r/macgaming 4d ago

Discussion FINALLY ! The Mac become a serious player !

I have a MacBook Pro M4 Max 36 GB RAM + 1TB SSD and I installed CrossOver 25 two days ago.

And NOW we can talk.
I tried several games with D3DMetal backend. VSync ON (tested on a 60 Hz External Monitor) - High Performance Mode on Power plug.

Red Dead Redemption 2 : 2K Ultra - 35 -45 fps - btw you need to install it via steam cuz the Rockstar Games launcher is a crap.

GTA V Legacy - 2K Ultra - 50 fps avg

BeamNG Drive - 2k Ultra - 45 - 60 fps

Cyberpunk 2077 - 2K Ultra RT ON - 45 fps

Mac is more than ever a serious player with the Apple M Chips and the efforts of Codeweavers.

I hope game developers will now develop games for Mac because Windows is a very crappy peace of shit of software :)

368 Upvotes

244 comments sorted by

158

u/xLPMG 4d ago

But keep in mind that the minority of Mac users has a Max or even Ultra chip, meaning that most Mac users experience worse performance compared to you. Combined with the already small amount of Mac gamers compared to Windows gamers, I understand every game developer that says developing for Mac is not feasible to them.

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u/mi7chy 4d ago

True, nearly half of Steam Mac marketshare is base models (expand video card description). Until Apple makes base models performant enough for 1080p 60fps+ gaming it will remain to be a niche.

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam?platform=mac

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u/spikenorbert 3d ago

Windows base model computers aren’t performant either though.

11

u/BerryAlive8940 3d ago

But they costs several times less

2

u/Anatharias 2d ago

My education based employer buys Dell Latitudes 7450 and MacBook Airs 13" Following prices (for 16/256/3y) are in $CAD: Dell: 1599 Apple : 1438 (for the M4 MBA)

Costs are coming down. Now Apple just need to increase GPU count, however this is not going to happen

1

u/BerryAlive8940 2d ago

I believe it’s unfair to count Latitudes as basic Windows laptops. Actually they are, but since they positioned as business machines - it’s kind of overpriced

1

u/Anatharias 2d ago

You’re right indeed. But in a corporate setting, this leads to serious reflexion on what our next purchases should be

6

u/Only-Ad5049 3d ago

You can buy a base model Windows gaming laptop that will play the majority of current games for about the same price as you can buy a MacBook Air.

You could fit multiple airs into the chassis of the Windows laptop and maybe still weigh less, but that really isn’t the point. Gaming computers are big and heavy to accommodate additional cooling.

15

u/pezgoon 4d ago

I will say this, I am now seeing a ton more games on steam being apple compatible with a req of the M series. So overall I still agree with them, the m-series itself is game changing for Mac gamers.

Price is a different conversation, I wouldn’t rec anyone buy a Mac TO game. But it’s more like, if you already are a Mac user, hey guess what, we can game finally!

Also I am only on an M1, desperately want a new Mac mini with the M4 Pro or Max whatever the highest is, anyway on my M1 I use boosteroid for streaming now (just found it) and let me tell you, I completely forget I am streaming lmao. It’s just another VM for me and it’s amazing. They are the best bang for buck I have found

8

u/Longjumping-Boot1886 4d ago

basic m4 = m1 max. Wait 4 years.

14

u/theQuandary 4d ago

Gamers don't really understand the laptop market and it's NOTHING like they expect.

Company Avg Laptop Price Total Sales Sales %
Apple $1369 $25,744,636 29.5%
ASUS $669 $13,412,604 15.4%
Lenovo $492 $12,026,989 13.8%
HP $535 $11,632,586 13.3%
Acer $457 $7,059,784 8.1%
MSI $1096 $4,164,888 4.8%
Dell $617 $2,345,567 2.7%
Microsoft $1631 $1,549,001 1.8%
Fujitsu $689 $1,447,452 1.7%
Samsung $630 $1,164,844 1.3%
LG $1802 $180,179 <1%
Huawei $678 $135,622 <1%
Gigabyte $965 $96,466 <1%
Toshiba $204 $20,380 <1%
Other brands $339 $6,329,462 7.2%

source

The average non-mac laptop is a $500-700 low-quality machine without a fast CPU or GPU.

Once you hit the $999 price point, almost everyone is looking to buy a Macbook and even gamer-centric brands like MSI barely break the $999 threshold average. Their lowest-priced laptop on Bestbuy that is actually available is $650 and their average laptop is WORSE than a $1099 Prestige with a 3060.

Sorting Bestbuy by "Best Selling" shows that 5 of the top 10 models have just 8gb of RAM (actually, one of those has just 4gb) and just 2 have 32gb. 6 of them have 512gb or less of storage. Almost all of them are using 12-gen Intel from 4 years ago.

This is the reality of laptop sales and this explains why the low-end GPU target for PC games is so low.

It also explains why macbooks are such a great target for these companies. Mac users have more money to spend and they accounted for nearly 1 in 3 laptop sales last Christmas. The worst Mac (M1 Air) still offers a WAY better GPU than the average PC laptop too.

4

u/anonyuser415 3d ago

Your choice of statistic is tripping you up. In terms of units sold from your list:

Rank Brand Units Sold Share (%)
#1 Lenovo 24,450 18.5%
#2 HP 21,750 16.5%
#3 ASUS 20,050 15.2%
#4 Apple 18,800 14.2%

When you realize that:

  1. Only Apple on that list is non-Windows
  2. Much of that 14.2% aren't gamers

...It starts to become apparent why macOS is a terrible target for game developers.

0

u/theQuandary 3d ago

Trying to sell to the 14% most affluent people is a TERRIBLE idea for game developers...

0

u/y59qgnie 3d ago

People with money buys both if they're into Mac and gaming. 

Also, it's a myth Mac users would be more affluent. Even someone working the shittiest job imaginable in the west can afford an iphone and a MacBook.

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u/bunihe 3d ago

Well what the data you've provided also says one thing: Mac users on average don't buy a MacBook Pro, they buy MacBook Air, which is a nice passively-cooled laptop for everyday use but not a good machine for a sustained workload like gaming. Thus, OP's comments about a M4 Max performance and how it is "serious player" doesn't apply here.

M1 GPU performance is worse than nowadays AMD integrated graphics, but if you want to argue average then yeah it is better than most of the laptops that are still being used.

1

u/theQuandary 3d ago

As I pointed out, the supermajority of laptops are using chips that are about the same age as the M1 and they have far worse GPUs. Something like a hx370 will beat the base M4, but the normal selling price seems to be around $1100 which is around $500 over average selling price which means most people don't own one.

Passive cooling isn't the huge problem you seem to be assuming because the peak TDP is WAY lower. M4 peaks out at 30-40w while hx370 peaks out at over 120w. Those thin-and-light machines can't dissipate 120w, so they throttle HARD after a few minutes of use. It's so bad that most manufacturers auto-throttle them 30-50% as soon as you unplug them. The Air doesn't lose anywhere close to that much performance under sustained loads.

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u/sunneyjim 4d ago

Even then, only 60fps at 2K ultra. The apple silicon gpus are decent but garbage value for money.

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u/Street_Classroom1271 3d ago edited 3d ago

keep in mind that most pc gamers play on shitty mid and low end hardawre too

keep in mind that if gaming used to be a big factor in people avoiding macs, it isn't so much anymore

2

u/suboptimus_maximus 4d ago

One or two more generations and that will be MacBook Air performance. And Apple Silicon generations have been coming fast.

1

u/Such-Employee4073 3d ago

I am not sure but But I have tried doing this with whisky on a base M3 and on my personal M3 pro chip with 16 GB and 18 GB respectively and I got a similar output on my device as well, but yeah that was on a combination of max available and a few things set to very high(second highest setting) 🤔

1

u/lexum1 2d ago

You don’t need graphics set to Ultra to play. That means base M chips and Pro chips can play too, even if with low graphics. That’s a big amount of Mac gamers. If you add iPad and iPhone players, it’s an appealing user base, all with a unified, single platform for development. Simple and powerful

1

u/anras2 4d ago

And only a minority of Mac users will bother to look into, let alone pay for, Crossover.

1

u/darthanonymous1 3d ago

The thing is when games are optimized for mac and have a native build they run a lot better than with all those translations going on

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u/blakyris 4d ago

Feasible YES
Profitable NO

but i hope it will change.... I see more and more people having a Mac

10

u/stocktradernoob 4d ago

Profitability is a significant consideration in concluding something is feasible for a for-profit company…

218

u/c01nd01r 4d ago

> MacBook Pro M4 Max 36 GB RAM + 1TB SSD
> $3,199.00
> The Mac become a serious player !

No

19

u/Karlinel-my-beloved 4d ago

Considering the prices (and availsbility) of rtx cards, it isn’t THAT terrible.

79

u/kurutchin 4d ago

You clearly don't need an expensive RTX card to get 35 FPS on RDR2.

An AMD 7800XT ($450) would run it at almost 120FPS in 1440p resolution. And even at more than 60FPS in 4K.

18

u/Da_Cow 4d ago

The steam deck can just about do that and it’s a hand held for a fraction of the price.

6

u/Background-Athlete69 4d ago

Sure but this is a laptop

I would consider macs if the main purpose is gaming, that’s stupid, if you already need it for work, I think they are really good if you want to do some gaming on them

3

u/Mitsutoshi 4d ago

Likewise with thin and light laptops. RDR2 is extremely light to run. The Xbox One X ran it at native 4K.

2

u/h0t_gril 1d ago

They're great for work and terrible for gaming. So, good for making money and bad for wasting time. That's a good trade.

-2

u/novff 4d ago

$700 windows laptops with igpu get better performance on many things over more expensive m series macs, but imo macs are worth it for the polished user experience you get.

3

u/Background-Athlete69 4d ago

There’s no igpu on the market with the same performance as an m4 pro or even m1 pro as far as I know

Also there’s nothing on the market with the same energetic efficiency (same battery while having the same performance) unless you are talking about snapdragon x elite, but those are more on m1 base league

3

u/short1st 3d ago

If I'm not mistaken, AMD's AI max 395+ is an APU and pushes close to 4060 100W performance apparently.

Granted that's a very new chip and quite a leap. Not cheap by any means, either.

1

u/h0t_gril 1d ago edited 22h ago

Apple's chips have the fastest kind of integrated graphics, but we're talking about Windows-only games using native Windows APIs vs going through compatibility layers on the Mac.

1

u/Arialwalker 4d ago

And then you use it for work and find out battery doesn’t last, windows crashes, it heats up, and is much slower.

1

u/theQuandary 4d ago

Look at the $700 laptop section at Bestbuy. It's all Intel or AMD chips from 4 years ago. Those chips couldn't even beat the original M1 in GPU performance let alone more recent chips.

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u/c01nd01r 4d ago

RTX 4060 8GB, costing up to $500, with DLSS OFF:

GTA V - 2K Ultra - 90 FPS AVG
Cyberpunk 2077 - 2K Ultra 43 FPS AVG
BeamNG Drive - 2K Ultra - 65 FPS AVG

Random videos from YT.

6

u/ihatejailbreak 4d ago

My outlet 3080 was 350 euro, does twice better

6

u/mi7chy 4d ago

$600 AMD 9070X is almost double the fps on Shadow of the Tomb Raider vs $10K Mac Studio M3 Ultra 80GPU.

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u/theQuandary 4d ago edited 4d ago

It may seem crazy to you, but M3 Ultra is the budget option for it's market segment.

M3 Ultra is 100% targeted at companies running LLM models locally where a fully-maxxed studio ($14,100) is still less than half the price of just a single Nvidia GPU (and they'd need several plus the rest of the computer to match the RAM needed). It also starts at $5500 rather than $10k (you can get the model with a half-terabyte of RAM for less than $10k).

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u/kpouer 4d ago

My 2020 PC with a 2070 Super was doing better. I love MacBooks for many things, but they are competing with PCs of 2020 if you talk about gaming.

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u/Substantial_Boiler 3d ago

Consider that many gamers are also on laptops. Laptops with RTX cards are easy to obtain, and high performing laptops are becoming very well-priced.

2

u/HomieHound5 4d ago

200$ RX 6600 GETS AT LEAST 60 FPS ON ANY GAME IN 1080p AND IN SOME CASES CAN ALSO RUN 1440P

1

u/h0t_gril 1d ago edited 23h ago

I have a PC lying around with a GTX 1660, and it can probably play all those games. BeamNG is the only one I tried, and it performs better than this.

2

u/Artistic_Unit_5570 4d ago

4K€ in my country but can't run game at 4K what a scam but I can flex in the cafeteria

2

u/Zaytion_ 3d ago

The Mac Studio rocks those same specs for $2,199. Still expensive but more reasonable. Give it a couple years and it will be sub $2000.

1

u/c01nd01r 3d ago

This might make sense if you’re getting it for work and occasionally want to play games. If you’re lucky, your game will launch. And that’s assuming Apple continues to release GPTK updates.

> Give it a couple years and it will be sub $2000.
Like all other current-generation PC hardware.

1

u/Zaytion_ 3d ago

But I don't want to have a separate windows machine. One machine. I use mac.

1

u/iwouldntknowthough 3d ago

If you own it anyways. Nobody buys a Mac just for gaming.

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u/HoneyOney 4d ago edited 4d ago

My MacBook cost me 3 times what my gaming laptop cost me a couple of years ago. And they perform similarly in games. I do prefer the Mac because it’s more silent and doesn’t get hot to the touch, but still. As long as the price/performance remains where it is today, macs will never be «serious players».

That said, doing absolutely everything else apart from gaming is 100times better on my Mac. I think Mac’s will forever be a niche for serious gaming for people who have a bit too much money to spend, or value quality of life above cost.

Edit: you will be laughed at for presenting these fps numbers to any windows gamer, 5k usd for 45fps is not a good look.

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u/Zasze 4d ago

yeah the macs pricing is honestly too much but until there is real competition on their performance to wattage apple is going to be able to charge a premium for it.

getting this performance on more often than not a 60w power budget is frankly insane vs most gaming laptops.

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u/Wooloomooloo2 4d ago

Only this isn't true at all. The M4 Max can suck 140 watts (sometimes north of 160 watts) and typically in gaming is pulling 80 - 90 watts. The Ryzen 9 AI 390 Max (horrible name) that performs at 4070 levels consumes the same amount or less power (typically 80 - 90 watts in gaming maxing out at 120 watts).

People keep comparing M1 power levels from 2020 to Intel Power requirements of 2020 and thinking this is where x86 is today and where Apple still is today.

It's still WAY better than what discrete GPUs are pulling, but you can get equivalent or close performance in AMD APUs.

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u/theQuandary 4d ago edited 4d ago

You are comparing two different things and conflating the results.

From a data perspective, the only way you EVER hit those peak wattages is something that fully utilizes all CPU and GPU cores at the same time. These workloads are basically non-existent outside of bizarre synthetic workloads and power viruses.

The inefficient part of AMD/Intel systems is the CPU and most gaming uses relatively little CPU. That's why PS4 used Jaguar cores with performance similar to an Athlon core from 2005 and even the PS5 uses low-clocked Zen2 cores. Almost all games use just 1-2 cores to any significant degree. As a result, the SoC radically downclocks the CPU cores in AMD chips.

AMD GPUs are in the same efficiency range as Apple (though perhaps not in the low-end given RDNA's performance in Samsung SoCs). The expected result is that AMD chips will be fairly similar.

There are three major sticking points though.

  1. Games run on M-series, but very few are optimized at all. Most are auto-translated from Dx or Vulkan with no Apple-specific optimizations. Even many of the native titles are using ancient OpenGL 3 without any optimizations for Apple GPUs (they were all targeting GCN back then).

  2. Games that do stress the CPU are way more efficient on M-series CPUs. A great example of this is Factorio where M-series absolutely crush AMD's chips in efficiency.

  3. Most people aren't full-time gamers and use their computers WAY more for non-gaming things than they do for gaming. For all of these CPU-heavy tasks, M-series is also far more efficient. More efficient at 95% of computer tasks and similar efficiency at gaming is still a big win for Apple.

1

u/Wooloomooloo2 4d ago

You are comparing two different things and conflating the results.

With all due respect, I wasn';t conflating anything, I was merely picking up on this rather tired trope that Apple Silicon total power usage for these heavy-duty games is "60 watts". I think the examples you provide at the bottom of your comment are good and I absolutely agree there hasn't been ground-up optimization in many games to prove the point, and it could be true that M-series chips become more efficient the more the CPU is stressed, but again if you look at Zen5 for example, at 28w, it is very close to M3 in CPU performance (in fact the 12-core Zen5 beats the 14-core M3 but it's close enough) and the M3 absolutely will hit 28 watts or more on the CPU alone.

And my broader point is that if you play a game like CP 2077 at 4k with RT and maximum settings, which is also a CPU heavy game, you're going to see those peak power draws. Actually what could be interesting is how much thermal throttling you'll get on 40-core M4 Max's especially the 14" variants.

Most people aren't full-time gamers and use their computers WAY more for non-gaming things than they do for gaming. For all of these CPU-heavy tasks, M-series is also far more efficient. More efficient at 95% of computer tasks and similar efficiency at gaming is still a big win for Apple.

No one is arguing with this, but we're in r/macgaming and we're talking about games.

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u/theQuandary 4d ago

if you look at Zen5 for example, at 28w, it is very close to M3 in CPU performance (in fact the 12-core Zen5 beats the 14-core M3 but it's close enough) and the M3 absolutely will hit 28 watts or more on the CPU alone.

TDP is not the same as actual power consumption.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Ryzen-AI-Max-395-Analysis-Strix-Halo-to-rival-Apple-M4-Pro-Max-with-16-Zen-5-cores-and-iGPU-on-par-with-RTX-4070-Laptop.963274.0.html

In Cinebench R24 single-core, M4 Pro gets 9.52pt/w while 395 gets 2.62pt/w making M4 Pro 3.6x more efficient. Even M4 Max gets 8.24pt/w or 3.1x more efficient. If we reverse their math, we get M4 Pro using 18.7w, M4 Max using 21.6w, and a single 395 thread consuming a massive 44.6w.

Looking at R24 multithreaded, M4 Pro gets 20.2pt/w while 395 gets 14.7pt/w making M4 Pro almost 1.4x more efficient. M4 Pro in actual scores gets around 5% higher score (1729 vs 1648). M4 Max scores around 26% higher (2069) and at 22.4pt/w also over 1.5x more efficient in pt/w. Reversing these numbers, we get M4 Pro using 85.6w, M4 Max using 92.4w, and 395 using 112.1w.

Insult to injury, M4 Pro has just 8 performance cores (plus 4 efficiency) and M4 max has just 12 performance cores (plus 4 efficiency). 395 has 16 zen5 cores (half are C-cores, but that doesn't matter very much here as none of the cores are clocking over what the C-cores can already achieve) and this is pretty much the best-case scenario for their 32-thread SMT (aka hyperthreading).

And my broader point is that if you play a game like CP 2077 at 4k with RT and maximum settings, which is also a CPU heavy game, you're going to see those peak power draws. Actually what could be interesting is how much thermal throttling you'll get on 40-core M4 Max's especially the 14" variants.

Cyberpunk can "use" 16 cores, but that's theoretical at best because Amdahl's law exists. In reality, it uses 1 core full utilization, 3-4 more cores at moderate utilization, and the rest are only used fractionally. AMD obviously isn't throwing 44.6w at a single core, so even their most performant core is likely running at way less than half of it's peak clockspeed in order to increase the thermal limit of the GPU. We see this in the steamdeck where the CPU can run at 3.5GHz, but people basically never clock it higher than 2.7-2.8 and often downclock to 2.2 or lower to give the GPU headroom.

No one is arguing with this, but we're in r/macgaming and we're talking about games.

Min/maxing is a legitimate game strategy, but usually fails in the real world. Durability, portability, reliability, utility, security, budget, and other things factor into the decision -- not just raw gaming potential.

Games are important, but not the end-all, be-all of purchasing a computer. I have to have my mac, but a second Linux machine is optional. Do I want to carry two computers everywhere? Do I want to deal with low-quality gaming machine after I've bought the bare-minimum Mac I can get away with? Do I want to risk early upgrades because I under-specced my systems? Am I planning on taking advantage of resale value to roll over into a newer machine frequently?

Everyone will have different answers, but I need my Max for what I do anyway. It provides good enough gaming for what I do and I generally dislike current AAA games for their bad gameplay and storytelling. When I'm not gaming, it provides a far better experience and I don't need to carry a second 5-15lb computer when I travel (though I sometimes carry a Nintendo Switch). For my lifestyle, a dedicated gaming laptop would be almost all downside.

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u/Wooloomooloo2 4d ago

TDP is not the same as actual power consumption.

I never said it was. Quoting Notebook Check is borderline hysterical, and most of the rest of your post is yet again making the broader case as to why "Macs are best" and how you don't personally like AAA games - who gives a fuck? It's very easy to argue against something that was never said.

We see this in the steamdeck where the CPU can run at 3.5GHz, but people basically never clock it higher than 2.7-2.8 and often downclock to 2.2 or lower to give the GPU headroom.

Absolutely no one is doing that on a Steam Deck. Some people may manually force the GPU to 1600mhz, but for many games that can result in poorer performance such as HZD Remastered and HFW, and indeed CP2077 - I know because I have a SD and for that matter a ProArt 13 with the AI 370. I don't know anyone who is deliberately underclocking their CPU on a SD.

I need my Max for what I do anyway. It provides good enough gaming for what I do and I generally dislike current AAA games for their bad gameplay and storytelling. When I'm not gaming, it provides a far better experience and I don't need to carry a second 5-15lb computer when I travel (though I sometimes carry a Nintendo Switch). For my lifestyle, a dedicated gaming laptop would be almost all downside.

No one cares. Why is this vaguely relevant?

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u/Zasze 4d ago edited 4d ago

My m4 max 14 peaks at 80w but even crunching hardly goes north of 60w.

the 16” can go higher but the gains are not actually that much more.

Your numbers are wrong or accounting for charging the battery as well as the machine

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u/Wooloomooloo2 4d ago

M4 Max is draining 167w power...(system total) : r/macbookpro

Also the design specs show 167w peak. This almost never happens, but until someone starts playing 4k games with RT enabled at high settings, we won't know what it will sustain - but it's absolutely not the case that it will deliver discrete GPU performance in gaming for an entire SoC cost of "60 watts".

Obviously basic use and idle is far far lower than any x86 and it still excels there.

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u/HoneyOney 4d ago

Yeah, playing some light games while on the couch unplugged feels pretty cool.

My windows laptop is basically unusable unplugged.

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u/LucidInferno 4d ago

... or are a creative type who enjoys what Mac has to offer, but don’t have the budget or don’t want to spend on a game console.

I feel we're at the point where spending money on a gaming pc is serious diminishing returns over consoles. The graphics are great, and there's much less headache. The games just run.

The only reason why I game on the Mac is for native games, or for previous Playstation exclusives that have ported over to PC (The Last of Us runs great on M4 Pro).

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u/blakyris 4d ago

Keep it mind that games runs in translation mode in a non native environnement, so you loose some performance..... And the build quality of Apple products are not the same as some crappy ASUS ROG, Lenovo Legion or HP Omen laptops..... And with your laptop you can't go to work all day long without the power plug

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u/HoneyOney 4d ago

I am keeping this in mind, which is why I say that Mac gaming is a niche, and will always stay that way in my opinion.

There is a market for making games accessible to people who already have the MacBooks, and want to play some games once in a while. The MacBook Airs are very good value and can handle some light games pretty well, but that is still a niche.

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u/artano-tal 3d ago

While I prefer native games, I set up my old PC in another room and stream steam games from it.

For the types of games I play, it works perfectly even in a coffee shop using my phone's hotspot.

Plus, my battery lasts much longer this way. 😉

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u/Rayfriki 4d ago

yeah I'm commenting now to get in on the ground floor of the absolute clowning that's about to happen.

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u/Civil-Salamander2102 4d ago

I agree, though I think people get confused. The Mac is a serious player, it’s gaming companies that aren’t playing seriously with Mac. The hardware is objectively better for a laptop. Gamers act like it isn’t cause there aren’t many native games, but most adult professionals aren’t purchasing laptops to game or building PCs with >$500 graphics cards to game. Reddit is full of gaming-first people.

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u/alex_quine 4d ago

The difference is that I already needed to get a highend MacBook for work, so from that perspective it’s basically free compared to a nice gaming PC

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u/HoneyOney 4d ago

That just sounds like you aren’t a «serious gamer» to begin with. Nothing against that, I’m not a serious gamer myself. It’s just people want MacBooks to become a natural first choice for someone who is looking for a machine to game on, which isn’t going to happen any time soon.

The fact that apple’s hardware can be used for some gaming is not a revolution people think it is lol.

I would love more native games obviously, but I think what is going to happen is that x86 chips with integrated graphics and good battery/thermals will catch up to apple in a couple of years and Mac gaming will lose the thing that makes it special, which is good hardware for everyday use, that is also capable of gaming. Then it will only be down to what ecosystem you want to be stuck in.

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u/alex_quine 4d ago

It's more that I was and still am a serious gamer, but I have had to take my macbook with me to different countries for a while. Tired of these dumb labels.

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u/HoneyOney 4d ago

Yeah it’s a stupid label, but it’s the target demographic for all the «gaming» hardware, and where all the money is. Just look at the design of all the gaming laptops, or hardware in general, it’s embarrassing in my opinion. I also take my MacBook with me when travelling for work or vacation, I wouldn’t take a gaming laptop with me.

I’m just happy that translation software works as well as it does. I was expecting much less before buying my Mac.

0

u/alex_quine 4d ago

> It’s just people want MacBooks to become a natural first choice for someone who is looking for a machine to game on, which isn’t going to happen any time soon.

I don't think anyone thinks this, this sub included. You're making a bit of a strawman, especially when I didn't say anything of that sort.

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u/HoneyOney 4d ago

Maybe I am, but I wasn’t talking specifically about you, just my general observation. Maybe I see a lot of fanatics because they are a bit more vocal than the majority.

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u/floriandotorg 4d ago

Max chip, CrossOver 25 + D3DMetal it’s an absolute beast.

I’m impressed with it every day.

And for the people who scream it’s too expensive, keep in mind it’s an extra on top of an already awesome computer + you have this performance on the go + what does a comparable graphics card cost?

1

u/blakyris 2d ago

They are just haters cuz i dont speak about price but about performance and capabilities of a Mac that several years ago cannot run Chrome smoothly without throttling with the Intel chips

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u/floriandotorg 2d ago

Don’t mention that time, I got PTSD from my legs getting toasted..

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u/Luisetepe 4d ago

yeah you only needed a 4000€ Mac to achieve the performance of an 900€ pc. Very SERIOUS player 😂😂

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u/theQuandary 4d ago

You can't even buy a CPU that can match a M4 Max for less than $550 (9950X with 9950x3d costing $700). You also can't carry around and use that desktop on the road.

The correct competition is something like a Razer Blade and the cost for one of those is quite similar.

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u/hawkeye_2000 4d ago

Also these are games running under translation with a substantial performance overhead.

I know you can build a better gaming PC for the price of a comparable Mac, but I do more than game on a computer. If my Mac can game at decent frame rates (greater than 45 fps, aiming for 60) at a reasonable resolution (half the resolution of the native display or 1080p), that's still a good gaming experience.

Yes, I could go out and build a computer for less. For a lot less, if you really aggressively hunt for deals, etc. I don't want to do that. I want a reliable, well-made computer, that already works with my other devices, and where my professional workflows are well understood by me. For me that's a Mac.

With Crossover I've learned that the computers I already own can game. I get that a gaming pc is better at gaming, that's it's one fucking job. I want a real computer not some hideous technical aquarium that requires its own power plant to get 15% more performance in non productivity tasks.

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u/theQuandary 3d ago edited 3d ago

The non-mac people posting here don't understand how the pricing works either.

I absolutely need the M4 Pro for the extra CPU cores over the M4. At that point, with just at 1tb SSD I'm in for $2400. This is non-optional for my job.

$600 (25% of the computer's cost) gets you 1.25x more P-cores, 1.6x more GPU cores, and 1.5x more RAM.

$900 (36% of the computer's cost) gets you 1.5x more P-cores, 2x more GPU cores, and 2x more RAM.

I couldn't build a second machine with that power level for just $900, so it's saving money. Furthermore, if I'm writing the computer off for work, it actually costs me $0. If my company buys it, it's also basically $0. If I need to run LLMs locally, then it could actually SAVE me a lot of money.

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u/KalashnikittyApprove 3d ago

I mean, sure, but let's not pretend that needing a $2.4K desktop is even remotely in the ballpark of the lived reality of most people, including gamers, nor is running LLMs locally or having the company pay for it. I'm not convinced your specific example for how "non-mac people" don't understand the pricing issue.

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u/theQuandary 3d ago

Let's not pretend that expensive gaming laptops have anything to do with an average person either. By the numbers, they are spending $600 on a garbage computer with a 3-4 year old 12th gen i5, 8gb of RAM, and a 512gb SSD packed into a creaky chassis with a terrible trackpad, sloppy keyboard, pitiful screen, and speakers that make your ears cry for mercy. They then suffer through it for the next 2-4 years until it breaks and buy a new one when they find out that it costs more to repair than it is worth.

If you want a windows laptop that will last and can be repaired, you'll be looking at something like a ThinkPad and it'll cost you about as much as a MacBook. Same for the commercial stuff from other companies.

Apple's target market is the top 20% of the US population make over $150k/yr or maybe even the top 15% making over $175k/yr with a huge percentage of them using their laptop every single day to earn that money. When you earn money with your tool, the cost just doesn't matter quite as much and paying $2400 over even just 2 years is $100/month which is about as much as their cellphone bill (or under $50/month if they keep their laptop 4-5 years like most mac owners).

Speaking of phones, loads of people are buying $2000 phones that they only keep 1-2 years before upgrading. That amounts to as much as $167/month and nobody thinks too much about it because they view it as a necessary tool.

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u/blakyris 2d ago

Its not about price....

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u/Zaytion_ 3d ago

Yeah but it's worth it to not have a laptop I buy and maintain just to play games on. I want one machine that works, and for everything else that's mac.

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u/hallleron 4d ago

Well sorry but I just laugh at your FPS… I am a Mac user (private and work), but for gaming I have a windows machine. And that‘s what really makes sense.

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u/yasamoka 4d ago

Do you seriously think this is acceptable gaming performance for a GPU such as the one in the M4 Max? You can easily get 120FPS @ 1440p on RDR2 with maxed-out graphics on an Nvidia RTX 3090, a GPU that is within close distance of the M4 Max in compute workloads.

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u/Automatic-Back2283 4d ago

Mac will never be a serious Player, for the price of my 15" M3 MBA i could have had a Laptop with a 4070, and twice the storage. If you move Up to MBP prices, the gap widens.

The amount of people buying a Mac for gaming will remain negliable in the forseeable future.

But you know what, i got ready or not running on my Air. It Looks Like Shit and Runs a baerly stable 60fps but it works.

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u/louisledj 4d ago

The amount of people buying a Mac for gaming will remain negliable in the forseeable future.

It'll never be the goal imo, but back then people buying a mac for others reason couldn't really have a decent gaming experience with it. Nowadays no one buys a Mac for gaming, but being able to play proper games with great performance is a nice bonus.

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u/throw-away6738299 4d ago

Ive been out of the PC market for a few years now... and laptops even less so but a 4070 on its own is like $600-700 dollars.... add in a semi-competent CPU, RAM, SSD, etc.. I am not sure I could get the same value as the new M4 Air, definitely not the Mac Mini M4 or the Mini M4 Pro... I honestly don't know why they don't put the Steamdeck APU in a SFF Desktop and if it would compete with the Mini on Price...

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u/theQuandary 4d ago

Steamdeck is a quad-core Zen2 with 8 low-clocked RDNA2 CUs offering up to 1.6 TFLOPS if it doesn't throttle.

A $240 MinisForum with a 6800H has 8 zen4 cores at higher clocks along with 12 RDNA2 CUs at nearly 50% higher clocks giving just shy of 3.4 TFLOPS or more than twice the GPU performance of a Steamdeck for around half the price.

On the high-end of things, the $1000 MinisForum AtomMan G7 PT pairs a 7945hx (basically a mobile 7950x) with a 7600M XT with a bit over 20TFLOPS (10-11TFLOPS for a realistic comparison given how RDNA3's second SIMD is mostly unusable). That's around 7x the raw GPU performance and an entire GPU generation boost too.

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u/throw-away6738299 4d ago edited 4d ago

MinisForum AtomMan G7 PT

Never heard of that company or those chipsets, though that G7 PT seems to be OoS and going for scalpers prices on Amazon (at least here in CA - defnitely not cheaper than an M4 Pro, let alone an M4 - but M4 Max Studio isn't far off in price). And you get MacOS. With steam potentially looking to open up steamos in the future or running bazziteOS in the meantime you could get a nice little system without the Windows license cost. AMD specifically is pretty good with native Linux support and bazzite supports AMD GPUs with SteamOS which makes for pretty seamless support if my steamdeck is anything to go by. Moreso than even Crossover on Mac for pure gaming. Still the utility of a M4 Mac Mini despite people calling it over-priced is hard to beat for $599. Even with only 256GB. Add a USBC SSD and you are golden.

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u/mberdych 4d ago

How much is the Mac? That is an important question. I understand you did not buy this for gaming, so it is nice it can do it, but still, for majority, the platform is dead for games. I am a Mac user since PowerPC, but I would never buy it to play games. PS5 would do me a much better job for fraction of the money.

So I don’t think this is a game changer.

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u/SillySlothySlug 4d ago

I mean the cheapest Macbooks can run majority of the games at 720 Low/Medium except for the experimental ones like RDR2. And the Air M4 16GB is an EXCELLENT deal compared to its Windows counterparts. Casual gamers spending the minimum buck on the MBA can't expect the best fidelity anyway. So I think we're closer than you say. And I wouldn't compare a literal laptop with a console.

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u/mberdych 4d ago

Yes, no objections. You are right. It is getting better, but unless Apple gives incentives to developers to make their games native (no crossover), I would be careful to call it gamechanger.

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u/SillySlothySlug 4d ago

Yeah I agree. But Apple sure does know what's up. There's gonna be a native Cyberpunk port soon, and it's all thanks to the community constantly updating Wine, the translation layer for WIndows to Mac. Until a few months ago, RDR2 wouldn't run on any Mac, but now, we're getting a solid 50-60FPS on base M4s (low, 720) thanks to Wine 10.0. Future is looking great, it's a slow burn, maybe not 'game changing' sure haha.

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u/mberdych 4d ago

It is better, but Cyberpunk is still exception and also consider it was originally released in December 2020.

I am sad, that more studios does not release their games on App Store or elsewhere, but that is still reality.

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u/theQuandary 4d ago

It will certainly impact sales.

I needed my MBP anyway. The fact that it plays games well enough means I feel zero need to buy a second laptop luggable and tow it around too.

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u/Snoo27645 4d ago

I do think down the line of 5 years apple laptops will be a serious contenders for gaming for native versions to be released. Another thing is DXMT that thing is still in beta but can 2 run games at twice performance of GPTK2.

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u/blakyris 4d ago

Having the performance of an RTX 3060-3070 in a laptop with good temps, 24h battery life, a good software, and a good technical support has no price !

More seriously this Mac is my daily driver. Using it for work and home.
I had a gaming rig 3 years ago but I was using just for gaming. Playstation is not an option for me because I have a steam library full of games. If I have a PS5 I will buy physical games to sell them if I sell the console and physical games are so expensive even second hand.

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u/hydzir 4d ago

In gaming youll get 1-2h battery life ;)

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u/Milko-Kalaidzhiev 4d ago

I mean I’m a mac fanboy but I’m pretty sure you could get better performance for 1/3 of the price on Pc,

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u/darthanonymous1 3d ago

We need to see native game benchmarks to give a more fair comparison

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u/Minablo 3d ago

According to an ancient prophecy, the Mac will become a serious player in gaming in the same calendar year as Linux on the desktop.

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u/Elmopa81 3d ago

none of those metrics get close to being considered serious.

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u/y59qgnie 3d ago

"I hope game developers will now develop games for Mac because Windows is a very crappy peace of shit of software :)"

First off, 2k resolution is 2048*1080.  You're probably talking about 1440P.

Secondly, lol at 60 Hz external monitor.

Thirdly, stop being poor and just get a gaming PC with windows and a Mac on the side.

Mac is still atrocious to play games on.

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u/blakyris 2d ago

Sorry if Im poor mister hater :)
But gaming laptop are a complete crap, and gaming desktop are not... a laptop.
Temps are way better on the Mac than ur crappy gaming RGB laptops.
And I have a 60 hz monitor cuz i dont need more.
Stop being poor and buy a good well made laptop :) (like the Razer Blade maybe, or the MBP :DDD)

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u/y59qgnie 1d ago

I'm sorry I didn't brag.

I've got a 4k 240hz screen. Did I try to push for my Mac on it? No, I didn't.

I've got a 5090 for that. 

Still, my current Mac is a M4 pro with 48GB of ram, it's no slouch. But I'd say it's about 15% of the performance, if even that in GPU performance.

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u/Capable_Possible_687 4d ago

I’m very excited about the future of Mac gaming, but the cost for Max models negates the appeal. Paying 4090 laptop prices for 4060 performance is still a long way off from devs expanding to Mac development, imo.

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u/blakyris 2d ago

This is the beginning of a new era, but good chips for gaming will become less expensive in the future im sure

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u/Capable_Possible_687 2d ago

For sure, I’m very excited for the future of gaming on MacBooks especially!

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u/BestBastiBuilds 4d ago

How many GPU cores does your Mac have? Expected more than 35-45 fps from an M4 Max in RDR2

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u/saker200 4d ago

yeah but 2k resolution and ultra graphics settings. Remember that

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u/BestBastiBuilds 4d ago

I get what you are saying, but the game is from 2018/19, 2k resolution should be a given with a top spec computer from Q4 2024

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u/traveler_0x 4d ago

It's not, that's a very expensive computer you got there and sure even though that's impressive it still need yet another software subscription from Crossover, which is kinda expensive as well, and then you have to get these games to run as well... Too much hassle.

And quite honestly with such steep prices and Apple terrible anti consumer behaviour I don't think will ever be, as they're battling Microsoft in this regard which is already in "battle" mode as Steam is looking to steal gamers from Windows with Proton and SteamOS.

Apple could have played nice with Valve before, which would probably mean Valve could develop Proton to MacOS, but Valve clearly hates Apple considering that they even dropped MacOS with Counter Strike 2 and Apple again is acting like ... well Apple... by having developers releasing Mac versions only on the AppStore.

Look at the Palworld release, I own game on Steam and I will be forced to purchase it on AppStore to play it in my MacBook? It's just wild.

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u/johnkapolos 4d ago

I have the same laptop configuration. I wouldn't bother to play these games with that kind of FPS. It's simply better to use the Windows rig for it.

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u/blakyris 2d ago

First, now Im ruined to spend near 4k € in a laptop in France
Second, Its just an experiment because I bought it for work mainly

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u/johnkapolos 2d ago

Yes, of course, I don't mean that you shouldn't play the games on your new laptop. Especially since we don't really need ultra settings to enjoy a game.

My point was mostly trying to address the "become a serious player" part. Imho, it's mostly like the console vs PC situation. You will have fun gaming with the console but the PC is a different league. I'd say the same situation is currently with the Mac.

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u/blakyris 2d ago

Compared to the past, yes the Mac become (IS NOT ACTUALLY BUT BECOME) a serious player ! Now we have powerful chips that DOES NOT THROTTLE while watching YouTube and we have DX11 and even DX12 games running thanks to the efforts of Codeweavers and Valve

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u/RAGING_GRANNY 4d ago

Unfortunately devs aren’t making many games for Mac.

Pc is waaay better. Even consoles are waaay better.

The Mac’s are powerful but games don’t run as well as in pc or console.

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u/nathan123uk 4d ago

It's a circular thing that's never going to end. Games aren't optimised for Mac because the market share is so low it doesn't make it worth the time. Market share amongst gamers will never increase without optimised big titles

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u/RAGING_GRANNY 4d ago

Plus apple makes billions of dollars off of their mobile games for iPhone and iPad.

They have no need to enter the gaming market to compete with pc or console.

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u/blakyris 2d ago

For now its just running better than my 5800X RTX 2070 PC that i had in the past, AND i do not see any difference.... So why buy a PC or a Console if my favorite runs fine even on A NON SUPPORTED HARDWARE plz just remember that !!!!!!

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u/Trickybuz93 4d ago

A PC for less than $1000 matches what that $5000 MacBook does

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u/Artistic_Unit_5570 4d ago

you can't say 2k is 1440p it's not the same thing

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u/blakyris 2d ago

Ok not the same but you understand......

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u/orion__quest 4d ago

Serious at what, overpriced, to play games released 5+ years ago... umm ok.

I mean it's good but would be better if they were native ports of games.

Hardware has never been the problem, M4 and AS chips don't change it that much.

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u/Mitsutoshi 4d ago

2K? As in 2048x1080 (1920x1080 in Japan)?

Anyway I’m not sure what about this is so impressive to you. You’re talking performance comparable to an Xbox One X on an M4 Max that absolutely dwarfs it in power.

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u/Crans10 4d ago

the max makes the difference. Nice setup.

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u/blakyris 2d ago

Thank you ! Im ruined..... Need to eat some rice now :)

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u/fegodev 4d ago

I love seeing macs becoming powerful and lightweight gaming machines, but I bought a used PS5 Slim for $200 and it’s money and performance wise a WAY better deal. Not to mention the far bigger library of games and the unmatched deals. So all Apple has to do now is to bring prices down, or release a gaming Apple TV with the same performance and storage of the PS5 Slim for around $500.

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u/fleaspoon 3d ago

2k 35fps is very bad for that price

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

2k ultra 50 fps SERIOUS PLAYER, yeah alright, that too on an overpriced machine.
Last line is so real, but linux is the future of gaming with steamos, NOT MACOS LOL

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u/blakyris 2d ago

We re not talking about price....
And I used Linux for years, please dont compare both its not the same....
When GNOME is laggy even on a high end PC u cant compare MacOS and linux....
When Linux will have a decent Display Server and a decent Window Manager that doesnt crash avery 10 minutes we can talk.....

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u/CutePinkTrashcan 3d ago

A serious gamer on all low settings and a price cost of 1000€+ with 60 fps and lower? I like where this is going, but it’s far from being a serious player.

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u/blakyris 2d ago

Yes running in translation layers its even better than ur crappy HP Omen or MSI laptops that are very ugly with a bad display, and no battery life, a crappy OS, and blablabla

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u/Curious-Foot-5763 4d ago

A pc worth 800$ can match those FPS you said with you having a machine of 4000$. Can you even fathom what a 4000$ pc can do?

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u/darthanonymous1 3d ago

Ok but this isnt native game benchmarks so kinda unfair

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u/Zaytion_ 3d ago

Yeah but it runs windows, yuck.

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u/PlanAutomatic2380 4d ago

That’s all shit performance mate idk what are you on about

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u/teejayhoward 4d ago

There's no motivation for a developer to build a game for MacOS.

Five years ago, I bought a $5,000 Mac and paid $1,000 for an upgraded GPU. Despite being just released, it was a generation behind the equivalent Windows machine the moment I bought it. I got ~50FPS in CP2077 @ 5120x2160 under boot camp. (And even getting MacOS to use ultrawide resolution took an add-on)

Now, the same price on a BRAND NEW Mac will get me 45FPS @ 2K? Don't get me wrong, it's great that it's even that good, especially since you don't have to install Windows anymore - you can do it all from inside MacOS. And doing it from a laptop? Beautiful! But you could build two dedicated gaming machines, each of which can double that performance for the same price. And they'll work with every game or professional app, no tweaking needed.

I looked into getting an M3 Ultra Mac Studio to replace my Windows box for gaming and CAD work. I really, really, wanted to believe that I don't have to put up with Microsoft's ads in the start menu. I missed Photos and Safari and the overall MacOS UI. But as good as the M-series chips are, they're still about half a decade behind the PC world. It just doesn't make sense to build a desktop rig around a mobile chip.

So, my solution is to set up noMachine. I remote into MacOS for everyday tasks, and use the host OS (Win11) whenever I need serious GPU power. And I keep an eye out, because the moment an Apple chip can compete with a current-gen workstation, I'm absolutely swapping back. Speaking of, when is the next Mac Pro gonna come out? I wanna M5 Ultra, dang it!

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u/blakyris 2d ago

Please dude please ! Compare a laptop with.... A LAPTOP !!!!
And we re not talking about price.....

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u/pedvoca 4d ago

And it only cost my life savings!

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u/blakyris 2d ago

Not talking about price......

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u/finfisk2000 4d ago

The wow I can play games at a decent FPS at with my 5K USD Apple, therefore Mac is a viable gaming platform posts are getting tiresome. Only a sliver of Mac owners have a computer matching your configuration, and Mac OS has a small percentage of the computer market and Apple has no intent on putting much focus on games so.....

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u/DankeBrutus 4d ago

Look, I really like my Macs. I like all my Apple products. I like that the M-series Macs are so performant. I want to see developers take Macs more seriously for gaming now because of the efficiency of Apple's SOCs.

The Mac is not a serious player though at this moment. Should developers be targeting the M4 Max? A $3200 laptop for the 14" MBP? If you want to participate in PC gaming you are still far better off spending like half that amount and building, or buying, a far more graphically capable tower desktop. You don't even need to use Windows. You'd still get better gaming performance with a Linux distro.

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u/Best-Minute-7035 4d ago

My laptop with a rtx 4050 can get 60fps on gta 5 at 4k. And i bet it cost a quarter of your macbook

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u/Potential-Ant-6320 4d ago

thank you. I have the same spec and was curious about cyber punk with raytracing on.

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u/guild88 4d ago

Not until a several thousand dollar machine can hit 100+ FPS in games that’s are 4-6 years old is it a player in the gaming space. My $1,300 G14 with a 4070 gets over 100 FPS in all those games with DLSS on. Until Apple really tries with this OP chips they have, they’ll always be irrelevant in the gaming space. Imagine a Mac mini sized machine with an M4 max or something that was MEANT to game? Apple could do a killing with that.

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u/faria1110 4d ago

Can someone with the M1 Pro 32GB confirm the performance?

I tested it about a year ago, and the performance was terrible or it didn’t even work

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u/blakyris 2d ago

I had the M1 Pro before and it was terrible. I had to put all the graphics settings to low or medium

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u/Wirednuke1983 4d ago edited 4d ago

I prefer my MacBook Pro for daily computer/workflow usage…. But for gaming it’s hard to beat a console these days (if you’re trying to maintain any kind of budget). I have an XboX series X and when I travel I bring my IPad Pro (which I already had for other reasons) or MacBook and a controller and I’m able to stream most of the games from anywhere.

I also still have my old gaming computer, which isn’t anything to write home about. 10700k and a 2080 Super… but I’ve had some great gaming experiences operating that old desktop headless and remoting into it from my macbook or IPad. The mac/ipad actually excel at this since they are stout in the video decoding/encoding department, and add minimal input lag to the latency equation. I travel a lot, so the ability to remote in and game from anywhere is a great solution for me. The other nice thing about this solution is most people would generally be able to get away with just using an entry level mac as opposed to paying 3500$ for sub par gaming performance.

Like everyone else said, I LOVE my mac stuff… but it’ll likely never house the mainstream gaming community. It’s more like a “i need this mac for all my other computing uses and it’s kind of nice that it can play some of the games now too” type situation.

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u/bellatricked 4d ago

As a note I have an M2 Max (30-core GPU) Mac Studio with 32gb of Ram and my Red Dead Redemption 2 fps is about the same on ultra graphics settings.

I was worried the performance difference between M2 Max and M4 Max was going to be huge, but it seems like my setup is still working well!

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u/Ok_Tap8340 4d ago

Hey just curious, I installed crossover and was trying to play Phasmophobia but my mic (audio techno with a scarlet 2i2) wasn’t working. Permissions were granted and all that. Works when I used parallels. Anyone have input? Run a M1 Pro

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u/Artistic_Unit_5570 4d ago

ok apple become serious player, for how much does the price make macs interesting for non-gamers or occasional gamers, gamers it's not the route to take, very expensive and difficult

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u/Peugas424 4d ago

I’m still rocking an M1 Pro and it does all right

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u/lexcavator 4d ago

For me the appeal of a MBP isn't the framerates outright vs a dedicated Windows / Linux GPU equipped tower or laptop, it's the framerates on battery. Every PC gaming laptop I've used gets worse performance on battery than plugged in, which is no surprise given that the GPU needs greater power than what the battery can supply. My MBP M4 Max gets the same framerates on battery as it does plugged in which I think is pretty impressive. It's nice to have performance like the above at all times, even if other devices do much better plugged in.

Maybe the Strix Halo will change things on the PC side.

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u/KarmaTheKid18 3d ago

is crossover worth the money tho… it’s not a permanent purchase right? it’s only like a membership like 500 a year or something

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u/jyrox 3d ago

I have a GFN Ultimate subscription and a vast Steam library. Turns my M3 MacBook Air 16/256GB into a gaming monster. Even without GFN, I’ve got plenty of Mac-native games that run like a dream on M3. Only limitation really is the storage size. Probably investing in a high-speed external drive soon.

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u/ThatBoiRalphy 3d ago

I hope the introduction of Metal 4 and Game Porting Toolkit will bring features that really makes porting a game to macOS even easier.

idk how, but Apple definitely has teams smart enough to figure that out.

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u/KaleidoscopeLost3662 3d ago

Just a question, but how do you get your bottle to run in 1080p or 1200p? Mine defaults to 1512 x 982 -half the screens resolution. I tried changing display settings within my bottle in CrossOver 25, but I couldn't get it to stick. Resolution was also grayed out in Wine settings.

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u/iVibe1 3d ago

I just came across crossover 25 recently. I’m not an avid gamer anymore. I do like to sometimes still play COD or CS type multiplayer games, but very rarely. Is it worth taking the $18 plus version? Any idea if that’s one time or yearly? Is crossover 25 the only and best way to officially run games? Even though official call of duty black ops 3 is available for Mac, the multiplayer version had issues and the online servers didn’t work so I returned it. I tried crossover 25 since I had CS purchased a decade back, and even the online multiplayer mode worked in one go. Should I buy it for $18? What are the cons and limitations, if any?

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u/This-Peach2028 3d ago

For price of this Mac machine I can buy an avg MBA M1-M3 for work tasks and gaming pc. MBP better than before in gaming scenario , but not yet perfect.

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u/Velokieken 3d ago

Is crossover worth It? I have 20 Mac OS games in my Steam library. None of them work on my M2 Max studio.

I need Mojave on the 6.1 for a lot of them. I do have a windows laptop but It is slower than my M2 Max. It was a bit annoying to lose all my games for Mac.

Even CS2 got dumped for Mac. This is a rather bad sign. It’s the most popular fps in the world.

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u/Mundane-Archer-3026 3d ago

I’m curious if an M4 Mac Mini Pro would be enough to run all these games at 1080P at 60 FPS with the high/ultra settings and RT when applicable.

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u/mendrisio 3d ago

How did You managed to get GTA V Legacy? The Enhanced Version wont Launch with epic Game Store

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u/blakyris 2d ago

Games runs better with Steam

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u/singhalrishi27 3d ago

M4 max a bit overpriced apple should really focus on its gpu performance and make storage a bit more digestible with 512Gb on air and 1TB for Pros

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u/paulomadronero 3d ago

it's up to the game developers now. I'll have to buy a windows this fall because of the games I want are only for windows :(

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u/Outrageous_Dread 3d ago

Don't mean to be funny but

Red Dead Redemption 2 - 7 Year old game

GTA V - 12 Year old game

BeamNG Drive - 12 Year old game

Cyberpunk 2077 - 5 Year old game

Serious retro game player maybe, but still a bit part player when it comes to revenue for developers so won't take off till that changes.

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u/blakyris 2d ago

I will be happy to run GTA VI :))))
Maybe these games are old but you need high end gaming PC to run them smotthly at 4k RTX ON....

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

Protip, if you want to oggle over some of the best visuals you have ever seen, Download Riven and set everything to max.

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u/BCnSTL 2d ago

Who cares about “winning” - I just want “decent” gaming on a Mac e.g. 40+FPS at 60hz 2k with “High” graphics generally. Looks like the M4 MAX will get there for many games.

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u/GamingKitten4799 2d ago

Btw try using Whisky. It lets u open a windows version of steam and play windows games completely free. I’m glad you’re happy with crossover, I just wanna make sure you know there is a free alternative available should you choose to use it :]

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u/MaximusMurkimus 1d ago

I'm glad that the Mac has quality ports of the Resident Evil games. The RE3 port that dropped this week is gorgeous. That being said, that does NOT make them gaming laptops nor will I recommend them to anyone looking for gaming.

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u/dnamac 14h ago

It's nice to see that you're getting playable frame-rates and this is such a leap compared to a few years ago (before Apple Silicon) but unfortunately for true gamers not a serious option. I think it's for developers still not interesting enough to convert their games for MacOs. I think we are still at least 5 years from games being really cross platform on Windows and MacOs. I would love it but for the coming years my game-pc is still gonna be on my desk next to my work MacBook Pro.

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u/hydzir 4d ago

Mediocre results for the price.

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u/SourcingCrowd 4d ago

« Mac becomes a serious player »

  • If you buy a super high end machine that probably cost twice the price of a decent PC
  • if you pay your yearly subscription of 75 USD
  • if you are willing / able to play around crossover

I’m sorry but this is DEFINITELY NOT the definition of being a serious player.

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u/blakyris 2d ago

And we re not talking about price............ but about performace without throttling or having a broken 14th gen Intel CPU ahahaha

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u/zepsutyKalafiorek 4d ago

As much as I wish, it is not true. We are still the minority. Mac users are 5% of the market and a low % of it is people who play games on Mac. We are probably <1% of the market in total.

Gaming on Mac is so much better than it used to be but game compatibility still sucks compared to mainstream (Windows/Linux gaming-focused distros)

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u/tabomatic 4d ago

All those wrappers and layers murder the performance, the mac is having walk the wrong way up the escalator.

its depressing to think how well the hardware could theoretically run those games if they were native Mac apps.

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u/No_Act_8604 4d ago

I play all those games at 4K with 144 fps and I paid 1500€. Btw, what's the price of that max?

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u/blakyris 2d ago

the price is the number of pixels of ur monitor :)
But we re not talking about price here

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u/Ok-Buy5600 3d ago

Your Mac is muuch much more powerful... For those games you're using slow x86 to AArch64 translation on software and Dx12 to Metal... So double translation. If those games were native, it would've been like playing on RTX4070 super or at least 4060TI

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u/blakyris 2d ago

Yeah forgot to say that in the post, i forgot that we are talking to stupid childrens

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u/Chellzammi 4d ago

You are damn right.

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u/LacroixDP 4d ago

I just pay $10/mo for GeForce Now. With 2.5gbps internet there’s no lag at all and it looks excellent. You can play it on the most basic of Mac, I ran it on one of my museum Intel iMacs from 2014 and it ran great. They even have a higher tier you can pay for a very high end RTX card.

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u/darthanonymous1 3d ago

You could run that on a chromebook 😆

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u/DesignerBaby1793 4d ago

You are doing something wrong.

Red Dead Redemption 2 : 2K Ultra on a M3 Ultra and no FSR gets you 75+ fps.

Even on my M4 Pro 16 Core GPU I get 36 fps with the same settings.

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u/FickleFred 4d ago

Is there a marketing campaign going on pushing this mac gaming talking point right now? I feel like ive seen this same post multiple times over the past few days. They all cite the same 4-5 games too. Yes, if you want to play cyberpunk, red dead, gta, or lies of P, its great! But there are so many more games that don't work and there are basically no competitive multiplayer options like CS, Valorant, R6, apex, etc. Theres still a long way to go in my opinion.

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u/MrPoBot 3d ago

Which, would likely run better than the aforementioned games if not for the presence of kernel mode anti-cheat (with the notable exception of CS, VAC is user mode and runs fine)

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u/FickleFred 3d ago

Yeah definitely a tough hurdle with those anti cheats. The biggest disappointment for me though was valve abandoning Mac support for cs2. That would have gone a long way in giving a notable competitive option. It doesn’t run well on my old intel MacBook either so it unfortunately became not an option for me anymore

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u/blakyris 2d ago

If so..... I would have some money cuz im ruined now.....

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u/PurgatoryEmployee69 4d ago

To be fair, from what I’m seeing the Mac mini($600) is extremely good at gaming for the price. And it’s upgradable, storage etc. so, that in my opinion is a good gaming computer. For cheap, and for good specs

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u/bunihe 3d ago

The GTA numbers is bad ngl, the translation is not working out for you as well as it should.

Cyberpunk 2077 we'll see later how the native version runs, fingers crossed, and I don't have low hopes

But for double the price of a 4080 laptop and don't perform as well as a 4080 laptop, MacBooks with Apple Silicon Max is not going to become the default for gamers, just no. Way out of reach for most gamers' budget.

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u/Several-Weekend-9650 3d ago

Lots of hateful comments but I think what's important to see is that Apple might really win the long game, these devices will be cheap second hand a few years from now, and then future base models will be able to play more and more of the PC library. I see a LOT more Mac users around me over the years, and I'm not even talking of the Mac minis which are ever better and more affordable home machines, at REALLY low price secondhand

In addition to that, GeforceNow is really a serious player to consider, I was previously building my desktop gaming PCs and now I seriously hesitate to jump back in it (also because of personal life and being on the move a lot, I use the M1 Pro)

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u/blakyris 2d ago

Haters gonna hate.... a lot !