Intel based old games on an ARM based Mac - desperately need feedback.

[JKtheDovahkiin]

Hi.

I use MacBooks for many things, including some games. The most crucial games to me are:
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords
Minecraft (Desktop version)

I am concerned however how will these perform on Apple Silicone Mac without being optimized.
Anyone tried those on M1 Mac? Please help me.

Thank you!!! 😁

 

[Lord Hamsa]

I can't help you directly, but for comparison purposes others might have more info if you provided what your current setup is so they can have some kind of baseline to use.

 

[JKtheDovahkiin]

Hi.
Thanks for the quick reply.

My base setup is a
2020 MacBook Air with 8GB RAM, 500 GB SSD, intel core i5, quad core and intel Iris plus graphics 1536 MB

2019 MacBook Pro 16 inch with 16 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD intel Core i9 8 core and intel UHD Graphics 630 + AMD Radeon Pro 5500M

But I don't think that's relevant. What I need to know is will these will work on apple M1 chip inside new Macs (especially the MacBook Air) and if there's someone who can tell me that from experience, and not based on assumptions.

 

[MuckrakerJG]

I saw a Youtuber playing World of Warcraft with the M1 MacBook Pro earlier today. They were also streaming to Twitch using OBS on the same device. Note that while Blizzard is providing native support for WoW today, that patch, 9.0.2, was not live at the time of this stream, meaning WoW and OBS were both being used under Rosetta at the time I watched this on YouTube.

The game got 30 FPS at 1080p resolution on graphics settings 5 out of 10.

I assume FPS will be higher once the native patch goes live and also higher if you are only running the game and not also streaming to Twitch. But I thought even the 30 FPS on 5 was impressive considering the conditions.

WoW and KOTOR graphics are similar, so I would expect similar performance for you, even if KOTOR does not go native.

Or wait, KOTOR is the single player game that was originally on Xbox, right? Not the Star Wars MMO? I’d imagine that would run even better than WoW then.

 

[JKtheDovahkiin]

I saw a Youtuber playing World of Warcraft with the M1 MacBook Pro earlier today. They were also streaming to Twitch using OBS on the same device. Note that while Blizzard is providing native support for WoW today, that patch, 9.0.2, was not live at the time of this stream, meaning WoW and OBS were both being used under Rosetta at the time I watched this on YouTube.

The game got 30 FPS at 1080p resolution on graphics settings 5 out of 10.

I assume FPS will be higher once the native patch goes live and also higher if you are only running the game and not also streaming to Twitch. But I thought even the 30 FPS on 5 was impressive considering the conditions.

WoW and KOTOR are both old games so I would expect similar performance for you, even if KOTOR does not go native.

I see, thank you! I suppose you do not know anyone who actually played the KotOR games and/or Minecraft on M1 Mac?

 

[MuckrakerJG]

I see, thank you! I suppose you do not know anyone who actually played the KotOR games and/or Minecraft on M1 Mac?

No, but I have KOTOR on my iPhone. It runs great, and an M1 processor is even faster than the A13 I have on my current phone. Even with Rosetta emulation, you will be fine. And Minecraft can run on a potato, lol. I think you’re good to go.

 

[JKtheDovahkiin]

No, but I have KOTOR on my iPhone. It runs great, and an M1 processor is even faster than the A13 I have on my current phone. Even with Rosetta emulation, you will be fine. And Minecraft can run on a potato, lol. I think you’re good to go.

I see, thank you! But still I'd prefer to know for sure that they actually work.

 

[primmer10590]

EVE Online just crashes, doesn't work, before anyone asks, brand new install, never used it before.

 

[r6mile]

Hi.

I use MacBooks for many things, including some games. The most crucial games to me are:
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords
Minecraft (Desktop version)

I am concerned however how will these perform on Apple Silicone Mac without being optimized.
Anyone tried those on M1 Mac? Please help me.

Thank you!!! 😁

Really doubt they will even run the Mac version of these games. As far as I understand, Rosetta only emulates 64-bit x86-64 code. These old games will be 32-bit.

However, Apple Silicon Macs will run iPad apps so you should be able to run that version.

 

[JKtheDovahkiin]

Really doubt they will even run the Mac version of these games. As far as I understand, Rosetta only emulates 64-bit x86-64 code. These old games will be 32-bit.

However, Apple Silicon Macs will run iPad apps so you should be able to run that version.

These games will run because they are updated to 64-bit. If they weren't, they would not work in Catalina

 

[r6mile]

Fair enough. I didn't realise these had been updated - most of my Steam Library is older games and doesn't work in Catalina. I assumed since they are old that they also hadn't.

In that case, I expect an M1 Mac to run them well, though you never know for sure until someone tries it I suppose.

 

[nkdonut]

Minecraft does work.

 

[JKtheDovahkiin]

Minecraft does work.
View attachment 1671952

Thank You!!!!

 

[JKtheDovahkiin]

Fair enough. I didn't realise these had been updated - most of my Steam Library is older games and doesn't work in Catalina. I assumed since they are old that they also hadn't.

In that case, I expect an M1 Mac to run them well, though you never know for sure until someone tries it I suppose.

I know. That's why I'm reaching out. In hopes of drawing attention of someone who did try them. Oh and one more thing, the Star Wars games I have are from Mac App Store, not from Steam.

 

[JKtheDovahkiin]

I saw a Youtuber playing World of Warcraft with the M1 MacBook Pro earlier today. They were also streaming to Twitch using OBS on the same device. Note that while Blizzard is providing native support for WoW today, that patch, 9.0.2, was not live at the time of this stream, meaning WoW and OBS were both being used under Rosetta at the time I watched this on YouTube.

The game got 30 FPS at 1080p resolution on graphics settings 5 out of 10.

I assume FPS will be higher once the native patch goes live and also higher if you are only running the game and not also streaming to Twitch. But I thought even the 30 FPS on 5 was impressive considering the conditions.

WoW and KOTOR graphics are similar, so I would expect similar performance for you, even if KOTOR does not go native.

Or wait, KOTOR is the single player game that was originally on Xbox, right? Not the Star Wars MMO? I’d imagine that would run even better than WoW then.

No, KotOR is not the MMO. It's a single player RPG game. And yes, it was originally made for Xbox. According to Wikipedia at least.