Is the New MacBook Pro Finally a Gaming Laptop?
We all know you don’t buy a Mac to play games. It’s possible , of course, but you don’t buy Apple just for games unless you only play Apple Arcade. But with Apple’s new MacBook Pros, complete with powerful M1 Pro and M1 Max chipsets, could the Mac finally be a viable option for gaming?
Why are Macs not good gaming computers?
This question can be tricky, but let’s link the answer with the simplest explanation. In short, equipment is (usually) not designed for optimal play situations. Many Macs are designed to be sleek, thin, elegant, or a combination of the three. This makes the car beautiful, but allows you to build a computer suitable for many tasks; games are simply not among them.
Light games don’t require much, but many games depend on optimized hardware to perform well. They need graphics cards that can handle demanding gaming and cooling systems to keep them from overheating. Most Macs don’t have these features out of the box.
However, it’s not just the hardware; Many developers have traditionally avoided making games for the Mac, which means these games can be found exclusively on Windows. You can access these games by installing Windows on your Mac using Bootcamp or using software such as Parallels, but the experience is not optimal.
This is why, even on a Mac with excellent graphics hardware, you still run into problems. Developers know the market for Mac games is limited, so they don’t invest resources in optimizing the experience or even offer a solution for these machines.
What about the MacBook M1?
Apple made a splash last year with the introduction of its first silicon chip, the Apple M1. The M1 is good in many ways: it has a fantastic processor, is extremely efficient, and could make the $ 1,000 MacBook Air a robust Final Cut Pro video editing machine.
However, the only area that the M1’s critics have pointed to is graphics power. While the M1’s graphics are by no means bad (you can choose between 7-cores or 8-cores, depending on your Mac), for graphics-intensive tasks it just isn’t the best option. Unfortunately, these tasks include games.
This is why the M1 Pro and M1 Max were so excited about how the M1 performance graphics powerhouse was known. But how does it work in practice?
How do the MacBook Pro M1 Pro and M1 Max work?
The data we have is promising. My favorite study belongs to MrMacRight, who made a video showingbenchmarks of the M1 Max ,M1 Pro, and acomparison of the M1 Pro and M1 Max (as well as the M1, but as we said, this is not a very good game chip).
In his M1 Max test, he played 25 games, and on the M1 Pro, he tried 15, depending on the launch (apps optimized for macOS), through Parallels and CrossOver 21 (software used to run Windows on Mac) and Rosetta 2 ( emulation program for running Intel-optimized applications). It’s worth noting that these are also not basic chipsets, so they can work under test conditions.
MrMacRight does a great job explaining the performance of various games and their settings, and also includes recommended graphics settings for each game. In most cases, for both the M1 Max and M1 Pro, MrMacRight does not suggest running these games at high settings; For optimal performance, you should probably treat your MacBook Pro as a mid-range gaming laptop rather than a high-end laptop.
Many games he plays at these settings (1080p or 1440p) can hit 40-60fps on the M1 Pro and 60-100fps on the M1 Max. This includes games like Metro Exodus , Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and The Witcher 3 . However, if the game is optimized for an Apple chip like Baldur’s Gate 3 , you can see the same performance in both the M1 Max and the M1 Pro. This is a great example of how great the M1 Max and M1 Pro are for gaming.
However, you will encounter a hitch when playing Windows games through Parallels; games like Overwatch , for example, run at high frame rates for most graphics settings, but have annoying stuttering that cannot be eliminated. However, a game like GTA V doesn’t work as it should, as even at 1080p, the game could n’t reach even 30fps on average.
You might want to use a solution like CrossOver for these games. CrossOver is not an emulator like Parallels, so games can run better. In MrMacRight’s experience, GTA V was able to run closer to 60fps at 1080p, which is a huge improvement over Parallels.
PCMag also ran several benchmarks that are encouraging for the MacBook Pro. The publication ran tests Hitman (2016), Tomb Raider , Shadow of the Tomb Raider , Total War: Warhammer II and Civilization VI . These names vary in degree of requirements, so the tests provided a range of situations in which you could put your laptop to the test.
In general, their configuration (which, by the way, was also higher) showed good results. While some demanding games experienced downturns and the dedicated gaming laptop certainly outperformed Apple, these MacBook Pros stayed on their own, almost always running at an average speed of over 100 frames per second across all games at both low and high. graphics settings.
M1 Pro and M1 Max need optimized games
The real test for these MacBook Pros will be whether the developers take the time to develop. While you can run many games on these machines as they are, in order to take full advantage of the hardware, game developers need to optimize their software for these chips.
It is true that there are native games available for the Mac; it is not the majority. Most games still require you to use imperfect solutions like Rosetta 2, Parallels and CrossOver, which diminishes the full potential of these chips. It’s certainly Apple’s credit for the many games running as well as before, but until we see more games made for the M1 Pro and M1 Max, it’s hard to say if these laptops will see optimized gaming experiences in the future.
However, Mac gamers are in the air. On r / macgaming’s site, the Redditors discussed their buying decisions on various configurations of Apple’s latest MacBook Pros as a kind of investment in the idea that developers can create well-optimized games for their machines. It does sound like an opportunity from the initial tests already running, so if you’re someone looking to play on a Mac, the M1 Pro and M1 Max might be good choices.
After all, the more players use these machines, the more likely game developers will start optimizing their games for the Apple chip.