My intel based computer appears to have bought the farm and I’m doing some research as to replacement possibilities. I’d like some opinions on the M1 chip from Apple. Does anyone have experience with this chip?
It runs fairly well on the M1Max with external monitor connected (38" Ultra Wide), can’t hear the fans but gets warm. On the 16" internal display it runs with fans really loud and super warm, even with graphics turned down. Also, the frame rates drop sometimes in the new expansion (Bastion).
1 Like
The machine provided by the company I work for is a 16" MBP with M1 Pro, 1TB/32GB config.
It’s a really nice machine. Speedy for anything I throw at it (including compiling code, which is what the bulk of its usage), really takes a lot to get it hot, and I rarely if ever hear its fan. It has no problems driving external displays up to 240hz, and I was surprised to see that it even supports variable refresh rates on my G-Sync monitor.
The integrated GPU is pretty decent. In WoW I consistently got a framerate above the 120hz refresh rate of the built-in screen with most settings at high or ultra, running at 50% render scale (1728x1117 effective resolution). I would say the performance for the M1 Pro (which has a GPU that’s weaker than that of the M1 Max, but stronger than that of the plain M1) sits at about the same level as an RTX 2060S or 2070, which isn’t gaming laptop performance or anything, but it’s pretty darn good for a laptop you never hear the fans of and pulls 120W when stressed as hard as possible (which is rare).
Battery life is great, I can easily get a day’s work of developer usage out of a single charge. For lighter more average-person usage (2-3 hours of web browsing, email, etc per day) you’d probably not need to plug it in for multiple days.
1 Like
Well, I’m working with a Mac mini (0.5TB/8GB) running on recommended graphics quality 4 and the game works like a champ. The only drawback with a Mac is that the apps have to go on the boot drive. There may be a way to ‘fool’ the O/S to put Apps on another drive but I don’t have the nerve to mess with it. I have a powered usb hub and a hard drive (SSD) dock for additional usb and disk space. It’s such a tiny thing. : )
My thanks to those who responded. It’s a pleasure using a Mac again.
This isn’t true for WOW (or at least it hasn’t been in the past, haven’t tried it lately). For a while I had a copy of WOW on a second drive in a Mac Pro and it was no problem to run it from there. I might have had to fiddle with the launcher settings a bit to get it pointed at the correct folder but it worked.
in general, some Mac apps are more picky about their location than others. Some want to be installed in the Applications folder (and some even insist on being in the top level of the Applications folder) and others just don’t care.
1 Like
Hi if money isn’t as much of a concern the new Mac Studio appears to be killing it.
I got the base model with the M1 Max in it and can run the game at 10 without a sweat. I think it’s good they went for big cooling.
I just got my Mac Studio Ultra yesterday and was able to get it up and running for raid in SFO. I was SOO very happy with the performance.
I grabbed these after an hour and a half in the raid. So, the system had been running for a while.
I had my settings on 9 with shadows turned to ultra? The setting before the best. The temps and power consumption, or lack thereof, are amazing. I am replacing a RTX 3080 TI which I have been forced to cap at 60 FPS just to keep my office from getting up to 80+ degrees on raid nights.
I look forward to doing more tests.
WARNING - Do NOT purchase this simply for WOW. That is just silly. This is a beast of a computer at a beast of a price. Only purchase it if you have other things you need this much power for.
1 Like
Thank you for the insight. When I went to install wow on the Mac mini, the (Mac) installer had an option to install on another drive just like with a PC, but the Mac installer refused to let me activate the option and forced the install in the Applications folder on the boot drive. Once installed, I went to the Battlenet launcher Settings/Game Settings and was able to change the directory once I copied the files to the new drive. It throws an error when I start up but it let’s the game run anyway.
1 Like
Nice to see some solid data. I’m currently running this duo:
- Base spec iMac Pro [Xeon W-2140B, Radeon Pro Vega 56, 32GB 2666MHz RAM)
- Custom built tower [Ryzen 5950X, EVGA RTX 3080 Ti FTW3, 32GB 3600MHz RAM)
The iMac handles most of my non-job-related software dev and graphics work (the macOS desktop is just more conducive to work for me), while the tower handles gaming and Windows native development.
Been thinking about grabbing a Studio to replace the iMac for the huge single threaded performance boost (that Xeon is about on par with an i7-6700K in that regard, which is ok but not amazing), reduced fan noise under load, and better monitor sharing. Nice to see that I might not need to wake up the tower if I wanted to take a break and fire up WoW for a bit.
Not sure if I’ll go with the Studio or a 16" MBP though. As noted before my company laptop is a 16" M1 Pro and I’m pretty happy with that already.
1 Like
FYI - here is how you install to a secondary drive in os x if the software will not allow you to. I had to do this for FFXIV