Metal Developer Tools on Windows Offer New Gaming Opportunities

[Azrael9]

serious gaming on a mac is achieved when pro gamers go to esports events on a mac. as a serious gamer I know that gpus are less important than what most amateurs think. also, game developers hate proprietary apis and gpus. let‘s talk about pro peripherals like gaming mice, keyboards and displays incl. their drivers and their current ridiculously bad support for macs. or optimization on gpu drivers incl fine tuning options. or streaming capabilities. and the elephant in the room that serious gaming is still native 1080p and not 4k, 5k or 6k but with 144/240 hz displays. this will never fit to the apple philosophy of not wanting to give the customer any options and keep things simple. it may work for ios games which makes the most profit anyways compared to pc games. but it will always be like baby gaming.

I hear what you're saying. And...

1080p is still prevalent. And will be for another couple of years (as I doubt the RDNA2 and Ampere will saturate the PC market to make 4k gaming mainstream and that's the next step up in quality.)

I find the term 'serious' gamers ironic. Back in the early 80s you were a 'weirdo' if played on the 8 bit consoles with their abstract squiggles. Gaming was relatively young and niche.

Now? I think gaming for all ages and males and females is quite mainstream. Even my Mum has a PS3 and can crunch the heads on Batman. Ergo. Apple are going for the mainstream gaming market at this point. (The 'serious' gaming will come along later...whether by intent or more likely, Osmosis...)

There is money in gaming and the esports competition show that gaming is increasingly taken 'seriously.' AMD are. Nvidia are. It's £££. Even Apple have got into 'gaming' with it's Arcade service. (I'm surprised the Earth didn't shake or get a solar eclipse.) Money can make many things 'serious.'

I'd hardly call casual gaming 'baby' gaming. There are many fine games on the iOS app store. But it, in the main, might be classified as 'casual' and there is a vast audience for it even if Apple's iOS gaming rep' came via osmosis. Ie they fell into it.

Compared to the unit sales of iPhone, iPad the PC gaming market is niche. If you took an AS14/A14x chip in the Mac ARm and iPad? That would be 40 million units per year. Will the PS5 with it's RDNA2 sell that many? Will any particular model of Windows PC? The days of the iOS games running on an iPod were it took its 1st steps are far behind us. The next big step is the AS14 and the AS ARM Mac being the top tier of the ARM MacOS/iOS platform.

A Mac OS ARM will likely sell the same...units as Intel Macs or more. (I expect its performance to be potent natively...) Add that to iPad units. Add it to iPhone units. Add that up per year? That's a lot of units to write once and deploy. If you're writing for the Apple platform, it will be 'easy enough' to deploy for more platforms for more £££. Even if Apple did nothing, osmosis will kick in. And 'better' games will come. Casual or serious. I think? Just good games.

Bad support for Macs. Apple have historically played their part and not very well. And Steve Jobs did say he'd make the Mac the best gaming platform in the world. I'm sure he didn't mean the detour via the iPhone and App store.

With the new AS Macs...it means devs can write once and deploy to a much bigger target platform.

The unit sales of which ££££ will probably dwarf what the PS5 sells in its 1st year.

Sure, AS has to put out decent hardware. But if the run the Metal, the Store, the CPU/GPU. A greater chance of tuning and optimising their SoCs to get much better gaming experience than is currently being served up on their 2nd class consumer Macs. And they are. Poor 2nd rate gaming citizens. It was never great on Mac Open Gl. Mac ARM SoC gpu will probably knock the tar out of the Intel iGPU for starters.

Sooner or later that casual gaming platform will produce 'triple A' games as competition for £££ hots up.

Azrael.
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You know OpenGL is a standard and it is up to each developer/manufacturer to implement it? That's why a lot of games that have native macOS clients perform much worse on macOS than in Boot Camp. Sometimes Windows (Boot Camp) client is even up to twice as fast (FPS).

What I'm getting at - if Apple is comparing Metal to its own OpenGL implementation then of course it's going to be A LOT faster. You know why? Because Apple's implementation of OpenGL was lackluster since its conception. That's why this comparison is the way it is - Vulkan is compared to OpenGL on Android. It's not apples to apples comparison.

In essence Vulkan, Metal and DirectX 12 should perform equally as good because they function very similarly. Vulkan has richer feature set than Metal at the moment but Metal is catching up quickly. However in reality Metal performance leaves much to be desired. There's no way to compare those two APIs fairly because there's no Vulkan for macOS (MoltenVK is just a wrapper around Metal). However there are games with native clients on macOS that use Metal renderer (World of Warcraft, Starcraft 2) and in Boot Camp they still perform much better on DirectX (11 and 12).

I like Apple but let's be honest for a minute. Their graphics performance was lackluster for decades now and it's not going to change overnight. They no longer compare themselves to PCs like in 90's and early 00's. They compare their devices to previous generations of their devices.

True. Re; Apple draped themselves in no glory with Open Gl.

But why compete with a 2nd rate standard of middleware against M$'s Direct X which gets the plaudits and is used by 'serious' PC Tower gaMuRs to club Mac owners with?

Far better to get that performance close to the 'Metal' and 'start again' on the Mac platform.

Sure it was bad. But why flog the horse? It was dying or dead. Better to put it out of its misery.

Apple can control the greater destiny of Mac apps and yes, 'gaming' by making 'Metal' the price of admission to the App store for the write once and deploy AS ARM, iPad and iPhone and yes, the ATV platform. Apple can control the api and quality of it. And tune it for their hardware. And they put out alot of units. Why is Metal considered proprietry and M£ Direct X 'not' by some? Metal is hardly the minority any more. It's on millions of Macs, phones and pads and atvs.

That adds up to alot of units. Enough to compare to any PC platform or console platform.

Apple may not compete directly with Steam or offer a gaming TOWURRR...but this move to offer the Metal to PC devs is noteworthy in addtion to Apple Arcade and offering Mac ARM silicon with likely signficiantly better gpu performance than the current iGPU junk.

Re: Direct X vs Metal.

I ran WoW on Open GL vs Metal. Metal was better. Surprise. That was with, likely, Blizzard's only Mac guy coming out of the cupboard to port and tune it himself. Metal is younger than Direct X. Who knew? That doesn't mean that Apple can't claw back more Direct X performance advantage. Enough to make it far more attractive tuned for AS CPU/GPU than the current laughable Intel cpu/iGPU for consumer Macs.

The iPad is a great consumer platform. Smooth as butter, sound at games...great at apps. If we re-imagine this for AS Macs with the AS silicon tuned in software stack to co-processors and 8 core cpus...and many gpu cores. The consumer AS ARM Mac can hardly do any worse than the 2nd rate tripe served up for Mac consumer gaming over the last two decades.

Seems Apple is quitely confident about their chances. CPU or GPU.

Bootcamp. It's history. It's going the way of Open GL. If we keep clinging to these crutches...then Apple gaming will never be 'great.'

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

PS5/XBox One 2020 are RDNA 2.0 based GPUs. Nothing Apple will do will match that level. They are both custom AMD SoC with Zen 2/RDNA 2.0 designs.

Perhaps we can compare PS5 and Mac AS when they're out together?

The A12z is a sound performer for its weight class.

We don't know what the A14 will do. Nor the A14x. Nor the AS14.

It's taken AMD, a cash poor company, years to catch NV' up with RDNA2. And we're still in the dark as to which, RDNA2 or Ampere will emerge a top.

Apple can't cash poor. I enjoyed the WD2020 demos. They were potent previews.

But the pudding is in the tasting.

Azrael.
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Why not adopt industry standard Vulkan instead of making developers learn another API?

Because Apple don't control that?

Thus keeping Mac owners special '2nd rate' gamers status intact.

Azrael.
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I did say current generation. Not next gen.

And I believe the A12x/z competes with the xBox one (not X) and the PS4. But that’s basically 2 years old and running in a thermally constrained tablet.

That's a very good point.

Critics of the A12x/z have a hard time realising that isn't shipping hardware...nor is it desktop or laptop hardware.

It's something in the iPad that gives the iPad great performance. That toasts its direct competition.

I'm not surprised it competes with the X 1 and the PS4. And it's two years old at that.

Using the A14, A14x and AS14, that's a large target platform of units. I expect the A14 to be a substantive performer.

Bringing enlightenment to consumer Macs.

When they ship.

Azrael.
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It feels like the appletv treats gaming as a bit of a hobby right now. If the next one has performance that beats the current gen systems and has a few genuinely excellent exclusive titles; games that have fully developed stories and last 40+ hours then I think it would become a ‘serious’ gaming platform. Ie, one that people might buy simply or primarily for the games.

No one (hardly anyone?) buys the current appletv as a gaming device.

But that might change in the future as it (eventually) gets the A14, the iPads/phones get that A14/x and the Macs get the AS14.

A 40% per core improvement in ARM for Apple is significant. And who knows what surprises they have for desktop Mac AS hardware.

Now that the platform is coming together with the pending Mac ARMS as the flagship of the 'same' software and hardware family?

Big changes.

Azrael.
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Apple has to have the hardware to entice development. If they do, developers will put in the effort. If not, they won’t.

I sincerely hope the switch to ARM will support much better graphics.

Take the iPad as an example. It toasts the competition. The iPhone toasts the competition.

The Mac ARM 'AS' will do well to perform worse than Intel iGPU...

I'd expect 'pro' level gpu performance for all consumer ARM Macs.

ie. Look at what you get for £750-£2000 on the Mac platform for graphics. It's a joke.

Extrapolate the iPad experience to the future Mac ARM consumer platform. Expect teh Mini, Macbook 13 and iMac 24 inch to get significant boosts in gpu.

Azrael.

 

[Azrael9]

This could be the canary in the coal mine for a major move into gaming. Let's hope as it would be a good thing Apple to do.

The 'Birth of Mac Gaming.'

He does decent Mac videos. Amen to what he said.

He's absolutely smashed it out the park there. A great summing up.

He's laser beam on point.

£££. When Blizzard said they were going mobile. They copped alot of heat. But PC Tower owners can moan and whine about that. But teh £££ is where it's going. Mobile.

Great news about Ray Tracing and Metal.

Azrael.
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Apple has to have the hardware to entice development. If they do, developers will put in the effort. If not, they won’t.

I sincerely hope the switch to ARM will support much better graphics.

A14 powered phones, pads, atvs and Macs.

That's great silicon. Pushing alot of unit sales.

£££. The dev's will follow.

Apple are the mobile gaming platform.

Azrael.
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Metal provides a 10 times increase in draw calls compared to OpenGL ES 3,1 while Vulkan provides a 3.5 times increase in draw calls compared to OpenGL ES 3,1.

Essentially Metal is faster.

Go Metal GO!

Azrael.
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Because OpenGL failed.

First, it became "write once debug everywhere". Everybody's implementation had different bugs made worse with different driver versions. You'd have to deal with differences and bugs on the same hardware across operating systems, and on the same operating system across different vendors.

Even Google gave up on OpenGL; Chrome translates all its OpenGL ES/WebGL into DirectX on Windows.

Second, because everything was implemented as a ton of different extensions, often proprietary, and no extensions were consistently available, causing coding to the lowest common denominator. DirectX and Metal have set feature levels that guarantee a bundle of capabilities.

Third, Khronos is a giant committee with politics and special interests. This is what happened with OpenCL. Apple gave it to them and they took it in a completely different direction, which ultimately nobody really cared about and certainly failed to compete against CUDA.

By being a closed standard, DirectX and Metal ensure a consistent API and minimal bugs across different hardware and different platforms. Look at games today, DirectX is far preferred on desktop over Vulkan.

Well said.

As good a summation as you're likely to hear.

Azrael.

 

[Ethosik]

Saying that Apple can do nothing to match that level is a pretty far reaching statement. They may not hit the ground running with equal tech, but there's no reason to believe they couldn't develop an equivalent level of hardware in the near future.

One nitpick. There's no such animal as an XBox One 2020. There is such an animal as the XBox Series X and most likely the streaming only XBox Series S. Just an opinion, but I think a Series S streaming device is more than within Apple's capabilities. Shameless plug→ GamerTag:I AM NOOB527 Forza Artist.
View attachment 933040

Ugh I wish Microsoft would have just called it Xbox Two. Their naming conventions are horrible. Its going to be quite confusing to some what the different is between the Xbox One X and Xbox One Series X.

 

[Azrael9]

I like Apple but let's be honest for a minute. Their graphics performance was lackluster for decades now and it's not going to change overnight. They no longer compare themselves to PCs like in 90's and early 00's. They compare their devices to previous generations of their devices.

Change over night?

Shrugs.*

Look at the Mac Mini which effectively has no iGPU. (It's junk.) The iMac 21 inch. Not great graphics. Let's be honest.

It took time and alot of osmosis for iPhone and iPad to become the mobile gaming monster that it is. And yes. Lots of Metal. A young API. Which is improving fast. It's better than Apple Open GL at any rate. Academic. Open GL is old and dead middleware for Macs.

I'd argue that the move to AS CPU/GPU with the avalanche of millions of iPhone and iPad apps and games? Will be transformative to the Mac gaming platform overnight.

And that will bring the developers by the £ nose.

Write once and deploy to a target platform of millions and millions of units per quarter?

40 million iPad/Mac ARM units per year?

200 million iPhone units per year

All running on potent A14 variants?

Write once and deploy?



It's a Rebirth.

Azrael.
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Almost certainly because Apple never wants to held hostage with other orgs controlling an API crucial to their platforms. By controlling Metal they can push forward with new/different GPU tech. It’s crystal clear that apples GPUs is already better than intels and you can bet they are gunning for amd and Nvidia. Metal lets them do all that at lowest levels and doesn’t leak anything to their competitors.

Spot on.

I think they'll be gunning for Nvidia in particular. I get the feeling that one is personal.

Apple and it's Mac customers aren't being held hostage to lacklustre apis or devs.

Azrael.
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It seems like Apple pundits always conflate the casual and AAA gaming market. Apple is bound to connect its massive mobile gaming service to Mac and TV-related products, but all of that basically exists in a parallel dimension to traditional console and PC gaming. Apple has already dominated the mobile sector for over a decade without any meaningful synergy. And yet there's always these headlines saying Apple is 'getting into gaming' with breathless editorials about how they're going to be neck and neck with Xbox, Steam and Playstation any day now.

But it's basically a category error. Apple *is* already in gaming in a huge way: mobile gaming. But the AAA gaming ship sailed into the horizon years ago, and is probably approaching Voyager I's location at this point. There no evidence Apple will catch up to it, or that it even really wants to.

Whether Apple chips can compete with the prosumer market is basically just academic until then.

You've nailed it there, VJ.

Azrael.
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It may just be me but I shudder at the term "Port"

When speaking of games over the past years, even back to Atari ST and Amiga days. Yes, back THAT far, and still as true today.
The very VERY LAST thing you ever wanted to be told was that your game was a "Port" from the game the platform was originally written for.
Generally that means worse.
A "Port" typically meant a lazy way to get the game to run on something else, and pretty much guaranteed it would not take advantage of any of the custom chips/methods that made your system run at it's best.

You wanted the game written specifically for your platform, and not just a quick port over.

And that's why Apple has gone Metal and AS ARM Macs.

That's why Jobs was so anti middle ware like flash.

And it's why Apple took Open Gl to the back of the cow shed.

Azrael.

 

[Somian]

Why not adopt industry standard Vulkan instead of making developers learn another API?

Because they needed a new API and metal came a couple of years before Vulkan.

 

[762999]

If Metal is faster then why do people bootcamp Windows on the same Mac to play games? Every comparison out there shows Vulkan/DirectX12 > DirectX11 > Metal. Wouldn't they rather have the convenience of gaming on MacOS with the frame rate of Vulkan/DirectX12 without having to boot into Windows? Maybe Apple will finally come to their senses like with VP9 adoption.

DX12 & Metal test on macbook and hackintosh.. DX12 was fastest on all tests:

I sincerely think that Metal was a good move by Apple as DirectX was a good move for Microsoft. Old performance metrics won't be useful for the next generation of arm chips. The unified memory is shared between cpu/gpu and it's faster than going through the bus. In a few years they should be able to achieve some incredible things, even if it will cost an ARM and a leg.

 

[Azrael9]

DX12 & Metal test on macbook and hackintosh.. DX12 was fastest on all tests:

I sincerely think that Metal was a good move by Apple as DirectX was a good move for Microsoft. Old performance metrics won't be useful for the next generation of arm chips. The unified memory is shared between cpu/gpu and it's faster than going through the bus. In a few years they should be able to achieve some incredible things, even if it will cost an ARM and a leg.

Great head to head comparison.

So 10-15% on Metal vs Windows. Won't belong before Apple tunes AS Silicon and Metal to eat that up. As the 10-15% is nominal for such a young API vs such a mature one. Lots of room to optimise. Augers will for future ARM Consumer Macs gaming potential.

And 30-50% of Open vs Windows. Glad Apple deprecated it.

Azrael.

 

[Colonel Blimp]

Why not adopt industry standard Vulkan instead of making developers learn another API?

Since Apple shipped Metal before Vulkan was even announced, your question is really, “Why not abandon Metal and make developers learn another API?”

(Edit: As pointed out already by ruka.snow above.)

 

[Chompineer]

Apple game console incoming? All that controller / keyboard support. Apple silicon with GPUs surely competing / surpassing the current generation consoles. Seems kind of inevitable that the Apple TV becomes a serious gaming platform.

Considering the current gen consoles are being replaced in November, and are equivalent to very very budget pc’s right now at best...

New Xbox is roughly on par with a 2080ti, with hardware raytracing.

 

[69Mustang]

Ugh I wish Microsoft would have just called it Xbox Two. Their naming conventions are horrible. Its going to be quite confusing to some what the different is between the Xbox One X and Xbox One Series X.

The naming convention is questionable. No doubt. Verbally, using S and X as your designation is poor form imo. Even with that being said, I seriously don't think the buying public is going to be confused. They weren't confused by the Xbox One, Xbox One S, and the Xbox One X.

I personally think they aren't going with your numbering idea because they are already behind Sony number. Sony's coming up on the PS5. Microsoft is only coming up on, what would be chronologically, XB4. They definitely wouldn't use "Two" in their name when PS is coming up on "Five". Marketing... go figure.

 

[Gerdi]

Perhaps we can compare PS5 and Mac AS when they're out together?

The A12z is a sound performer for its weight class.

We don't know what the A14 will do. Nor the A14x. Nor the AS14.

It's taken AMD, a cash poor company, years to catch NV' up with RDNA2. And we're still in the dark as to which, RDNA2 or Ampere will emerge a top.

I suggest to somewhat reduce expectations when comparing upcoming AS Macs to next XBox or PS5. In case of consoles we are talking about almost 400mm^2 SoCs with peak power north of 100W. Thats not remotely comparable to what you would put into a laptop - at least not today.
Point in case, the A12z might very well match XBox One in performance, but we are comparing 7 years old SoC with 2 years old.
You can also look at this from the viewpoint of process node as an enabler of putting Xbox One/PS4 performance into a tablet. XBox One/PS4 were using 28nm process, while A12x is using 7nm.

 

[mi7chy]

Since Apple shipped Metal before Vulkan was even announced, your question is really, “Why not abandon Metal and make developers learn another API?”

Vulkan evolved from AMD Mantle which came out before Metal. That's besides the point though as the context of the article is about tools for Windows game developers to create/port games for Apple platform. Windows game developers know Vulkan but not Metal and the quickest way to make PC AAA game titles available on MacOS is to leverage what they already know. Vulkan not only provides faster frame rates but also more consistent and stable experience to avoid the usual frame drops and issues like Fortnite Metal hanging on $15K Mac Pro.

 

[Gerdi]

Windows game developers know Vulkan but not Metal and the quickest way to make PC AAA game titles available on MacOS is to leverage what they already know.

The vast majority of Windows games are based on Direct3d and not Vulkan. So not sure where this general Vulkan knowledge would come from.
In any case you would need to invest into porting from Direct3d to either Vulkan and Metal. Given the much larger userbase who have Metal only machines compared to Vulkan only machines - it would be more reasonable to port to Metal.

That having said, it certainly would help if Apple would provide some kind of Direct3d-to-Metal mapper similar to MoltenVK or MoltenGL.

 

[groove-agent]

No one (hardly anyone?) buys the current appletv as a gaming device.

I bought an Apple TV and got a gaming controller for it for Christmas. Returned back the controller as I couldn't find a single game I wanted to play. This was before Apple Arcade though.

 

[Tucom]

Yeah, no. There have been way too many serious Metal-only bugs in WoW at this point to take that seriously. Bugs that have required OSX upgrades in order to resolve.

Most recent one is a bug where if there were too many particles rendering at once, the system would lock up (Touch Bar included) and possibly kernel panic. Only fix was to completely disable particle rendering, which isn't even a valid setting normally.

And too many particles could be triggered by activities such as:
* Island Expeditions
* Raiding

Sure the game runs, but it was a seriously compromised experience since particles cannot normally be disabled, and the game is designed with the assumption that they are there.

Yeah, never had that. Besides, is that bug with METAL? or Blizzards incompetency which has been showing up more and more? Another example being Borderlands 3 having a DX12 renderer on Windows, yet crashes, locks up, prevents the game from even booting and causes all sorts of chaos on the installed platform.

Yet, BL3 (besides some tiny FPS oscillation bug that happens every now and then, thinking its my specific setup but not a big deal) - runs beautifully, like, really, really well. Metal does just work if programmed for properly and it's obvious the devs can get solid results.

So yeah, yeah. BS coding can show itself on any platform dude, don't cherry pick.
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Metal performance may be fast, but your examples of next gen games aren't supporting that argument. 4 and 5 year old games aren't next gen games, they're really old current gen games. Besides, simply listing old games that you can play on your computer doesn't show it can smoke anything, new GPU notwithstanding.

Lol, uh yeah, it does - they're demanding games that show Metal can keep up with any Windows API for gaming. Maxed out they still bring some PC's to their knees (not hyperbole like Crysis), but they're demanding. Not sure what you think gaming is then if a machine can or can't run a demanding renderer well in real-time, IE, gaming. Another way of accurately thinking about it - which you're not at all, is any newer games aren't THAT much better looking or demanding than say Deus Ex when maxed out showing the Metal Mac would keep up just fine, and again not sure what you're exact reasoning is.

These games can 'still be used' as benchmarks vs. GPU to GPU on Windows, so platform to platform shows Macs are potentially killer platforms for gaming. I mean, they are. And it's getting there. But just like a Mustang, some people would mention there are far better choices. Fortunately Macs aren't obnoxiously designed cars.
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Vulkan evolved from AMD Mantle which came out before Metal. That's besides the point though as the context of the article is about tools for Windows game developers to create/port games for Apple platform. Windows game developers know Vulkan but not Metal and the quickest way to make PC AAA game titles available on MacOS is to leverage what they already know. Vulkan not only provides faster frame rates but also more consistent and stable experience to avoid the usual frame drops and issues like Fortnite Metal hanging on $15K Mac Pro.

Dude, ONE example on an unsupported platform with junk coding from the devs (Epic) on Mac doesn't mean *ANYTHING*. At all. That's like saying a cars junk because the petrol based engine doesn't use diesel, or in this case pushing crap code on a Mac and saying it's the Macs fault. Any engine stall isn't the OS's duty to circumvent in realtime..................

 

[hot-gril]

Because OpenGL failed.

First, it became "write once debug everywhere". Everybody's implementation had different bugs made worse with different driver versions. You'd have to deal with differences and bugs on the same hardware across operating systems, and on the same operating system across different vendors.

Even Google gave up on OpenGL; Chrome translates all its OpenGL ES/WebGL into DirectX on Windows.

Second, because everything was implemented as a ton of different extensions, often proprietary, and no extensions were consistently available, causing coding to the lowest common denominator. DirectX and Metal have set feature levels that guarantee a bundle of capabilities.

Third, Khronos is a giant committee with politics and special interests. This is what happened with OpenCL. Apple gave it to them and they took it in a completely different direction, which ultimately nobody really cared about and certainly failed to compete against CUDA.

By being a closed standard, DirectX and Metal ensure a consistent API and minimal bugs across different hardware and different platforms. Look at games today, DirectX is far preferred on desktop over Vulkan.

I don't know much about graphics in particular, but this is exactly what I expected. Proprietary standards tend to have the upper hand when the tech isn't mature yet.
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No, Metal performance is FAST and I have a few next gen game that run as fast if not faster than their Windows counterparts on the same hardware - or similar. Black Ops III and Deus Ex MD are both examples that show my Mac Pro, from 2010, w/ a new GPU can smoke some gaming PCs and equal others of similar spec.

Metal just WORKS, as well. Though being on a Mac that makes any quality gaming performance you get preferable over using Windows anyways, not because Windows is bad though, but because Windows loves to break at random times. But I still love it overall.

Finally, I'm building a gaming rig fwiw, I'm all for custom rigs running high quality games, but to say Metal "leaves a lot to be desired" performance wise is OBJECTIVELY false. Period.

Are games still so GPU-bound? I love my 2010 Mac Pro, but single-core CPU performance isn't its strong suit. Would expect that to bottleneck a lot of games. Certainly does when I run BeamNG Drive.

 

[hot-gril]

Metal provides a 10 times increase in draw calls compared to OpenGL ES 3,1 while Vulkan provides a 3.5 times increase in draw calls compared to OpenGL ES 3,1.

Essentially Metal is faster.

It's faster in theory, for some games, according to some people. I'll believe it when people are buying Macs to play games on.

 

[Tucom]

Are games still so GPU-bound? I love my 2010 Mac Pro, but single-core CPU performance isn't its strong suit. Would expect that to bottleneck a lot of games. Certainly does when I run BeamNG Drive.

Depends the engine and game in question; heavily run physics or open-world simulation will heavily stress the CPU as there's much non-graphical code crunching in the background, which in effect can tank performance if everything's not up to snuff.

Per game engines, yes - nearly everything these days is highly GPU bound as you'd expect; the CPU is no longer the rendering "node" in video games as it used to be, and GPU's can be used for general compute which takes care of many once off-loaded-to-CPU duties of yesteryear.

 

[Azrael9]

I suggest to somewhat reduce expectations when comparing upcoming AS Macs to next XBox or PS5. In case of consoles we are talking about almost 400mm^2 SoCs with peak power north of 100W. Thats not remotely comparable to what you would put into a laptop - at least not today.
Point in case, the A12z might very well match XBox One in performance, but we are comparing 7 years old SoC with 2 years old.
You can also look at this from the viewpoint of process node as an enabler of putting Xbox One/PS4 performance into a tablet. XBox One/PS4 were using 28nm process, while A12x is using 7nm.

I hear what you're saying.

The consoles are the most worthy ones in a long, long time.

That said?

A14x or AS14 will surprise many relative to the current Intel cpu/iGPU in Macs. (Such a low bar if you're paying £750-£2000...)

...and it will begin to chase down the gap with the PS5...

Mac gaming is at the bottom in reputation. Apple committing to AS and their own GPUs must mean they're pretty confident about taking on the competition.

Azrael.

 

[69Mustang]

Lol, uh yeah, it does - they're demanding games that show Metal can keep up with any Windows API for gaming. Maxed out they still bring some PC's to their knees (not hyperbole like Crysis), but they're demanding. Not sure what you think gaming is then if a machine can or can't run a demanding renderer well in real-time, IE, gaming. Another way of accurately thinking about it - which you're not at all, is any newer games aren't THAT much better looking or demanding than say Deus Ex when maxed out showing the Metal Mac would keep up just fine, and again not sure what you're exact reasoning is.

These games can 'still be used' as benchmarks vs. GPU to GPU on Windows, so platform to platform shows Macs are potentially killer platforms for gaming. I mean, they are. And it's getting there. But just like a Mustang, some people would mention there are far better choices. Fortunately Macs aren't obnoxiously designed cars.

Lol, no it doesn't. Just saying an old game runs on your computer is not an indication of anything. You've provided no data to back your anecdote. Whether or not you think the game is demanding is immaterial if the only thing you're going to back your claim with is passive aggressive shade. Which is all you've done. So instead of trying veiled insults about my forum name, try providing hard data to back your claim.

 

[Tucom]

Lol, no it doesn't. Just saying an old game runs on your computer is not an indication of anything. You've provided no data to back your anecdote. Whether or not you think the game is demanding is immaterial if the only thing you're going to back your claim with passive aggressive shade. Which is all you've done. So instead of trying veiled insults about my forum name, try providing hard data to back your claim.

Passive aggressive lmao, I was direct, you're the one starting personal wars here. All you've done is done the same with your hypocritical attitude and absolute absent minded statements. Point is you're objectively wrong, sorry you can't man up and have a mature conversation about it, or rather, "my rig doesn't smoke anything" which absolutely would not warrant a reciprocative reply at all, wouldn't it?

Good job on your social awareness, may want to get some sometime.

Finally, if you don't believe the facts, I could cares less. Seriously I could. Do the testing yourself or get blocked. I don't have time for childish nonsense.

 

[pankajdoharey]

Why not adopt industry standard Vulkan instead of making developers learn another API?

Have a look at Vulkan it is notoriously difficult, Metal is a breeze for developers. Vulkan is quite literally explicit, and by explicit Khronos means you have to specify everything. Metal is a superior API. Industry should rather adopt Metal in my opinion.
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What's your definition of "serious"?

/edit/ genuine question, not inflammatory, what do you think would take it from casual to serious is what im wondering.

I think ability to play AAA titles is a serious effort. And Apple is doing everything to do it.
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serious gaming on a mac is achieved when pro gamers go to esports events on a mac. as a serious gamer I know that gpus are less important than what most amateurs think. also, game developers hate proprietary apis and gpus. let‘s talk about pro peripherals like gaming mice, keyboards and displays incl. their drivers and their current ridiculously bad support for macs. or optimization on gpu drivers incl fine tuning options. or streaming capabilities. and the elephant in the room that serious gaming is still native 1080p and not 4k, 5k or 6k but with 144/240 hz displays. this will never fit to the apple philosophy of not wanting to give the customer any options and keep things simple. it may work for ios games which makes the most profit anyways compared to pc games. but it will always be like baby gaming.

DirectX is a proprietary API and yet tons of games are written for that, Even Game engines optimise for both OpenGL and DirectX both. OpenGL drivers on Mac are some of the best drivers for that hardware, apple pays top dollar to AMD and Intel to produce those drivers. Which is why you could see Macs pumping such high res videos. Even and iPad is capable of running 3 simultaneous 4K Video streams.

 

[pankajdoharey]

I honestly don't know why Apple wanted to put all that effort and time into Metal when they belong to Khronos group and Vulkan was already implemented.

Performance and convenience is more important for Apple to stay ahead of the rest than standard. Look at it, Apple Chips on Mobile Devices are ahead of the Industry by 2-3 yrs, Every single Apple A series chip has beaten the equivalent ARM Chip of that generation from Samsung , Mediatek, and Qualcomm in both CPU and GPU benchmarks. If Apple adopts the same standard as the rest of the industry they cannot stay ahead, Apple is a member in Khronos so they know what Kronos is cooking, they can update Metals api to be faster than Vulkan. Also they dont have to agree on the table with Google and Samsung to agree to reveal their architectural plans. They can work independently.

Also I would suggest you look at the Vulkan API it is garbage, Metal is easier to program and superior you can write shaders in way fewer lines than Vulkan. Vulkan is explicit and boring and long.

Metals api is not just for graphics, there is Performance API for compute, There is also a Machine Learning API, Raytracing, Vector math API in metal. Metal is way more powerful than Vulkan.

 

[evocarti]

PS5/XBox One 2020 are RDNA 2.0 based GPUs. Nothing Apple will do will match that level. They are both custom AMD SoC with Zen 2/RDNA 2.0 designs.

Don't tempt them. I have a feeling there GPU tech can give Xbox One X performance at the highest level, right now.