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- Mac Games For Metal Roofs
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- Apple Metal Mac
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Introduction
For many years, anyone wanting to play games on their Mac has been left with two choices – either accept the reduced gaming performance of OS X, or use Boot Camp to install Windows on a separate partition to use as a game launcher.
Apple’s new Metal API, announced for macOS in 2015, was designed to remedy this and to replace the old OpenGL API which, on Apple hardware, was stuck at version 4.1 – released all the way back in 2010
The other problem I had was the dropped FPS in numerous spots of the game (examples of specific areas include the bamboo jungle, the color swamp, and the Monastery). I have a Mac with a 3.1 Ghz Intel i7 Core Processor and 16 GB of RAM, but as powerful as this desktop computer is I still experience framerate drops in this game. An interface for allocating a MetalKit buffer that backs the vertex data of a Model I/O mesh, suitable for use in a Metal app. Class MTKSubmesh A container for the index data of a Model I/O submesh, suitable for use in a Metal app. Mini Metal is a 3D fast paced shooter where you customize and control your own battle tank! Face off in an arena against wave after wave of unique enemies, destroying them with your powerful weapons! Collect coins and badges, and use them to purchase, unlock and upgrade new weapons and vehicles! The first store dedicated to Mac games with over ten years of customer satisfaction. Thousands of Mac games to choose from! Instantly download and play most games for sale. Apple's list of Mac hardware supporting the new macOS Mojave is identical to its list of Mac computers that support Metal.More specifically, Metal is Apple's hardware-accelerated 3D graphics.
So, how does Metal compare to DirectX under Windows in terms of performance? Can you game on macOS in 2019?
To find out, we ran some Metal supporting games under macOS Mojave 10.14.2 and Windows 10 on the same hardware.
First, at the low end, a 2015 MacBook Pro with a 2.9Ghz i5 and Iris 6100 integrated Graphics.
And at the higher end, a Hackintosh with an i5-8400 and Radeon RX 570, which is the same GPU used in the base 5K iMac.
To begin, we tested Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia, released in 2018.
On the Hackintosh, the game surprisingly ran significantly faster under macOS than under Windows. At least to begin with. At 1080P, on the high detail preset, the game was hitting over 90fps on macOS compared to the high 70’s in Windows 10. However, once the action moved inside the city, with lots of particle effects and heat haze distortion, the macOS frame rate fell apart, with Windows beating it by a significant margin.
On the MacBook Pro, at 1280×800 and the lowest detail preset, as expected the frame rates are consistently bad on both operating systems, but just about still playable, with Windows beating MacOS by a couple of frames per second.
Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia | macOS Mojave | Windows 10 |
---|---|---|
Hackintosh 1080P / High | 80.7 fps | 81.9 fps |
Hackintosh 1440P / High | 57.3 fps | 68.8 fps |
Hackintosh 4K / High | 28.8 fps | 35.1 fps |
MacBook Pro 1280×800 / Lowest | 26.6 fps | 28.2 fps |
Overall, at 1080P in high detail, Windows is about 1 fps faster. Moving up to 1440P, however, Windows’ lead increases to almost 12 fps, while at 4K resolution the difference is 7 FPS. On the MacBook Pro at the lowest details setting, the overall difference is about 2 fps.
The next game, Rise of the Tomb raider, was released in 2016 on Windows and the macOS port in 2018.
Running at high detail on the Hackintosh under macOS and Windows the game looks identical but the Windows version is noticeably smoother. On the MacBook Pro, even at the lowest detail setting in 1280×800 the game was predictably slow on both.
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Overall at High detail 1080P Windows is about 10fps faster. At 1440p it’s 9 fps faster, and at 4K 5fps faster.
On the MacBook Pro, Windows is slightly better at almost 2fps faster.
Rise of the Tomb Raider | macOS Mojave | Windows 10 |
---|---|---|
Hackintosh 1080P / High | 78.2 fps | 88.2 fps |
Hackintosh 1440P / High | 51.6 fps | 60.3 fps |
Hackintosh 4K / High | 26.9 fps | 31.7 fps |
MacBook Pro 1280×800 / Lowest | 17.6 fps | 19.4 fps |
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The final game tested was Total War Warhammer. Vlc download for windows 10. Released for MacOS in April 2017, this was among the first Metal supporting games to appear on the Mac.
Apple Metal Mac
On the RX 570, at high detail in 1080P, Windows was 15 fps faster. At 1440P, 9 fps faster, and at 4K the gap was reduced to about 4 fps. Kotor 2 hk factory.
On the MacBook Pro, meanwhile, in 1280×800 at the lowest detail setting, macOS managed 17.4 fps compared to Windows 20.5 – a difference of about 3 fps.
Total War: Warhammer | macOS Mojave | Windows 10 |
---|---|---|
Hackintosh 1080P / High | 77.6 fps | 92.5 fps |
Hackintosh 1440P / High | 54.2 fps | 63.6 fps |
Hackintosh 4K / High | 29.6 fps | 33.6 fps |
MacBook Pro 1280×800 / Lowest | 17.4 fps | 20.5 fps |
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Overall, on average across the different resolutions, Thrones of Britannia was 10.6% faster on Windows.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was 12.5% faster on Windows.
Total War: Warhammer was 14.5% faster on Windows.
So if you want the best possible gaming performance it’s fairly obvious that installing Windows on your Mac is still going to be necessary. That said, Metal is still a vast improvement over the old OpenGL API on macOS.
To illustrate this, Unigine Valley is about 25% faster on Windows than MacOS, while Total War: Attila – the last Total war game on Mac still using openGL – is about 30-40% faster in Windows on the same hardware. Other games are much slower. Civilization VI, for example, is over twice as fast under Windows as under macOS on the same computer.
So, while there’s still room for improvement, what Metal has accomplished so far is reduce the performance gap from 30%-50% to 12-15%. Hopefully with future updates it will continue to improve, and as developers become more familiar with the API, the difference should narrow further.
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Mac computers that support Metal
Find out if your Mac computer supports Metal in OS X El Capitan and later.
Metal is a graphics technology from Apple that allows the main processor (CPU) and graphics processor (GPU) to work together more effectively, providing faster and more fluid graphics performance in games and high-performance apps.
These Mac computers support Metal:
- MacBook (2015 and later)
- MacBook Air (2012 and later)
- MacBook Pro (2012 and later)
- Mac mini (2012 and later)
- iMac (2012 and later)
- Mac Pro (Late 2013)