Big news for Mac gaming: Crossover gains DX12 support

[Obioban]

Summary

 Crossover on Mac is similar to Proton on Linux— lets you run windows games. Historically it hasn’t supported DX12, which significantly limited compatibility. The latest beta is adding it for the first time.

 

Quotes

Quote

 It's with immense pleasure that we bring you an update on the much-anticipated DirectX 12 support for CrossOver Mac. Brace yourself as we reveal the remarkable progress we've made and the adventures that lie ahead!

 

My thoughts

 This is a pretty big deal for Mac gaming. With every new Mac coming with at least a decent GPU on board and unprecedented compatibility currently, Mac gaming is making strides at a pretty remarkable rate.

 

Sources

 https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/mjohnson/2023/6/1/unleashing-the-gaming-revolution-crossover-macs-directx-12-support-update
 

 

[Monkey Dust]

I imagine most games will still have to run through Rosetta, with x86 likely to reign supreme in gaming until the consoles go ARM. I'm also not sure how great all the GPUs are, particularly in the Air. Even the Pros, without a RAM upgrade, 16GB is not a lot for both the GPU and CPU if you're working it hard.

 

And who buys a Mac for gaming anyway? Macs have many strengths, but gaming is probably their most famous weakness.

[Zodiark1593]

34 minutes ago, Monkey Dust said:

I imagine most games will still have to run through Rosetta, with x86 likely to reign supreme in gaming until the consoles go ARM. I'm also not sure how great all the GPUs are, particularly in the Air. Even the Pros, without a RAM upgrade, 16GB is not a lot for both the GPU and CPU if you're working it hard.

 

And who buys a Mac for gaming anyway? Macs have many strengths, but gaming is probably their most famous weakness.

M1 should be competitive with faster iGPUs, such as Iris XE, Vega APUs, etc. not terribly fast, but should offer up enough performance to play a lot. 

[porina]

47 minutes ago, Monkey Dust said:

16GB is not a lot for both the GPU and CPU if you're working it hard.

That puts it at parity with current gen consoles, although how much is available may be less overall. Also it is unified like the consoles. The lower performance of the GPU might take pressure off since it'll be unlikely to be used with more demanding settings. Let's see where the performance really ends up.

 

47 minutes ago, Monkey Dust said:

And who buys a Mac for gaming anyway? Macs have many strengths, but gaming is probably their most famous weakness.

Maybe not bought specifically for gaming, but if you have one already for other uses, more accessible PC games is a bonus.

[Obioban]

2 hours ago, Monkey Dust said:

I imagine most games will still have to run through Rosetta, with x86 likely to reign supreme in gaming until the consoles go ARM. I'm also not sure how great all the GPUs are, particularly in the Air. Even the Pros, without a RAM upgrade, 16GB is not a lot for both the GPU and CPU if you're working it hard.

 

And who buys a Mac for gaming anyway? Macs have many strengths, but gaming is probably their most famous weakness.

 

The base original M1 GPU benchmarks a little bit below a 1650. Not amazing, but pretty solid for being the worst thing on offer for the last 3 years (and newer/higher end Apple Silicon chips being considerably more performant). 

GPU tasks have almost zero performance penalty when run through Rosetta. 
 

Nobody should currently buy a Mac for gaming, but if they get it as a bonus… Only better. But, in lots of ways at once, their most famous weakness is rapidly becoming less of a weakness. If they want the VR to succeed, they’re going to have to court game devs. They’ve rapidly been improving their graphics API stack recently. Apple silicon all has at least a decent GPU, and some quite performant. Most windows games will soon work through crossover, as DX12 support comes online. 

[Paul Thexton]

22 minutes ago, Obioban said:

Nobody should currently buy a Mac for gaming, but if they get it as a bonus

Exactly the way I see it too. If anybody ever asks me whether they should get a Mac, because they know I have used them for years, my first question is "Are you mostly just wanting to play games on it?", and if their answer is yes, then I steer them back to getting a Windows machine instead.

 

I've been enjoying RE:Village on my Mac though, the more games come available is just a bonus to me, as I very rarely game anyway (I gave up prior to Xbox One/PS4 era as I couldn't justify the time spent anymore), so the limited selection of games simply doesn't matter to me

 

[da na]

That's pretty cool. Outside of gaming, there's a potential for other 3D applications to get a boost - eg CAD apps not speficically designed for Mac

[hishnash]

4 hours ago, Monkey Dust said:

I imagine most games will still have to run through Rosetta, with x86 likely to reign supreme in gaming until the consoles go ARM. I'm also not sure how great all the GPUs are, particularly in the Air. Even the Pros, without a RAM upgrade, 16GB is not a lot for both the GPU and CPU if you're working it hard.

 

And who buys a Mac for gaming anyway? Macs have many strengths, but gaming is probably their most famous weakness.

If you have the source code then supporting ARM64 is not a big deal at all. 

As to memory 16GB is not that bad, remember modern consoles also have this amount.
 

[Obioban]

10 hours ago, Paul Thexton said:

Exactly the way I see it too. If anybody ever asks me whether they should get a Mac, because they know I have used them for years, my first question is "Are you mostly just wanting to play games on it?", and if their answer is yes, then I steer them back to getting a Windows machine instead.

 

I've been enjoying RE:Village on my Mac though, the more games come available is just a bonus to me, as I very rarely game anyway (I gave up prior to Xbox One/PS4 era as I couldn't justify the time spent anymore), so the limited selection of games simply doesn't matter to me

 

I have a gaming PC... 

 

... but since I had a kid, it almost never gets turned on. 90% of what I actually play these days is my switch, and 10% actually is on the Mac, since I'm already on it for other stuff. 

[kpluck]

Quote

While we are elated with this breakthrough, we acknowledge that our journey has just begun. Our team’s investigations concluded that there was no single magic key that unlocked DirectX 12 support on macOS. To get just Diablo II Resurrected running, we had to fix a multitude of bugs involving MoltenVK and SPIRV-Cross. We anticipate that this will be the case for other DirectX 12 games: we will need to add support on a per-title basis, and each game will likely involve multiple bugs.

 

That sounds like far less of a "breakthrough" than the headlines would have us believe.

 

-kp

[Obioban]

1 hour ago, kpluck said:

 

That sounds like far less of a "breakthrough" than the headlines would have us believe.

 

-kp

Per an interview I heard with him, that is the short term case— but over time they expect each game to need less fixes, eventually resulting in it being generic DX12 translation.

[AutumnVolume]

Sounds awesome. I just bought an M2 Mac mini, and while I'm not a huge gamer, I would love a bit more selection than what is currently available - I've been making do with CS:GO and Cities:Skylines. Honestly, I'd love to just have a decent gaming PC but I simply can't justify spending hundreds on something that I'll barely use.

[Obioban]

43 minutes ago, AutumnVolume said:

Sounds awesome. I just bought an M2 Mac mini, and while I'm not a huge gamer, I would love a bit more selection than what is currently available - I've been making do with CS:GO and Cities:Skylines. Honestly, I'd love to just have a decent gaming PC but I simply can't justify spending hundreds on something that I'll barely use.

No man’s sky port is pretty freaking solid. And since I already bought it on steam for windows and never played it, “free”! 

[Obioban]

 

 

Interesting. Apple made translation layer for DX12.