Good morning/afternoon/evening/night, dear TechRadar readers. I come before you today to offer some sort of rebuttal to… last week’s article from the lovely John Loeffler, in which he argued that MacBooks could become the new place for PC gamers to enjoy their favorite games.
Apple’s shiny new M1 and M2 processors, along with the company’s resurrected drive to commit to gaming as a profit, certainly seem to fit the bill here. Apple was once one of the main drivers of the expansion of the PC gaming industry, providing a home to some of the best-selling games of the ’90s. Armed with its new M-series SoCs (system-on-a-chip), the California company has ditched Intel processors and is starting to make gaming a viable option on its latest laptops.
But here’s the thing: Personally, I despise macOS (to the point where you might imagine an Apple software engineer stole my car and killed my dog, starting an anti-heroic origin story) and can’t really help myself. see ever want to play games on it. So while I think John made a compelling case for Macs to become the new best option for PC gamers, I believe there’s another possibility: AMD and the potential of SoCs for high-end gaming in the future.
The future of PC gaming is bright – but different
Why AMD? Well, as John accurately noted in his article, discrete graphics cards are becoming more and more expensive – and not just to buy. Of course, prices are high even with the gradual stabilization of the GPU market after the crypto crash in May, but the cost of using these graphics cards is also steadily increasing, and it looks like Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 4000 series will be no exception to that rule.
As GPUs get bigger and more powerful, PC games may need to buy new power supplies, cooling solutions, and even cases to house them. It is a problem with many modern gaming laptops at; those with high-end GPUs are always big, heavy, and have rowdy fans that could put a Blackhawk to shame — and that’s before you see the dazzling price tag.
SoC powered systems do not share this difficulty. Admittedly, they have their own problems to contend with – the new ones M2 MacBook Air‘s fanless design caused some thermal limitation issues – but in general, laptops and desktops running on processor-integrated graphics (iGPUs) can be smaller, quieter, cooler and cheaper than their discrete graphics counterparts. The major drawback, of course, has always been the loss of game performance.
But iGPUs have come a long way in recent years and AMD is leading the way. A great recent example is MSI’s Trident S 5M, a console replacement PC that runs on Team Red’s Ryzen 7 5700G CPU and delivers pretty decent gaming performance at 1080p. Apple’s proprietary M2 silicon is a serious contender, offering graphics performance well beyond older Intel Mac devices.
Certainly more impressive is AMD’s work on dedicated processors for non-PC platforms. Both current-generation consoles (and Valve’s steam deck) are powered by specially designed AMD Zen 2 chips, and the idea that for $500 you could get PS5 performance on a gaming PC is downright laughable right now. Sure, the RTX 3090 Ti can blow consoles out of the water, but it costs three times as much and that is only one part.
The solution for resolution:
One very important thing to remember is that casual gaming is on the rise, and while desktop and laptop iGPUs aren’t capable of 4K gaming yet, the vast majority of PC gamers don’t play at that resolution. A 2019 survey of Steam users found that only 1.74% of respondents played games in 4K, likely due to the cost of hardware upgrades. Even if your PC can play games at 4K Ultra, you’ll still need one of the best 4K monitors to play them on to really get the most out of it.
While this figure will no doubt have risen a bit over the past three years, the vast majority of players still stick to 1080p – and for those gaming on laptops, upgrading just your display isn’t even an option. The “game in 8K” dreams of high-end Nvidia cards are meaningless to many gamers; unaffordable, unrealistic and downright unnecessary.
With the skyrocketing cost of PC gaming, it’s no wonder more people are clamoring to play on consoles instead. hell, de Nintendo Switch is powered by an ARM-based SoC that works wonders on its 720p display, with a low price tag for anyone looking for a new gaming device.
Of course, special hardware makes it easier for developers to make games that run smoothly and look great. Anyone developing a game for the PS5 knows exactly what hardware will power that game, so optimization just got a whole lot easier. PC gamers are left out in the cold; with such an impossibly wide variety of computers out there, many games these days run poorly on anything but the best gaming PC.
The Downfall of Dedicated GPUs
But imagine, if you will, a glorious future where your HP or Dell ultrabook has all best pc games at Ultra graphics presets without sacrificing their thin and light designs. Imagine an AMD-powered desktop PC the size of a soda can, capable of running Cyberpunk 2077 with its mighty Zen 4 iGPU.
Eliminating dedicated GPUs provides greater simplicity and power for game makers to optimize their games for PC hardware. With those possibilities on the horizon, chunky graphics cards could go the way of the dodo. Now, before you call me a crazy silicon-chewing doomsayer for thinking we should ditch the best graphics cards altogether, I want you to think about sound cards.
Do you remember that one? You used to need a whole extra card on your motherboard to enjoy audio from your PC, but these were replaced by integrated circuits on the motherboard, rendering them useless to all but the most serious audio makers. I took a quick trip to the TechRadar archives and we reviewed exactly one internal sound card in the past two years targeting – you guessed it – audiophiles with money to burn.
Graphics cards are the same, and Nvidia might not appreciate me saying this, but they’re going to become an obsolete product used only by professionals and cash-flush enthusiasts — and it could happen sooner than you think. Apple’s pursuit of turning any MacBook into a “gaming MacBook” will only speed up the process.
SoCs are the answer, but Apple has competition
Which brings me back to the headline. I refuse to believe that Macs are the future of PC gaming, but John is absolutely right: SoCs represent the way forward here, and Apple’s M-series processors are a step in the right direction.
But PC gamers won’t be adopting Macs widely. As of June 2021, 90% of Steam users were playing on Windows 10; some will have made the jump to Windows 11 by now, but very few will have moved to macOS, which accounted for about 2% of total users. Apple would love to turn their laptops into portable game consoles, but it’s just too late; Macs aren’t considered a good platform for gaming, and it takes more than an EVE Online partnership to change that. The move from Windows to macOS is also a huge demand, and those who already buy MacBooks tend to be more interested in productivity than gaming.
AMD’s Zen 4 CPUs are in the works, with increasingly better integrated graphics and beautiful 3D V-cache technology for enhanced gaming performance. that is the future of PC gaming, if you ask me. When the tables are turned and consoles beat PCs, maybe it’s time for PCs to take a leaf out of their book.
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