YouTuber ETA Prime has tested PC games on an Apple MacBook Pro with the Apple M4 Max. This was made possible thanks to an ARM64 build of SteamOS running on macOS, courtesy of a new GitHub project titled "FX Steam Launcher".
So it runs on a Mac that costs twice as much as a perfectly capable gaming PC. Congrats.
I’d be curious to see how it runs on a base M1 or M2. I wonder if it will run on those or if it’s just M4 (note: M4 added ray tracing, so it was an attractive target for hobbyist gamers, and its launch was when Cyberpunk was released on macOS).
I have a base M2 MacBook Air (16GB RAM/1TB SSD), I’m sure I could spare a couple hundred GB of space for a SteamOS partition. But I wonder what kinds of games would actually run. M2 is very capable (I think my machine is roughly equivalent to a 12th gen Intel i3, but with a better iGPU, though let’s be real, an iGPU isn’t gonna rival a dedicated one… I had a Radeon 280 with 3GB of VRAM in my last PC, and it benched better than both my Macs (M2 base, and M2 Pro for the desktop). Even though “technically” the M2/M2 Pro GPU can tap into any of that 16GB RAM that the system isn’t using. Still got smoked by the 280, and it wasn’t close. The only way the Macs won was on CPU against my 4th-gen Xeon. But, duh. And even then, the Apple chips didn’t “smoke” the Xeon. Xeon is good shit. There’s a reason Intel Mac Pros used Xeons. If I were building today, I would really want to use a Xeon again, but AMD is kicking Intel’s arse on value these days, and there are some great AMD chips. I just don’t know what model numbers and whatnot.
Sure, but if that’s the only hardware you have available then you wouldn’t need to buy another “perfectly capable gaming PC” to play because games would just work on the Mac too.
I’ve just installed it on my own M2 Air (16gb/512). So far it’s cool to be able to run SteamOS as a Linux VM, but the one game I’ve tried (so far) - The Talos Principle - just crashed Steam.
The M2 air is more equivalent to a 12th Gen. i7 u or i5 H their CPU. My M1 MBP smokes my 12th gen i7 ThinkPad after the throttling has set in. A well cooled one at that. I3 laptops notoriously have shit cooling and even the passively cooled M2 will absolutely crush them once throttling has set in.
Some games run extremely well through translation layers, others done. It kinda depends on what instructions are needed. But as the other person said. If it’s what ya got then run what ya brung.
So it runs on a Mac that costs twice as much as a perfectly capable gaming PC. Congrats.
I’d be curious to see how it runs on a base M1 or M2. I wonder if it will run on those or if it’s just M4 (note: M4 added ray tracing, so it was an attractive target for hobbyist gamers, and its launch was when Cyberpunk was released on macOS).
I have a base M2 MacBook Air (16GB RAM/1TB SSD), I’m sure I could spare a couple hundred GB of space for a SteamOS partition. But I wonder what kinds of games would actually run. M2 is very capable (I think my machine is roughly equivalent to a 12th gen Intel i3, but with a better iGPU, though let’s be real, an iGPU isn’t gonna rival a dedicated one… I had a Radeon 280 with 3GB of VRAM in my last PC, and it benched better than both my Macs (M2 base, and M2 Pro for the desktop). Even though “technically” the M2/M2 Pro GPU can tap into any of that 16GB RAM that the system isn’t using. Still got smoked by the 280, and it wasn’t close. The only way the Macs won was on CPU against my 4th-gen Xeon. But, duh. And even then, the Apple chips didn’t “smoke” the Xeon. Xeon is good shit. There’s a reason Intel Mac Pros used Xeons. If I were building today, I would really want to use a Xeon again, but AMD is kicking Intel’s arse on value these days, and there are some great AMD chips. I just don’t know what model numbers and whatnot.
Sure, but if that’s the only hardware you have available then you wouldn’t need to buy another “perfectly capable gaming PC” to play because games would just work on the Mac too.
I’ve just installed it on my own M2 Air (16gb/512). So far it’s cool to be able to run SteamOS as a Linux VM, but the one game I’ve tried (so far) - The Talos Principle - just crashed Steam.
My testing continues…
The M2 air is more equivalent to a 12th Gen. i7 u or i5 H their CPU. My M1 MBP smokes my 12th gen i7 ThinkPad after the throttling has set in. A well cooled one at that. I3 laptops notoriously have shit cooling and even the passively cooled M2 will absolutely crush them once throttling has set in.
Some games run extremely well through translation layers, others done. It kinda depends on what instructions are needed. But as the other person said. If it’s what ya got then run what ya brung.