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Anyone Miss Intel Macs for Gaming?

groove-agent

groove-agent

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I miss the flexibility of the Intel macs, especially for gaming.

Since Apple Silicon I have to maintain a PC for gaming. With the old Intels you could eGPU/ dual boot Windows and it was a decent gamer. Also Parallels virtualization software gave adequate performance to Intel apps in MacOS.

I just replaced my 10 year old gaming PC. I told myself the replaced gaming PC would be my last PC in hopes that Apple would progress farther with Apple silicon. Unfortunately I think the obsession with AI has delayed hardware development.

On the productivity side, I don't miss Intel's hot output and fan noise. I remember doing voiceovers for video and the fan would spin up so loud on my i9 MBP I had to put it on the floor so the microphone wouldn't pick it up.

As retro as it seems, I wish Apple would simply make an Apple Silicon eGPU via TB5 that any Mac user can add to their existing system to turn into a gaming setup.
 
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groove-agent said:
I miss the flexibility of the Intel macs, especially for gaming.

Since Apple Silicon I have to maintain a PC for gaming. With the old Intels you could eGPU/ dual boot Windows and it was a decent gamer. Also Parallels virtualization software gave adequate performance to Intel apps in MacOS.

I just replaced my 10 year old gaming PC. I told myself the replaced gaming PC would be my last PC in hopes that Apple would progress farther with Apple silicon. Unfortunately I think the obsession with AI has delayed hardware development.

On the productivity side, I don't miss Intel's hot output and fan noise. I remember doing voiceovers for video and the fan would spin up so loud on my i9 MBP I had to put it on the floor so the microphone wouldn't pick it up.

As retro as it seems, I wish Apple would simply make an Apple Silicon eGPU via TB5 that any Mac user can add to their existing system to turn into a gaming setup.
Click to expand...

I don't miss it at all.

Crossover satisfies what gaming needs I have.
 
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groove-agent said:
I miss the flexibility of the Intel macs, especially for gaming.

Since Apple Silicon I have to maintain a PC for gaming. With the old Intels you could eGPU/ dual boot Windows and it was a decent gamer. Also Parallels virtualization software gave adequate performance to Intel apps in MacOS.

I just replaced my 10 year old gaming PC. I told myself the replaced gaming PC would be my last PC in hopes that Apple would progress farther with Apple silicon. Unfortunately I think the obsession with AI has delayed hardware development.

On the productivity side, I don't miss Intel's hot output and fan noise. I remember doing voiceovers for video and the fan would spin up so loud on my i9 MBP I had to put it on the floor so the microphone wouldn't pick it up.

As retro as it seems, I wish Apple would simply make an Apple Silicon eGPU via TB5 that any Mac user can add to their existing system to turn into a gaming setup.
Click to expand...
Intel Macs were great when I was working traveling with a one computer did it all (work and gaming) for me. Now my PC meets my gaming needs, although I still have a Mac laptop for productivity.
 
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I was, until recently with RPCS3 getting so good.

I play old games though.

Love me some Gran Turismo 5 (and 4 -- PS3/PS2 emulation) as well as Tiger Woods golf and Top Spin 4 tennis (PS3).
All work really well on my Mac Mini M4 base model.
 
turbineseaplane said:
I was, until recently with RPCS3 getting so good.

I play old games though.
Click to expand...
I guess it depends on what games you play. I remember on my 2008 MBP I only played World of Warcraft and the chassis started to swell where the CPU was. At that time, that game was fine for me because I couldn't afford a PC as well, nor did I have the space for one at my little sitting station in my apartment.

Even now I think about ditching my PC and just playing a handful of games, but when you compared something like World of Warcraft on Mac vs PC, it looks a lot better on PC. WoW doesn't support proper ray traced shadows etc on Mac.

If I was in that situation now I'd probably use NVIDIA Geforce Now on my Mac, but if you play any eSport PVP games, it wouldn't be great for that.
 
groove-agent said:
How much of a fps hit do you figure you're getting with crossover virtualization?
Click to expand...

Depends on the game and settings. My own test between Resident Evil 4 in Crossover and native Mac version at 1440p Max settings no upscaling on Mac Studio M1 Max 24c GPU, Hair strands off in Windows version:

Native Mac port 45 fps vs 21 fps in Crossover, with Terrain Off 28 fps. The native version is 61-114% faster with 2-3 GB less GPU and application memory usage and half the GPU pressure.

OpenGL games are much faster in Crossover. Some other games have the same performance.
 
I finally downloaded the Crossover trial.

- Heroes of the Storm was a stuttering, unplayable mess

Installed Steam next and will try Jedi Survivor and Battlefront 2. Wish me luck.
 
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I think many (most?) of us had Intel Macs with integrated graphics, so any current Mac running Crossover should still be a massive improvement. My M4 Air does a pretty good job with all but AAA titles from the last few years.

That said, I'm not ditching my desktop PC quite yet. 😉
 
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My 2018 Macmini 8,1 with sonnet egpu with Rx 6800xt card runs fine on WOW using windows 10. I take it needs the proper setu, but for my needs in using two Macminis for dual setups for OBS, it works fine. I just ran a program to see compatiblity issues on new upcoming games and my the results says I'm in the 91% of game capability to run a recommended settings.
 

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No I don't miss it. I remember how disappointed I was in my 2011 iMac. I falsely assumed that it was going to have a desktop grade GPU. It had a mobile GPU that was weak sauce for gaming. Yes, I could use Boot Camp for Windows only games, but booting out of MacOS just to play a game was irritating after awhile. That's why I bought a Windows desktop in 2014 just for gaming. If I didn't play computer games, I would have abandoned Windows for home use a long time ago. The iMac was great for everything else.
 
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Black_Mage said:
No I don't miss it. I remember how disappointed I was in my 2011 iMac. I falsely assumed that it was going to have a desktop grade GPU. It had a mobile GPU that was weak sauce for gaming. Yes, I could use Boot Camp for Windows only games, but booting out of MacOS just to play a game was irritating after awhile. That's why I bought a Windows desktop in 2014 just for gaming. If I didn't play computer games, I would have abandoned Windows for home use a long time ago. The iMac was great for everything else.
Click to expand...
I’m with you on that…
 
Black_Mage said:
No I don't miss it. I remember how disappointed I was in my 2011 iMac. I falsely assumed that it was going to have a desktop grade GPU. It had a mobile GPU that was weak sauce for gaming. Yes, I could use Boot Camp for Windows only games, but booting out of MacOS just to play a game was irritating after awhile. That's why I bought a Windows desktop in 2014 just for gaming. If I didn't play computer games, I would have abandoned Windows for home use a long time ago. The iMac was great for everything else.
Click to expand...
This right here is what makes Mac Pro + proxmox almighty. Pick the best GPU you can afford, and proxmox it for probably 97% of the performance vs. running in bootcamp, without rebooting. Yeah I had friends with iMacs that would overheat during WoW sessions. 🤣
 
Not in the least.

Well, I don’t play many games anymore, but the few that I do run well under Whisky (I really should invest in crossover), or are native already.

For the ones that don’t, I installed Windows 10 on my old 5,1 and spent hours just troubleshooting the old games instead of playing them. And using Windows 11 for work has me convinced that it’s not getting any better.
 
MRMSFC said:
Not in the least.

Well, I don’t play many games anymore, but the few that I do run well under Whisky (I really should invest in crossover), or are native already.

For the ones that don’t, I installed Windows 10 on my old 5,1 and spent hours just troubleshooting the old games instead of playing them. And using Windows 11 for work has me convinced that it’s not getting any better.
Click to expand...

Whisky uses Wine 7.7. You could try Sikarugir which currently uses Wine 10. Crossover uses Wine 11. You could also use Heroic with GPTK/Wine/Crossover Wine.
 
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Black_Mage said:
No I don't miss it. I remember how disappointed I was in my 2011 iMac. I falsely assumed that it was going to have a desktop grade GPU.
Click to expand...
You could have bought an eGPU for your iMac, but in the end a PC would have been best if you don't mind having dual setups, particularly at one desk.

This is what I'm doing now and it makes things a little more complicated. I bought a logitech gaming mouse/ keyboard that I can connect to my PC via wired while gaming then detach the cables which forces them to go wireless to my mac. I then have to switch the monitor to display port where my PC video is connected.

I'd still sacrifice *some* FPS and games to centralize my setup to one computer - mostly because I'm a minimalist. I just bought a new $2600 (CDN) gaming PC which I'd rather put towards a faster Mac since the Mac is for productivity and I use it more often, and it actually makes me money. 😉

This will be my last gaming this PC (I hate MS Windows) so I hope Apple has a much better gaming platform within 5 years.
 
Flint Ironstag said:
Check out Morgonaut's Hackintosh / Proxmox videos on youtube. It really is the best thing since sliced bread.
Click to expand...
I built a Hackintosh around 2017 which was a cool project but in the end I spent more time getting hardware to work than actually being productive. Plus there were a lot of sacrifices on the MacOS side of things.
 
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