Adam Kos If you're already the owner of the new MacBook Pros, gaming probably wasn't a priority in your selection. It's true that Macs aren't exactly praised for their catalog of AAA games, but there are still some popular titles worth playing on your new PC. And you might be surprised how well it runs.
The following titles offer a real taste of the gaming performance that the latest M1 Pro and M1 Max chips can achieve, where in some cases said games are not even fully optimized for Apple Silicon chips. With any luck, however, their impressive results may excite game developers and their publishers enough to realize the potential performance of Apple's processors and finally start bringing more content to the Mac platform.
It could be interest you
Patrik Pajer Shadow of the Tomb Raider
This title is one of the most powerful on Apple's own chip architecture, despite not being a Mac-optimized port that uses the macOS Metal graphical interface. To play this game on the new Macs, you need to run it through Apple's Rosetta translation layer.
Still, the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips make it easy to handle complex outdoor environments and render at long distances, even when using the high-detail graphics preset at 1080p. In this case, the game averages 14 to 1 frames per second even on a 50-inch MacBook Pro with an M60 Pro chip. As the YouTuber then showed MrMacRight, so on a 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Max chip, the frame rate almost doubles at the same setting. With a resolution of 1440p, it is then possible to achieve medium details of a continuous 50 to 60 frames per second.
Metro Exodus
Metro Exodus is one of the latest game ports of AAA games for macOS, as well as one of the most impressive FPS available on Mac today. Although this game also requires the Rosetta translation layer to run, the integrated graphics cores in the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips are well equipped to handle the effects-laden game engine that makes heavy use of bright and dark environments and fast-paced action . In the native resolution of 1440p, the game reaches an average frame rate of 40 to 50 fps on both chips. At 1080p quality, it runs at less than 100 fps.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Here, too, it is a port that needs the Rosetta interface to run. It is one of the most demanding games that even M1 chips have problems with. However, with the M1 Max chip, the game can average 70 to 80 frames per second at 1080p at high graphics settings. Machines with the M1 Pro chip achieve around 50 to 60 fps at the same settings. In the case of 1440p resolution, the M1 Max still provides a playable 45 to 55 fps.
And Total War Saga: Troy
Troy is the latest installment in the Total War series of real-time strategies, which are traditionally considered CPU-intensive due to large-scale land battles. Here, however, the title already runs natively on Apple Silicon chips, and M1 Max here clearly uses optimized code and thus achieves a truly exemplary frame rate. In 1080p even at high detail settings, the game consistently exceeds 100 fps, while the M1 Pro manages 60 to 70 frames per second at the same resolution.
Baldur's Gate 3
Although the expected RPG hit Baldur's Gate 3 is not officially released yet, its early access version is already available. The title runs natively on Apple Silicon and at 1080p resolution in the "Ultra" setting it achieves a sustained 14 to 1 frames per second on both the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip and the 90-inch MacBook Pro with the M100 Max chip. The latter reaches these values even at 1440p resolution, but the M1 Pro already has problems here and fluctuates between 20 and 45 frames per second. If you then set 16K on the 1" M4 Max machine and leave the Ultra details, you still get around 50 to 60 frames per second.
Where does it say that A Total War Saga: Troy runs natively on Apple Silicon? I found on Feral interactive and Steam that he is working on Rosetta 2.