Did Apple Accidentally Make the Best Gaming Laptop?

so the title it's a good question because  apple directly compared their new macbook pros   to machines with the highest end nvidia 3080  mobile gpus now yes apple fanboys they didn't   specifically state that they meant in gaming  but like it or not and i don't apple is one of   the biggest players in the gaming industry by  net profit they might be the biggest but that's   in mobile gaming stupid little kid games real  gamers play an rgb laden battle stations with   custom water loops g-fuel and hot enemy body  pillows okay maybe that's just me but let's   be frank here apple computers have never been  the best option for gaming the commodore 64 had   a better looking video output and significantly  better sound capabilities than the apple ii the   1990s apple pippin gaming console was a total flop  see my video on that here if you haven't already   and halo was destined to be a mac exclusive that's  right at least until microsoft swept in and bought   bungie but then in 2005 apple announced that it  was moving away from ibm's powerpc architecture   in favor of x86 by way of intel processors the  same chips that were put into the majority of   competing windows pcs and for a good  many years apple computers could game   even though they weren't made to game bootcamp  brought support for native booting into windows   increasingly competent gpus made games run  adequately on the majority of apple computers and   some models especially more recent ones run games  legitimately great you get it great because cheese the problem is that apple's machines have never  been price competitive and gaming on a mac was   always a well if you have a mac you can game on it  more than it was ever a legitimate recommendation   against the same priced gaming pcs max were never  value kings well at least not until apple silicon   ships which have perverted pervasive price to  performance perceptions pertaining to apple's   computers the new macbook pros ship with chips  that unlike the m1 before them are anything but   polite retaining the m1's efficiency strengths  but beefing up the quantity of cpu and gpu cores   to make hotter faster meaner machines and  look you've already seen a number of reviews   and you've seen that yes these chips are fast  and the m1 pro and max gpu cores in particular   can blaze through compute benchmarks but compute  benchmarks and real work is lame okay yeah look   games are fun and we're going to get to those in  a minute but you do need to get real work done and   that's where today's sponsor setup comes in setup  simplifies and streamlines software acquisition   on the mac without having to go out and find  stuff on the web let me show you how let's say i   accidentally deleted a file from one of our memory  cards this happens more often than you'd think all   i have to do is type data recovery i guess and uh  yeah check it out it suggests disk drill which is   a very popular mac app i press install and i get  instant full functionality there's no trials no   more credit card numbers that are strewn across  the web no more license management check it out   boom we're done setup provides full access to over  200 of the mac's very best apps using multiple   apps i can revamp my workflow from productivity  to utility task management and so much more   think tasks with setup and try it free for seven  days by clicking the link in the video description to game on a pc you typically install  steam from the launcher of your choice   you download your games and you're done on  a mac it's not even remotely that simple now   make no mistake you can go out and download and  install steam and acquire a number of games but   the quantity of binaries compiled for mac are few  in my library of 408 games just 93 of them offer   native mac support and of those 93 just 14 of them  are aaa titles now i'll talk about the performance   of the few resource intensive mac games in a bit  but first what if you want to play games that are   not supported by mac os on old intel machines  this was easy open up bootcamp install windows   but on apple silicon that's a no go you can't  virtualize x86 operating systems only those   compiled for arm now you might be wondering well  why doesn't camp support windows for arm that's a   thing right well there's a lot of reasons from  drivers to architecture but the biggest reason   is that it is literally against microsoft's  end-user license agreement which is honestly   hilarious apple has stated that they're open to  the idea but they just can't but anyone who's   built a hackintosh knows that just because you  can't doesn't mean you can't parallels for mac   supports the installation of windows 11 for arm  now that's an iso that you can only get upon   acceptance into the windows insider program but  it's pretty easy to get in and once you do it's   windows as of last year windows for arm  brought support for 64-bit app emulation   and this year they announced arm 64 ec which is  kind of similar to mac os's universal binaries but   for all intents and purposes what we have here is  a mac virtualizing windows arm which when it plays   games emulates windows x86 it sounds like a recipe  for disaster but it's kind of not at least not 100   of the time select titles like overwatch performed  surprisingly well and even older more demanding   titles like the witcher 3 were perfectly  playable at least in so much as you looked   at the fps counter and not the game the issue we  ran into with a lot of titles and apparently it's   a pretty common one is that the game will just get  hung up sometimes north of a second on what seems   like nothing it's usually when it tries to load a  new asset into memory now i'm not sure if it's the   way that parallels works with directx or what but  it's really weird let me give an example the first   time i perform a move or an attack in overwatch  it's super slow it freezes but then once i've done   it once it's fine for the rest of the gameplay  experience it's bizarre now is it game breaking   yeah it can be but it's usually just an annoying  thing that fixes itself once the game has been up   a few minutes it's certainly playable even  though it's not ideal now a more popular   method of gaming on mac os historically has  been using a compatibility layer like wine now   the advantage to a compatibility layer as opposed  to something like parallels is that it translates   system calls from a foreign system windows to mac  os using native system calls rather than emulating   hardware in software and the theoretical advantage  of this is better performance but here's the thing   using crossover an app built on wine resulted in  some issues now the app has a perfectly nice gui   and there are a few options for enhanced gaming  performance and there were instances in which i   found performance was indeed superior but they are  few grand theft auto 5 is one such game that can   actually run quite well in crossover at least  in so much as you're using a controller and   the latest nightly build of the software for  whatever reason a keyboard and mouse combo would   result in glitching and the public release  just straight up wouldn't launch the game   here's the problem i had to use a pirated version  of gta 5 because the official steam version   uses the rockstar launcher which is unsupported  in crossover and results in the game crashing this   was an overarching theme that i found while using  both crossover and parallels most games just don't   work and anything that requires kernel-based  anti-cheat yeah that's not going to work either   so apex legends fortnite those are all out ah and  all directx 12 games fail to work as well so good   luck playing any aaa title from the last couple  of years oh furthermore any game acquired from the   microsoft store or from the xbox app those fail  to launch because of drm so no game pass for you   oh and most vulcan games also won't work in  crossover and none of them work in parallels   oh and last yeah any game that uses stream output  which is all unity 3d games those are not going   to work and oh yeah last thing if you have a  32-bit vulcan game those are going to run really   slow because molten vk which is the compatibility  layer that is available for macos that translates   vulcan to metal that only works with 64-bit apps  as of mac os catalina so crossover has to use   wine's old directx to open gl translation which  is notoriously slow are you seeing a trend here   yeah it's not great now look there are sites out  there like apple gaming wiki amongst others that   have allegedly tested compatibility with these  software titles and various mac hardware but i've   found almost all of them to be woefully unreliable  and inaccurate games that state they're supported   just straight up won't launch they're they're  not and games that say they aren't supported   sometimes are like gta 5. now look i don't know  that i've been direct enough so let me put it   like this playing windows titles on apple silicon  max is such a nightmare and it's so unexceptional   if you even can manage to get it working that  it's literally not even worth your time to try   so then quinn what the heck is with the  title is this just clickbait deception   no there are three different categories  where these new macs really do excel at   gaming hope i didn't break the screen on this  the first is emulation of retro game consoles   we ran both xmu and original xbox emulator as well  as the excellent dolphin gamecube and wii emulator   and they both work in a word perfectly i was a  bit shocked but elated to see even the base model   macbook pro pushing 4k 60fps in titles like super  mario galaxy 2. there are only a couple of games   now that don't work with dolphin so to have such  a vast library of games right at your fingertips   is pretty cool even if it's in a little  bit of a legal gray area now obviously   a real kind of natural emulation candidate would  seem to be the nintendo switch but sadly the two   emulators on the market that currently exist don't  yet support mac os at all intel or apple silicon   though yuzu has said that they're working on it  and it'll come eventually so at what else can   a mac gain well you're gonna laugh because it is  pretty silly but apple arcade and ios apps we are   now to the point where there are some legitimately  impressive games available via apple arcade and   the app store like the gorgeous the last campfire  published by hello games of no man's sky infamy   now look in these types of videos we tend to  get super bogged down with specs and performance   but indie games are often some of the most fun  out there and thanks to game engines like unity   and unreal many of these indie games have native  mac binaries ready to go and they play amazingly   well on these new machines but look i know you've  been waiting the whole video for the grand reveal   of aaa gaming performance on the mac or you  just skipped here using chapter markers down   below in which case shame on you but with all the  stars aligned so the m1 pro and ammo max hardware   with intentionally ported games to the mac so  ones that run on apple's hardware accelerated   metal graphics api the question becomes can  they match the performance of the best gaming   windows laptops and the answer is surprisingly  yes and they actually do it so well that even a   disillusioned mac enthusiast like myself finds  himself absolutely blown away in dirt rally at   4k ultra settings we were pushing well over 100  frames per second on the 16 inch macbook pro   with the 32 core gpu m1 max by contrast my  aorus aero 15 with an nvidia 2070 super max q   wasn't even able to average 60 frames per second  at the same settings moving to shadow of the tomb   raider we found that the 16-inch m1 max matched  the performance of a razer blade with an nvidia   2080 max-q planet coaster a game ported recently  to metal by asper runs like a dream as well as   i've ever seen it run on desktop pcs interestingly  all of these games while still metal compatible   have not yet been ported to apple silicon they're  running through rosetta so it's not unreasonable   given what we know about rosetta to assume an  additional 10 to 15 performance bump from a   natively compiled binary amazing and that brings  us to the most recent most tech demoy game of   them all mist which is natively compiled for apple  silicon and uses metal now for a mac user like me   it's easy to be wowed by the performance of this  machine i swear i don't have stockholm syndrome but to a more discerning pc user you're probably  thinking wow a mac finally matches the performance   of a gaming computer that's only several hundred  dollars less expensive instead of several thousand   dollars less expensive great work guy but look  i want to make a case for the macbook pro here   and that's in efficiency the total package tdp of  the m1 is substantially and i mean substantially   nearly 200 watts less than the razer blade 15  advanced or gigabyte aero 15. i'm lucky to get   five hours of battery life on those  machines just doing everyday computing   whereas on the 16-inch macbook pro i can  get over 12 hours without a sweat and gaming   i was able to run the dirt rally benchmark on a  loop at comparable brightness for hours and hours   longer than the other laptops and the last  time i checked and i'm no expert the last   time i checked battery life was kind of important  in a laptop but there are other advantages too   while other games or really any heavy gpu load  can really get the macbook pro fans spinning   they are much quieter than the prior generation  macbook pros and while they're absolutely audible   they are not anywhere near deafening like their pc  counterparts factor in the significantly brighter   higher resolution higher refresh rate display  amazing speakers that make her crystal clear   above the quietly worrying fan noise and  suddenly this machine doesn't just look competent   but takes the crown for the most well-rounded  powerful practical gaming laptop ever   until you remember the worst part of all of this  and that's that the mac just doesn't have a good   catalog of games that support metal and even the  ones that claim to support the mac via opengl   or vulkan through molten vk like cs go they  often don't work on the m1 without googling for   weird fixes like modify and launch options this is  insanely janky it doesn't matter how powerful your   hardware is and how streamlined your graphics  apis are if nobody uses them and nobody does   apple has been pretending like gaming on macs has  been a thing in their keynotes for a few years now   but that's a lie it's not if apple really  wants to bring gaming to the mac and i think   that this hardware clearly demonstrates  that they're capable of making that happen   then they need to pony up the cash and financially  incentivize game studios like the rest of the   industry does to bring their games to the mac or  they need to just accept defeat and re-implement   popular standardized graphics apis like vulcan  which they have gotten rid of so that bringing   games to the mac isn't enormously tedious  for game studios like it currently is today   because ultimately this has very little market  share and very little return on investment now you   say that you care apple so show it because right  now the only thing that you're showing is that you   like taking 30 of the mobile gaming industry's  revenue in exchange for basically nothing   speaking of basically nothing i sure would  like it if you basically gave me a like on   this video in exchange for nothing if you  didn't like this video send it to someone   that you don't like because that costs  you nothing and they're gonna hate it   thank you so much for watching this video please  let me know have you been gaming on any macs and   if so what titles hello tomb raider i see you  thank you so much for watching and as always you

Channel: Snazzy Labs

Views: 835,260

Keywords: snazzy labs, quinn nelson, snazzyq, gaming, macbook pro, m1, m1 max, m1 pro, macbook pro vs, m1 pro vs intel, m1 max vs intel, m1 pro vs ryzen, m1 max vs ryzen, m1 max vs nvidia, m1 max vs radeon, gaming pc, gaming laptop, gaming benchmarks, performance

Id: 0exWsfKdsMk

Length: 17min 49sec (1069 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 16 2021