Can You Game on a Mac? (2017) #Helpful Post

 Hey guys, this is Austin,

and today we're going to find out,

can you actually game on a Mac?

So to find out, I have two of the most recent Macbooks

in front of me. So this is the base line 13" model,

so it has a dual core Core i5 processor,

8 gigabytes of memory, and integrated Iris graphics.

Where I also have a 15" maxed out model,

with the Core i7 quad core, 16 gigabytes of memory

and the dedicated Radeon Pro 460 graphics.

Obviously, no one should go out and buy a

Mac as a gaming PC, they just don't make sense.

However, what I'm curious about is if you

already do have a Mac for whatever reason,

can you play games on them at all?

What's kind of cool is that over half of my

Steam library will work on macOS, no problem.

Now, a couple of things actually have changed on

the gaming side of Mac in the last couple years.

Most notably, Metal.

This is very similar to a lower level API,

such as DirectX12 on the PC, or something like Vulkan,

and essentially, it should allow us to get

better performance by abstracting all the

stuff in the middle and letting the game

get as close to the hardware as possible.

To start with, I want to try F1 2016,

which does take advantage of Metal on the Mac.

Now I'm going to start using the 13" Macbook Pro,

as I feel like this is pretty similar to

the Macs that most people are using.

So it looks like this works pretty well.

I don't have a way of testing the exact framerates

but to my eye it looks nice and smooth.

No torn frames or anything dropping too badly.

So right now I'm using the Playstation 4 controller,

which interestingly enough, actually just works

straight out of the box.

You literally just pair it via bluetooth and that's it.

Oh, nope, you can't go flat out everywhere,

no, no, nope, no, no, no, no. (laughs)

Okay, so maybe you actually can't go flat out everywhere.

I will say the graphics are not the greatest,

so we're running at 1280 by 800

but, I mean, I would say that this looks roughly equivalent

to something like an Xbox 360 game

so it's hard to know exactly how much of

a difference Metal makes since I actually can't turn it off

but considering that I'm running on an integrated graphics

this doesn't look bad at all.

Next up, we have Minecraft and because of our

wonderful dongle life, I have to use an adapter,

but besides that, we should be good to go.

So max framerate, 60, VSync, yep,

Maximum, Fancy, this is pretty much all turned up.

Minecraft's easy. (laughs)

I mean, after running Minecraft on the Raspbery Pi,

I'm really not surprised that anything can run Minecraft,

but I think the nice thing is that we're really

not losing anything with the Macbook Pro.

Yeah, maybe you can do stuff like shaders and whatnot on PC,

but to be fair, a lot of mods, in fact,

I think most of them actually should be

just completely fine to run on Mac.

(singing doo in rhythm)

I was just having fun, and then Ken started

zooming the camera and pointing at my face

so I feel like that just made in in the video.

Next, we have CS:GO.

Now this is another game I know will run on Mac

but what I'm curious about is what happens if

we actually try to crank up the resolution and settings.

Alright, it works but it's definitely dropping some frames.

To be fair, we actually are playing at 2560 by 1600.

It's decent, but let's see if we can crank

the settings down a little bit.

Oh, that's way better.

So cranking the resolution down to 1280 by 800

pretty much immediately fixes all the problems.

There is a little bit of screen tearing though,

which is interesting.

Almost immediately, I could tell this is usable.

It's definitely playable but it's not as nice

as it would be on a machine running Windows.

So next we have Rocket League, and again,

this is another game that natively does support

the DualShock 4.

So it thinks that we can run at 900p with

pretty much everything cranked up, so let's give it a try.

It looks like we actually have pretty much

the full Rocket League experience here.

Graphic wise, on high it looks pretty nice.

We've got stuff like the rain, and the particle effect.

And, uh, no!

How did that happen?

I am noticing some framerate drops,

it's maybe not the smoothest thing in the world

but we definitely do have a lot of room to

crank the graphics down if we need to.

Next, I want to see how a more powerful Mac handles games.

So we have the 15" Pro.

So the first trial that I want to try

is StarCraft 2; not exactly a brand new game

but it does have support for Metal.

So right now we're running at 1650 by 1050

with everything set to high and again,

it seems to be running nice and smooth,

which is important for a game like StarCraft.

So the first thing that's actually throwing me off

a lot is actually the keyboard.

The Command, Option, Control and Function keys

are not remotely in the same spot as

they are in Windows so all my muscle memory

is just completely shot right now.

For example, my escape key is a software key,

which seems like it would be a big problem.

Especially for a game where I'm actually kind of

canceling commands sometimes but it actually kind of works.

Can the Macbook successfully help me win a game

against an easy AI, or I guess, a hard AI?

Yes.

The answer is I can actually kind of play this.

Next, we have Shadow of Mordor.

Even though this is a couple years old,

this has been one of my favorite games

to benchmark PCs for quite a while

and for what I remember, the port to Mac and Linux

is actually pretty decent.

I really actually do like Shadow of Mordor.

It kind of feels a little bit like

playing some of the Batman games

that it's kind of a bit like a hack and slash.

Like God of War or something but one thing

you actually should be careful of,

especially with these kind of more high end games,

is to make sure that you have a Mac that's

going to be compatible.

Lighter stuff, like CS:GO, should run on basically anything,

but a lot of these games specifically

do need a dedicated graphics card, or a quad core processor,

or something, so don't just expect that you

could just pick up any game and it's going to work.

Yo, am I going to beat, like, 40 guys right now

by myself on a Macbook?

Pretty proud of that.

Of course, you could run Windows on a Mac

via Bootcamp which will open up pretty much

all the games in the universe,

but that doesn't get around the fact that

you should not buy a Mac for gaming.

However, if you already have one and you just

want to play a few games, it's totally usable.

So, what do you guys think about gaming on a Mac in 2017?

Let me know in the comments below

and I will catch you in the next one.

English

 Hey guys, this is Austin,

and today we're going to find out,

can you actually game on a Mac?

So to find out, I have two of the most recent Macbooks

in front of me. So this is the base line 13" model,

so it has a dual core Core i5 processor,

8 gigabytes of memory, and integrated Iris graphics.

Where I also have a 15" maxed out model,

with the Core i7 quad core, 16 gigabytes of memory

and the dedicated Radeon Pro 460 graphics.

Obviously, no one should go out and buy a

Mac as a gaming PC, they just don't make sense.

However, what I'm curious about is if you

already do have a Mac for whatever reason,

can you play games on them at all?

What's kind of cool is that over half of my

Steam library will work on macOS, no problem.

Now, a couple of things actually have changed on

the gaming side of Mac in the last couple years.

Most notably, Metal.

This is very similar to a lower level API,

such as DirectX12 on the PC, or something like Vulkan,

and essentially, it should allow us to get

better performance by abstracting all the

stuff in the middle and letting the game

get as close to the hardware as possible.

To start with, I want to try F1 2016,

which does take advantage of Metal on the Mac.

Now I'm going to start using the 13" Macbook Pro,

as I feel like this is pretty similar to

the Macs that most people are using.

So it looks like this works pretty well.

I don't have a way of testing the exact framerates

but to my eye it looks nice and smooth.

No torn frames or anything dropping too badly.

So right now I'm using the Playstation 4 controller,

which interestingly enough, actually just works

straight out of the box.

You literally just pair it via bluetooth and that's it.

Oh, nope, you can't go flat out everywhere,

no, no, nope, no, no, no, no. (laughs)

Okay, so maybe you actually can't go flat out everywhere.

I will say the graphics are not the greatest,

so we're running at 1280 by 800

but, I mean, I would say that this looks roughly equivalent

to something like an Xbox 360 game

so it's hard to know exactly how much of

a difference Metal makes since I actually can't turn it off

but considering that I'm running on an integrated graphics

this doesn't look bad at all.

Next up, we have Minecraft and because of our

wonderful dongle life, I have to use an adapter,

but besides that, we should be good to go.

So max framerate, 60, VSync, yep,

Maximum, Fancy, this is pretty much all turned up.

Minecraft's easy. (laughs)

I mean, after running Minecraft on the Raspbery Pi,

I'm really not surprised that anything can run Minecraft,

but I think the nice thing is that we're really

not losing anything with the Macbook Pro.

Yeah, maybe you can do stuff like shaders and whatnot on PC,

but to be fair, a lot of mods, in fact,

I think most of them actually should be

just completely fine to run on Mac.

(singing doo in rhythm)

I was just having fun, and then Ken started

zooming the camera and pointing at my face

so I feel like that just made in in the video.

Next, we have CS:GO.

Now this is another game I know will run on Mac

but what I'm curious about is what happens if

we actually try to crank up the resolution and settings.

Alright, it works but it's definitely dropping some frames.

To be fair, we actually are playing at 2560 by 1600.

It's decent, but let's see if we can crank

the settings down a little bit.

Oh, that's way better.

So cranking the resolution down to 1280 by 800

pretty much immediately fixes all the problems.

There is a little bit of screen tearing though,

which is interesting.

Almost immediately, I could tell this is usable.

It's definitely playable but it's not as nice

as it would be on a machine running Windows.

So next we have Rocket League, and again,

this is another game that natively does support

the DualShock 4.

So it thinks that we can run at 900p with

pretty much everything cranked up, so let's give it a try.

It looks like we actually have pretty much

the full Rocket League experience here.

Graphic wise, on high it looks pretty nice.

We've got stuff like the rain, and the particle effect.

And, uh, no!

How did that happen?

I am noticing some framerate drops,

it's maybe not the smoothest thing in the world

but we definitely do have a lot of room to

crank the graphics down if we need to.

Next, I want to see how a more powerful Mac handles games.

So we have the 15" Pro.

So the first trial that I want to try

is StarCraft 2; not exactly a brand new game

but it does have support for Metal.

So right now we're running at 1650 by 1050

with everything set to high and again,

it seems to be running nice and smooth,

which is important for a game like StarCraft.

So the first thing that's actually throwing me off

a lot is actually the keyboard.

The Command, Option, Control and Function keys

are not remotely in the same spot as

they are in Windows so all my muscle memory

is just completely shot right now.

For example, my escape key is a software key,

which seems like it would be a big problem.

Especially for a game where I'm actually kind of

canceling commands sometimes but it actually kind of works.

Can the Macbook successfully help me win a game

against an easy AI, or I guess, a hard AI?

Yes.

The answer is I can actually kind of play this.

Next, we have Shadow of Mordor.

Even though this is a couple years old,

this has been one of my favorite games

to benchmark PCs for quite a while

and for what I remember, the port to Mac and Linux

is actually pretty decent.

I really actually do like Shadow of Mordor.

It kind of feels a little bit like

playing some of the Batman games

that it's kind of a bit like a hack and slash.

Like God of War or something but one thing

you actually should be careful of,

especially with these kind of more high end games,

is to make sure that you have a Mac that's

going to be compatible.

Lighter stuff, like CS:GO, should run on basically anything,

but a lot of these games specifically

do need a dedicated graphics card, or a quad core processor,

or something, so don't just expect that you

could just pick up any game and it's going to work.

Yo, am I going to beat, like, 40 guys right now

by myself on a Macbook?

Pretty proud of that.

Of course, you could run Windows on a Mac

via Bootcamp which will open up pretty much

all the games in the universe,

but that doesn't get around the fact that

you should not buy a Mac for gaming.

However, if you already have one and you just

want to play a few games, it's totally usable.

So, what do you guys think about gaming on a Mac in 2017?

Let me know in the comments below

and I will catch you in the next one.