'Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration' Release Date and Mac Requirements Revealed

[Darmok N Jalad]

I understand that but I am not asking for hardware that will run games from 2024 in 8K. It will not even run games from same year in 1080p which is the old standard btw. PS3 released late -2006-(12 years ago) can output in 1080p just for comparison. As I mentioned earlier, games released are usually compatible with at least few years older hardware.

It’s pretty hard to make that kind of comparison. The PS3 is old, yes, but it is also fixed hardware, designed primarily to play games. A developer targeting PS3 knows exactly what hardware his/her entire audience will be using, and they tune performance throughout the game accordingly. A developer targeting PC or Mac has to design around significant hardware and OS variability, with much higher overhead from the OS itself. You don’t get to pick the resolution or quality settings on PS3, but a PC game shoots across the board. Also consider that AAA developers targeting PC know their audience, and it’s not people running Intel integrated graphics. Intel graphics has never been considered capable of playing anything but old titles on low settings. And that 1080p on PS3 is a little suspect, as most titles ran at 720p with upscaling. Even the far more powerful XboxOne isn’t able to run all titles at true 1080p.

Back to the MacBook. The Y-series is the only x86 CPU that can run in such a thin chassis, short of the Pentium Silver line, which would be ever worse. Both the CPU and GPU are very limited in clock speeds and power. There’s no way a dGPU could be added to the MacBook and still meet the thinness goal of the product. x86 just can’t be that much more efficient. It is altogether possible why Apple wants to switch to their own SOCs on Mac, though that might be what kills gaming on MacOS for good. Will that make it even harder to port titles over?

 

[GeneralChang]

It is altogether possible why Apple wants to switch to their own SOCs on Mac, though that might be what kills gaming on MacOS for good. Will that make it even harder to port titles over?

Some top tier developers have demonstrated some willingness to port popular PC and console games over to ARM and Metal on iOS devices (Fortnite and PUBG), and I'd imagine a theoretical ARM powered macOS device wouldn't be any harder than that. In fact, considering the support from Unreal and Unity on iOS, as well as the recently added support (sorta) for Vulkan on that platform... assuming continued love from Aspyr and Feral, Apple switching to their own SOC might not actually make gaming on macOS any worse at all.

Though I still wouldn't expect to do any better than actual iOS games on the MacBook.

 

[matt3526]

If Apple starts making their own chips, then whats the likelihood that bootcamp stops working? For me, that remains absolutely the best way to game on a mac

 

[voyager77]

And it's now available for download on the App store and Steam.

 

[MacBH928]

Back to the MacBook. The Y-series is the only x86 CPU that can run in such a thin chassis, short of the Pentium Silver line, which would be ever worse. Both the CPU and GPU are very limited in clock speeds and power. There’s no way a dGPU could be added to the MacBook and still meet the thinness goal of the product. x86 just can’t be that much more efficient. It is altogether possible why Apple wants to switch to their own SOCs on Mac, though that might be what kills gaming on MacOS for good. Will that make it even harder to port titles over?

I don't know, on the PC side of things, some laptops seem to do much better than macbokos on the gaming side while maintaining a reasonable thinness and price point. Again, we are talking about the MacBook PRO here not talking about the MacBook AIR.

You also seem to be blaming the thinnes and weight for the underpowered hardware, it is not like the desktop machines like the Mini and iMac are screamers when you run games on them. Look how thin and small the Nintendo Switch is, and it seems to be running recent HD games just fine.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I don't know, on the PC side of things, some laptops seem to do much better than macbokos on the gaming side while maintaining a reasonable thinness and price point. Again, we are talking about the MacBook PRO here not talking about the MacBook AIR.

You also seem to be blaming the thinnes and weight for the underpowered hardware, it is not like the desktop machines like the Mini and iMac are screamers when you run games on them. Look how thin and small the Nintendo Switch is, and it seems to be running recent HD games just fine.

The OP was referring to the MacBook specifically. As for MBP, I won't deny that some of the problem is simply MacOS itself, as I've seen many people say that they get much better performance in most cross-platform games via Bootcamp and Windows. That's not the hardware limitation as much as it's Apple's lack of targeting the gaming environment.

The Switch is similar to the PS3 comments above. Besides not being x86 at all, it is again fixed hardware for the developer and is designed primarily for gaming, with less OS overhead. First party titles are great for showcasing the upper limits of the console hardware. PC games have all sorts of quality settings in order to let the user choose their preferred settings based on their relatively unique hardware/software configuration. Most developers targeting PC expect something better than integrated graphics, which is what you find in many entry level Apple configurations.

 

[iamtheonlyone4ever]

What a steal at $60 for a 2 year old game!!!

2 year old on consoles and windows, brand new on Mac, maybe that's why we have to pay the price like is new, when in reality we know it isn't. but that company put effort , time and money to create the port so we can run it on a Mac at Low resolution lol. just for 60 dollars, maybe companies have this belief, if you own a Mac you have money and if you have a Mac is because you don't cry for money, that's why you spent hundreds and thousands of dollar on Mac product, so they figure 60 dollars for a apple fan is not a big deal
[doublepost=1523571858][/doublepost]this the only thing I hate about apple, they threat Mac OS like it can't run games, the only reason why it doesn't run the next generation of games is because Tim doesn't want to do nothing about it, Mac OS still running old versions of open gl and open cl compared to windows, trust me when I say this I'm not a windows fan, I'm actually a windows hater but that is where windows has the upper hand on Mac OS, the only reason why I use windows is to play games and most games right now sucks , so I rather play old games on emulators on Mac OS, so I don't have to use windows, but when there is a new good game and the only way to play it is on windows then there is no other choice, Macs are capable of running games if they really want to, but I don't know why they don't update the drivers, look at iOS , they have many games and we Mac OS users are left biting the dust, just because Mac OS is not important to them, the only good games available are ports from feral, everything else with the exception of a few good games are pretty much garbage and low resolution useless crap

 

[GeneralChang]

2 year old on consoles and windows, brand new on Mac, maybe that's why we have to pay the price like is new, when in reality we know it isn't. but that company put effort , time and money to create the port so we can run it on a Mac at Low resolution lol. just for 60 dollars, maybe companies have this belief, if you own a Mac you have money and if you have a Mac is because you don't cry for money, that's why you spent hundreds and thousands of dollar on Mac product, so they figure 60 dollars for a apple fan is not a big deal

As a note, if you wanted to buy this game on Steam right now for Windows you'd also be paying $60. That's just the price of the 20th anniversary version of the game. If you already owned the game for Windows via Steam, you now conveniently own it for Mac. If you didn't, wait for the Steam Summer Sale in a few weeks, I'm sure it'll be heavily discounted.

Or buy it via (shudder) the Mac App Store, where it's currently $30. Doesn't look like that's a sale price, either, which makes some sense considering via that storefront Feral is probably handling the distribution directly, and that's a pretty normal price for their Mac ports. I'm guessing distribution via Steam has been turned over to Square Enix.

 

[iamtheonlyone4ever]

yes I saw it in the App Store for 30 dollars. that is a much fair price considering the time the game has been out. I really don't like steam, having to install games on a steam library even if you have steam to run games off line or use steam off line, I like the old way that you simply install games on their respective directories and call it a day. if I want to play the game simply run the game and that's it but having to launch an app to the run the game, I personally don't like it that way, but that's the way it is now most of the time.

 

[lec0rsaire]

Would be nice with that kind of GPUs, but… Look at the size of that thing! https://www.anandtech.com/show/12635/msis-gt75-titan-dtr-gets-core-i9-geforce-gtx-1080

Yeah, this is the problem. These MSIs are loaded but incredibly bulky which defeats the purpose of portability. That’s why I think it’s a better solution to have a PC or console for gaming and have a MacBook Pro and/or iMac for macOS and productivity.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Yeah, this is the problem. These MSIs are loaded but incredibly bulky which defeats the purpose of portability. That’s why I think it’s a better solution to have a PC or console for gaming and have a MacBook Pro and/or iMac for macOS and productivity.

I just said this very thing in another thread!

 

[Eric5h5]

You can buy this game for $10 on Steam.

Nope.

What a steal at $60 for a 2 year old game!!!

Not really. The base game is $30; $60, as shown above, includes the season pass, which would be $30 by itself. It's true that you can't buy it without the season pass now (on Steam anyway), but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the Mac version.

Given how difficult it is to set up controllers on Tomb Raider for Mac (also ported by Feral), I would be wary of anything else put out by this company.

If "difficult" you mean "plug it in and it just works" (my first-hand experience), then yeah, I guess it's "difficult". Feral does excellent ports.

Controllers are great. On the whole just plug em in and play. Any person and any game, don’t even need to read the manual sometimes.

No, not "any game". They're great for some games, terrible if not downright unusable for many others. Tomb Raider was meant to be played with a controller. Whether you read a manual or not is irrelevant to the control method.

--Eric

 

[MacBH928]

The sentiment that a PC should automatically be able to run games released the same year as it was has never been true of AAA games on ultra-portable machines. The MBA, netbooks, laptops in the 90's, etc. This is how it's always been with PC gaming, it's not an Apple thing (though their ultra-portable devices tend to be under-powered for their price, which doesn't help the perception).

Honestly this happens frequently enough even in the desktop space. I was actually just playing around with an SFF Dell Optiplex from 2005 a few weeks ago, and I thought "hey, Half-Life 2 came out in 2005, I wonder if this PC will run it." It was a cheap office desktop with a Pentium 4 HT and Intel graphics on the motherboard and no PCI-e expansion slots, but I figured since they came out the same year...

Yeah, no. Even on the lowest in-game settings at 480p, I couldn't get a stable framerate. Any time you started to fire weapons it would drop into the single-digits. Totally unplayable. This kind of thing is far more common than you seem to think it is.

Your PC will not be able to play games from same year release, sure, but that is because its probably has been optimized for office work where they made it to be just powerful enough to run office applications for the cheapest price possible. I am talking about the top of the line MacBook Pro here although not the '15. This machine is $2000+. If your dell desktop was for $2000+ in 2005 I would accept your arguement. I am pretty sure it was north of $800. Maybe even $600.

 

[star-affinity]

That’s why I think it’s a better solution to have a PC or console for gaming and have a MacBook Pro and/or iMac for macOS and productivity.

Yes, I agree. I just wish it could be a PC or Mac for gaming and a MacBook Pro for productivity on the go.

That's more or less the way I have it now since I have a MacPro5,1 (6-core 3.33 GHz) and a GTX 970 GPU and dual boot into Windows 10 for the games that doesn't work (or work less well) in macOS.

So, looking forward to Apple bringing some good desktop computers back (hopefully).

 

[GeneralChang]

Your PC will not be able to play games from same year release, sure, but that is because its probably has been optimized for office work where they made it to be just powerful enough to run office applications for the cheapest price possible. I am talking about the top of the line MacBook Pro here although not the '15. This machine is $2000+. If your dell desktop was for $2000+ in 2005 I would accept your arguement. I am pretty sure it was north of $800. Maybe even $600.

It would have been around $800 to the consumer (businesses would have paid less), but that was just an example of how your broad statement is hardly representative, and price wasn't really the point. Also, the post you responded to was about the MacBook, not the MBP. But if we're going to talk about the 13-inch MBP (which I assume is what you meant by referencing "top of the line MacBook Pro here although not the '15), let's talk about that.

And your own argument applies here as well, it's a machine that has been targeted at CPU specific tasks, and as such does not include a discrete GPU, which is kinda the first requirement to play brand new AAA releases. Similarly priced Windows devices that don't feature discrete GPUs (the Surface Pro lineup, for instance) would have similar gaming restrictions to the 13-inch MBP. That's mainly because those devices were targeted at portability and productivity tasks that are CPU intensive and don't use a GPU.

That's not an Apple-exclusive issue, there are tons of PCs like that even at the $2000 price point. I still maintain that the expectation of "because it costs more than $2000 means it should play all the games released the same year as it" is silly and has never actually been true across the board. I mean, the Chromebook Pixel costs almost two grand in its highest configuration, and that's a Chromebook.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Yes, I agree. I just wish it could be a PC or Mac for gaming and a MacBook Pro for productivity on the go.

That's more or less the way I have it now since I have a MacPro5,1 (6-core 3.33 GHz) and a GTX 970 GPU and dual boot into Windows 10 for the games that doesn't work (or work less well) in macOS.

So, looking forward to Apple bringing some good desktop computers back (hopefully).

I would think that your cMP would still provide a good gaming environment, since the GPU is the biggest difference maker these days. You can always add a PCIe SSD card for your game content if load times are a big concern. Otherwise, the x5677 or x5690 should get you enough CPU power. Yeah, you can always go faster, but at that point you are spending a lot of money. I think the cMP is probably the most economical way to game on a Mac, thanks to the ability to upgrade it and the fact that it has a massive PSU already. The new Mac Pro will hopefully be better, but it won’t be cheap by any means.

 

[star-affinity]

I would think that your cMP would still provide a good gaming environment, since the GPU is the biggest difference maker these days. You can always add a PCIe SSD card for your game content if load times are a big concern. Otherwise, the x5677 or x5690 should get you enough CPU power. Yeah, you can always go faster, but at that point you are spending a lot of money. I think the cMP is probably the most economical way to game on a Mac, thanks to the ability to upgrade it and the fact that it has a massive PSU already. The new Mac Pro will hopefully be better, but it won’t be cheap by any means.

Yes, thanks. It runs pretty well I think considering it being yet years this year. Like we can see here it competes with more recently released Mac models – the GPU makes the difference: http://barefeats.com/rise_of_tomb_raider.html

Like I said I have the six-core version the cMP there in that test and I think it would fare pretty close to the twelve core machine in that test – quite sure most games won't benefit from more than six cores (as of today).

 

[lec0rsaire]

Yes, I agree. I just wish it could be a PC or Mac for gaming and a MacBook Pro for productivity on the go.

That's more or less the way I have it now since I have a MacPro5,1 (6-core 3.33 GHz) and a GTX 970 GPU and dual boot into Windows 10 for the games that doesn't work (or work less well) in macOS.

So, looking forward to Apple bringing some good desktop computers back (hopefully).

Yeah, they really need a tower again. They already have the iMac Pro for people who want an extremely clean setup and they look great in space grey but once the Vega is outdated, that’s it.

They’re actually really powerful but most customers spending this kind of money would rather have a tower they can tinker with. For the most part, SSD and GPUs are what need to be upgraded. They’re the components that see real gains on a yearly basis. The CPUs Apple uses are really not the problem.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Yes, thanks. It runs pretty well I think considering it being yet years this year. Like we can see here it competes with more recently released Mac models – the GPU makes the difference: http://barefeats.com/rise_of_tomb_raider.html

Like I said I have the six-core version the cMP there in that test and I think it would fare pretty close to the twelve core machine in that test – quite sure most games won't benefit from more than six cores (as of today).

I doubt the 12C/24T setup would help, as most games aren’t going to leverage the extra cores. Until Ryzen, they weren’t even common on desktops. I think the fastest single CPU would be the best option. The x5677 (4C/8T) and x5690/W3690 (6C/12T) are it. I had a cMP, but I upgraded to a 2017 5K iMac for simplicity. I had a Radeon 7870 in my cMP, but I found that I never played a game on it, so the iMac was a move for effeciency and a nice display for my LR work. If I was still a PC gamer, I’d have kept the cMP and maybe got an even more modern GPU instead.

 

[H2SO4]

Can I install the mac version from Steam when I own the PC game on Steam?

Have a look see. Now I used to boot into Windows I'm sure for this. I'm now asking myself how long this button as been here.

 

[GeneralChang]

Have a look see. Now I used to boot into Windows I'm sure for this. I'm now asking myself how long this button as been here.
View attachment 758628

Not long. The Mac version was released on steam the same time as it was posted to the Mac App Store. If you already owned it on Steam for Windows, that button would have just shown up on release day. For all the bad parts of Steam, this kind of thing is sure a nice bonus to shopping there.

 

[H2SO4]

Not long. The Mac version was released on steam the same time as it was posted to the Mac App Store. If you already owned it on Steam for Windows, that button would have just shown up on release day. For all the bad parts of Steam, this kind of thing is sure a nice bonus to shopping there.

No doubt. I've installed it now so I might have a go later and see what the deal is.

 

[iShater]

Good news yall, it is on sale at Steam for $19.79 (only through April 23rd)

Only down side is that it requires High Sierra (UGH!). Have to figure that one out.

 

[JedNZ]

I have a cMP 4,1 > 5,1 - 12 core X5680 - 48GB ram - R9 380X GPU. I'm currently running 10.12.6. I purchased RoTR before I checked the minimum specs - duh! I now realise my cMP doesn't meet the minimum Mac specifications for both macOS version and hardware, so I haven't bothered to download it, and I also haven't upgraded to macOS HS 10.13.4. I won't upgrade HS unless I knew I could run RoTR - I'm happy just running Sierra in the mean time.

Has anyone else managed to get RoTR running on a cMP with similar specs to mine?
Is there a way to run it on macOS Sierra 10.12?
Has anyone managed to get it running (with a cMP with the same or similar hardware specs I have) on Bootcamp with Win10 (I have Win10 Pro 64bit)?

 

[Eric5h5]

You'd never get it to run on 10.12 since it needs the latest version of Metal. This will be a common requirement for games, so you might as well upgrade. Other than that, you do meet the specs, since a R9 380X is for sure better than a R9 M290.

--Eric