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Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

But "specialized gaming PC" IS what gamers play on. I have a M2 Max and even for native Apple Silicon games like Stray or BG3 the performance is pretty poor, even compared to discrete GPUs of several years ago.

Don't get me wrong, I love that laptop, but a gaming PC it is not. Apple Silicon has the efficiency but not the raw horsepower, even if you get something like the Ultra. That doesn't even include things like DLSS and Reflex. I do my gaming on GeForce Now because it's a dramatically better experience.

That said, it should still be oodles more powerful than the Quest, at least. I wonder if Apple will actually try to push gaming on it.

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I don't really disagree with what you say, but I mostly play on laptops and I find that a MacbookPro M3 max feels about the same as my Razer gaming laptop with a 4090 in it.

It's the same silicon on laptop and desktop with apple gear though, and that isn't true with x86. The desktop chips with an edgy heat profile are nearly twice as fast as the laptops if not more. But compared to xbox or PS the apple machines still win. So it's really specialized gaming desktops that win, even though it is by a solid margin.

Yeah, that's a good point. I think I'd feel the same way about Wintel laptop GPUs. I tried a few in the past but they were so much worse than the desktop GPUs I returned them.

But in any case, I'd still consider gaming laptops specialized gaming hardware. It takes a 40-core M3 Max to approach ~4080 levels, and the Vision only has 10 GPU cores for a roughly 6k display at 90 Hz. That's not going to be a great AAA experience...

Personally I wish they went the opposite way, just a dumb display-only headset without the compute, and streamed everything from a Mac/desktop PC/the cloud.

But, still, it's pretty exciting to see this come out. I won't be able to afford something like this for a few years, but I'm still hoping Apple really makes a dent in this space.

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