An interesting tidbit found in Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit 2 was that it supports the AVX2 instruction set. For those unfamiliar with this term, modern games such as Alan Wake 2 and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart cannot run well on hardware that does not support this instruction set. One M3 Max MacBook Pro owner has now demonstrated that one of the titles runs incredibly well, but there might be another reason why the game can obtain a solid framerate on this hardware.
M3 Max sports a minimum of 36GB unified RAM, making it plentiful to run Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart flawlessly with ray tracing enabled
With the Game Porting Toolkit 2, Andrew Tsai demonstrated briefly on X that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart can deliver impressive framerates on this hardware. Looking at the small clip below, we noticed that at the 1080p resolution, the M3 Max can render the game at 100+FPS, and we are confident that all of the visual settings are maxed out because the performance counter and graphs on the top right of the display show that memory usage is closing in on that 15GB mark, with GPU memory close to 11GB consumption.
Bear in mind that with the unified RAM architecture, developers can treat the system memory and GPU memory as the same, and with the M3 Max sporting 36GB RAM for the base version, it is more than sufficient to allow users to crank those graphical settings to the maximum supported values. On the PC version of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, we have noticed a myriad of performance issues, particularly with GPUs like the RTX 3070 and RTX 3070 Ti that have 8GB of VRAM. Even with GPUs like the RTX 3080 Ti with 12GB GDDR6X framebuffer struggle to run the game properly at higher resolutions when maxing out the settings.
This game plays flawlessly on Mac! With Game Porting Toolkit 2, you can now play new Windows games including Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart—all thanks to the AVX2 support in macOS Sequoia. What other games should I test? Tutorial here: https://t.co/8tFNmwZUr1 pic.twitter.com/LVAjV5dL0t
— Andrew Tsai (@Andytizer) June 12, 2024
These differences show that the M3 Max’s biggest advantage is having ample unified RAM at its disposal for developers to take advantage of. However, dedicated graphics processors still possess an edge in terms of raw performance, but it is great to see what the latest range of Apple Silicon can accomplish with the Game Porting Toolkit 2. Andrew has provided a tutorial on how to get the toolkit running, so if you want to try out Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on your Mac, here is your chance to do so. While you are at it, make sure to check out our review of the game.
News Source: Andrew Tsai
About the author: Omar Sohail is a reporter and analyst for Wccftech's mobile section, specializing in the technology and business of the mobile industry. His expertise lies in the intricate hardware supply chain, covering developments in semiconductor manufacturing, chip lithography, and camera sensor technology.
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