Tech Apple claims their new stuff can feature PC-level gaming

[SSgt Dickweed]

...like you could play Assassin's Creed: Shadows on the new Mac's and Ipads.

I pretty much hate everything Apple, but whuuuuuut???

I know it's possible to play AAA games on Apple stuff just that they're extremely limited in capacity. Never followed any development of gaming on Apple, so this is 'oh shit' news to me.

 

[Madmick]

...like you could play Assassin's Creed: Shadows on the new Mac's and Ipads.

I pretty much hate everything Apple, but whuuuuuut???

I know it's possible to play AAA games on Apple stuff just that they're extremely limited in capacity. Never followed any development of gaming on Apple, so this is 'oh shit' news to me.

Yep. Called it.

Apple M1 silicon upsets the establishment by skipping past the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X and coming close to Intel Core i7-11700K single-thread performance on PassMark
Apple is looking like a bull in a China shop. Intel and AMD might not be too threatened, right now, because Apple only makes chips for their own computers, but if this is an indication of the future Apple's M chip line will take, then every PC gamer in the world will be pining for their chips. I have no idea how to predict what the impact will be on PC gaming. I strongly doubt Apple would permit Windows manufacturers access to their hardware, the margins are far too low for them, but all of the tools for game development are on PC, and everyone will want this processing power.

It's not a leak or an engineer sample of anything like that. It's already showing up on the official charts (26 samples):
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

This is a freaking 15.1W chip under load when actively cooled. The 5800X is 131W. The 11700K is 225W.

Apple just swooped in with a Fat Man level bitch slap.

It why I lost my mind and wouldn't shut up about the M1 in the Steam Deck thread. More recently, I caught a LinusTechTips vid reviewing the latest iPad with the M4 variant. Beyond how incredibly powerful the M4 is, the most astonishing thing he mentioned in the vid was the quality of the screen. He said in their lab it was as good as any display they'd ever tested including the $20,000 reference display from Flanders scientific they'd recently checked out. It's kind of scary how good Apple has become at...everything.

You can see some performance benchmarks here:

iPad Pro 2024 benchmarks: Here’s how Apple’s M4 chip performs

We've tested Apple's latest tablets, and the M4 drives the iPad Pro 2024 to new heights

www.tomsguide.com

To be clear, for the above, benchmarks like Geekbench are focused on CPU and RAM performance, not the GPU. So while those MacBooks win against the HP Omen Transcend 14 gaming laptop in Geekbench, it definitely isn't as powerful for gaming as that laptop's RTX 4060 Mobile GPU, and wouldn't perform as well in games. For perspective, on paper, the closest current chip used in gaming devices to the Apple M4 would be Intel's new Core Ultra 7 155H that is being put into some of the new Steam Deck competitors like the MSI A1 Claw that got a lot of press at this most recent Computex show. GPUs are very close.

However, the huge difference, as I noted for past generation of M chips in the Steam Deck thread, is the power draw. The Ultra 7 155H will draw 28W, minimum, and even in extremely small form factor devices like the Claw, where they restrict its consumption, it will probably draw more like 45W-60W under load. Meanwhile, even under synthetic loads, the M chips have drawn less than double their TDP, and the TDP for the M4 is 10W. So it will probably achieve nearly equal performance while pulling a third of the power. It's just insane. It doesn't make any sense to me since everyone is using the same fabrication plants (i.e. TSMC).

And the baseline M4 is just that. It will go:
M4 --> M4 Pro --> M4 Max --> M4 Ultra (just two M4 Max chipsets linked together if they make it)

If game developers code their games for the M4 Max, then yes, Apple will be an immediate player in the AAA space. The iPad and MacBooks will the baseline Apple M4 are basically already more powerful than the Steam Deck.

 

[jefferz]

Yep. Called it.


It why I lost my mind and wouldn't shut up about the M1 in the Steam Deck thread. More recently, I caught a LinusTechTips vid reviewing the latest iPad with the M4 variant. Beyond how incredibly powerful the M4 is, the most astonishing thing he mentioned in the vid was the quality of the screen. He said in their lab it was as good as any display they'd ever tested including the $20,000 reference display from Flanders scientific they'd recently checked out. It's kind of scary how good Apple has become at...everything.

You can see some performance benchmarks here:

iPad Pro 2024 benchmarks: Here’s how Apple’s M4 chip performs

We've tested Apple's latest tablets, and the M4 drives the iPad Pro 2024 to new heights

www.tomsguide.com

To be clear, for the above, benchmarks like Geekbench are focused on CPU and RAM performance, not the GPU. So while those MacBooks win against the HP Omen Transcend 14 gaming laptop in Geekbench, it definitely isn't as powerful for gaming as that laptop's RTX 4060 Mobile GPU, and wouldn't perform as well in games. For perspective, on paper, the closest current chip used in gaming devices to the Apple M4 would be Intel's new Core Ultra 7 155H that is being put into some of the new Steam Deck competitors like the MSI A1 Claw that got a lot of press at this most recent Computex show. Very close.

However, the huge difference, as I noted for past generation of M chips in the Steam Deck thread, is the power draw. The Ultra 7 155H will draw 28W, minimum, and even in extremely small form factor devices like the Claw, where they restrict its consumption, it will probably draw more like 45W-60W under load. Meanwhile, even under synthetic loads, the M chips have drawn less than double their TDP, and the TDP for the M4 is 10W. So it will probably achieve nearly equal performance while pulling a third of the power. It's just insane. It doesn't make any sense to me since everyone is using the same fabrication plants (i.e. TSMC).

And the baseline M4 is just that. It will go:
M4 --> M4 Pro --> M4 Max --> M4 Ultra (just two M4 Max chipsets linked together if they make it)

If game developers code their games for the M4 Max, then yes, Apple will be an immediate player in the AAA space. The iPad and MacBooks will the baseline Apple M4 are basically already more powerful than the Steam Deck.

Yesterday I had a video from Mac Right, I think that was his name, testing a couple different products with AC Mirage pop up on my feed. He claimed it was running 1080p medium 30fps on an M2 iPad Air. I don't know if he's trustworthy or not, but if that's true, I'm shocked at how far they've come. He said the game was a little shaky at times, but there are tons of games out there that are just as fun that aren't as demanding. You could dock it, and use it like a Switch.
And that's a huge untapped market for someone like Microsoft and their Game Pass service.


If you buy a game for a macOS product, do they force you to buy it through the Apple store, like their phones and tablets?

 

[PEB]

Well this also explains why even AMD, Intel an Nvidia continue to race to develop competitive solutions. ARM an Apple have pretty much ended the performance debate. It's now about battery life an artificial intelligence. Now discreet GPU's still have life left but 2nm chips may change that too.

 

[Blayt7hh]

Well this also explains why even AMD, Intel an Nvidia continue to race to develop competitive solutions. ARM an Apple have pretty much ended the performance debate. It's now about battery life an artificial intelligence. Now discreet GPU's still have life left but 2nm chips may change that too.

They’re not even close to being able to compete with a discrete GPU. Come on now. If anyone buys a an iPad hoping it can run modern games, they’re going to be extremely disappointed.

I don’t know what they’re putting in MacBooks these days. I know they used to get gpus from nvidia or amd. It’s at least possible for MacBooks to be gaming laptops too as Razer does it pretty well in a similar sized laptop.

 

[Madmick]

They’re not even close to being able to compete with a discrete GPU. Come on now. If anyone buys a an iPad hoping it can run modern games, they’re going to be extremely disappointed.

I don’t know what they’re putting in MacBooks these days. I know they used to get gpus from nvidia or amd. It’s at least possible for MacBooks to be gaming laptops too as Razer does it pretty well in a similar sized laptop.

This isn't about hardware. Their hardware is more than capable of performing alongside today's discrete GPUs. It's scary how fast they're closing in. It's about software coding and drivers. They use a greatly different structural assembly of pathways. One need only remind himself of the launch of the Intel ARC GPUs. While the ARC A770 is a peer of the RX 6800 XT on paper (it's complicated but close), in reality, at launch, due to awful driver optimization, it was trailing the RX 6600 XT in gaming suites by ~10%. Fast forward less than a year and a half, and it has vaulted past the 6600 XT, 6650 XT, and even 7600 XT. It's closing in on the 6700 XT from driver patches alone. Eventually one expects it might pass that card up, too, because in the individual games where it has been patched it often does.

But Intel also built ARC to run current games as they were developed. Apple didn't even do that. The chips aren't designed with that priority.



The Apple M4 Max hasn't been specified yet, but here's the previous generation's top single-chipset design: the M3 Max. Compare raw outputs of solely the GPU.

	Apple M3 Max	NVIDIA 4060 Ti	AMD RX 7700 XT
Pixel Throughput (GP/s)	204.8	121.7	244.2
Textel Throughput (GT/s)	409.6	344.8	549.5
Memory Bandwidth (GB/s)	409.6	288.0	432.0
TFLOPS	16.38	22.06	35.17* [17.59]
VRAM	64GB LPDDR5 (up to; pooled w/system)	12GB GDDR6	12GB GDDR6

*Using AMD's new calculation doubling from its built-in floating point accelerators. Controversial since it's not a classic calculation base on real hardware, but that's because their new design deviates from old architectural strategies. In reality, actual performance seems to resemble more what one would expect with the classic calculation.

 

[Blayt7hh]

This isn't about hardware. Their hardware is more than capable of performing alongside today's discrete GPUs. It's scary how fast they're closing in. It's about software coding and drivers. They use a greatly different structural assembly of pathways. One need only remind himself of the launch of the Intel ARC GPUs. While the ARC A770 is a peer of the RX 6800 XT on paper (it's complicated but close), in reality, at launch, due to awful driver optimization, it was trailing the RX 6600 XT in gaming suites by ~10%. Fast forward less than a year and a half, and it has vaulted past the 6600 XT, 6650 XT, and even 7600 XT. It's closing in on the 6700 XT from driver patches alone. Eventually one expects it might pass that card up, too, because in the individual games where it has been patched it often does.

But Intel also built ARC to run current games as they were developed. Apple didn't even do that. The chips aren't designed with that priority.

View attachment 1048292

The Apple M4 Max hasn't been specified yet, but here's the previous generation's top single-chipset design: the M3 Max. Compare raw outputs of solely the GPU.

	Apple M3 Max	NVIDIA 4060 Ti	AMD RX 7700 XT
Pixel Throughput (GP/s)	204.8	121.7	244.2
Textel Throughput (GT/s)	409.6	344.8	549.5
Memory Bandwidth (GB/s)	409.6	288.0	432.0
TFLOPS	16.38	22.06	35.17* [17.59]
VRAM	64GB LPDDR5 (up to; pooled w/system)	12GB GDDR6	12GB GDDR6

*Using AMD's new calculation doubling from its built-in floating point accelerators. Controversial since it's not a classic calculation base on real hardware, but that's because their new design deviates from old architectural strategies. In reality, actual performance seems to resemble more what one would expect with the classic calculation.

Yeah im not about to go round and round with you on this one, especially not when your argument started by comparing discrete gpus with driver issues. I've been hearing about the end of the discrete GPU for ages now. So how about this, quote me on it when Ipads looking like current midlevel gpus and we can revisit it. Sorry, but barely running Assasin's Creed while impressive, is not it.

 

[Madmick]

Yeah im not about to go round and round with you on this one, especially not when your argument started by comparing discrete gpus with driver issues. I've been hearing about the end of the discrete GPU for ages now. So how about this, quote me on it when Ipads looking like current midlevel gpus and we can revisit it. Sorry, but barely running Assasin's Creed while impressive, is not it.

You're not ready to go rounds because this is over your head. That's why you made the ignorant comment you did.

 

[avenue94]

It's about software coding and drivers

Anticheat will probably be a major focus too since that's required for cash cows like Warzone.

 

[Blayt7hh]

You're not ready to go rounds because this is over your head. That's why you made the ignorant comment you did.

YAWN. Like I said hit me up when it actually happens.