One of the more recent triple-A game ports to macOS, Metro Exodus is one of the most impressive looking first-person shooters currently available on the Mac, and also one of the best performing on Apple silicon.Įven though the game requires Apple's Rosetta translation layer to run, the integrated graphics cores in the ‌M1 Pro‌ and ‌M1 Max‌ chips are well-equipped to deal with the effects-laden game engine, which makes extensive use of light and dark environments to deliver its blend of deadly combat, stealthy exploration, and survival horror. To play the game on Apple silicon, you need to run it through Apple's Rosetta translation layer.Įven so, the ‌M1 Pro‌ and ‌M1 Max‌ chips make light work of processing the complex outdoor environments and large draw distances of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, even when using the 'High' graphics preset at 1080p, with the game averaging 50-60 frames per second on a 14-inch MacBook Pro with an ‌M1 Pro‌ chip.Īs demonstrated by YouTuber MrMacRight, on a 16-inch MacBook Pro with an ‌M1 Max‌ chip, frame rates almost double at the same settings, while at 1140p resolution it's possible to achieve a sustained 50-60fps on the more powerful MacBook Pro chip if you switch the graphics to medium. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the most high-performing games on Apple's custom chip architecture, despite not being an optimized Mac port that takes advantage of the macOS Metal graphics API. And with a little bit of luck, these impressive results might excite games developers and publishers enough for them to see the potential power of Apple's processors, and for us to see more triple-A titles ported to the Mac platform in future. The following titles offer a taster of the gaming performance that Apple's latest M1 Pro and M1 Max chips can achieve, in some cases running code that isn't even optimized for Apple silicon. Granted, Macs aren't revered for their triple-A games catalog, but there are some popular titles worth firing up on your new machine, and you might just be surprised at how well they play. Even so, when you're not doing resource-hungry work on your new high-end Mac, you can still have some fun with all that power under the hood.

If you're the proud owner of a new MacBook Pro, all things considered, gaming probably wasn't at the top of your priority list when you made the expensive purchase.

Best rpg for mac 2020