M2 Pro/Max/Ultra Gaming Benchmarks.

[Colstan]

Andrew Tsai has released a video featuring the first available gaming benchmarks for the M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBook Pros. The Pro is a 14-inch model, while the Max is a 16-inch. Presumably, the 16-inch is running at a slightly higher clock, as demonstrated in Geekbench. He compares them to an M2 MacBook Air and a 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro.



The short version: the M2 is an evolutionary advance. GPU cores scale almost linearly in games, and the same can be said for CPU-bound titles. If you plan to use your M2 Mac for gaming, then skip the base M2, and go for at least the M2 Pro.

His next video will feature Resident Evil: Village, which should give us the best performance metrics for a modern game on these new Macs.

 

[Colstan]

Andrew Tsai has released a followup video with more M2 Pro/Max benchmarks, featuring the following games:

Resident Evil Village (Apple Silicon native)
Metro Exodus (Rosetta 2)
The Witcher 3 (CrossOver)
GTA V (CrossOver)

 

[diamond.g]

Andrew Tsai has released a followup video with more M2 Pro/Max benchmarks, featuring the following games:

Resident Evil Village (Apple Silicon native)
Metro Exodus (Rosetta 2)
The Witcher 3 (CrossOver)
GTA V (CrossOver)

Wonder if the “poor” scaling is due to testing at 1080p. In PC land that resolution is starting to become CPU limited (depending on GPU in question).

 

[exoticspice1]

Wonder if the “poor” scaling is due to testing at 1080p. In PC land that resolution is starting to become CPU limited (depending on GPU in question).

Don't even know why Andrew tested at 1080p. The resolution of these Macs are 3.5K.

1440p/2K should be tested at the minimum.

 

[Andropov]

Wonder if the “poor” scaling is due to testing at 1080p. In PC land that resolution is starting to become CPU limited (depending on GPU in question).

This is the problem when using games as benchmarks. When designing a benchmark, you have to think about scaling in all kinds of systems, as the goal is to accurately represent hardware capabilities. When optimizing a game, it's my understanding that you target some performance level certain reference systems and optimize the game for that. The studio probably couldn't care less if the game scales linearly with GPU capabilities when exceeding 120 fps, as the screen refresh rate is going to be the limiting factor. You often get good scaling for 'free' but I wouldn't assume that scaling is linear by default.

 

[exoticspice1]

This is the problem when using games as benchmarks

That's the thing for games. They either be CPU dependent or GPU dependent or both. It's games that really test the raster performance if a GPU and also Ray tracing but there are many forms of ray tracing.

When testing a powerful GPU it's a waste to test at 1080p. You are not using the GPU to it's full potential. That's why 4k ultra or 1440p ultra is the best choice.

 

[Colstan]

More from Andrew Tsai. This time he compares the M1 Max vs. M2 Max inside the 16-inch MacBook Pro models. He includes some productivity, but the more interesting details are performance measurements with Baldur's Gate 3 and Minecraft, both of which are Apple Silicon native. I would note that he decided to test in 2560 x 1440 for this run.



The short version:

BG3: 28% increase over M1 Max.
Minecraft: 50%.
Minecraft with Shaders: 15%.

Keep in mind that BG3 is still in early access and continues to receive optimizations.

 

[diamond.g]

More from Andrew Tsai. This time he compares the M1 Max vs. M2 Max inside the 16-inch MacBook Pro models. He includes some productivity, but the more interesting details are performance measurements with Baldur's Gate 3 and Minecraft, both of which are Apple Silicon native. I would note that he decided to test in 2560 x 1440 for this run.



The short version:

BG3: 28% increase over M1 Max.
Minecraft: 50%.
Minecraft with Shaders: 15%.

Keep in mind that BG3 is still in early access and continues to receive optimizations.

Based on their patch release cadence for macOS I really hope the full game drops for macOS the same time it does for PC. (Talking about Baldurs Gate 3)

 

[Colstan]

Andrew Tsai has a released a much longer video, featuring 15 games tested on a 14-inch M2 Pro MacBook Pro, mostly at 1440p.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Slight tangent, but just saw this job posting on Apple and thought it may be of interest to those in this thread.

Metal Game Ecosystem Engineer - Careers at Apple

Apply for a Metal Game Ecosystem Engineer job at Apple. Read about the role and find out if it’s right for you.

jobs.apple.com

Hopefully this means an increase in AAA games coming to the Mac.

 

[exoticspice1]

Slight tangent, but just saw this job posting on Apple and thought it may be of interest to those in this thread.

Metal Game Ecosystem Engineer - Careers at Apple

Apply for a Metal Game Ecosystem Engineer job at Apple. Read about the role and find out if it’s right for you.

jobs.apple.com

View attachment 21771

Hopefully this means an increase in AAA games coming to the Mac.

Notice they also mention iPhone which means that it's probably games in genera as the iPhone is not a market for AAA games.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Notice they also mention iPhone which means that it's probably games in genera as the iPhone is not a market for AAA games.

I don’t think so. They already have the top mobile games on the iPhone. It’s the Mac that doesn’t. Things like this along with pronouncements from certain employees on Twitter lead to me to believe there is a definite push into higher end gaming.

 

[exoticspice1]

I don’t think so. They already have the top mobile games on the iPhone. It’s the Mac that doesn’t. Things like this along with pronouncements from certain employees on Twitter lead to me to believe there is a definite push into higher end gaming.

I really hope so. For the Mac to succeed even more in the consumer market gaming is important. It has a huge cultural impact nowadays. Most people don't edit videos or render 3D scenes and for the Mac to increase market share gaming is a area Apple must pursue.

To fast forward Apple should really make a console. Put the M2 Max in a custom Mac mini and run a console version of tvOS and sell the machine at cost or loss. In the long run it pays off. Honestly game devs target consoles more than PC because of their price and ease of use. A $999 MBA still has 8Gb RAM and 256SSD. This is not enough for AAA gaming.

 

[throAU]

To fast forward Apple should really make a console. Put the M2 Max in a custom Mac mini and run a console version of tvOS and sell the machine at cost or loss. In the long run it pays off. Honestly game devs target consoles more than PC because of their price and ease of use. A $999 MBA still has 8Gb RAM and 256SSD. This is not enough for AAA gaming.

They already do in a way, but it needs some more development thrown at it - the AppleTV. There are games on it and they support controllers.

They do however need to keep it a bit more up to date, but it would be trivial for them to ship a more powerful AppleTV running TvOS on an M1 or M2 (or later, Pro/Max CPU for example) as a friendly home entertainment/console device.

 

[exoticspice1]

They already do in a way, but it needs some more development thrown at it - the AppleTV. There are games on it and they support controllers.

They do however need to keep it a bit more up to date, but it would be trivial for them to ship a more powerful AppleTV running TvOS on an M1 or M2 (or later, Pro/Max CPU for example) as a friendly home entertainment/console device.

But Apple TV is not even a proper console. It has no way to expand storage and it's limited to 128GB storage which is not even close to enough these days for AAA gaming. Apple purposefully does not include USB ports as well and the newer models are fanless making it thermal throttle when gaming.

The Apple TV is much stronger than the Switch GPU and CPU wise yet no major AAA or indie titles appear on Apple TV. (Excluding Apple Arcade). Apple can easily solve this yet since 2017 the Apple TV has gotten worse hardware wise in terms of gaming features.

 

[Colstan]

MrMacRight has released a video testing 25 Mac games on a 16-inch M2 Max MacBook Pro. The model he tested features a 12-core CPU, 38-core GPU, and 96GB of memory.



Of note, Baldur's Gate 3 is more demanding, as a result of engine enhancements done by Larian Studios. Also, Larian's partner on the Mac port, Elverils, plans to support MetalFX upscaling in a future release.

Of the 25 games tested, about one-third are Apple Silicon native, so it's good to see that some progress in transitioning over to the new architecture is being made by Mac game developers.

For games that don't have a Mac version, I would note that CodeWeavers have just announced the release of CrossOver 22.1. Other than bug fixes, CrossOver can now run 32-bit DirectX 10/11 games, whereas it had only been able to do so with 64-bit titles previously. This will give macOS users the ability to run games like BioShock Infinite and Command and Conquer Remastered.

CodeWeavers haven't provided a recent update about DirectX 12 support, but they have mentioned that it could come as early as CrossOver 23, as they have said previously.

 

[throAU]

But Apple TV is not even a proper console. It has no way to expand storage and it's limited to 128GB storage which is not even close to enough these days for AAA gaming. Apple purposefully does not include USB ports as well and the newer models are fanless making it thermal throttle when gaming.

The Apple TV is much stronger than the Switch GPU and CPU wise yet no major AAA or indie titles appear on Apple TV. (Excluding Apple Arcade). Apple can easily solve this yet since 2017 the Apple TV has gotten worse hardware wise in terms of gaming features.

Current version is not expandable sure, but it has 4x the storage of the Nintendo Switch built in, and expandable storage is a USB port or m.2 slot away (in say, a future more “proper console” focused version).

Stick an m series chip in it, expose a USB port and you have an XBOX/Switch/Playstation competitor with friendly development frameworks that are cross platform with iOS and macOS. In one fell swoop, apple has a compatible platform across all major segments of the gaming market (desktop/laptop, mobile and couch). M series macos games will be trivial to port, ditto for the entire iOS game library.

 

[Nycturne]

Current version is not expandable sure, but it has 4x the storage of the Nintendo Switch built in, and expandable storage is a USB port or m.2 slot away (in say, a future more “proper console” focused version).

I’ll just add that the the iOS/tvOS platforms also support on-demand resources which can cut down on how much local storage is needed at a time by a game (if the developer is willing to spend the time to tag their resources, and/or environments like Unity add support).

tvOS’ more annoying issue is that it doesn’t actually support any real local storage that isn’t managed by the app store in some way. Small amounts for things like save data, but not enough for assets. If I want to offer DLC for example, it has to exist (say as an on-demand resource tag) as part of the build assets. I can’t download those assets from a third party server after validating a purchase and expect them to stick around on the Apple TV. So it does require that ports to Apple TV handle certain things differently than other platforms.

 

[diamond.g]

The Switch has shown that hardware isn’t the problem as long as you have good games people with buy them. If Apple wants to be taken seriously in the gaming space they need good first party or exclusive games.

 

[Andropov]

The Switch has shown that hardware isn’t the problem as long as you have good games people with buy them. If Apple wants to be taken seriously in the gaming space they need good first party or exclusive games.

Easier said than done. Breath of the Wild (probably the single most important thing that kept the Switch launch from being a failure) is an absolute masterpiece of a game. Even if Apple went with first party games, I'd be very surprised if they made a game half as good in their first years.