gaming experience. My experience playing virtualized Diablo 4 on Whisky and Crossover was that it was lagging all the time, failed to register clicks a lot, and was only really playable on lowest settings with AMD FSD turned on (so it was faking frames).
Even for native games, there are sometimes issues with gamma curves and HDR if you use a regular PC monitor (like when Baldur's Gate 3 first came out on Mac, everything was super washed out on my external monitor).
Mods sometimes won't work. The Steam Workshop ones tend to work the best; third-party file-based mods and mod managers are unlikely to work.
The mouse acceleration curves are different for Windows and Mac, especially if you use a Windows mouse on Mac. This can matter a lot for shooters, less so for other games. I suppose you can get used to it, or use something like https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels to help get around it.
In general it's just a crappy experience, and I'd say Macs are nowhere near ready for primetime gaming. The iPad provides a much better experience.
Maybe things will get better if the Apple VR headset spurs a game rush, but I doubt it will. Apple just doesn't care about the desktop gaming segment. They have a bunch of iOS games and a few Apple Arcade games, but as far as I can see it's not something they show any real interest in improving.
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In the meantime, I do all my Mac gaming on Geforce Now and it's been truly wonderful: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/ You get a 4080 in the cloud for $20/mo, and no local heat or noise since the rendering happens remotely. It is a DRAMATICALLY better experience than gaming directly on my hardware, whether native or virtualized. Even for games that have an Apple Silicon native build, GFN provides a vastly superior experience (because the 4080 is incomparably more powerful, and isn't taxing your local hardware).
I love my M2 Max for work, but IMO it's not really any better for gaming than a Windows laptop with integrated graphics would be (i.e., not good enough at all).
However, Codeweavers (the company) makes Crossover, which can utilize GPT in its recent versions: https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover/ They have a compatibility DB which isn't very well maintained, because for some reason they closed down submissions (don't understand this, but isn't my service): https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility
There is also Whisky, a FOSS app that uses Wine and GPT: https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky/ (unlike Crossover, it doesn't have per-game profiles, so you just have to look at its wiki and issues and try to get games to run on your own).
In my experience, neither is very good, and both are way more difficult to use than a real PC. I was playing Diablo 4 on both for a while, but it keeps breaking on updates (and is still broken for several weeks now, I think). Eventually I just gave up; wasn't worth all the tinkering just to play a game.
For non-GPU games (like indie 2D games), you can also try it in Parallels running Windows for ARM, which has its own built-in x86 emulation layer (that Microsoft provides, not Apple or Parallels).
And old x86 Mac games can still be emulated by Rosetta, but my experience with that has been even worse than GPT.
In my experience, native Apple Silicon games run acceptably on medium graphics -- for games like Stray that optimize for it. It's still not the same as a proper PC gaming experience. My experience playing virtualized Diablo 4 on Whisky and Crossover was that it was lagging all the time, failed to register clicks a lot, and was only really playable on lowest settings with AMD FSD turned on (so it was faking frames).
Even for native games, there are sometimes issues with gamma curves and HDR if you use a regular PC monitor (like when Baldur's Gate 3 first came out on Mac, everything was super washed out on my external monitor).
Mods sometimes won't work. The Steam Workshop ones tend to work the best; third-party file-based mods and mod managers are unlikely to work.
The mouse acceleration curves are different for Windows and Mac, especially if you use a Windows mouse on Mac. This can matter a lot for shooters, less so for other games. I suppose you can get used to it, or use something like https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels to help get around it.
In general it's just a crappy experience, and I'd say Macs are nowhere near ready for primetime gaming. The iPad provides a much better experience.
Maybe things will get better if the Apple VR headset spurs a game rush, but I doubt it will. Apple just doesn't care about the desktop gaming segment. They have a bunch of iOS games and a few Apple Arcade games, but as far as I can see it's not something they show any real interest in improving.
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In the meantime, I do all my Mac gaming on Geforce Now and it's been truly wonderful: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/ You get a 4080 in the cloud for $20/mo, and no local heat or noise since the rendering happens remotely. It is a DRAMATICALLY better experience than gaming directly on my hardware, whether native or virtualized. Even for games that have an Apple Silicon native build, GFN provides a vastly superior experience (because the 4080 is incomparably more powerful, and isn't taxing your local hardware).
I love my M2 Max for work, but IMO it's not really any better for gaming than a Windows laptop with integrated graphics would be (i.e., not good enough at all).
You can turn off mouse acceleration in macOS Ventura
https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-disable-mouse-accele...
https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-disable-mouse-accele...
Yeah, but it's not necessarily just an on/off thing, but that Windows and Mac have different curves, so if you're transitioning, it can be a very jarring experience.
Depending on the game, too, some will use your OS inputs (with your acceleration settings) while others will try to read the raw mouse input and try to impose their own acceleration curves.
Anyway, it's not the end of the world, just one more thing to deal with when trying to play PC games on a Mac.
Depending on the game, too, some will use your OS inputs (with your acceleration settings) while others will try to read the raw mouse input and try to impose their own acceleration curves.
Anyway, it's not the end of the world, just one more thing to deal with when trying to play PC games on a Mac.
So I'm curious what are the next steps. Is apple working on improving it further or is it done with gaming on Mac?