MacBook Pro M1 Chip Compatibility

[jpackowski]

Hello. Looking to upgrade my MacBook Pro to a newer version that has the newer M1 Chip. I can't find any documentation on whether NoLimits 2 would run properly using this new chip. Anyone have any insights or experience here? Thank you!

[Ride_Op]

It should work, and there is a free demo available for you to try out. However, we strongly recommend that you get a laptop or MacBook with a dedicated graphics card from nVidia or AMD. Integrated, shared resource solutions do not perform as well.

Easy way to tell: is the MacBook you are looking at capable of realtime VR graphics suitable for Oculus Rift or Vive, maintaining the appropriate resolution at 90+FPS? If so, it'll run NL2 very well. If not, it is not a good gaming machine and isn't likely to perform that well.

-Ride_Op

[TheHadouJHyrule]

Originally posted by Ride_Op:

It should work, and there is a free demo available for you to try out. However, we strongly recommend that you get a laptop or MacBook with a dedicated graphics card from nVidia or AMD. Integrated, shared resource solutions do not perform as well.

Easy way to tell: is the MacBook you are looking at capable of realtime VR graphics suitable for Oculus Rift or Vive, maintaining the appropriate resolution at 90+FPS? If so, it'll run NL2 very well. If not, it is not a good gaming machine and isn't likely to perform that well.

-Ride_Op

Apple terminated their contract with NVIDIA when their graphics cards were in too high of demand that the company couldn't keep up. The same thing happened with AMD Graphics and Intel processors.

Nowadays, Apple makes their own hardware for the Mac, their own unique set of SoCs (System on Chips) that started with M1, and they use a high-performance, low-power consumption formula when developing all their chips. Here's some excerpts from Wikipedia that may clear things up:

READ THIS FIRST!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1
THEN READ THIS!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1_Pro_and_M1_Max

Basically said, you'll need to buy at least an M1 Mac Mini, and recode NoLimits 2 to work natively on Apple Silicon (ARM64v8.5-A) by recompiling them into Universal 2 binaries using xCode. Otherwise, once Apple pulls the plug on Rosetta 2, Intel apps, including Steam and NoLimits 2, will cease functioning on this new hardware.

[nlcoaster]

Native Apple Silicon (M1) support is coming soon (most likely in April, 2022). It requires some more testing, but everything looks good so far.