I play absolutely everything on my M1 Macbook Pro. Through Crossover, basically every Windows game runs fine. I used to check ahead of time before buying a game, but it's so good I now kind of just assume games work.
A NVIDIA 2080 graphics card from 2018 still surpasses the M5 for gaming. The M5 Pro coming early next year will likely finally catch up with the 8-year-old 2080.
I'm happy to hear your games work well for you, but it sounds like the games you're playing aren't demanding compared to modern AAA titles. Most games released in the last year or two don't run well on my 2080 test system at anything approaching decent graphics.
A 2080 is about the same performance as a 5060 and every game is going to be able to run on a 5060. You might not be running it at 4K Ultra with ray tracing enabled but you should be able to run at like 1080p High or better.
Whether or not the M5 GPU is actually capable of that level of performance or whether the drivers will let it reach its potential is of course a completely different story. GPU performance is hard to estimate based on raw specs, you just have to run benchmarks and see what you end up with.
A 5060 outperforms a 2080 by roughly 20% on most titles, across the board, not cherry-picking for the best results. They are not about the same.
> you should be able to run at like 1080p High or better
This is disconnected from reality. 1080p low/medium, some games are playable but not enjoyable. Remember, I actually have a 2080, so I'm not just guessing.
> GPU performance is hard to estimate based on raw specs, you just have to run benchmarks and see what you end up with.
Rich coming from someone who claims a 7 year old graphics card is "about the same" as a card which has 2.5x better RayTracing, has 3x faster DLSS, faster VRAM, and much better AI capabilities. The 2080 can't even encode/decode AV1...
It's much higher in some categories, but in general across gameplay the 2080 is only about 20% slower than the 5060 in otherwise similar systems. NVIDIA's 3000 series was mostly worse than the 2080 except the 3090, which itself is still is incredible compared to today's 5xxx cards
Yeah, I totally hear you. People are always like "please, make sure my desktop computer only uses 30 watts of energy" and "I'm an eco-gamer, please turn off the RGB lights and let's all play the game on eco/low graphics settings, kumbaya"
I can confirm this is not the case. I don't use crossover but crossover is wine. I use kegworks which is also wine. It is a pain in the ass. Steam app runs like garbage over wine. Games like tf2 I got more consistent fps on my 2012 mac which can run it natively than I do on this 12/16 whatever core 4ghz beast. I used to get like 90fps pegged in that now even on low graphics configs I'm barely doing 50fps and losing frames like crazy when there's a lot of action.
Most games just flat out do not work that I've tried. Plenty will stop you with anticheat.
About the only sorts of games that actually work well over WINE on this rig (m3 pro) are ones that came out 15 years ago.
Native games like no mans sky actually got worse over time. When I first got this mac I was so impressed by the performance of nms even though its an old game at this point. I could run it entirely on ultra. Then nms put out an update and that ended, back to medium-low and no AA unless I want to experience pervasive graphical glitches like flashing purple.
Other games have some internal lock to their fps I'm not sure why even as native mac games. This is true for cities skylines. It is capped at 40fps, maybe through rosetta layer limitations? I'm not sure.
There are things that Crossover figures out that the alternatives don’t. For example, steam downloads are broken for PortingKit but not for Crossover, and they are both Wine
I would guess they are mostly talking to game devs for now, but man in a few years if Apple can get me to throw out my windows rig that me and I imagine many others have around just for gaming I wouldn't hate that!
The gaming world is so deeply ingrained with Windows technologies. Even with the GPK from Apple, I don't see the mods and patches that some Windows players enjoy.
I do almost all of my gaming on an M3 MacBook Air. It’s great for games. I’ll sometimes hop on Windows for titles unavailable on the Mac, but increasingly I just skip them if they aren’t on Steam for MacOS.
I get that it is good for some games, but when people say "gaming PCs" on Windows, they usually mean AAA titles. The stuff on endcaps at BestBuy for sale for PC and console. Those games won't run well on Macs unless you spend insane amounts on a Max or Ultra variant.
The M5's GPU specs seem to put it near a high-end NVIDIA card from 2018. Impressive as all get out for a power-friendly chip, but not really what I think of when I hear "good for gaming"
The trend I see that is more concerning is that previously mac friendly game devs have already abandoned the platform. Valve no longer maintains mac os builds of their games like cs or tf2. City skylines 1 had a first party mac release but City skylines 2 skipped mac os.
we went from 10 hours to 24 hours in 5 years - impressive
i wonder why they advertise gaming on the laptop, anyone plays anything Meaningful on macbooks?