Comments on: ARM Macs

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 21:42:40 +0000

In reply to Noah Lieberman. For what it's worth, you'd only see a CPU, not GPU win from going native. So if _pausing_ the sim doesn't improve your FPS (e.g. you're GPU bound), the native version won't help a ton.

By: Noah Lieberman

Noah Lieberman — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 20:25:31 +0000

I’ve been testing X-Plane on my new M1 MacBook Pro and the results are mind bending. I can’t wait to see what it’s like when X-Plane is actually compiled to run native on the M1 chip set. My main machine is a 12 core, 2019 Mac Pro with 96GB of RAM and an AMD Pro Vega II with 32GB of VRAM. Same aircraft, scenery, and settings, the little MacBook Pro, running in EMULATION is faster than the Mac Pro?! It’s unbelievable, and truly awesome what will be possible in the future. I have to say it even looks better somehow, seems like the colors, lighting, and shadow are a little smoother and better rendered. Even running with Max objects, max visual effects, max texture quality, antialiasing 2x SSAA + FXAA, Anisotropic filtering at 8x, and shadows, using XCODR’s pretty intense KDEN package and the Tolis A319, I’m getting 25 to 50 fps.

By: Coda

Coda — Sat, 21 Nov 2020 15:42:28 +0000

In reply to Elios.

Do you mean “Unlikely. They will go with their own…” or “Unlikely they will go with their own…”?

Punctuation is important.

Anyway, they still have to pay licence to ARM for their own CPUs, and guess what, ARM is owned by Nvidia. There is no way to completely get away from it.

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Sat, 21 Nov 2020 00:05:41 +0000

In reply to Elios. Wat? You got a source for this? (I'd be particularly surprised that the x86 and ARM code signing requirements would differ, when they don't represent differential security threats)

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Sat, 21 Nov 2020 00:04:53 +0000

In reply to Elios.

Clearly the M1 doesn’t have an NV or AMD-style super-wide memory bus…but since it’s strictly a tiling GPU, it’s not an Apples-to-Apples comparison for things like fill rate – a lot of rendering that is over-the-bus on an AMD card is on-chip on an M1 or the A-series.

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Sat, 21 Nov 2020 00:03:10 +0000

In reply to Steve.Wilson. As far as we can tell, the tool chain to develop ARM (SDK for Big Sur, X-Code 12.2 DO work on Catalina, so this is a case where the new OS isn't needed to dev for the US.

By: Elios

Elios — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 23:27:40 +0000

In reply to Coda. unlikely they will go with there own GPUs based on what they have already. the point of ARM like this is so Apple has full in house SoCs

By: Elios

Elios — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 23:27:00 +0000

In reply to Ben Supnik.

bigger issue is Apple has locked down ARM to require ALL code be signed… this means even free ware plug ins will have to have signed code…

By: Elios

Elios — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 23:24:41 +0000

In reply to Elios. derp ment "still using" how did it type "slitting" dyslexia for the lose

By: Elios

Elios — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 23:22:54 +0000

In reply to Marshall Arbitman. this is the bigger issue your slitting 8 or 16GB of ram with the CPU and GPU... its likely only running with about 2GB of ram at most for the GPU maybe 4GB in the case of 16GB option its just not going to run well. and then has to do this wile sharing the bus with the CPU and its only 128bit bus on top of that. better off just porting XP Moblie to the ARM macs