hello everybody and welcome to bull technology in recent videos i've
gotten some comments about gaming on apple's new custom silicon max
and some of them haven't been very polite so as an owner of not one but two m1 powered macs
i thought today we'd answer this question can you game on an m1 mac let's find out
for testing purposes today i will be using this m1 powered macbook air
it features an 8 core apple silicon gpu an 8 core apple silicon cpu and 16 gigabytes of ram while i
do own a significantly more powerful m1 imac i want to see how gaming on this macbook air is
because it represents the least powerful of all of apple's new macs that being because this
machine lacks a dedicated cooling system but it's safe to assume that whatever this macbook can do
the other m1 models can do and better so let's jump into some tests the biggest problem with
gaming on apple silicon is the lack of game support and even further lack of m1 optimization
for example of my 56 games in my steam library only 17 of them will run on mac os
and 0 of them are optimized for the m1 chip this may seem disappointing
but don't let that discourage you yet we'll first test the games that can run on mac os
lighter 2d titles run flawlessly as expected terraria's simple graphics means it runs at a
constant 60 frames per second on this machine at the native resolution stardew valley is a terrific
game and it too has relatively simple graphics and again it ran at a constant 60 frames per second
bumping things up a bit civilization 6 also runs on this machine with no issues as a matter of fact
this version of the game looks much better than the nintendo switch port of siv6 and it runs at
a higher resolution for most of the time the long dark is my favorite survival game and it features
simple but beautiful graphics at high settings and a resolution of 1440x900 the long dark ran
at a perfectly playable 30 frames per second most of the time again this port of the game looks and
runs far better than on the nintendo switch in subnautica an ocean survival game some graphical
features needed to be reduced in order to run the game smoothly but at a resolution of 1440x900
and at the low preset it ran at a reasonable average frame rate of about 45 frames per second
unturned is a free-to-play zombie survival game that's tons of fun
and again at 1440x900 and at the medium preset the game ran at a buttery smooth 60 frames per second
minecraft needs no introduction and on this computer at eight chunks it runs flawlessly
only skipping a beat or two when things are being rendered in
finally we have cities skylines which is a challenging game for even my dedicated gaming pc
at the lowest possible settings and at a resolution of 1440x900 the m1 managed to maintain
a respectable 40 frames per second though with larger cities this figure will definitely drop
so there you have it can you game on an m1 mac absolutely but the lack of game support on mac os
to begin with means most of the games you'll want to play simply won't run
on the m1 notice how i didn't benchmark any aaa titles well it's because none of them have support
on the mac which is a shame given the m1's potential let me just end with this i'm genuinely
impressed with how the m1 performs given that none of these games are optimized for the m1 chip
given the m1's incredible power efficiency and given the lack of a cooling system so if you have
an m1 mac and you want to play some casual games you'll definitely have the capability to do so
be sure to leave a like a comment and definitely subscribe and as always thank you all for watching
you