KingOfPain
Site Champ
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2021
- Posts
- 736
I'm still at the process of testing some emulators on my new Mac mini (M4 Pro with 64 GB RAM), but from my first impressions this machine is really capable in terms of emulation (I cannot judge the basic M4, but I'm guessing if an emulator doesn't utilise more than 4 performance cores it should probably have similar performance).
I'll have to perform more testing with some of the more demanding emulators, but there are a few I won't be covering, because they already were more or less perfect on the M1. Therefore, I'll skip all 8 bitters, 16 bitters, and most 32 bitters, and even some 64 bitters (since Dreamcast and Gamecube run fine on an M1 with Flycast and Dolphin, respectively).
An honourably mention goes to the N64 emulation of ares. This was still somewhat choppy on the M1, but seems to run very smoothly on the M4 Pro even with UHD render quality enabled.
Unfortunately, my Xbox One controller isn't recognised by ares, and the primitive SNES-like controller that is recognised lacks an analog stick, which makes testing quite hard.
All other systems emulated by ares shouldn't have any problems, but with its general very low-level approach the N64 emulation is quite demanding here.
When I compiled a list of interesting emulators over 4 years ago, before I switched to the M1 MacBook Air, I was really hoping of running Windows 9x on DOSBox-X or PCem to play a few older games, in particular Jedi Knight (aka Dark Forces II). But using 3DMark2000 as a test, the Voodoo emulation in both was so atrociously slow and had graphics errors that they wouldn't be able to run any real game. Also, the Mac port of PCem was only an alpha, which never got updated, and the original maintainer of the mainline source for PCem, Sarah Walker, dropped development and it has been somewhat dormant since then, despite having a new maintainer.
Back then I didn't have 86box (a fork of PCem) on my radar, because it was Windows-only. But in a matter of three or four months it had been ported to Linux, then macOS, then native Apple Silicon.
I'm not using it to run Windows games, though, as CrossOver, Whisky, or Parallels are better candidates for this task (I actually managed to get Jedi Knight running with dgVoodoo2 on Parallels, and now it's even easier with DREAMM). And for DOS game, DOSBox-Staging is much easier to handle than real DOS on a PC emulator.
What I use 86box for is a bit of nostalgia by booting BeOS, which I used before I switched to macOS on a PowerMac G5. I configured the PC that I was using back then to run BeOS:
ASUS P2B board with 350 MHz Pentium II and a Voodoo Banshee video card. I couldn't remember which sound card I had (only that it used a Yamaha chipset), thus I simply used a Soundblaster 16 PnP for compatibility reasons. (I eventually upgraded my real PC with a 550 MHz Pentium III and an ATI Radeon card, but 86box doesn't emulate Pentium III and vanilla BeOS has no Radeon drivers).
On the M1 this setup somewhat worked, but the startup sound after reaching the desktop was a bit choppy, and IIRC the demo videos didn't play smoothly.
On the M4 Pro the startup sound is the just the way it should be, and the videos (of monitors being tossed off a roof) play smoothly. Playing both at the same time is getting choppy, though. I cannot recall if the real hardware was able to handle two videos at the same time over 20 years ago. BTW, I set the desktop resolution so high that BeOS warned me it could damage the "monitor".
Also, while playing the included demo songs, the music gets slightly interrupted when opening the photos of the composers. I'm guessing this is a timing limitation of the emulator not a performance problem with the M4. BeOS is famous for having a very quick response time and 86box might not be as precise.
Since the M4 Pro didn't seem to have any issues performance-wise, I cranked the clock of the emulated Pentium II from 350 to 450 MHz, and the emulated machine is still at 100%.
For a joke, I just installed Windows 98SE, a Voodoo Banshee driver, and DirectX 8.1 to run 3DMark2000. I was surprised to see the demo mode running smoothly and as far as I can tell without any graphics errors. The CPU utilisation ranges from slightly above 200% to occasionally close to 300% while running the demo. I suspect 86box might be able to run less demanding games even on a basic M4, but I think I'd still prefer the other options mentioned above, unless the game demands an original Windows 9x.
I almost didn't test the Xbox emulator xemu, because someone mentioned in a Youtube video that it doesn't run playable, even on the M4 (I cannot remember if it was a Pro or not). That was also my impression after testing it on the M1.
It took me a while to get it running again, because it has been a few years since my last test and it seems xemu has switched from normal ISOs to XISOs, which requires some conversion.
Surprisingly, Halo 1 runs perfectly playable for me (I completed the first two levels without any issues). On the M1 it started out OK, but had huge frame rate drops during explosions or with multiple enemies, but not so on the M4 Pro.
I also suspect there might have been large improvements in the emulator itself, since Halo 2 had big texture issues. This has been improved a lot, but I still wouldn't count it as playable (subpar frame rate, the HUD doesn't seem to work, and still some texture issues).
Riddick also has many issues (the main menu is practically all black), and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath has the problem of textures occasionally not showing up, which makes it hard to play.
I still have to test Fable and KOTOR...
But if you want to see Halo 1 again, I can definitely recommend it. I doubled the internal resolution to make it look better. For some reason the textures don't look as dated to me as in a lot of other games, but that might just be nostalgia. But the M4 Pro is definitely getting hot here (over 100°C).
That's it for now. If you are looking for a specific emulator, I can recommend the following site:
emulation.gametechwiki.com
I'll have to perform more testing with some of the more demanding emulators, but there are a few I won't be covering, because they already were more or less perfect on the M1. Therefore, I'll skip all 8 bitters, 16 bitters, and most 32 bitters, and even some 64 bitters (since Dreamcast and Gamecube run fine on an M1 with Flycast and Dolphin, respectively).
An honourably mention goes to the N64 emulation of ares. This was still somewhat choppy on the M1, but seems to run very smoothly on the M4 Pro even with UHD render quality enabled.
Unfortunately, my Xbox One controller isn't recognised by ares, and the primitive SNES-like controller that is recognised lacks an analog stick, which makes testing quite hard.
All other systems emulated by ares shouldn't have any problems, but with its general very low-level approach the N64 emulation is quite demanding here.
When I compiled a list of interesting emulators over 4 years ago, before I switched to the M1 MacBook Air, I was really hoping of running Windows 9x on DOSBox-X or PCem to play a few older games, in particular Jedi Knight (aka Dark Forces II). But using 3DMark2000 as a test, the Voodoo emulation in both was so atrociously slow and had graphics errors that they wouldn't be able to run any real game. Also, the Mac port of PCem was only an alpha, which never got updated, and the original maintainer of the mainline source for PCem, Sarah Walker, dropped development and it has been somewhat dormant since then, despite having a new maintainer.
Back then I didn't have 86box (a fork of PCem) on my radar, because it was Windows-only. But in a matter of three or four months it had been ported to Linux, then macOS, then native Apple Silicon.
I'm not using it to run Windows games, though, as CrossOver, Whisky, or Parallels are better candidates for this task (I actually managed to get Jedi Knight running with dgVoodoo2 on Parallels, and now it's even easier with DREAMM). And for DOS game, DOSBox-Staging is much easier to handle than real DOS on a PC emulator.
What I use 86box for is a bit of nostalgia by booting BeOS, which I used before I switched to macOS on a PowerMac G5. I configured the PC that I was using back then to run BeOS:
ASUS P2B board with 350 MHz Pentium II and a Voodoo Banshee video card. I couldn't remember which sound card I had (only that it used a Yamaha chipset), thus I simply used a Soundblaster 16 PnP for compatibility reasons. (I eventually upgraded my real PC with a 550 MHz Pentium III and an ATI Radeon card, but 86box doesn't emulate Pentium III and vanilla BeOS has no Radeon drivers).
On the M1 this setup somewhat worked, but the startup sound after reaching the desktop was a bit choppy, and IIRC the demo videos didn't play smoothly.
On the M4 Pro the startup sound is the just the way it should be, and the videos (of monitors being tossed off a roof) play smoothly. Playing both at the same time is getting choppy, though. I cannot recall if the real hardware was able to handle two videos at the same time over 20 years ago. BTW, I set the desktop resolution so high that BeOS warned me it could damage the "monitor".
Also, while playing the included demo songs, the music gets slightly interrupted when opening the photos of the composers. I'm guessing this is a timing limitation of the emulator not a performance problem with the M4. BeOS is famous for having a very quick response time and 86box might not be as precise.
Since the M4 Pro didn't seem to have any issues performance-wise, I cranked the clock of the emulated Pentium II from 350 to 450 MHz, and the emulated machine is still at 100%.
For a joke, I just installed Windows 98SE, a Voodoo Banshee driver, and DirectX 8.1 to run 3DMark2000. I was surprised to see the demo mode running smoothly and as far as I can tell without any graphics errors. The CPU utilisation ranges from slightly above 200% to occasionally close to 300% while running the demo. I suspect 86box might be able to run less demanding games even on a basic M4, but I think I'd still prefer the other options mentioned above, unless the game demands an original Windows 9x.
I almost didn't test the Xbox emulator xemu, because someone mentioned in a Youtube video that it doesn't run playable, even on the M4 (I cannot remember if it was a Pro or not). That was also my impression after testing it on the M1.
It took me a while to get it running again, because it has been a few years since my last test and it seems xemu has switched from normal ISOs to XISOs, which requires some conversion.
Surprisingly, Halo 1 runs perfectly playable for me (I completed the first two levels without any issues). On the M1 it started out OK, but had huge frame rate drops during explosions or with multiple enemies, but not so on the M4 Pro.
I also suspect there might have been large improvements in the emulator itself, since Halo 2 had big texture issues. This has been improved a lot, but I still wouldn't count it as playable (subpar frame rate, the HUD doesn't seem to work, and still some texture issues).
Riddick also has many issues (the main menu is practically all black), and Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath has the problem of textures occasionally not showing up, which makes it hard to play.
I still have to test Fable and KOTOR...
But if you want to see Halo 1 again, I can definitely recommend it. I doubled the internal resolution to make it look better. For some reason the textures don't look as dated to me as in a lot of other games, but that might just be nostalgia. But the M4 Pro is definitely getting hot here (over 100°C).
That's it for now. If you are looking for a specific emulator, I can recommend the following site:
Emulators on macOS - Emulation General Wiki
emulation.gametechwiki.com
