Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Major gaming news at WWDC: Metal and New games
- Thread starter Homy
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
What’s the confusion exactly? Apple currently does not ship any dedicated fixed function raytracing hardware. That’s what “hardware raytracing” conventionally refers to. Raytracing pipeline is done entirely via compute shaders on current Apple Silicon while some other GPUs have fixed-function blocks to accelerate raytracing. This is also why raytracing in Apple Silicon is several times slower than, say, on Nvidia RTX series.
As to where I have this info from… it’s kind of common knowledge? While Apple does not release many hardware details, the performance characteristics of Metal RT already speaks for itself. Besides, specialized raytracing acceleration is not on the feature list of either A14 nor A15 and that’s the GPUs in the current Macs.
I am not quite sure which broken promises you refer to. I don’t think Apple ever promised that their current-gen GPUs are capable of real-time raytracing. That the checkbox is at all present in the game is curious indeed. It might be an artifact from the PC version, but it also might be a sign that Capcom already has the access to next-gen Apple GPUs capable of realtime RT and have left the option there for the time that hardware hits the market. Frankly, my bet is on option one
Feels like 1080P30 should be easily achievable.
What’s the confusion exactly? Apple currently does not ship any dedicated fixed function raytracing hardware. That’s what “hardware raytracing” conventionally refers to. Raytracing pipeline is done entirely via compute shaders on current Apple Silicon while some other GPUs have fixed-function blocks to accelerate raytracing. This is also why raytracing in Apple Silicon is several times slower than, say, on Nvidia RTX series.
As to where I have this info from… it’s kind of common knowledge? While Apple does not release many hardware details, the performance characteristics of Metal RT already speaks for itself. Besides, specialized raytracing acceleration is not on the feature list of either A14 nor A15 and that’s the GPUs in the current Macs.
I am not quite sure which broken promises you refer to. I don’t think Apple ever promised that their current-gen GPUs are capable of real-time raytracing. That the checkbox is at all present in the game is curious indeed. It might be an artifact from the PC version, but it also might be a sign that Capcom already has the access to next-gen Apple GPUs capable of realtime RT and have left the option there for the time that hardware hits the market. Frankly, my bet is on option one
For me, that’s not common knowledge at all, but I would be willing to cede that, depending on which circles or groups you share experiences and conversations within, it could easily seem that way.
Following this, I am trying to see what is informing your take, if not skill, education, or professional training. I’ve repeatedly reminded everyone that I’m not a developer, nor a coder. I do tend to defer to those who are.
Have you seen those WWDC session videos, the ones I mentioned that discussed the differences between Metal 2 and Metal 3?
Would you be interested in watching them, if I were able to get links for you?
Last edited:
Thanks for explaining. I’ve spent significant amount of time working with Metal and testing Apple GPUs under various scenarios, and can fairly confidently declare that it’s very unlikely that Apple currently ships any specialized raytracing circuitry. I’m also quite sure I watched every Metal-related WWDC video at least couple of times
If there is a particular session you want my commentary on please feel free to link it here.What I can tell is that Metal raytracing API appears to be designed with specialized hardware acceleration in mind, and it’s mostly compatible with Nvidia‘s APIs (after which DX12 and Vulkan raytracing is modeled). So Apple at least considered the issue of portability when designing these interfaces. In addition, Apple has a bunch of very interesting patents related to raytracing acceleration filed in the last couple of years which suggests that their real-time hardware raytracing solution could be on the horizon.
Last edited:
REV RT is supported with AMD RX6800XT and higher on Windows so likely same for MacOS if they ever release REV for x64 Mac Pro. Surprising it doesn't have a significant performance impact with AMD RT on.
https://wccftech.com/resident-evil-village-ray-tracing-impact-explored/
His CPU and GPU numbers across the board look wrong to me. I believe he’s misinterpreting the data shown by the Metal 3 Performance HUD, which shows render time and not % used. As a point of reference, I have Activity Monitor running on my MacBook Pro display and the game running on my Studio Display. Activity Monitor shows that my M1 Max with 32 GPU cores rendering at 4k maxed out uses 96% GPU and 84% CPU sitting at the animated title screen, but the Metal HUD shows a number next to GPU that’s around 15.
I wonder if it is frametime. When you saw the 15 what was your FPS?
The video posted by @Homy did mention that Ventura was a little bit faster than Monterey and that MetalFX was greyed out.
Yep, that’s what I meant by render time. 🤓
It was locked at 60fps, which is about right since 16.67 milliseconds would be exactly correct for 60fps.
One interesting detail for those liking Steam achievements is that MAS also offers achievements.
Your friends:
View and manage Game Center friends in the App Store on Mac
In the App Store on Mac, see your Game Center friends, friend requests, achievements for games they’re playing, and invite new friends.
And they're still inferior to Steam Achievements, or console achievement systems for that matter like PSN Trophies. No global achievement rankings, your achievements are only visible to your friends and not on a global profile, and you can't share your rarest ones on your profile
It's not just about having achievements, it's the community and sharing aspect of said achievement. It's why everyone is obsessed over Playstation's trophy system because of how easy they are to share and how rare they get with certain Platinum Trophies.
Results for M1 Ultra included
Last edited: