The personal computer market has changed a lot
in the past two years and the differences
between Mac and PC are starting to break tradition.
And even though the Great Mac versus PC debate rages on
and will continue to do so, the introduction
and subsequent evolution of Apple silicon
has already started to disrupt the status quo.
For example, are Macs actually good at gaming now?
Well, more on that later.
So here are my thoughts
and a few main things I'd like to discuss
after spending the last year testing,
benchmarking, and using both team Mac and team pc.
Now, disclaimer, I use both Mac and PC
on a daily basis and at the end of the day,
I'm not saying one is better than the other.
As always, you should buy whichever one you like best
that also suits your needs.
So let's start with performance.
Now, in the past, it's been generally accepted
that PC systems are more powerful when compared
to Macs and in a lot of areas, even with Apple silicon,
this is still true, like gaming,
3D modeling, and rendering, machine learning,
and several more.
The Mac gets destroyed in these areas,
often due to software not being optimized.
But if you take a look at other areas,
mainly the creative side of things,
they're either pretty comparable,
or just straight up better on an Apple silicon Mac.
Take the Adobe Suite for example.
Something that usually ran better on a Windows pc.
Now, Adobe being buggy in general
and crashing all of the time aside,
once it got updated for Apple silicon Max,
the results were impressive.
Take after effects, for example,
it only received native Apple silicon support in mid 2022.
And as you can see, the M1 Max MacBook Pro
was able to outperform an Intel 12900H
and RTX3080Ti laptop
in both PugetBench and a real life 2D animation scene.
This was also the case when looking at video editing,
which traditionally has been a strong point already for Max,
but it is impressive, nonetheless,
to see it outperforming a high-end Intel
and RTX system in almost every area.
But if the Mac can't use its dedicated encode
and decode media engines that support H.264, HEVC,
and ProRes Codex, it kind of falls apart.
So it really depends
on the specific workflow you are throwing at each machine.
Regardless of what system you end up choosing,
you should also use a password manager,
which is where NordPass,
the sponsor for this section of the video comes in.
Now, more than ever, your online data is at risk.
Take it from someone whose passport just got leaked
by their old mobile phone provider.
Yeah, true story.
That's why it's so important to have a secure password.
If you do get hacked or someone steals your password,
they can gain access to all of your photos,
videos, emails, credit cards, and more.
Or worse, they can even steal your identity.
NordPass is more than just a password manager.
You'll get access to several really cool features,
like a built-in password generator that allows you
to tweak exactly how strong your passwords are,
or emergency access, allowing you to add someone
that will be able to access your passwords
in the event you are no longer able to.
Like me, almost having a heart attack
when I saw how much I spent on Apple products this year.
So get exclusive access
to NordPass's best offer using the link
in the description, or use code, CREATEDTECH
at the checkout to get an additional one month for free.
Now, getting back to performance,
let's take a quick look at gaming,
because this is something
that only very recently changed massively.
Earlier this year, during WWDC 2022,
Apple announced an update to their very own Metal API.
Now, if you're not familiar with Metal and what it does,
it's basically the Apple version of Vulkan
or DirectX.
DirectX as in what most modern games run on.
Now, these graphics APIs essentially act as a middleman
between the software and the hardware of your computer.
And if the required API to run a certain game
isn't compatible with your operating system,
you simply can't play that game.
And that's a problem for Max,
because DirectX doesn't really work on Apple silicon
and it's the API that most games you'd want to play run on.
That's where Metal 3 comes in.
Apple seems to be putting a lot of time and effort
into making Mac gaming more accessible to game developers.
And Metal 3 has a number of really cool new features,
like MetalFX Upscaling or the Fast resource loading API.
In layman's terms,
this is Apple essentially saying to game developers,
"Hey, we just made it way easier for you
to translate your games into the metal API
and allow them to be played on Max.
And Capcom answered the call
with their new AAA rated game, "Resident Evil Village."
It now runs natively on Apple silicon.
That's right, no Rosetta 2 parallels,
or emulation software required.
And the results were pretty good.
I mean, on the M1 MacBook Air, which doesn't have a fan
and is now over two years old,
I was able to have a pretty decent experience
at medium and low settings.
Sure, I was mostly stuck between 30 to 40 fps
and there was a little bit of stuttering and dropped frames.
But hey, it's still pretty impressive
for a newly released AAA rated game.
Definitely better than any Windows laptops
with integrated graphics.
And when I bring the big boys in,
a 16-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro
with 32 GPU cores and 32 gigabytes of unified memory
and a Windows gaming laptop
with the latest Intel 12900 HCPU and RTX 3070Ti GPU,
the results are interesting.
Using an external monitor
and at the same resolution in graphical settings,
the gaming laptop still destroys
the Mac getting around double the fps
and obviously, the gaming laptop is much cheaper.
But the game is still running pretty well on the MacBook.
And if I turn on VSync and lock the fps to 60,
it actually runs just as well
and as smoothly as the gaming laptop, albeit with lower fps.
And if you want to see a full video on this topic,
I'll link it down below.
So pretty promising, right?
Obviously in my opinion, it will still be years
until the needle on Mac gaming moves significantly.
And I still think a proper Windows gaming laptop
will always be better,
but this is probably the most significant improvement
to Mac gaming we've seen in a while.
Now, one other major difference
between the two platforms is obviously fan noise,
heat, and power draw.
In all of my comparison videos
including that gaming test I just did,
the Windows computers get way hotter
than the Apple silicon Max.
They also need to run their fans at a much higher rpm
which results in some massive noise differences.
And they not only suck two to three times more power,
but need to be attached
to their charger for full performance.
Unlike of course, the Apple silicon MacBooks,
which is so efficient that their battery
is able to provide enough wattage
even at maximum performance.
If you look at the powerful desktop offerings
from both teams like this custom 12900K
and RTX 3090 build I did a few months ago
and a 48 core GPU M1 Ultra Max studio,
the power draw differences are massive.
And I did get a bit of criticism
on that video for mentioning that.
People were like, "Who cares about power drawing?
You're after maximum performance."
And while that might be true in some situations,
since that video, the cost of power in many areas
has tripled or more,
which might make some people think twice before going
with a beefy RTX system,
especially the newly released RTX 4090,
which sucks almost 400 watts under load.
Although, to be fair, you can under clock those cards
and reduce the wattage by 75 to 150 watts
and only lose a few percentage points of performance.
But speaking of the RTX 4090,
let's talk about the future for a second,
because I'm not too sure how Apple silicon
is going to fare against some of the new tech coming out
from Intel, Nvidia and AMD.
And without going into too much technical detail here,
I think Apple is in trouble.
Intel seems to be finally waking up
from that decade-long slumber and actually coming out
with some pretty significant improvements to their CPUs.
Their new 13th gen CPUs, for example, are impressive
and wreck anything that Apple silicon has to offer
in terms of performance.
And the wattage isn't too bad either.
There are also rumors
that Intel is developing their own high performance,
ultra efficient CPUs,
specifically targeted at outperforming Apple silicon.
And that isn't really that surprising because I think a lot
of these manufacturers are going to be putting a big focus
on ARM-based systems in the next couple of years.
Not to mention, Intel has just entered the GPU game
with their ARC GPU's,
which is going to create a lot of healthy competition,
hopefully, for both Nvidia and AMD,
which already have pretty impressive updates
to their flagship cards.
And with all of these new updates and renewed competition,
Apple could find itself losing whatever advantage
it currently has.
So yeah, it's safe to say
that 2022 has been a pretty interesting year.
I mean, we had the M1 Ultra chip come out earlier this year.
We also had a brand new M2 MacBook Air
and a new M2 chip.
But compared to PC and Intel and Nvidia
and all the crazy new stuff that's come out on that side,
I think Apple is in big trouble like I said before,
and I think 2023 and beyond 24, 25,
when we potentially start seeing a bigger focus
on ARM-based systems in general,
it's just going to be very, very interesting
to see how everything pans out
and how the two platforms stack up against each other.
But apart from that, guys,
thanks for watching this video,
and I'll catch you in the next one.