The issue is more likely the very different graphics implementation. There is a reason both major console platforms settled on the same hardware (AMD CPU & GPU). Sony's own teams crying out "stop with the fucking proprietary bullshit like cell". Now Sony even publishes its games on Windows! It's top selling MLB The Show ships on Xbox!

The Apple GPU is actually more like the Cell idea that Sony had to give up on (and add a GPU) before the PS3 shipped. It's not as slow as Cell, but it's different enough from a regular GPU that games optimized for one aren't that great on the other. I love my M1 Max and M2 Max for Civ and Factorio, but I've got a windows gaming rig for playing the kind of games that need show stopping graphics, and a PS5 for convenience.

Yeah pretty much everyone who tried some sort of RISC implementation for graphics has let go in favor of the modern GPU architecture. Apple seems to think it knows better but the actual performance getting out of their hardware says otherwise. The base was pretty good to scale stuff at first and was(is) enough in a mobile phone but it really shouldn't be applied to a console and even less to a full size computer...

> The issue is more likely the very different graphics implementation.

Metal and Vulkan are very conceptually similar. Most things you can write against Vulkan will work in Metal, only the API calls will differ. MoltenVK will even wrap Metal with Vulkan's API.

But the OP isn't talking about graphics APIs, they're making the absurd claim that ARM CPUs are "obscure". It's so wrong it borders on asinine.

> It's so wrong it borders on asinine.

Only because you're complaining about their exact wording and ignoring context.

The M1's TBDR GPU is very different from an Nvidia-style GPU. The different API doesn't actually matter much, but for best performance you'd want to rewrite the renderer whether or not you used a different API.

I don't believe Valve currently targets any ARM systems with any of its games.

That's not the same as saying ARM processors are obscure. You've probably got at least a dozen of them in your house right now if not several on your person.

This entire conversation is taking place in the context of desktop/laptop PC gaming, where ARM is definitely obscure.

I was playing CSGO on my m1 until a month ago

Portal 1 and 2 are on the Switch. They had a HL2 port to the Nvidia Shield too IIRC.

Did they do the Portal ports? I thought the nVidia Shield ports were done externally.

I mean, nobody else uses Apple's _custom_ ARM-_ish_ processor, no.

M1/M1 chips aren’t arm-ish. they’re 100% arm, plus some proprietary extras.

Didn't they deprecate OpenGL or something to that extent?

OpenGL isn't a part of the ARM instruction set. There are plenty of arm chips that don't even have a GPU (e.g. name any embedded arm processor).

This subthread of people being just anal about a comment that we should all understand the meaning of.

Apple switched to ARM ISA and moved away from an open graphics abstraction layers. Those two things go hand-in-hand. ARM ISA isn't the problem, being a proprietary API on a platform that isn't of value for major game devs - that's the problem.

(FFS - Blizzard left MacOS, the one that released their titles on OSX one of the first.)

Arguing over what ARM ISA includes or not, is besides the point.

Yeah Apple should have realised something was wrong when blizzard went out with Overwatch and no mac version in sight because the numbers of macs that could run it decently well was so small even though it's not that demanding of a game.

Since then Apple has only made more excuse and even raised the price of their weak-ass proprietary hardware. They made their bed they deserve no efforts from anyone ; not developers not users. If they come out with competent hardware at a decent price then we will see...

Apple uses custom processors with features that aren't available on other ARM chips, and they have a custom compiler as well.

That custom compiler is *checks notes* clang. Yup. Totally custom. Don't see that compiler anywhere else in the industry.

As far as high level code is concerned Apple's chips are just ARM chips. They've got microarchitectural features that put them ahead of other ARM chips clock for clock. But if you want to call their implementation obscure then by that twisted logic then AMD chips are obscure because they operate differently than Intel chips despite the AMD64 ISA.

It's a stupid distinction to justify an ignorant statement. Between iPhones, iPads, and Macs Apple has shipped a billion of their CPUs. At a billion units it's just dumb to suggest they're obscure. Different from Wintel PCs? Sure. But obscure? That's just asinine.