Do MacBooks even have dedicated GPUs to play high end games? Or is the hardware powerful enough without one, but the games just need to be rewritten from scratch?
I used to love Macs back in the early 2000s but I’m so out of touch now.
They have powerful iGPUs; something similar to Strix Halo. I am not a Mac user, but in my understanding the top end SKU have iGPUs comparable to high end dGPUs (with respect to synthetic performance, actual gaming performance tends to lag heavily).
I use a Mac. I’m not really interested in high end games though. I like turn-based things.
I’m still using a 2018 Mac Mini (middle-of-the-road specs) and I run things like Pathfinder:Kingmaker and Wasteland 3 just fine. Both are older, but came out around the same time as the computer. However, Baldur’s Gate 3 suffers.
You can add eGPUs to them, but I’ve never bothered to look too much in to it because I’m satisfied with the games available to me.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about the new M-series but have yet to try one.
I upgraded from a 2018 Mac Mini to an M1 Macbook Air. It was quite noticeably faster. I had a big code project at the time that took over a minute to compile on the Mini, and on the Air, it zipped through it in <20s. I think even Intel programs emulating through Rosetta were faster, which is just crazy.
But now I’m thinking about going back to a Mini again. That M4 model sounds like it’s an absolute beast!
MacBooks do not. I think the Mac Pro tower supports AMD dGPUs, but for nearly their entire computer line you’re working with integrated graphics. I will say, their high end Apple Silicon chips have some decent graphical capabilities that are comparable to APUs you would find in something like a Steam Deck or Xbox/PS5, so it’s not a total wash. I’ll see if I can find some M series graphics benchmarks now.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but looking at this, it looks to me that the best Apple Silicon results for this specific benchmark put their best processors at about the same level as a 3070 or so.
Do MacBooks even have dedicated GPUs to play high end games? Or is the hardware powerful enough without one, but the games just need to be rewritten from scratch?
I used to love Macs back in the early 2000s but I’m so out of touch now.
They have powerful iGPUs; something similar to Strix Halo. I am not a Mac user, but in my understanding the top end SKU have iGPUs comparable to high end dGPUs (with respect to synthetic performance, actual gaming performance tends to lag heavily).
I use a Mac. I’m not really interested in high end games though. I like turn-based things.
I’m still using a 2018 Mac Mini (middle-of-the-road specs) and I run things like Pathfinder:Kingmaker and Wasteland 3 just fine. Both are older, but came out around the same time as the computer. However, Baldur’s Gate 3 suffers.
You can add eGPUs to them, but I’ve never bothered to look too much in to it because I’m satisfied with the games available to me.
I’ve heard nothing but good things about the new M-series but have yet to try one.
I upgraded from a 2018 Mac Mini to an M1 Macbook Air. It was quite noticeably faster. I had a big code project at the time that took over a minute to compile on the Mini, and on the Air, it zipped through it in <20s. I think even Intel programs emulating through Rosetta were faster, which is just crazy.
But now I’m thinking about going back to a Mini again. That M4 model sounds like it’s an absolute beast!
MacBooks do not. I think the Mac Pro tower supports AMD dGPUs, but for nearly their entire computer line you’re working with integrated graphics. I will say, their high end Apple Silicon chips have some decent graphical capabilities that are comparable to APUs you would find in something like a Steam Deck or Xbox/PS5, so it’s not a total wash. I’ll see if I can find some M series graphics benchmarks now.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but looking at this, it looks to me that the best Apple Silicon results for this specific benchmark put their best processors at about the same level as a 3070 or so.