Elite: Dangerous | Horizon on MacBook Pro

tolm

tolm
So, before going "all in" and buying a proper gaming PC, I figured I'd find out how well I could run ED on my MacBook Pro running via BootCamp. For reference, it's a 2019 16" version with a 2.6Ghz 6-core Intel i7, 16Gb 2667Mhz RAM and an AMD Radeon Pro 5300M with 4GB VRAM.

I initially jumped straight in at 4K/Ultra ... I mean, why not?! Unsurprisingly the results were not good! So I dropped to 1440p/High and that seemed okay so kept things there whilst I pottered around the newbies area earning credits and wot-not. More recently I took a trip out to the crystal shard sites (curtesy of my PlayStation CMDRs Fleet Carrier!) to stock up on mats and, on planets, I had to drop the resolution down to 1080p to avoid motion sickness from the noticeably shabby frame-rate.

Then - earlier today - I found out how to enable the frame-rate counter ... and did "science"!

So, for anyone who might be interested ... sitting outside a spinning Orbis Starport with the massive rotating circle full of farms (or whatever they are) I observed the following:
  • 1080p/High : Reasonably stable 60fps. Very infrequent drops to mid-to-high 50s but they were there.
  • 1080p/Medium : Solid 60fps. No drops apart from when flying into the station through the foggy mail slot. Hmm ... that sounds ruder than I intended ...
  • 1440p/Medium : Almost identical to 1080p/High. Maybe a little less stable with a few more drops but hard to say. I suspect this would struggle more in a higher-activity area like a HazRES or something?
  • 2160p/Medium : Pretty solid 30fps. Would certainly prioritise a higher frame-rate over this resolution though!
  • 2160p/High/Ultra : Frame-rate tanks and fluctuates between high teens and mid-to-low 20s.
One thing I noticed is that 1080p looks noticeable worse than 1440p. But 4K doesn't really look noticeable better than 1440p. So I guess the 1440p signal has enough detail in it that my monitor can upscale it to the panel more successfully? Of course, this is all assuming the same texture qualities selected.

Nothing managed to go above 60fps apart from 1440p/Medium which very briefly hit 61FPS but I don't believe it because I'm fairly sure my monitor is a 60Hz monitor. 😄

For me ... I think I'm going to stick on 1080p/Med settings. Whilst 1440p does look much better the improved frame rate stability just seems like the sensible choice. Especially since I eventually want to get back to shooting pirates in asteroid fields! However, it would seem Odyssey is not an option at present. Back to saving for the gaming PC, then, I guess!!
 

tolm

tolm
LeoBartlet said:
Why play ED on a Mac when you can just complain for 4+ years about it not being officially supported.

Sadly no BootCamp for M1 :(
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Yeh ... the new M1 chips seems very fancy and all that but I have to say I have been very surprised by how well Windows runs on this Intel one!

My original plan was to try and install Linux and use Proton to run ED via Steam. But that plan got a pretty hard "No" when having battled for several hours to get Ubuntu installed ... it finally booted ... and had no drivers for trackpad or keyboard so I couldn't do anything!!!
 

Bottom Hat

Bottom Hat
Im no expert on Macs but I doubt this is a good example of what you can expect from a pc mate. I'm not trying to be argumentative at all, I just think it could give you false impressions and that is dangerous when looking to invest :(
 

tolm

tolm
Bottom Hat said:
Im no expert on Macs but I doubt this is a good example of what you can expect from a pc mate. I'm not trying to be argumentative at all, I just think it could give you false impressions and that is dangerous when looking to invest :(
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It’s running Windows natively on an Intel based laptop with an AMD Graphics Card … macOS is completely out of the picture. Should be a fair comparison for any PC-laptop of equivalent spec.

But, yeh, it’s a laptop with a mobile-edition graphics card … so it will be limited. If I go gaming PC I’ll be aiming at something like a 3.6Ghz i7 / 16GB RAM and an RTX 3070 which should be far better.
 

Bottom Hat

Bottom Hat
tolm said:
It’s running Windows natively on an Intel based laptop with an AMD Graphics Card … macOS is completely out of the picture. Should be a fair comparison for any PC-laptop of equivalent spec.

But, yeh, it’s a laptop with a mobile-edition graphics card … so it will be limited. If I go gaming PC I’ll be aiming at something like a 3.6Ghz i7 / 16GB RAM and an RTX 3070 which should be far better.
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To be honest I was referring to it being a laptop, not the OS it was on. And they are all tight with the mobile GPUs - certainly the case on mine.

I just meant in my first post that I didn't want you to base your purchase of a pc on the results of a laptop, as experiences can swing either way, with some reporting great results on laptops, and others the opposite. Basically I didn't want you to make a purchase that was subpar or overegged because of this, but it's your call of course.

Just trying to be helpful :)
 

tolm

tolm
Bottom Hat said:
To be honest I was referring to it being a laptop, not the OS it was on. And they are all tight with the mobile GPUs - certainly the case on mine.

I just meant in my first post that I didn't want you to base your purchase of a pc on the results of a laptop, as experiences can swing either way, with some reporting great results on laptops, and others the opposite. Basically I didn't want you to make a purchase that was subpar or overegged because of this, but it's your call of course.

Just trying to be helpful :)
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Gotcha - yeh, makes sense. TBH, I was mainly playing it on the laptop just to see what it was like, given I already had the machine … I mean, if it had hit 4K/Ultra/60fps then I wouldn’t even be considering buying anything!! But I was never expecting it to do that.

What it has shown me is that I would be far happier with 1440p/Ultra/60fps than I would with 2160p/Ultra/30fps. So I just need to figure out what spec of PC I need to hit that as a minimum … 😂
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
tolm said:
Gotcha - yeh, makes sense. TBH, I was mainly playing it on the laptop just to see what it was like, given I already had the machine … I mean, if it had hit 4K/Ultra/60fps then I wouldn’t even be considering buying anything!! But I was never expecting it to do that.

What it has shown me is that I would be far happier with 1440p/Ultra/60fps than I would with 2160p/Ultra/30fps. So I just need to figure out what spec of PC I need to hit that as a minimum … 😂
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The most important spec is the amount of GPU VRAM I think. 4 is the base minimum, any less and it gets bad.
 

Bottom Hat

Bottom Hat
tolm said:
Gotcha - yeh, makes sense. TBH, I was mainly playing it on the laptop just to see what it was like, given I already had the machine … I mean, if it had hit 4K/Ultra/60fps then I wouldn’t even be considering buying anything!! But I was never expecting it to do that.

What it has shown me is that I would be far happier with 1440p/Ultra/60fps than I would with 2160p/Ultra/30fps. So I just need to figure out what spec of PC I need to hit that as a minimum … 😂
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Cool - I didn't want you to get the wrong impression of what I was trying to say, which probably wasn't my clearest effort lol!
 

Bottom Hat

Bottom Hat
tolm said:
It’s all good!

Got some solid advice on this thread so much appreciated, all! 👍
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I just hope you can get the spec of PC you want without getting scalped! But as RN has said, it seems like having more than 4 in the vram is a must. Personally I'd aim for 8, but that's just my deal with trying to future proof a little - and it isn't my money on the table lol! Let us know what you do if you make a choice, I'll be interested to know mate.
 

alexzk

A
tolm said:
Yeh ... the new M1 chips seems very fancy and all that but I have to say I have been very surprised by how well Windows runs on this Intel one!

My original plan was to try and install Linux and use Proton to run ED via Steam. But that plan got a pretty hard "No" when having battled for several hours to get Ubuntu installed ... it finally booted ... and had no drivers for trackpad or keyboard so I couldn't do anything!!!
Click to expand...
I was doing hackintosh using Yosemite and my old 2-core CPU once. I can say macos is highly bound to hardware defaults, like frequency. I used to have boosted that PC with Linux and well, mac os failed in many different ways until I loaded default factory settings in BIOS.
This means - lower performance in games + lower quality of Linux as you can't BIOS-change settings.
Just saying.
 

tolm

tolm
Bottom Hat said:
I just hope you can get the spec of PC you want without getting scalped! But as RN has said, it seems like having more than 4 in the vram is a must. Personally I'd aim for 8, but that's just my deal with trying to future proof a little - and it isn't my money on the table lol! Let us know what you do if you make a choice, I'll be interested to know mate.
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Will do! Minimum spec I would go for is the 3060 - which weirdly has 12GB - but I’d much prefer the 3070. My company announces annual bonuses / pay rises next week so it really all depends on how that goes …
 

tolm

tolm
Imo said:
I am playing on a giant 48 inch LG C1 TV and I confirm that in 4 k the game does look almost the same in 1440p mode. :)
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Good to know. I reckon a 3070 should be good to hit 1440p in Ultra - or at least High? Which will save me a ton of cash vs as 3080 or 3090, which I think might be needed for 4K.
 

tolm

tolm
alexzk said:
I was doing hackintosh using Yosemite and my old 2-core CPU once. I can say macos is highly bound to hardware defaults, like frequency. I used to have boosted that PC with Linux and well, mac os failed in many different ways until I loaded default factory settings in BIOS.
This means - lower performance in games + lower quality of Linux as you can't BIOS-change settings.
Just saying.
Click to expand...
I’m going nowhere near it due to lack of drivers but, yeh, now there’s two reasons!!
 
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