I have a question about… Gaming on Mac. I know, I know. It’s for my wife, though. Lol!
She has a very old Windows laptop that I cannot convince her to let me put Linux on to improve its life. I’m looking to source an upgrade for her. She is an iPhone person, through and through, and I thought it might be nice to get something for her in that ecosystem. So, I’m looking into a MacBook of some sort.
The question: how does a MacBook hold up to light gaming? We’re talking Sims 4 and Minecraft, primarily.
This is something I know about.
The new ARM-based macs are actually very powerful, but as another commenter mentioned, the ARM architecture would normally be a bad fit for gaming as not much runs on it.
That said, there are ways around it.
I’m personally gaming on an M2 Macbook Pro, and am able to play almost my full Steam library of Windows games using a tool called Whisky
Whisky uses Wine (a longstanding Windows emulator commonly used on Linux) along with other toolkits to translate DirectX graphics instructions into Mac-native ‘Metal’ graphics instructions. There is a performance hit in doing this, but the end result is actually pretty good.
The result you get will depend on your hardware. I’m personally running a high-end M2 Max configuration and get 50 FPS on high settings in Deep Rock Galactic (a first-person shoooter game) but lower configurations would be okay for casual gaming.
There is another product that does the same thing as Whisky called Crossover. It is paid (unlike Whisky which is free) but is otherwise similar. You can watch this YouTube video on Crossover to get some idea on how it works, how to set it up, and the performance you might expect.
As for Minecraft, I personally play that too, and it actually runs natively on the new Apple Silicon macs anyway and doesn’t need anything special :)
Very compelling. I’m guessing Steam’s Proton work doesn’t do much if anything for Mac? I’m familiar with gaming on Linux, so I’m not afraid to get technical to get it all working, I’m just trying to get a feel for viability… It sounds like Sims 4 is the only thing up in the air, lol.
I need to find someone with a Mac willing to let me try it… 😂
Proton is actually based on Wine so there’s a lot in common. And Valve contributes back to Wine via Codeweavers (who also make crossover)
I’ve been gaming on Linux for a loooong time, lol. I follow Proton’s progress pretty closely since the beginning as it pertains to the Linux space, I just wasn’t sure if it was considered a “solution” in the MacOS world or if it requires some finagling…
Thanks for the insight! I’ll have to do a liiiittle more research, but I’m feeling more comfortable about it now.
Fair :) Glad I was able to share my experience if that helped a little.
I’d like to make the switch to Linux for my gaming desktop, currently still on Windows for that personally, but soon!
Just be sure to research your must-have titles on ProtonDB. It’ll tell you pretty much everything you need to know if there’s any tinkering to be done for your titles… And don’t make the same mistake I did! 😂
I upgraded from an AMD Radeon RX580 to an Intel ARC A750… Works perfect, except the specific setup of Linux + Intel ARC can’t play Halo Infinite… It worked fine (if subpar performance) on the RX580, but there’s some software issues between Vulkan and Intel that means certain DX12 games that make a very particular graphics call will NOT work with an Intel GPU… Otherwise I love it!
There have been a few cases where developers “port” their games to Mac by wrapping them in Wine.
Apple used Wine in their Game Porting Toolkit: https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/Game_Porting_Toolkit
It will require some finagling, but it’s about as good as you will get for running windows only games on Mac.
Also games built for Intel Macs should be able to be run thanks to Rosetta.
Ooh, this looks pretty nice. I’ll have to give Whisky a try just to see how games can run on my M1 Mac Mini. I have it set up as a TV PC and I usually just connect a Linux PC or Steam Deck to game on the TV. If I could run Windows games on it that’d be great.
The main issue with new Macs is that they use ARM processors and most games, even for Mac, were made for x86 processors. Minecraft works fine as it is CPU-independent Java code, but you aren’t going to have access to a wide library like you do with Linux. I think there have been efforts to game on Wine with Mac but it will likely require x86 CPU emulation through Rosetta 2, possibly slowing things down. I remember I got Skyrim to run on my Mac Mini M1 somehow but it wasn’t a good experience.
I’ve honestly had a better experience running a Windows VM with parallels, and inside the VM running certain games with windows’ translation layer.
Also very minor, but actually important. Rosetta2 doesn’t do 32 bit emulation, it only does 64 bit emulation. For whatever ungodly reason developers still compiled their programs for x86 despite not being capable of running on the few 2006 model Intel Macs that are 32 bit. And a LOT of games were only ever compiled for x86 on Mac so they will not run.
Sims 4 and Minecraft play just fine. My ex wife played Sims 4 without issue on her 2012 MacBook Pro without a problem for years.
I know Sims 4 and Minecraft java edition ran fine on mac 10 years ago, so I would hope they still do.
Can confirm that Minecraft runs very well on ARM MacBooks
I have a 2021 MacBook M1 Pro and tbh, I do most of my gaming on it anymore. It has no trouble with even modded Minecraft, although I haven’t been able to use shaders without the fps dropping lower than I’d like. I can’t imagine it’d have any trouble with Sims 4 either
There’s potentially some cloud-based options for this, if someone doesn’t want to maintain a gaming device.
Basically, it seems like Game Pass Ultimate will let you play games like The Sims 4 and Minecraft using a constant video connection to an Xbox server. If I’m right, these are in fact the mouse/keyboard version of the game. Probably not as moddable though.
It’s not a great option especially considering the subscription, but it sometimes feels more hassle-free depending on the user.
Work your communication skills. Let her have gnu linux.
I’m not gonna coerce her into using Linux, lol. That’s a surefire way to make sure she hates it and blames any little hiccups on Linux, even if it’s not the OS’s fault.
I have learned the hard way that insisting/coercing/whatever is a very bad strategy for spreading something that you think is better for the people/the planet. Anyway, what I do, is just say “I only work with libre systems because I have ethical guides” And, also because I cannot give you any support on windows, mac, whatsoever.
Doesn’t work so well when it’s your wife you’re telling “no, I won’t help you,” to. 😂
