how's it going on native support for M chips?

[stevey87]

just got the base model m4 mac mini last night and even using rosetta it's pretty darn impressive but I'd love to know what the boost would be with native M4 support....

 

... I think I got 90 days to return this thing, any chance it'll be done within 89 days? lol (no really though if I gotta upgrade does anyone know if just getting the 24gb ram model would be enough or do I gotta go m4 pro?)

[AmeliaJ08]

Megapahit is apparently pretty good, can't confirm since don't own a Mac but people seem positive about it.

Edited November 22 by AmeliaJ08

[filz Camino]

On 11/22/2024 at 3:45 PM, stevey87 said:

but I'd love to know what the boost would be with native M4 support.

Looking at this, perhaps a 30% boost?

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/6

24Gb of total memory is probably mostly OK for SL but is perhaps a bit tight for use on busy sims (bearing in mind that on an Apple computer, the GPU will need some of that 24Gb)

[discussionbot]

I’m getting an M4 Mac Mini Pro soon, probably might not want to mess around with Rosetta.

Anyone know if native support is on the roadmap for future Firestorm and Alchemy?

[Henri Beauchamp]

4 hours ago, discussionbot said:

Anyone know if native support is on the roadmap for future Firestorm and Alchemy?

You would have much better luck with Megapahit: IIRC they do have such native builds already.

[gwynchisholm]

What kind of performance are people getting with Rosetta? I’ve been contemplating tearing my pc apart and getting a mac mini and today I bit the bullet and took apart and listed the pc parts for sale.

So now it’s a matter of if I get the Mac or not. Honestly if SL is at least playable and stable I’m for it.

[filz Camino]

1 hour ago, gwynchisholm said:

What kind of performance are people getting with Rosetta? I’ve been contemplating tearing my pc apart and getting a mac mini and today I bit the bullet and took apart and listed the pc parts for sale.

So now it’s a matter of if I get the Mac or not. Honestly if SL is at least playable and stable I’m for it.

 

I did some experiments with my Intel mac a few years back, to see what difference in SL performance there was between the machine running MacOS or Windows.

Frame rates were about a factor of 5 higher with the same computer running on Windows. An unusable 5fps on a busy sim on MacOS went up to about 25fps with the computer running Windows with the same screen resolution and graphics settings.

Because the performance hit on MacOS seems to be due to the old version of OpenGL that Apple are using, and because that hasn't changed on the new Apple silicon, I would expect a similar 5:1 reduction in performance compared to an equivalent Windows machine, with an additional 30% hit in performance that comes from running Intel software on Apple silicon.

A further issue with running SL on modern macs is that the amount of memory that's needed for a good SL experience is regarded as a premium option on a Mac, and is therefore extremely expensive. 

(I think for SL these days, you need at least 32Gb combined system and video memory for a reasonable experience, and preferably a bit more).

Because of the above, I decided to replace my Mac with a decent gaming PC, and found I got another huge uplift in performance (about a factor of 4) comparing the Windows gaming PC with my Intel Mac running Windows. Macs just aren't really designed for gaming I guess.

So in total, I got a factor of 20 (or 1,900%) improvement in frame rate by going from a Mac running MacOS to a gaming PC running Windows. The difference in usability was night and day.

There may be plenty of other reasons that a Mac would be a better choice for you than a Windows PC but having experienced SL with both, I personally would never go back to MacOS, unless improvements were made to make Mac SL performance equivalent to Windows SL performance. 

Edited 23 hours ago by filz Camino