Gaming performance and issues in macOS 14 Sonoma

[Homy]

I'm currently on Monterey and wonder if Sonoma would break old 64-bit x86 games. That's the reason I haven't upgraded to Ventura either. I have old games like Mad Max, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Batman: Arkham City I haven't played. Even Crossover 23.5 with D3DMetal and Denuvo support needs Sonoma.

There are other benefits of using Sonoma such as Game Mode and of course MetalFX which is missing in Monterey so I would like to upgrade but wonder if I should play through my backlog of old games first. What's your gaming experience? Any issues in Sonoma, especially with old games using Rosetta 2? How is the performance compared to Monterey/Ventura or with/without Game mode? I can't find a compatibility list.

 

[diamond.g]

I'm currently on Monterey and wonder if Sonoma would break old 64-bit x86 games. That's the reason I haven't upgraded to Ventura either. I have old games like Mad Max, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Batman: Arkham City I haven't played. Even Crossover 23.5 with D3DMetal and Denuvo support needs Sonoma.

There are other benefits of using Sonoma such as Game Mode and of course MetalFX which is missing in Monterey so I would like to upgrade but wonder if I should play through my backlog of old games first. What's your gaming experience? Any issues in Sonoma, especially with old games using Rosetta 2? How is the performance compared to Monterey/Ventura or with/without Game mode? I can't find a compatibility list.

What mac hardware are you using currently?

 

[Homy]

What mac hardware are you using currently?

Base Mac Studio M1 Max. Why?

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I'm currently on Monterey and wonder if Sonoma would break old 64-bit x86 games. That's the reason I haven't upgraded to Ventura either. I have old games like Mad Max, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Batman: Arkham City I haven't played. Even Crossover 23.5 with D3DMetal and Denuvo support needs Sonoma.

There are other benefits of using Sonoma such as Game Mode and of course MetalFX which is missing in Monterey so I would like to upgrade but wonder if I should play through my backlog of old games first. What's your gaming experience? Any issues in Sonoma, especially with old games using Rosetta 2? How is the performance compared to Monterey/Ventura or with/without Game mode? I can't find a compatibility list.

When I was on the Sonoma beta, Alien Isolation was unplayable. It kept crashing every five minutes, and Feral told me to downgrade back to a release candidate. I don't know if that's still the case now that Sonoma is out but that was one game I just could not play on Sonoma

 

[Homy]

When I was on the Sonoma beta, Alien Isolation was unplayable. It kept crashing every five minutes, and Feral told me to downgrade back to a release candidate. I don't know if that's still the case now that Sonoma is out but that was one game I just could not play on Sonoma

Oh, thanks! First time I hear about it. I have that too and it’s on my playlist. It uses OpenGL though so the performance is so-so like Sleeping Dogs and XCOM 2.

 

[diamond.g]

Base Mac Studio M1 Max. Why?

Was unsure if you were on Intel Mac still. I'm on Ventura but to be honest haven't played much outside of Pathfinder King Maker and BG 3 on my MBP M1 Max.

 

[Homy]

Was unsure if you were on Intel Mac still. I'm on Ventura but to be honest haven't played much outside of Pathfinder King Maker and BG 3 on my MBP M1 Max.

I could install Sonoma and test it on my MBP M1 Pro which I use occasionally and not for gaming but I don't want to have different OSs on my Macs.

 

[Irishman]

I could install Sonoma and test it on my MBP M1 Pro which I use occasionally and not for gaming but I don't want to have different OSs on my Macs.

Why not have different versions of MacOS on different Macs?

My current Mac is a late 2012 21.5” iMac which is topped out with Mojave. I will never upgrade it past that because it will lose 32-bit support if I do.

You might be looking at it backwards in the sense that the hardware and software have to meet the needs that you can’t meet otherwise. When I do get my first M3 Mac Studio Max, why would it matter that my present Mac runs Mojave?

 

[diamond.g]

Why not have different versions of MacOS on different Macs?

My current Mac is a late 2012 21.5” iMac which is topped out with Mojave. I will never upgrade it past that because it will lose 32-bit support if I do.

You might be looking at it backwards in the sense that the hardware and software have to meet the needs that you can’t meet otherwise. When I do get my first M3 Mac Studio Max, why would it matter that my present Mac runs Mojave?

Does iCloud integration features work well when the systems are on different versions?

 

[Homy]

Why not have different versions of MacOS on different Macs?

My current Mac is a late 2012 21.5” iMac which is topped out with Mojave. I will never upgrade it past that because it will lose 32-bit support if I do.

You might be looking at it backwards in the sense that the hardware and software have to meet the needs that you can’t meet otherwise. When I do get my first M3 Mac Studio Max, why would it matter that my present Mac runs Mojave?

We’re in slightly different situations. You want to keep your old Mac for playing 32-bit games and don’t want to upgrade for that reason. Your main Mac will have the latest OS because you can play old games on your old iMac. I use my main Mac for gaming and don’t have an old Mac for old games. I want to upgrade my OS on my main Mac but it could break old games. So I’m using one Mac for everything and don’t want to use my MBP for playing old games because of the weaker GPU and the extra hassle to connect my peripherals to it every time I want to play old games. I may have to that someday but it’s easier to stay on an older OS so I don’t have to change between Macs. So I’m examining the possibilities.

It was the same situation when I only had my iMac 21.5” 2011 before it died after almost 12 years. I didn’t upgrade to High Sierra 10.13 for game compatibility and the new APFS that could slow down hard drives.

It turns out that I actually will need to play some games in Crossover despite having the Mac port so part of the problem is solved. Old OpenGL games seem to have much better performance in Crossover than when playing the Mac port. I tested Sleeping Dogs and depending on the settings the frame rate can be more than 2x higher in Crossover. I will test more games and have checked Crossover compatibility list and it looks promising. Here is a comparison between the Mac port of Sleeping Dogs and Crossover.

Mac port OpenGL 29.7 fps

Crossover 23.5 72.5 fps

 

[jeanlain]

It turns out that I actually will need to play some games in Crossover despite having the Mac port so part of the problem is solved. Old OpenGL games seem to have much better performance in Crossover than when playing the Mac port. I tested Sleeping Dogs and depending on the settings the frame rate can be more than 2x higher in Crossover. I will test more games and have checked Crossover compatibility list and it looks promising. Here is a comparison between the Mac port of Sleeping Dogs and Crossover.

Interesting. Do you have Alien Isolation to test?

 

[galad]

I remember buying Sleeping Dogs years ago, but it always run horribly and stuttered each second, so I never played it. Anything OpenGL is going to be sloooowww on macOS.

 

[galad]

About upgrading, you can install the system on an external disk and see how it goes.

 

[Homy]

About upgrading, you can install the system on an external disk and see how it goes.

Yes, there are alternatives but I read that it should be a SSD because of APFS as I wrote. Otherwise it will be slow. In another thread they say you can run into problem with booting. The SSD should be Thunderbolt if your Mac only has USB-C or you can boot through USB-A with other drives which is slow too. I only have external HDD so I could simply create a partition on my Mac’s SSD and test because my games are on external HDD and I don't have to install them again.

 

[Homy]

Interesting. Do you have Alien Isolation to test?

Yes, I will do that and report back soon.

UPDATE: It was a quick test. I got just a black screen and window. According to the compatibility database it has never worked in Crossover. The same result with or without DXVK.

It's playable on Mac though when you turn off SSAO which tanks the game on Mac. Here in the first scene I get 46 fps at 1440p. Turning off Planar Reflections gives another 5-7 fps. Lowering Level of Detail or Volumetric Lighting here has no impact. It's a pity Feral didn't update the game to Metal even though they released a new iOS version with Metal.

No reflections

 

[Homy]

I remember buying Sleeping Dogs years ago, but it always run horribly and stuttered each second, so I never played it. Anything OpenGL is going to be sloooowww on macOS.

I discovered another thing. The performance gets even better if you turn off DXVK in Crossover and use only Wine. That was a surprise to me.

DXVK 1440p 56 fps

Wine 1440p 64.4 fps

I can even choose 1800p and get the same result with Wine as 1440p with DXVK.

 

[jeanlain]

UPDATE: It was a quick test. I got just a black screen and window. According to the compatibility database it has never worked in Crossover. The same result with or without DXVK.

Have you tested with D3DMetal?

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Does iCloud integration features work well when the systems are on different versions?

I have no issues across machines spanning from 2011 to 2019 running latest OS' the machines are capable of.

 

[Homy]

Have you tested with 3D3Metal?

Not possible in Monterey. Needs Sonoma.

 

[Homy]

Great news guys at least for now! I installed Sonoma on a new internal partition on my Mac Studio. Didn't bother to check if I could install Sonoma directly and started my Mac in recovery mode but I had to install Monterey first so it took about an hour to install both, first Monterey and then Sonoma.

Steam fps counter doesn't work in Sonoma. The overlay works though so you can use the other services which I never do. For that reason I can't see if Alien Isolation runs better. Metal HUD doesn't work in OpenGL games. I ran the benchmark in Sleeping Dogs though and boy you see the difference. Game mode is on by default too when running in full screen. I don't know if it's that or Sonoma/Metal 3 itself but here you see the result. Compare it with my previous screen shots. Still not as good as in Crossover which I intend to test too in Sonoma but a big improvement.

I get 27% better average fps at 1800p in Sonoma than 1080p in Monterey. At 1080p I get 35% better fps in Sonoma than in Monterey. The biggest jump is at 1800p, 59% higher fps in Sonoma. "World Density" not showing here is on Extreme in all tests btw. Stay tuned for more results.

Sonoma 40 fps Monterey 29.7 fps

Sonoma 38.9 fps Monterey 26.2 fps

Sonoma 37.6 fps Monterey 23.7 fps

 

[jeanlain]

Now you can try D3DMetal. That may be the best option to play this game, and possibly other DirectX11 games that have been ported to Mac using openGL, like Alien Isolation, Shadow of Mordor.

 

[jeanlain]

Ok, I too installed Sonoma and tried a few games.
I'm happy to report that Alien Isolation runs ok at native retina resolution on my 14" MacBook Pro, with base M1 Pro GPU (14 cores). I haven't tried the flame thrower or anything, but on a "standard" section of a level, it seems fluid. Maybe 30 fps, which is ok for this type of slow-paced game on a ProMotion display. If only the Steam fps counter worked. There is a bit of stuttering at certain points, which I suppose is due to shader compilation and is unrelated to graphical quality.
Settings were mostly high, antialiasing was disabled (not needed at this resolution) and I even turned on SSAO. The SSAO bug appears to be gone, since SSAO didn't have much impact on performance. Apple appears to have improved openGL support with Sonoma.
The windows version of the game would not run with D3DMetal (Whisky). It crashes when loading (the menu works though.

I tried RoTR with D3DMetal. It's about 25% slower than the Metal version, and shows more stuttering, but it's playable.
CS2 appears to work with the -nojoy parameter, again with some stuttering. I wouldn't play it competitively.

 

[Irishman]

Ok, I too installed Sonoma and tried a few games.
I'm happy to report that Alien Isolation runs ok at native retina resolution on my 14" MacBook Pro, with base M1 Pro GPU (14 cores). I haven't tried the flame thrower or anything, but on a "standard" section of a level, it seems fluid. Maybe 30 fps, which is ok for this type of slow-paced game on a ProMotion display. If only the Steam fps counter worked. There is a bit of stuttering at certain points, which I suppose is due to shader compilation and is unrelated to graphical quality.
Settings were mostly high, antialiasing was disabled (not needed at this resolution) and I even turned on SSAO. The SSAO bug appears to be gone, since SSAO didn't have much impact on performance. Apple appears to have improved openGL support with Sonoma.
The windows version of the game would not run with D3DMetal (Whisky). It crashes when loading (the menu works though.

I tried RoTR with D3DMetal. It's about 25% slower than the Metal version, and shows more stuttering, but it's playable.
CS2 appears to work with the -nojoy parameter, again with some stuttering. I wouldn't play it competitively.

CS 2 or CSGO?

 

[jeanlain]

CS 2 or CSGO?

CS2. CSGO is dead.

 

[Irishman]

CS2. CSGO is dead.

So, does CS2 play natively on your Mac, or are you streaming it via GFN?