Has it really been that long? Apparently so. Valve originally announced their rebranding of Steam Play with Proton back on August 21st, 2018. Seems like a good time for a quick reflection being halfway to a decade old now with the tech that gave rise to the Steam Deck.
I am getting a MacBook for work reason (my work required MacOS-only app, not my choice). I would prefer to only have 1 laptop if I could. So should I pay extra for higher model (more GPU cores) and use it for gaming? (I Mostly play racing game and single player RPG).
Or would I better off by getting the base model MacBook pro, and a mediocre PC with the money left over (~$700)?
macOS has made it difficult for both game developers and Wine developers to support the platform by letting their OpenGL support rot, removing 32-bit support, ignoring Vulkan and coming out with their own graphics API, Metal. Wine is in a worse state than on GNU/Linux. There aren’t many native games available for macOS.
That being said, your best bet is likely CrossOver. They employ the principle Wine developers, worked with Valve on Proton, and have put a lot of effort into supporting macOS. They’ve got a free trial with complete functionality you can try out.
But if the games you’re playing have native releases for macOS, that’s not something you need to worry about. There are just so few games available on macOS that I assumed they don’t. Now, I only have an Intel iMac which I never play games on so I couldn’t tell you how the newer ARM laptops perform.
Gaming on Mac is a bit of a new territory. You can install Linux on modern Macs through Asahi Linux, but most games don’t work on it yet since it’s still somewhat experimental.
If you want to stick with MacOS, there’s a sort of Proton for it called Game Porting Toolkit. You may want to look at some benchmarks on it.
I am getting a MacBook for work reason (my work required MacOS-only app, not my choice). I would prefer to only have 1 laptop if I could. So should I pay extra for higher model (more GPU cores) and use it for gaming? (I Mostly play racing game and single player RPG). Or would I better off by getting the base model MacBook pro, and a mediocre PC with the money left over (~$700)?
I’ve never owned nor used MacOS before.
Thanks.
macOS has made it difficult for both game developers and Wine developers to support the platform by letting their OpenGL support rot, removing 32-bit support, ignoring Vulkan and coming out with their own graphics API, Metal. Wine is in a worse state than on GNU/Linux. There aren’t many native games available for macOS.
That being said, your best bet is likely CrossOver. They employ the principle Wine developers, worked with Valve on Proton, and have put a lot of effort into supporting macOS. They’ve got a free trial with complete functionality you can try out.
But if the games you’re playing have native releases for macOS, that’s not something you need to worry about. There are just so few games available on macOS that I assumed they don’t. Now, I only have an Intel iMac which I never play games on so I couldn’t tell you how the newer ARM laptops perform.
This is very out of date. The new game porting toolkit makes it trivial to play most windows games.
Kind of. Its more aimed at developers to “port” the game rather than the end user. Saying that there will no doubt be a third party solution.
Gaming on Mac is a bit of a new territory. You can install Linux on modern Macs through Asahi Linux, but most games don’t work on it yet since it’s still somewhat experimental.
If you want to stick with MacOS, there’s a sort of Proton for it called Game Porting Toolkit. You may want to look at some benchmarks on it.