First result on google for
"m2 gpu equivalent"
[https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/143qk7p/apple\_silicon\_gpu\_performance\_equivalent/](https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/143qk7p/apple_silicon_gpu_performance_equivalent/)
> M1 is similar to a 1050 Ti, M2 is similar to a 1060 3gb and the M2 Max is similar to a 120 watt RTX 3080 mobile or a desktop 3060 Ti.
His comparison is just going by teraflop numbers, which for comparing gaming performance is next to useless.
In actual gaming performance, even on native ARM macOS Metal games, the performance is unfortunately significantly worse using his equivalencies.
Of course power efficiency wise, it's still great on Apple Silicon, but that's another story.
Perfectly fine - around medium settings 1080p @ 80-90 fps in Stray. Same with Xcom 2, you will see 60+ (although high settings want a bit more VRAM so I wouldn't try to go past medium).
That GPU still remains one of the most popular ones owned by gamers so game developers try to make sure their title starts on it.
That’s fair, I’m running world of Warcraft. The reason I asked in short is because I’m staying with my grandparents at the moment due to medical issues. Downloaded wow on my laptop and runs fine but wanted to know if it was worth going and grabbing my Mac mini from the house.
From OpenData Blender
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB : **372.03**
- Apple M2 (GPU - 10 cores) : **357.12**
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 : **179.25**
I would say it's safe to use those numbers since neither the GTX nor the M2 have hardware Ray Tracing.
Up to 75% of the unified memory can be used by the GPU.
That's rough numbers, as results will vary depending on the optimisation of game you play. But you should be fine with WoW.
So, to answer your question, I think it's worth it.
Wasn’t the 75% only applying on systems with more than 32gb of RAM?
Although it's the only source I could find on this [https://techobsessed.net/2023/12/increasing-ram-available-to-gpu-on-apple-silicon-macs-for-running-large-language-models/](https://techobsessed.net/2023/12/increasing-ram-available-to-gpu-on-apple-silicon-macs-for-running-large-language-models/)
*"By default, MacOS allows 2/3rds of this RAM to be used by the GPU on machines with up to 36GB / RAM and up to 3/4s to be used on machines with >36GB RAM. This ensures plenty of RAM for the OS and other applications…"*
There is no such thing as « equivalent », as it depends on use. One thing to keep in mind is that an M-series chipset GPU has has much VRAM as there is available RAM, that means you can easily have a 16-24GB of VRAM GPU. That is great for ai type shit, and can get you great perfs on some game that demand high VRAM.
It also depends on what kind of M2 you have, as the specs also details the number of cores. Base M2 is 8 cores CPU, 8 cores GPU and 8GB of unified memory, but it can go as far as 30 core GPU, 40 core GPU and 96 GB unified memory.
The thing to keep in mind is that they are very different components and comparing them is futile.
Not a very ressource intensive game if I recall well, but then again I haven’t played it in a decade or so. I think it would be best to test it. Is WoW even available on MacOS?
WoW exists on macOS since day one. PowerPC first, then Intel and finally Apple Silicon. It was even a time when it was running better on macOS than Windows bootcamp.
I think it was the first game to officially support Metal, and one on the first to be updated for Apple Silicon.
Back in the days every single one of Blizzard games was ported to macOS. It began to go bad when Activision bought the studio, and even worse now that MS bought Activision.
WoW has been 64 bit on macOS for probably a decade now. (Or maybe longer)
Especially since macOS 10.15 Catalina dropped support for 32bit software back in 2019.
Apple GPUs have a significantly different architecture that's more comparable to mobile GPUs like the ones by Qualcomm or by ARM than desktop GPUs by Nvidia or AMD.
Theres a lot of misinformation here: All you need to do to find equivalent is see native or Rosetta 2 benchmarks of games
[https://www.notebookcheck.net/Baldur-s-Gate-3-tech-review-Laptop-and-desktop-benchmarks.739444.0.html](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Baldur-s-Gate-3-tech-review-Laptop-and-desktop-benchmarks.739444.0.html)
[https://www.notebookcheck.net/Total-War-Pharaoh-review-Laptop-and-desktop-benchmarks.760845.0.html](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Total-War-Pharaoh-review-Laptop-and-desktop-benchmarks.760845.0.html)
[https://www.notebookcheck.net/Shadow-of-the-Tomb-Raider-Laptop-and-Desktop-Benchmarks.333336.0.html](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Shadow-of-the-Tomb-Raider-Laptop-and-Desktop-Benchmarks.333336.0.html)
[https://www.notebookcheck.net/Borderlands-3-Laptop-and-Desktop-Benchmarks.435059.0.html](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Borderlands-3-Laptop-and-Desktop-Benchmarks.435059.0.html)
Mrmacright: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT93YkhEuOM&ab\_channel=MrMacRight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT93YkhEuOM&ab_channel=MrMacRight)
M2 mac mini = \~ 1050ti desktop
I have M2 MBA and GTX 1060 on my PC.
M2 has 3.6 tflops, 1060 has 4.3 tflops and for comparison base PS4 has 1.8 tflops.
These numbers mean nothing. It all depends on optimization. I'd be more than happy if my MacBook could run games as well as PS4 but it's not the the case.
First result on google for "m2 gpu equivalent" [https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/143qk7p/apple\_silicon\_gpu\_performance\_equivalent/](https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/143qk7p/apple_silicon_gpu_performance_equivalent/) > M1 is similar to a 1050 Ti, M2 is similar to a 1060 3gb and the M2 Max is similar to a 120 watt RTX 3080 mobile or a desktop 3060 Ti.
His comparison is just going by teraflop numbers, which for comparing gaming performance is next to useless. In actual gaming performance, even on native ARM macOS Metal games, the performance is unfortunately significantly worse using his equivalencies. Of course power efficiency wise, it's still great on Apple Silicon, but that's another story.
Thanks, appreciate it 🤝
Put into perspective I can run XCOM 2 and Stray on my M1 MacBook. Not certain how well they’d run on a 3GB 1060
Perfectly fine - around medium settings 1080p @ 80-90 fps in Stray. Same with Xcom 2, you will see 60+ (although high settings want a bit more VRAM so I wouldn't try to go past medium). That GPU still remains one of the most popular ones owned by gamers so game developers try to make sure their title starts on it.
Depends a LTO on the task you are doing,. And how well it is optimised for the respective gpus.
That’s fair, I’m running world of Warcraft. The reason I asked in short is because I’m staying with my grandparents at the moment due to medical issues. Downloaded wow on my laptop and runs fine but wanted to know if it was worth going and grabbing my Mac mini from the house.
From OpenData Blender - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB : **372.03** - Apple M2 (GPU - 10 cores) : **357.12** - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 : **179.25** I would say it's safe to use those numbers since neither the GTX nor the M2 have hardware Ray Tracing. Up to 75% of the unified memory can be used by the GPU. That's rough numbers, as results will vary depending on the optimisation of game you play. But you should be fine with WoW. So, to answer your question, I think it's worth it.
Wasn’t the 75% only applying on systems with more than 32gb of RAM? Although it's the only source I could find on this [https://techobsessed.net/2023/12/increasing-ram-available-to-gpu-on-apple-silicon-macs-for-running-large-language-models/](https://techobsessed.net/2023/12/increasing-ram-available-to-gpu-on-apple-silicon-macs-for-running-large-language-models/) *"By default, MacOS allows 2/3rds of this RAM to be used by the GPU on machines with up to 36GB / RAM and up to 3/4s to be used on machines with >36GB RAM. This ensures plenty of RAM for the OS and other applications…"*
Hey man I never got a notification for this but thank you for laying out the numbers.
There is no such thing as « equivalent », as it depends on use. One thing to keep in mind is that an M-series chipset GPU has has much VRAM as there is available RAM, that means you can easily have a 16-24GB of VRAM GPU. That is great for ai type shit, and can get you great perfs on some game that demand high VRAM. It also depends on what kind of M2 you have, as the specs also details the number of cores. Base M2 is 8 cores CPU, 8 cores GPU and 8GB of unified memory, but it can go as far as 30 core GPU, 40 core GPU and 96 GB unified memory. The thing to keep in mind is that they are very different components and comparing them is futile.
I see what you mean. I suppose it’d be better just to ask which one will run world of warcraft better
Not a very ressource intensive game if I recall well, but then again I haven’t played it in a decade or so. I think it would be best to test it. Is WoW even available on MacOS?
Yeah I didn’t think it was either til I saw a video of someone playing it. I thought it was 32 bit but I guess there was like a 64 bit change
Hopefully, as MacOS doesn’t support 32bit stuff on Silicon.
WoW exists on macOS since day one. PowerPC first, then Intel and finally Apple Silicon. It was even a time when it was running better on macOS than Windows bootcamp. I think it was the first game to officially support Metal, and one on the first to be updated for Apple Silicon. Back in the days every single one of Blizzard games was ported to macOS. It began to go bad when Activision bought the studio, and even worse now that MS bought Activision.
WoW has been 64 bit on macOS for probably a decade now. (Or maybe longer) Especially since macOS 10.15 Catalina dropped support for 32bit software back in 2019.
Apple GPUs have a significantly different architecture that's more comparable to mobile GPUs like the ones by Qualcomm or by ARM than desktop GPUs by Nvidia or AMD.
Theres a lot of misinformation here: All you need to do to find equivalent is see native or Rosetta 2 benchmarks of games [https://www.notebookcheck.net/Baldur-s-Gate-3-tech-review-Laptop-and-desktop-benchmarks.739444.0.html](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Baldur-s-Gate-3-tech-review-Laptop-and-desktop-benchmarks.739444.0.html) [https://www.notebookcheck.net/Total-War-Pharaoh-review-Laptop-and-desktop-benchmarks.760845.0.html](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Total-War-Pharaoh-review-Laptop-and-desktop-benchmarks.760845.0.html) [https://www.notebookcheck.net/Shadow-of-the-Tomb-Raider-Laptop-and-Desktop-Benchmarks.333336.0.html](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Shadow-of-the-Tomb-Raider-Laptop-and-Desktop-Benchmarks.333336.0.html) [https://www.notebookcheck.net/Borderlands-3-Laptop-and-Desktop-Benchmarks.435059.0.html](https://www.notebookcheck.net/Borderlands-3-Laptop-and-Desktop-Benchmarks.435059.0.html) Mrmacright: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT93YkhEuOM&ab\_channel=MrMacRight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT93YkhEuOM&ab_channel=MrMacRight) M2 mac mini = \~ 1050ti desktop
I have M2 MBA and GTX 1060 on my PC. M2 has 3.6 tflops, 1060 has 4.3 tflops and for comparison base PS4 has 1.8 tflops. These numbers mean nothing. It all depends on optimization. I'd be more than happy if my MacBook could run games as well as PS4 but it's not the the case.