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Apple’s M2 Pro and M2 Max are FAST! Mac gaming benchmarks

Are you excited for the ARM future?

  • Yes!

    Votes: 62 49.6%
  • No, I like drawing 1,000w+ while gaming.

    Votes: 63 50.4%

  • Total voters
    125

Razvedka

Banned
I know most of you won't like this but even though Silicone and ARM are the future on Hardware level, enterprise level cards on the Cloud will be even more cost effective based on them in the future and likely will outpace buying hardware when internet become viable for many because it will be affordable.
Latency will always be a knock against a cloud approach like this. Plus not always needing a (capped) internet connection, or being subject to a third party's terms/agreements or very existence.
 

Quasicat

Member
The m2 chips fixed the memory bandwidth issue that was holding the m1 back from its true potential.
Idk about gaming as it will take time for apple user base to fill out with apple silicon chips but another thing you guys have to remember is these same chips .. will be/are all already .. in Apple TV, iPads, and iPhones . It’s the very reason apple demands developers to use its METAL apis. Apple is setting itself up for a “computer/ gaming across all devices “ future.
It will be even more apparent when wifi 7 is standard and can deliver 40gbps which means everyone’s new phones and tablets could potentially be a easy to use switch like console just by pairing a Bluetooth controller and casting to WiFi 7 ready tv.
Definitely. The new Apple TV as a streaming device using the A15 chip is a bit overkill. It makes the menus extremely fast but as a streaming box it’s overpowered. Then you load Apple Arcade games into it and it runs on par with the PS4 generation. I know that’s a step backwards for most of us with the newest consoles, but it’s enough for the casual audience which Apple is aiming towards.
That being said, I wish they would open their software/hardware restrictions a bit so I could run my Plex server on an Apple TV.
 

Tarin02543

Member
Definitely. The new Apple TV as a streaming device using the A15 chip is a bit overkill. It makes the menus extremely fast but as a streaming box it’s overpowered. Then you load Apple Arcade games into it and it runs on par with the PS4 generation. I know that’s a step backwards for most of us with the newest consoles, but it’s enough for the casual audience which Apple is aiming towards.
That being said, I wish they would open their software/hardware restrictions a bit so I could run my Plex server on an Apple TV.

Try infuse pro, I pay 1 € each month and it plays everything you throw at it. Even AV1, which Apple TV doesn't do natively (via software) yet.
 
Yeah, I got an M1 Max last year and just couldn't bear to spend on the extra storage, that's a legitimate issue for gaming too, where are you going to store these games? To be fair the Apple internal storage is very quick, no idea how it stacks up, but I've seen people say it's faster than other storage.

Fwiw, I had a Mac of a similar vintage to yours and occasionally have to use it now, the new machines, as you would expect are a significant jump forward. If you've been waiting for a significant enough jump (I was) then I'd say now meets that criteria.
I got a 16" Pro with the base 512 memory and without gaming I haven't even come close to needing more.

edit: I don't do video stuff at all
 
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calistan

Member
Yeah, I got an M1 Max last year and just couldn't bear to spend on the extra storage, that's a legitimate issue for gaming too, where are you going to store these games? To be fair the Apple internal storage is very quick, no idea how it stacks up, but I've seen people say it's faster than other storage.

Fwiw, I had a Mac of a similar vintage to yours and occasionally have to use it now, the new machines, as you would expect are a significant jump forward. If you've been waiting for a significant enough jump (I was) then I'd say now meets that criteria.
Any Macbook Air from the last five years would be a huge jump for me! I was waiting until the Pro machines had better keyboards, more ports, magsafe and an SD card slot, but when they finally got all that I decided to wait for the next gen, as I'd recently bought a monster iPad. Now may well be the time...
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
The few native games I’ve tried on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro have impressed me. Sadly compatibility’s awful.
My experience has been the same. Some games were awesome but most I tried weren't.

The compatibility for lots of things was a problem during the first 9-12 months of M1. As awesome as Rosetta 2 is there were just so many things that were weird. Complex apps would randomly crash because some dependency couldn't run in Rosetta. Nearly everything else is great now, but gaming is really lagging. I suspect that for a lot of games the financial return to fully convert from x86 to native Apple silicon just isn't worth the investment.
 

LordCBH

Member
The m2 mac mini is a pretty insane value for the price they want considering the performance of it. Certainly the best value proposition I’ve seen from them in a long ass time.
 

twilo99

Member
It's an interesting future.

Both Intel and Microsoft poached the lead architects / engineers from the M chip team a couple of years ago, primarily to develop chips for datacentre applications, but as we see there is crossover potential.

I can have my teams compile all their existing code onto an arm target and deploy as containers internally or hosted in cloud on infrastructure that is more cost efficient in terms of initial cost; density; cooling etc saving money, which let's face it is the main driver these days.

They poached people from Apple silicon? Could you share source please
 

Mr Reasonable

Completely Unreasonable
I got a 16" Pro with the base 512 memory and without gaming I haven't even come close to needing more.

edit: I don't do video stuff at all

Yes, it obviously depends on what you use the machine for, I've got a 1tb machine (base Max) and I have 4tb of external storage connected to it too.
 

supernova8

Banned
The most impressive thing is how quiet the fans are. I just bought an ASUS Vivobook equipped with a 5900HX (no dedicated GPU) and the fans kick in even after just a few minutes of regular browsing on the internet. Based on the reviews I've watched, the new Macbook Pros barely turn on their fans when doing stuff like video editing, which is simply insane.
 
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64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
the M1/M2 technology is revolutionary and apple should be proud of their work here as these are some of the most impressive processors ive seen in years.

but i'm not gonna be buying an apple computer with no customization, overpriced acessories, no wires and terrible backwards compatibility just to support this ARM future. I still play a lot of x86 games and i don't wanna lose all of that just so i can consume less power.
I haven't even switched to linux because compatibility isn't 100% completely spotless like i want it to be and proton is far closer than any apple solution, while also being developed on x86. If i'm not willing to accept conditions like that there's no way in hell i'm gonna be changing an entire CPU architecture.
 
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diffusionx

Gold Member
I feel like Apple is operating on a completely different from everyone else. When they announced the M chips I figured they would lean into efficiency at the cost of power but no in turns out they did both. Obviously owning the entire software and hardware stack is a major advantage for them, but they’re destroying AMD and Intel everywhere but the very top-end. The new Mac Pro will be VERY interesting.
 

UltimaKilo

Gold Member
We already know that Apple leads the way, but I am more interested in their stuff 2-4 years from now. The M2 is just as impressive as the M1
Latency will always be a knock against a cloud approach like this. Plus not always needing a (capped) internet connection, or being subject to a third party's terms/agreements or very existence.
Don't say "always" but rather for the foreseeable future. At some point, it will get there, but it won't be this decade.
 

Razvedka

Banned
We already know that Apple leads the way, but I am more interested in their stuff 2-4 years from now. The M2 is just as impressive as the M1

Don't say "always" but rather for the foreseeable future. At some point, it will get there, but it won't be this decade.
Outside of some kind of quantum tomfoolery, what is on the horizon to mitigate this issue? I agree with you, am I'm also not a proponent of 'since science says this today, it means forever!' because that's hubris.

But I'm not aware of anything even hypothetical to defeat latency.
 
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jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Two whole pages, and nobody has mentioned yet that OP misspelled "Apple" in the title? You're slipping, GAF.

LMLco2m.png
 

HTK

Banned
Apple has great hardware no doubt about that. It's a challenge for Apple to turn their platform into a more serious gaming powerhouse. They are serious about mobile gaming and that's great but it's just not for me, I'd be curious to see what they can do for those big console/pc type of games.

Apple your move...
 

RickMasters

Member
Waiting for them to make a new mac pro, which will be going into my pro tools recording studio. I wouldnt use a mac for gaming, longterm. overpriced for the task, to be honest, no matter how impressive the M chips are.
 

UltimaKilo

Gold Member
Outside of some kind of quantum tomfoolery, what is on the horizon to mitigate this issue? I agree with you, am I'm also not a proponent of 'since science says this today, it means forever!' because that's hubris.

But I'm not aware of anything even hypothetical to defeat latency.
I don't see anything that will solve the issue currently, but I'm sure we will in our lifetimes since it appears the margins are better on server hosting than selling hardware.
 
Maybe the x86 era is coming into an end.

As long as the only company making these super high-performance ARM CPU cores is Apple, that's never gonna happen.

A big part of Apple's ARM performance lead is due to them fabbing their chips on the absolute bleeding edge mobile chip process nodes.

NVidia, Qualcomm, Samsung, etc don't have that luxury and will lag behind.

Apple will never ship its cores to OEMs to integrate into non-Apple overpriced hardware, so there'll continue to be a healthy market for x86 for the rest of the market, and Apple in its corner doing its own thing.
 
You’re an idiot, gaming isn’t the idea of Apple and not why people purchase them. Look at video processing times, and export they blow everything out of the water. Even gaming through virtual machine now they’re managing just fine for those weirdos who play games on laptops.

The M2 Pro chips are actually fucking insane, you have single core speeds the same as a i9 12900, multicore speeds the same as a 3960x threadripper. All while being a cm thin with display and lasting 20 hours on a charge and this is only their second gen. They have the best chip engineers in the business at the point right now.

If I could get one of these and they put boot camp on it I would be all over it, my Carbon X1 even being the best of PC laptops in its class is absolute crud bucket in comparison and sick of the absolute turd battery life of real world use being 6-8 hours.

If people can’t see ARM is the future I feel sorry for them.
This. Gaming isn't and will never be the focus for Mac. It's productivity, general use, and creative work. The fact that a MacBook Air can even play stuff like Fortnite at like 70-90fps is on it's own amazing.

You don't buy a Mac for gaming, but it's great that if you do want to do some gaming you can. Plus (hate/ridicule incoming) stuff like Geforce Now can give you a surprisingly great experience on even AAA games like Witcher/Battlefield/Cyberpunk.
 
This thread is an amazing preview for the not that distant future when Apple has the fastest computers for gaming. A lot of fanboys in love with their metal boxes are gonna be livid and the threads will be popcorn worthy.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
I got a 16" Pro with the base 512 memory and without gaming I haven't even come close to needing more.

edit: I don't do video stuff at all

Due to my PC from 2019 becoming a sloth in video editing, especially when throwing like 2-8 video clips on top of each other with H.265, 4K 4:2:2 10bit I tend to use on-the-spot rendering a lot. So far the main SSD has done 29TB out of 1,200 TBW:

ssd-tbw-29-TB.jpg
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
You’re an idiot, gaming isn’t the idea of Apple and not why people purchase them. Look at video processing times, and export they blow everything out of the water. Even gaming through virtual machine now they’re managing just fine for those weirdos who play games on laptops.

The M2 Pro chips are actually fucking insane, you have single core speeds the same as a i9 12900, multicore speeds the same as a 3960x threadripper. All while being a cm thin with display and lasting 20 hours on a charge and this is only their second gen. They have the best chip engineers in the business at the point right now.

If I could get one of these and they put boot camp on it I would be all over it, my Carbon X1 even being the best of PC laptops in its class is absolute crud bucket in comparison and sick of the absolute turd battery life of real world use being 6-8 hours.

If people can’t see ARM is the future I feel sorry for them.

Geek bench scores are not indicative of real world performance…
 

small_law

Member
"Apple is about to get serious about gaming" has been a headline since the 80's. It's not a priority at Apple. It never has been. It isn't a part of their culture. They are never going to make any sort of serious push into gaming on Macs. Every few years, they make a tacit gesture like this to dupe everyone into thinking they will. They won't.

Come on everybody. It's 2023. You can't keep getting hoodwinked with stuff like this.
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
They more than are with the work I out laid when these chips are exporting faster than intels or AMDs.. The M2 would have the best inbuilt GPU at this point to I believe?

Yes, but that's because in pc world gpus are plentiful. On macs you're usually stuck with whatever apple decides to support. There's no need to fab massive dies with combined cpu and gpu. And certainly GPU performance on these machines pales in comparison with what is available on pc land, specially if you consider apple gpus have exhibit very poor scaling, with individual cores being downclocked to 700mhz on the m1 ultra. But there's no technical barrier to do so, look at consoles: both the series X and the Ps5 are essentially an amd cpu with a very large gpu bolted together on a single die.

As for exports and general performance, with the exception of final cut exports (which are optimized beyond absurdity for apple hardware) the results between MX Max and whatever intel's top of the line is are very similar. The big difference being that intel laptop chips will be chugging like 100w at full tilt and this is the real leadership, specially when it comes to laptops: the battery life of these MX macs is untouchable.

You can check results, for example at this URL where they go through different tests and apps: https://www.techspot.com/review/2499-apple-m2/
 
Arm might be the future, but an Apple product would just be another walled garden. Might as well just buy a console for gaming, because you’d be giving up your freedom regardless.
to be fair windows is becoming more of a walled garden too adding drm, having less options than before and trying to force you to use their brower,not allowing to uninstall certain programs,etc
 

TheAssist

Member
Maybe the x86 era is coming into an end.

Modern Intel and AMD CPU's are already embracing RISC designs and have been for quite some time. The cisc layer is merely there for compatibility and certain niche use cases. The difference between x86 and ARM isnt as big as people make it out to be.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Sorry but gaming on a Mac is largely a joke still. These have about the graphical power of a 3070.
In a mobile size chip. There are iPads with m2 since last year. M3 will come out at the end of this year.

Point being if m2 are 3070s …macs, iPads, and iPhones will soon be as powerful as a ps5 in a year or 2. 😱
 
I love my Macbook for working. It's just a very clean computer, no distractions. Whenever I do homeoffice I'm 100% satisfied with it.

But as soon as I leave homeoffice I turn on my pc and do my private work, because I like playing during little breaks. And that's only possible on a PC. So professionally it's Mac, but privately I'm cheating on it with a PC because I am, after all, a gamer in private as well. That's why I bought myself a PC again just a few weeks ago and I'm loving it so far for all that's possible on it that wasn't on Mac.
 

VAVA Mk2

Member
In a mobile size chip. There are iPads with m2 since last year. M3 will come out at the end of this year.

Point being if m2 are 3070s …macs, iPads, and iPhones will soon be as powerful as a ps5 in a year or 2. 😱
Doesn't matter if you don't have AAA titles being released for it on a typical basis.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
In a mobile size chip. There are iPads with m2 since last year. M3 will come out at the end of this year.

Point being if m2 are 3070s …macs, iPads, and iPhones will soon be as powerful as a ps5 in a year or 2. 😱

The M2 Max, not base M2 though. Still, they might squeeze a Pro or Max with M3's 3nm.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Let me make my stance clear: If I was a PC gamer I won't look at Macs as gaming devices, but them starting to play some AAA games with good performance is promising. I would get a Mac for productivity, won't play any game on them just like I didn't played a game on my PC's since like 2008 or so being counter-strike or Generals. The form factor and portability of the Mac mini/Studio, how cool they are so you don't be afraid of them snapping as some of the key features. The only thing lacking is AV1 hardware decoders and encoders which is strange for a company that is considered one of the founders:

ttkgEwKZ34Ajnbwhkagnj7.jpg


Also surprised that Sony, Canon, Panasonic aren't there.
 

Tams

Gold Member
I think x86 is going to be just fine.

1. It has become increasingly more RISC-like, so most benefits RISC has it also gets.
2. The modularity will help keep it popular despite the performance hit (integration seems to be the main thing other than node size giving M-series an edge).
3. It can all be integrated like on almost ARM and RISC-V SoCs.
4. Most of the lead of the M-series seems to be due to fabrication node; as Intel and AMD move to the same or similar nodes they will get the same boosts.
5. Intel and AMD are still investing many billions into it.
6. Inertia and sheer market size.
7. Backwards compatibility.


Really, a lot of it comes down to intregration and locking things down (walled garden). A lot of people are okay with that as iOS device sales show, so Macs have a lot of market share they could gain. But, many people won't be too happy to not even be able to upgrade their SSD or RAM.

Also, who knows what pressure regulators (especially the EU) might put on companies to make their systems more accessible.
 
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Ornoku

Member
The m2 chips are very impressive. Having to deal with apples terrible customer support and even worse hardware engineering are a deal breaker and always will be.
 

VAVA Mk2

Member
The m2 chips are very impressive. Having to deal with apples terrible customer support and even worse hardware engineering are a deal breaker and always will be.
As someone that isn't really aware of it, what is bad about Apple's hardware engineering?
 
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