Engineers Engineers needs a branch for Mac users in stations

[Asp Explorer]

My current rig's 670MX GPU is a little old now but is more than adequate for Elite and given that the 670MX has excellent overclocking potential (can generally get around another 20-25% fps out of it just using MSI afterburner) so I can probably get it reasonably close to 680M performance if I needed to.

Well not really. My GF has my Razer Blade Pro which has a 960, and that gets a bit choppy in some games. A very nice $3k laptop, but a rubbish gaming machine. Even the special OLED keys are naff - they are only visible from two angles - awkward and unusable

Still - it's solid and the chassis is holding up well, it's plenty fast for what she uses it for, it's large but light (far lighter than my old 19" Acer) and the battery life is decent.

The only, only really bad thing about it - is the silly trackpad/screen being offset to the right. I've seen people touch metal for minutes and then complain that it won't let them log on or accept input - but wether that is a failing of design or peoples observance I will never know.

 

[Tikigod]

I actually think games will be moving more toward DX, not less, given that DX12 has (in theory) much greater support for quad-core optimizations. I remember running into some rather ridiculous CPU bottlenecks on some games running under DX10 and DX11 which were poorly coded to utilize only one core for the vast majority of workload. The downside of course is that even with DX12 giving developers the opportunity to take advantage of good multi-core the programmers still need to code for this and few games are really designed to take advantage of DX12's potential at present. The issue with GPUs is rather interesting as the new NVIDIA 1080 series is more powerful than the previous-generation Titans and in that sense developers will expect to have more GPU power to run their games, but again if they are poorly optimized to take advantage of this I anticipate quite a lot of "waste" of the potential of the new GPUs as well. Either way I wouldn't go anywhere near a Mac for gaming, ever, even with the option of dual-booting into Win10 given that you have almost no potential to customize or upgrade a Mac the way that you can for a PC. Even if you put a 1080 into a Mac that would be an absolute waste as you would need to dual-boot into Win10 to actually use it for gaming. Basically unless you love paying double for a Mac just for the sake of the Apple logo I would stay away from them entirely.

For now DX12 is definitely going to be the main focus, you can already tell in terms of GPU vendors who have been focusing more toward that goal than others with recent AMD offerings having their typical lower performance compared to Nvidia on DX10/11 and existing OpenGL titles, yet when it comes to DX12 and the rare Vulkan examples. AMD cards are seeing an dramatic jump that cause lesser cards to start catching up in terms of performance return to more powerful (and costly) Nvidia equivalents in the few real examples available for proper benchmarking.

Though how long that will hold true really depends how quickly Nvidia can get it together to bridge that gap and more importantly..... where developers end up gravitating towards focusing support toward and what influences they allow into their production team that favour one vendor over the other (See this old but probably still accurate article about vendor strengths and practises.... in particular the observed traits for 'Vendor A' in general).

However I don't think DX12 will remain the defacto focus for all that long. I still firmly hold the expectation that before too much time has passed and after a few more developers have seeded the path forward with examples for less confident developers to use as guidelines, that Vulkan will really start to see more adoption than even OpenGL has seen for being the primary framework used for projects.


As far as Apple come into things though, you're spot on that if you want to get into gaming or anything where flexible but potentially resource demanding actions are needed... I'd personally avoid anything shipped with an Apple OS like it had the plague. As it might as well have it.

It's not even like Apples "Don't need to think about hardware" market advantage holds much weight in todays market when you look at other examples about like "Steam Machines", that offer the peace of mind of not having to know a damn thing about hardware specs for those that don't want that worry, but still have the flexibility of ending up with an open ended PC you can also re-purpose and upgrade with zero hassle.

Personally I wouldn't touch 'em... but they're certainly real options for people that would normally gravitate toward Apple for the additional simplicity in decision making.


Opinions on how the next couple of years will take shape will vary significantly, but one things for sure it's likely to be a much needed shake-up to what has been typical up until now... and I can't see many people thinking Apple have much being brought to the table for long unless they reveal something unexpected.

 

[Devari]

Well not really. My GF has my Razer Blade Pro which has a 960, and that gets a bit choppy in some games. A very nice $3k laptop, but a rubbish gaming machine. Even the special OLED keys are naff - they are only visible from two angles - awkward and unusable

Yeah the 960 and 965 were really borderline for "gaming" rigs, I would have probably gone with a 970 but the 980 was probably the best value overall in the 900 series (despite the issues with the laptop versions having 4GB memory but only 3.5GB actually available). My main laptop's 670MX isn't powerful enough for VR or 4k gaming but I don't do either of those it's really just an issue of wanting to maintain a consistent frame rate above 30-40 fps. In Elite I'm consistently running at 55-60 fps so there's no need for me to upgrade at the moment. I have a second ASUS laptop but it's a smaller multimedia laptop that I use occasionally for travel and only has an 850M which is roughly comparable to my 670MX (with the important difference that the 670MX has much better overclocking and cooling). At this point with the new 1080's being more powerful then the Titan it makes the most sense to just wait for the mobile versions of those cards but I don't see those being available in laptops for another year or so.

Still - it's solid and the chassis is holding up well, it's plenty fast for what she uses it for, it's large but light (far lighter than my old 19" Acer) and the battery life is decent.

The only, only really bad thing about it - is the silly trackpad/screen being offset to the right. I've seen people touch metal for minutes and then complain that it won't let them log on or accept input - but wether that is a failing of design or peoples observance I will never know.

I didn't see much in the way of the Razer laptops when I was last looking at laptops, I mostly buy from my local computer chain (as they have an excellent warranty/return policy) and they only stock ASUS or MSI for gaming rigs. I've never been a fan of AMD components (for various reasons) so this usually means that I go with ASUS rather than MSI. At the same time there are some annoying trends that ASUS has been doing with their last few gaming series, specifically the lack of a removable battery which means it's not possible to disconnect the battery when running on AC power. I've found the ability to remove the battery on my G75VX has dramatically reduced battery wear (only 7% wear from occasional travel use) in comparison to my ASUS multimedia laptop (currently 12% wear just in the first year). The other issue is the lack of removable fan filters which I can remove and clean on my G75 but which are not user-serviceable on the newer laptops. I'm not sure why ASUS has moved away from these features, possibly it's to save on production costs or simplify the design but it does take them a little away from a true "specialist" gaming laptop manufacturer to remove these features. I'll see what they do when the mobile 1080 GPUs hit the market, hopefully they will take the opportunity to resdesign the ROG chassis completely for the new GPUs.

 

[amigacooke]

However I don't think DX12 will remain the defacto focus for all that long. I still firmly hold the expectation that before too much time has passed and after a few more developers have seeded the path forward with examples for less confident developers to use as guidelines, that Vulkan will really start to see more adoption than even OpenGL has seen for being the primary framework used for projects.

Why are developers going to use Vulkan when Microsoft and Apple are busily pushing other solutions?

 

[Soliluna]

Why are developers going to use Vulkan when Microsoft and Apple are busily pushing other solutions?

I doubt many developers are going to waste time with Apple's solution.

Vulkan doesn't require Windows 10. Will work on 7,8,10, Linux etc etc. Platform independent solution. That's probably the biggest reason to use it over DX12.

 

[Tikigod]

I doubt many developers are going to waste time with Apple's solution.

Vulkan doesn't require Windows 10. Will work on 7,8,10, Linux etc etc. Platform independent solution. That's probably the biggest reason to use it over DX12.

Exactly this.

Plus there's the part about how performance between DX12 and Vulkan will actually be influenced by vendor driver support for each, and I'd put my money on more solid optimised support on a driver level for Vulkan from at least one of the main companies given its development history over that of DX12.... but that's heavily speculative on my part and could end up holding zero weight.

At the end of the day no one other than Microsoft and Apple really want development teams trained up in solutions that only work with one set environment in this day and age. If you have a team comprised on people that either just joined the company only familiar with DX12 (say recent graduates) or were involved in a previous project of yours where you went with DX12 and as such ended up developing and getting familiar with working just with DX12 and tools related to it..... the cost of retraining, bringing in new heads or outsourcing the work on additional platform support is going to be rather significant.

Where as if you have a team comprised on individuals you've trained up in, or joined the team already familiar in a multi-platform API, there individuals can work on single environment targeted projects but then will have the flexibility in their skillset to move on to other projects that may not necessarily be limited to just one environment with significantly less overhead costs in training, recruitment or outsourcing.

For this reason at least I can see a lot of educational bodies that offer focused courses on things like game development and such gravitating toward adopting Vulkan as what they get students familiar with. This in turn gradually influences the knowledge pool that enters in the industry..... project managers, producers, publishers and such I'd imagine have their concerns more toward areas such as:

"Can this be done?"

"Will it work well?"

"What's the turn around on getting the ball rolling?"

"How many additional resources will be required to support making this happen on the scale desired?"

"How many of these answers will hold closely the same between projects with different distribution targets?"


And likely don't care all too much if the specifics about if it can be done well, cleanly in a timely fashion with reduced need for additional support is based on utilising DX12 or Vulkan.... that's not in their bubble of things to care about until it gets to the point of being told "Sure we can do this for our Windows release, but anything beyond that scope will require significant cost, hassle, training and new blood.".

For a long time such things were just the nature of the beast you had to deal with as the alternatives were shaky at best. But the times they be a changing.

 

[AdamDZ]

I'm a Mac user and I would never consider it for gaming. I own several Macs for everything else but I game on a DIY PC. Macs will never get even close to the gaming abilities of PCs because Apple does not care about gaming outside of iOS. Macs are great for a lot of things but playing games isn't one of them. Apple no longer cares about performance either. The days of "Intel smoking" are gone. It's now all about thinness.

A used $500 Dell on eBay plus $250 video card will run games better than any Mac at any price point.

 

[Devari]

Vulkan doesn't require Windows 10. Will work on 7,8,10, Linux etc etc. Platform independent solution. That's probably the biggest reason to use it over DX12.

For many game developers however the push towards 4k/VR gaming will make using DX12 quite attractive in order to push the limits of the hardware which you won't be able to do efficiently with DX11. In many cases the games would still remain playable on older systems limited to DX11 (i.e., Win7/8) but the game won't look as good or run as smoothly. I remember playing a game a few years ago that was coded for DX9/10 and once they finally updated and optimized it for DX11 my GPU ran almost 5 degrees cooler from those optimizations. It will be very hard to convince developers to "limit" their use of DX12 when they will want to make the best possible gaming experience using the CPU/GPU to it's highest potential. There is also the massive push from Microsoft to get everyone to upgrade to Win10/DX12 and gaming performance is a big part of the reason for this. In fact the only reason I upgraded to Win10 from Win8 was specifically for DX12, if I could have gotten DX12 to run on Win8 I would have never bothered upgrading even though it was a free upgrade.

 

[Soliluna]

For many game developers however the push towards 4k/VR gaming will make using DX12 quite attractive in order to push the limits of the hardware which you won't be able to do efficiently with DX11. In many cases the games would still remain playable on older systems limited to DX11 (i.e., Win7/8) but the game won't look as good or run as smoothly. I remember playing a game a few years ago that was coded for DX9/10 and once they finally updated and optimized it for DX11 my GPU ran almost 5 degrees cooler from those optimizations. It will be very hard to convince developers to "limit" their use of DX12 when they will want to make the best possible gaming experience using the CPU/GPU to it's highest potential. There is also the massive push from Microsoft to get everyone to upgrade to Win10/DX12 and gaming performance is a big part of the reason for this. In fact the only reason I upgraded to Win10 from Win8 was specifically for DX12, if I could have gotten DX12 to run on Win8 I would have never bothered upgrading even though it was a free upgrade.

What I mentioned was the main benefit of using Vulkan over DX12 but both DX12 and Vulkan offer excellent performance improvements and optimisations over DX11.

 

[Devari]

What I mentioned was the main benefit of using Vulkan over DX12 but both DX12 and Vulkan offer excellent performance improvements and optimisations over DX11.

I haven't heard much about Vulkan, does it offer the same hypertreading optimizations that are possible with DX12? Those aren't really implemented with most DX12 games at present but it's presumably one of the main benefits going forward with DX12.

 

[Tikigod]

I haven't heard much about Vulkan, does it offer the same hypertreading optimizations that are possible with DX12? Those aren't really implemented with most DX12 games at present but it's presumably one of the main benefits going forward with DX12.

Indeed it does, as well as in-API support for multiple-GPUs to remove the need for things like crossfire/SLi and the restrictions normally associated with that.

To give the idea that Vulkan is to be taken as a serious API alternative to DX12 engineers from studios like Valve are even saying it simply doesn't seem to make any sense to focus on DX12 moving forward compared to Vulkan due to the fact like Soliluna mentioned both deliver in the performance and optimisation gains efforts, but Vulkan comes without additional headaches of being tied to only targeting Windows 10.... admittedly Valve are somewhat biased as they've been deeply involved in its development as an API... along with a lot of other significant companies.

And when Vulkan is touted as 'Multi-platform targeted', it really means that. Not just different PC operating systems, but consoles and mobile to boot.


Edit: To clarify however, just because an API offers functionality to developers. It doesn't mean developers will necessarily take advantage of them in their software.

The main factor in how things go is really how people reactt o things... even if one option is technically the better choice doesn't mean they will go for it based on their knowledge set/experience or availability of working examples of how to accomplish something to use as 'inspiration'.

The potential for one company or another to decide it's in their interests to try steer the market in one direction over the other and offer questionable support for the alternatives which gets misconstrued by users as one option being weaker is a very real possibility and certainly wouldn't be the first time such things have happened.

 

[Devari]

Indeed it does, as well as in-API support for multiple-GPUs to remove the need for things like crossfire/SLi and the restrictions normally associated with that.

To give the idea that Vulkan is to be taken as a serious API alternative to DX12 engineers from studios like Valve are even saying it simply doesn't seem to make any sense to focus on DX12 moving forward compared to Vulkan due to the fact like Soliluna mentioned both deliver in the performance and optimisation gains efforts, but Vulkan comes without additional headaches of being tied to only targeting Windows 10.... admittedly Valve are somewhat biased as they've been deeply involved in its development as an API... along with a lot of other significant companies.

And when Vulkan is touted as 'Multi-platform targeted', it really means that. Not just different PC operating systems, but consoles and mobile to boot.

Interesting, it sounds like it offers a lot of the advantages that DX12 offers without being tied specifically to Win10. I suspect that getting developers to adopt it in preference for DX12 will be quite difficult however.

Edit: To clarify however, just because an API offers functionality to developers. It doesn't mean developers will necessarily take advantage of them in their software.

The main factor in how things go is really how people reactt o things... even if one option is technically the better choice doesn't mean they will go for it based on their knowledge set/experience or availability of working examples of how to accomplish something to use as 'inspiration'.

The potential for one company or another to decide it's in their interests to try steer the market in one direction over the other and offer questionable support for the alternatives which gets misconstrued by users as one option being weaker is a very real possibility and certainly wouldn't be the first time such things have happened.

I suspect that this will be the main issue that keep DX12 at the forefront for game developers over the next few years, given how dominant Microsoft is in the PC gaming market. There are many people who would continue using Win 7 if they could but the lack of DX12 support may force them to eventually upgrade to Win10/DX12. There's also the issue that few, if any, games have actually taken advantage of the hyperthreading benefits of DX12 and in that sense it's still in it's early stages of implementation for game developers.

 

[Soliluna]

I haven't heard much about Vulkan, does it offer the same hypertreading optimizations that are possible with DX12? Those aren't really implemented with most DX12 games at present but it's presumably one of the main benefits going forward with DX12.

Yeah basically, making use of multi-core CPU's efficiently, batching, memory allocation, low-level control, multi-GPU. All the stuff DX12 offers but platform independent.

As you say - there's nothing really using DX12 atm and likewise there isn't really anything using Vulkan. It's still very early days so benchmarks don't really exist and are not a good indication of anything at the moment.

DX12 is built by MS on a software platform, to capture a market that already uses that software platform.

Vulkan is being built to support lots of hardware: Qualcomm, nVidia, AMD, ARM, Broadcom, Vivante, Samsung etc etc. So you'll see performance gains using Vulkan on your whatever-core phone (running Android), your tablet, your Windows PC or your Linux machine if the devs use it.

And it would seem the engine developers are behind Vulkan - certainly Valve are - some of their developers have said it would be foolish to use something other than Vulkan, Epic are already boasting support with Unity and CryEngine to follow.

The Devs don't like building for specific software platforms as it limits the scope and reach of their games - it's a fair point. MS don't care whether your game runs on Linux or Android, as long as the game runs on Windows. The developer would prefer it to run on all systems and if there is one API that can do that for them they are far more likely to use it.

e: ninja'd. That's what I get for having a game of dota in between. (Dota is one of the early games supporting Vulkan btw, in beta atm)

 

[Tikigod]

Aye, Valve's 'Source 2' engine already has Vulkan support firmly established though as mentioned currently the only public showing of that is the DOTA 2 transition to the Source 2 engine that happened a while back... can't say I've really heard anything in regards to DX12 support in Source 2 but I'd be very surprised if there was any given Valves stance in regards to Microsoft and the direction they're taking Windows.

Unreal Engine 4 already offers Vulkan support to developers using the engine to build projects utilising Vulkan right now.

Unity I think has Vulkan support due in the next month or so (well they stated Q3 2016, but with Unity things often get pushed back and happen several major build releases later than announced).

And Crytek have confirmed CryEngine will offer Vulkan support but don't recall a estimated timeline on that.... knowing CryTek it could be tomorrow or sometime in 2030 either way you know it'll be poorly documented.


In terms of those 3 packaged engines, I can see Vulkan getting a fair of utilisation over DirectX 12 simply because it will be alot easier for the companies developing those engines to offer more consistent performance levels to developers making use of their engines without laying on the additional burden of making sure custom shaders and the like working with one platform build can sanely be translated over to builds for other platforms given that easier multi-platform build compilation is one of the biggest draw factors for such engines beyond the obvious removal of needing to write your own engine from the ground up.

But the important thing will be what developers that do opt to develop their own engines gravitate toward, and a big factor in that will be how consistent driver support is for one API versus another across the likes of AMD, Nvidia and.... *shudders* Intel.

The following is a entirely fictional example but to illustrate what I mean....

----
If Nvidia for example decided they're lagging behind AMD in optimised Vulkan support driver wise but notice AMD offering slightly less return in optimised DX12 driver support, Nvidia might decide to play into that and focus driver optimisation more heavily toward DX12 and less performance return with Vulkan.

As Nvidia are the 'Go to' company for most consumers looking for GPUs with some swearing blind that they will only ever touch Nvidia GPUs as 'they are best', if Nvidia driver support for Vulkan undermines developers efforts to utilise Vulkan cleanly by making it harder for them to provide consistent performance on Nvidia GPUs, then you'd almost certainly see developers shift to focusing on DX12 simply because it makes their life less complicated and stops all their players grabbing pitchforks and holding them to blame when their titles don't run solidly on their "20GB Titan 1337z0r edition".

(And this isn't to say this is a Nvidia-specific behaviour. AMD doing the opposite could equally be another potential example to illustrate the same hypothetical scenario)
----

It may sound silly that any company would do that and that the end result could be like above, rather than people actually getting clued in and going "Hang on... no. They're just trying to be <bleep>ers and it's not the developers at fault there".... but it happens, and people are much more likely to blame the developers than their machine purchases. Especially if they have experiences playing something running on an entirely different engine utilising completely different APIs, without issues.

They're probably equally unlikely to even consider the possibility that the title has fallen prey to an businesses efforts to try to redirect the industry in a way that suits their interests by strong arming developer efforts in a favourable direction.

*looks at this thread*

 

[Soliluna]

Aye, Valve's 'Source 2' engine already has Vulkan support firmly established though as mentioned currently the only public showing of that is the DOTA 2 transition to the Source 2 engine that happened a while back... can't say I've really heard anything in regards to DX12 support in Source 2 but I'd be very surprised if there was any given Valves stance in regards to Microsoft and the direction they're taking Windows.

Unreal Engine 4 already offers Vulkan support to developers using the engine to build projects utilising Vulkan right now.

Unity I think has Vulkan support due in the next month or so (well they stated Q3 2016, but with Unity things often get pushed back and happen several major build releases later than announced).

And Crytek have confirmed CryEngine will offer Vulkan support but don't recall a estimated timeline on that.... knowing CryTek it could be tomorrow or sometime in 2030 either way you know it'll be poorly documented.


In terms of those 3 packaged engines, I can see Vulkan getting a fair of utilisation over DirectX 12 simply because it will be alot easier for the companies developing those engines to offer more consistent performance levels to developers making use of their engines without laying on the additional burden of making sure custom shaders and the like working with one platform build can sanely be translated over to builds for other platforms given that easier multi-platform build compilation is one of the biggest draw factors for such engines beyond the obvious removal of needing to write your own engine from the ground up.

But the important thing will be what developers that do opt to develop their own engines gravitate toward, and a big factor in that will be how consistent driver support is for one API versus another across the likes of AMD, Nvidia and.... *shudders* Intel.

The following is a entirely fictional example but to illustrate what I mean....

----
If Nvidia for example decided they're lagging behind AMD in optimised Vulkan support driver wise but notice AMD offering slightly less return in optimised DX12 driver support, Nvidia might decide to play into that and focus driver optimisation more heavily toward DX12 and less performance return with Vulkan.

As Nvidia are the 'Go to' company for most consumers looking for GPUs with some swearing blind that they will only ever touch Nvidia GPUs as 'they are best', if Nvidia driver support for Vulkan undermines developers efforts to utilise Vulkan cleanly by making it harder for them to provide consistent performance on Nvidia GPUs, then you'd almost certainly see developers shift to focusing on DX12 simply because it makes their life less complicated and stops all their players grabbing pitchforks and holding them to blame when their titles don't run solidly on their "20GB Titan 1337z0r edition".

(And this isn't to say this is a Nvidia-specific behaviour. AMD doing the opposite could equally be another potential example to illustrate the same hypothetical scenario)
----

It may sound silly that any company would do that and that the end result could be like above, rather than people actually getting clued in and going "Hang on... no. They're just trying to be <bleep>ers and it's not the developers at fault there".... but it happens, and people are much more likely to blame the developers than their machine purchases. Especially if they have experiences playing something running on an entirely different engine utilising completely different APIs, without issues.

They're probably equally unlikely to even consider the possibility that the title has fallen prey to an businesses efforts to try to redirect the industry in a way that suits their interests by strong arming developer efforts in a favourable direction.

*looks at this thread*

Poorly documented indeed. Poorly being non-existent I imagine, left to the community to put together as usual.

I think for the high end titles, DX12 is going to be doing the rounds - because of consoles... well, mostly because of xbone. Vulkan is going to hit it off where the big money is - the mobile market - and hopefully that gives them the traction and momentum to help cement them as the leading API for all gaming.

I'm with Valve on the direction Windows is taking. It's why I'm still on 7. When someone offers something for free, there is always a catch. Nice try MS.

 

[Devari]

If Nvidia for example decided they're lagging behind AMD in optimised Vulkan support driver wise but notice AMD offering slightly less return in optimised DX12 driver support, Nvidia might decide to play into that and focus driver optimisation more heavily toward DX12 and less performance return with Vulkan.

As Nvidia are the 'Go to' company for most consumers looking for GPUs with some swearing blind that they will only ever touch Nvidia GPUs as 'they are best', if Nvidia driver support for Vulkan undermines developers efforts to utilise Vulkan cleanly by making it harder for them to provide consistent performance on Nvidia GPUs, then you'd almost certainly see developers shift to focusing on DX12 simply because it makes their life less complicated and stops all their players grabbing pitchforks and holding them to blame when their titles don't run solidly on their "20GB Titan 1337z0r edition".

In terms of NVIDIA vs AMD, I am usually a proponent of the NVIDIA GPUs as they generally have much better driver support and optimization which is generally AMD's greatest weakness. In general the hardware differences aren't as significant as some people would claim and you can usually find a comparable AMD card at a comparable price although in general NVIDIA does tend to provide a slightly higher performance at a slightly higher price point. At the moment NVIDIA's 1080 is notably ahead of AMD's 480 despite AMD using a smaller 14 nm Polaris process vs. the 16 nm Pascal process for NVIDIA, and both are currently using DDR5 memory. The upcoming AMD 490 should close most of that gap with it's HBM2 memory but the 1080's dramatically higher clock speeds will probably still edge the 490 out despite the advantages you would think AMD would have given their use of a smaller 14 nm process and much faster HBM2 memory. I suspect the main issue over the next few years will be the driver support as this will affect which card can actually run the VR/4k gaming applications more effectively in practice and in this case I expect NVIDIA to come out ahead as well.

The big issue for me will be when ASUS finally starts putting 1080's into their ROG series at a reasonable price point. There is an upcoming ASUS GX800 which is going to be a ridiculous beast of a laptop with 18 inch monitor supported by a liquid-cooled i7 and dual 1080 SLI GPUs all cooled with an external cooling dock. It will sort of push the idea of what you can really call a "laptop" as it will be dependent on the desktop cooling dock to run the 1080 SLI at full clock speeds. It will also probably cost around $5000-6000 and that is well above my gaming budget for a replacement laptop which for me tops out at around $2000 or so. Even a single 1080 in a laptop will be pretty much "future proof" for most upcoming VR/4k gaming applications for at least 3 years or so and that is more than I see myself needing given that I am not even using a VR or 4k setup yet.

 

[Pville_Piper]

To be fair though - until very recently consumer PC laptops were completely horridly constructed. Flimsy, flexible, fragile, frangible and frustrating. Bits fell off of them as soon as you looked at one with a quizzical eyebrow. The macs at least were mostly metal and could survive a couple of hundred miles on a motorbike in a backpack without disintegrating. I've lost track of how many Acers, Lenovos, Dells, HP's, Toshibas and Fujitsu's I've murdered over the years.

Nowadays though, things have got a bit better. My Surface Pro 3 is still holding up well, but my HP Elitebook 840 has splits in the metal and a battery like a watermelon. MacBook Air 2013 looks like it's barely been used.

That's because you buy cheap junk... Name brand not withstanding, if you buy a consumer oriented PC you will be buying junk. My company buys Dell workstations and they last 4 to 5 years before you need to change them out. The last company I was with bought Dell Inspirons and you were lucky to get 2 years out of them and if they did manage to last 3 years they were so slow you could hardly use them. And we ain't no bunch of pansy office boys either. These laptops are on the road at least 200 days of the year in hot, humid, dusty industrial conditions. They take a beating and keep going. MACs are well made but you can find the equivalent in the PC world if you know what to buy and you will pay less for similar quality.

 

[Stansky]

So let me get this straight, Frontier is selling a MAC expansion that doesn't work on a MAC?
And it's Apple's fault?

 

[amigacooke]

So let me get this straight, Frontier is selling a MAC expansion that doesn't work on a MAC?
And it's Apple's fault?

No, no you're quite wrong, it's our fault for not realising that technically FD were being economical with the truth

 

[Tikigod]

So let me get this straight, Frontier is selling a MAC expansion that doesn't work on a MAC?
And it's Apple's fault?

Actually Frontier are selling Horizons, stating in plain text it's not compatible with the Macs, and people wanting to play it on their Mac are buying it anyway for the features that are supported on their machine.

Then some of those people that bought it anyway are telling Frontier they need to stop being unfair for not supporting the features they had stated aren't supported on OSX.

Frontier aren't even saying "Hey guys, come buy Horizons on your Mac for only parts of the features!". Frontier are out right stating "OSX is NOT SUPPORTED for Horizons"..... but hey.... sure. Let them blame Frontier for being mean to them.

And for those who might go "But I never knew! Frontier didn't tell me Horizons wasn't supported on my Mac!"

Now if you had pre-ordered Horizons before they had revealed the requirements (not even sure if that was even possible but in case it is), then frankly let that be a learning experience.