Baldur's Gate 3 Now Available on Mac

[Voyageur]

Can someone tell me what settings you play BG3 on your MacBook?

I have a problem with my MBP 16” M1 Max: for me the image quality in the game is very low, because the game shows less than 60 fps and lags at a resolution higher than 1920x1080. But it is very blurry, given the native display resolution of 3.5K. I tried to find a balance between quality and performance by lowering the settings and using FSR 1.0 of different quality levels, but I can't find something to look at normally: the characters looks too plastic or the picture is too slow.

Maybe I got stuck because I'm used to playing BG3 on my Windows PC with RTX 4080 and Apple Studio Display. In this case, everything works stably on ultra settings, in 5K resolution with DLSS ultra-quality. It looks perfect. But there are no bonuses from the MacBook - portability and beautiful HDR.

 

[bsolar]

So online just for the duration of the verification of purchase, and then playable whilst offline afterwards?

For the "Steam part" there is an offline mode, but of course if the game uses its own launcher afterwards with its own online requirement that's not something Steam can affect.

 

[springsup]

Isn't the games on Apple's M1/M2 running under game mode? From what I understood, that uses a modified version of Wine (Linux)? So not native for Apple processors

No.

Game mode is a new feature in macOS Sonoma which gives higher priority to games and lowers the priority of background processes (e.g. push notifications, spotlight indexing, etc). It also prioritises wireless headphones and gaming controllers for reduced latency. It basically squeezes some more performance out of your Mac, so games run more fluidly.

Wine is something else, entirely separate from game mode - it’s a project which provides an open-source version of proprietary Windows APIs. It allows Windows software (not just games, but also apps such as Office) to run on non-Windows operating systems. Wine supports Linux, and it also supports the Mac (Mac and Linux have a shared Unix heritage, so lots of fundamental APIs work similarly).

Wine is a tool that helps users run software written for Windows, and helps developers port their Windows applications to other platforms with minimal effort. It is not an emulator, it’s a porting tool (Wine literally stands for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”).

As for this game - it appears to be a native Apple Silicon app. It may use Wine internally, or it may not; it really makes no difference because, as mentioned, Wine is just a tool to make development easier and not an emulator. From wha we’ve been told, there does not appear to be any emulation going on when running this game on an Apple Silicon Mac.

 

[Mac_The_Ripper]

Read what I said: "I certainly agree it would be helpful if RAM upgrading cost less."

Y'all whining about 16 GB RAM really just want more for less = cheaper product, duh. If you want to uselessly whine about Apple's prices be up front about it. But do not try to prohibit other folks from availability to least-cost 8 GB RAM choices.

E.g. if I was buying 100 MBAs for a school district just a few dollars less cost per computer might be a very big deal. And managing K-12 apps running one app at a time with Mac OS would easily run under 8 GB RAM.

You can easily get a 15" PC laptop with 16GB of RAM on the base model for well under $1299 (15" M2 MBA - 8GB) so no, we don't want more for less. We want the industry standard amount of RAM in 2023, which is 16GB, for $1299. It amazes me how people defend Apple's penny pinching like Apple as a company cares about them at all. Crazy.

 

[H00513R]

Been playing it through Steam and really like it.

Admittedly it was the pre-release, but my 2019 27” iMac with 32gb of memory had been fine. I hope they don’t screw with the requirements. I haven’t altered any settings as well.

 

[cylack]

I don’t game that often but had to buy this to check it out since the reviews are very high; the highest in Metacritic ever for a game. I used to love playing RPG’s like Bard’s Tale on the Apple IIGS. Hope this lives up to the hype.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

I don’t game that often but had to buy this to check it out since the reviews are very high; the highest in Metacritic ever for a game. I used to love playing RPG’s like Bard’s Tale on the Apple IIGS. Hope this lives up to the hype.

I never game but this looks fascinating. Love to hear your feedback on it.

 

[Alpha Centauri]

You can install your steam library on an external SSD, and it doesn't even have a massive impact on performance - I used to do this on my Mac, until my external SSD died.

I’ve still (for now) got plenty space on the internal. So BG3 in a NVMe m.2+TB4 enclosure won’t make a big difference if played on the highest graphics settings? It’s a 16“ M2 MBP max 64GB I would be using.

 

[rtrueman]

Any iMac Pro folks try this yet? I have the 10-core with updated Radeon Pro Vega 64 16 GB with 64 RAM. You'd think this would be okay.

 

[Regulus67]

Any iMac Pro folks try this yet? I have the 10-core with updated Radeon Pro Vega 64 16 GB with 64 RAM. You'd think this would be okay.

I believe it will be perfectly fine.
My Mac Pro has the 16-core, and Vega II. And I would think that is more or less equal when it comes to games. Same with the Apple SSD, which is plenty fast.
I use a DIY 5k iMac late 2015 display.

 

[somnolentsurfer]

Can someone tell me what settings you play BG3 on your MacBook?

I have a problem with my MBP 16” M1 Max: for me the image quality in the game is very low, because the game shows less than 60 fps and lags at a resolution higher than 1920x1080. But it is very blurry, given the native display resolution of 3.5K. I tried to find a balance between quality and performance by lowering the settings and using FSR 1.0 of different quality levels, but I can't find something to look at normally: the characters looks too plastic or the picture is too slow.

Maybe I got stuck because I'm used to playing BG3 on my Windows PC with RTX 4080 and Apple Studio Display. In this case, everything works stably on ultra settings, in 5K resolution with DLSS ultra-quality. It looks perfect. But there are no bonuses from the MacBook - portability and beautiful HDR.

I’m playing on the 16” M1 Max. I don’t really know what my frame rate is as the Steam overlay is completely unusable in HDR. It’s playable but not perfectly smooth, but I tend to prefer things looking pretty than smooth (within reason, obviously). I have native res, with everything on high/ultra and FSR on the highest quality setting. I did find that by default it was scaling to fit below the notch, which makes everything blurry, so make sure it’s set to a true 16:10 resolution, not one that includes the notch area, then find the game executable at right click > get info, and turn off ‘scale to fit below built in camera’.

I’ve also found that one of the anti aliasing settings turns everything into a blurry mess. It seems better either off, or the top one in the list.

 

[Wheel_D]

There are nine pages of responses here, so I guess the chances of anyone seeing this are slim. But if you’re playing on an M1/M2 MacBook Pro, be sure to tick the easy to miss HDR option in the launcher settings.

I’m relatively new to Macs; are they able to handle HDR correctly? I recall hearing that even Apple’s Studio Display isn’t properly HDR compatible.

 

[gagaliya]

Can someone tell me what settings you play BG3 on your MacBook?

I have a problem with my MBP 16” M1 Max: for me the image quality in the game is very low, because the game shows less than 60 fps and lags at a resolution higher than 1920x1080. But it is very blurry, given the native display resolution of 3.5K. I tried to find a balance between quality and performance by lowering the settings and using FSR 1.0 of different quality levels, but I can't find something to look at normally: the characters looks too plastic or the picture is too slow.

Maybe I got stuck because I'm used to playing BG3 on my Windows PC with RTX 4080 and Apple Studio Display. In this case, everything works stably on ultra settings, in 5K resolution with DLSS ultra-quality. It looks perfect. But there are no bonuses from the MacBook - portability and beautiful HDR.

you have to play at the monitor native resolution otherwise it always will be blurry in comparison. This is the reason why you buy monitor resolution speced to your hardware, ie i have a 3070 and use 1440p monitor for gaming at max setting instead of using the 4k monitor,, the little sacrifice in resolution to me is worth it to play at monitor's native resolution without any slow down.

For m1 max, someone mentioned earlier they were able to play bg3 pretty well at 4k, so i am not sure if you are getting thermal throttled or dont have enough memory? The fan should be running loud at max when you play bg3. Alternative is to buy a 1440p monitor and hook it up to the laptop, you should at least be able to do that. It doesn't sound right that m1 max can only run on 1080p, must be some setting that got turned on that is killing the game, or cooling is not kicking in.

 

[Voyageur]

I’m playing on the 16” M1 Max. I don’t really know what my frame rate is as the Steam overlay is completely unusable in HDR. It’s playable but not perfectly smooth, but I tend to prefer things looking pretty than smooth (within reason, obviously). I have native res, with everything on high/ultra and FSR on the highest quality setting. I did find that by default it was scaling to fit below the notch, which makes everything blurry, so make sure it’s set to a true 16:10 resolution, not one that includes the notch area, then find the game executable at right click > get info, and turn off ‘scale to fit below built in camera’.

I’ve also found that one of the anti aliasing settings turns everything into a blurry mess. It seems better either off, or the top one in the list.

You can use command in terminal:

/bin/launchctl setenv MTL_HUD_ENABLED 1

and the next game you start is going to show Metal overlay with fps count. This command disables the overlay:

/bin/launchctl setenv MTL_HUD_ENABLED 0

 

[Voyageur]

you have to play at the monitor native resolution otherwise it always will be blurry in comparison. This is the reason why you buy monitor resolution speced to your hardware, ie i have a 3070 and use 1440p monitor for gaming at max setting instead of using the 4k monitor,, the little sacrifice in resolution to me is worth it to play at monitor's native resolution without any slow down.

For m1 max, someone mentioned earlier they were able to play bg3 pretty well at 4k, so i am not sure if you are getting thermal throttled or dont have enough memory? The fan should be running loud at max when you play bg3. Alternative is to buy a 1440p monitor and hook it up to the laptop, you should at least be able to do that. It doesn't sound right that m1 max can only run on 1080p, must be some setting that got turned on that is killing the game, or cooling is not kicking in.

Interesting, I would like to look at these 4K in the M1 Max, because I have 32 cores, a 16" chassis and 64 GB of memory. In addition, the coolers work at full capacity, the MacBook gets hot during games - I even use a special stand for free air flow. Later I will try to connect via Apple Studio display, I will put 1440p there, which should look acceptable on 27" 5K

 

[AlexJaye]

Sorry you chose to underbuy on RAM with your M1. For years I have been strongly recommending folks to buy more RAM. We agree that only special low-end use cases should choose 8 GB RAM.

However just like I chose 96 GB RAM IMO those special low-end use cases should have 8 GB RAM as a choice. At some point of course Apple will move to higher base RAM as RAM needs always increase, but Apple's motives and costing there are no doubt complex.

Except, Apple Stans everywhere fully promise and believe that 8GB is MORE than enough for most people, even in 2023. It was a huge M selling point!

It's a joke, and so are Apple base computer configurations. The defense of Apple on poor business practices is quite sad, although very expected, at least on MacRumors Forums.

 

[upthetoffees]

Except, Apple Stans everywhere fully promise and believe that 8GB is MORE than enough for most people, even in 2023. It was a huge M selling point!

It's a joke, and so are Apple base computer configurations. The defense of Apple on poor business practices is quite sad, although very expected, at least on MacRumors Forums.

Well don’t forget that a lot of people do buy laptops for ‘low-end uses’ which the op mentioned: surfing, word processing, watching youtube. 8GB should be fine for that. Gaming and heavier use needs 16GB minimum, no secrets there but many will try to get away with it and then somehow blame Apple.

They should make lower end laptops for the low-end uses mentioned above. Think they will.

 

[histeachn81]

I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 since early access and through launch, playing cooperative, mostly on Steam Deck, and last night I gave it a proper go on my base model 13" M1 MacBook Air - it absolutely blitzes the steam deck, while simultaneously lasting longer on battery (unsure how long it will run, but played a few hours coop with a friend and didn't need to charge).

I am so impressed that it runs this well on fanless hardware! (Medium Graphics, 900P) I did try running it at 4K on my LG monitor, but that only managed about 11-14 FPS at a pinch. Looks great on the MacBook screen too.

I kept the Steam Deck around specifically to play BG3 (I am primarily a console gamer) but it looks like the MBA has this covered now - Is there anything this wonderful computer cannot do?!

Only downside was having to delete basically EVERYTHING because it only had a paltry 256gb SSD.

Thank you for posting this. I wanted to see how th M1 Air performs but most posting have beefier models. I have one with 16 GB and more storage, and the settings you use seem perfectly fine for me (of course would enjoy better graphics, but I’m more of a gameplay person myself). Thanks.

 

[Joe Dohn]

Well don’t forget that a lot of people do buy laptops for ‘low-end uses’ which the op mentioned: surfing, word processing, watching youtube. 8GB should be fine for that. Gaming and heavier use needs 16GB minimum, no secrets there but many will try to get away with it and then somehow blame Apple.

They should make lower end laptops for the low-end uses mentioned above. Think they will.

Steam allows you to install games on external disks. Just sayin'.

 

[Bug-Creator]

They should make lower end laptops for the low-end uses mentioned above. Think they will.

And then name it as something suggesting "light", like MacBookFart... or something like that.

 

[v3rlon]

This whole thread arguing about running a triple A game on minimum spec is quite pointless. It’s like complaining why it doesn’t run well on a pc with integrated graphics…

The real question is how does BG3 run on a high spec Mac vs gaming PC. Has anyone run the game on 4K and ultra setting using a m2 max 32gb? How does it compare performance wise vs say a rtx 3070 or 4070.

I have it running on rtx 3070 and it works great, but pain in the ass to switch to pc every time I want to play as all my other work is on mac. I don’t mind buying a mac copy to support this good company and mac gaming and not have to fire up the pc, if the performance is good on high setting on a mac studio m2 max

I am running on a M1 Ultra with 64GB of RAM in 4K with every slider maxed and not having issues. I don’t know the frame rate, but everything moves smoothly.

 

[Chuckeee]

I am running on a M1 Ultra with 64GB of RAM in 4K with every slider maxed and not having issues. I don’t know the frame rate, but everything moves smoothly.

Have you gotten to the 3rd act?

 

[Regulus67]

I just found a review of Baldurs Gate 3 on Mac, with interview of the developing studio.
Very interesting in my opinion. With explanation of the hardware targets. Both Intel and Apple

 

[v3rlon]

Can someone tell me what settings you play BG3 on your MacBook?

I have a problem with my MBP 16” M1 Max: for me the image quality in the game is very low, because the game shows less than 60 fps and lags at a resolution higher than 1920x1080. But it is very blurry, given the native display resolution of 3.5K. I tried to find a balance between quality and performance by lowering the settings and using FSR 1.0 of different quality levels, but I can't find something to look at normally: the characters looks too plastic or the picture is too slow.

Maybe I got stuck because I'm used to playing BG3 on my Windows PC with RTX 4080 and Apple Studio Display. In this case, everything works stably on ultra settings, in 5K resolution with DLSS ultra-quality. It looks perfect. But there are no bonuses from the MacBook - portability and beautiful HDR.

I am playing on an M1 Ultra Studio with 64GB RAM and all settings maxed. The game plays fine for me.

My daughter tried it on a 2015 MacBook Air i7 and, well, the experience was so painful to watch that

My daughter is now playing it on an M2 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM. Her settings are about middle for most things. I thought about an M1 with 16GB, but this seems to work so far.

 

[brgjoe]

Is the game experience ok on that M2 Macbook Air for her? I was thinking of either getting a M2 Macbook Air or going for the M1 Macbook Pro (the 16GB/512GB) with an eye on possibly being able to play BG3 on it.