Using a 2021 M1 MacBook Pro For Game Development - (Unity, Unreal, Godot, Blender & More)

The new M1 powered MacBook Pro is a powerhouse for video, but how is it at game development tasks? In this video we look at how an M1 Max Equipped 2021 MacBook Pro (14", 32GB, 24GPU) performs at common game development tasks, such as using the Unity, Unreal (UE5) and Godot game engines, as well as using applications including Blender, Affinity Photo & Designer.

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[brandonwinston]

I really appreciate you making this video. I just ordered a 64GB 32GPU just for Unreal dev and its perfect for my requirements. I live on the road and have a very limited amount of solar power I can access every day. For me, a typical gaming laptop is going to drain all that power in 4-5 hours. The MacBooks Pro are the only workstations with their kind of power efficiency.

[alejmc]

Hey Mike just a disclaimer in case, on some other Blender simulation tests that I saw, the person realized that using OBS for screen capture since on Mac is a CPU based encoding would take a lot of the CPU power for it, after switching to the built-in screen capture (command shift 5) it would slash those numbers to never seen levels.
Details: the person was getting either same numbers to a comparable 3080 laptop machine or a bit more (although not really a GPU test), after ditching OBS and using the built in screen capture the M1x would finish some of the simulations in half the time of the competing high end laptop.

[marcoseliasmep]

That’s insane! I got a M1 MBP in the beginning of this year, it is fine for my project inside Unity if I use resolutions like to 1080p. The default screen is so high for the M1 GPU. Those new machines are way better. I can’t wait to see what will come over the next few years!

[MrGooGone]

This is a great vid, thanks Mike! Been planning to get one of these machines at some point soon, really nice to see it in my specific use cases.

[MrBowmanMakes]

Very impressive! thanks for testing all this software out on the MacBook Pros, looking forward to getting one next year.
Also the reason you're seeing the faces as half the number of triangles is because faces are quads not triangles.

[mrpete]

Thanks for doing this! Much informative! Nice to see that the M1Pro/Max will do what I need it to do once I can get my hands on one.

[ForeverNils]

Great, been waiting for this vid for a week ) thank you

[MTBKyle]

Ordered a 16in MacBook with the M1 Pro chip. Pretty excited! Thanks for the video.

[PhotoMentor]

Totally agree about Affinity Designer (and Publisher) and Photo runs GREAT on the M1. This software is a no brainer, especially for the price. Thanks for demo of the 3D Gaming engines.

[HampusOlsson]

Great, thank you so much! Waiting for mine to arrive.

[venom_snake]

These videos are so helpful, thank you for making and sharing them.

[Redheadtama]

I believe the reason for the number of faces being half the number of triangles in blender is because each face is actually quad which is technically two triangles.

[spaceair]

Omg thank you so much there is no one is talking about this

[pacifico]

Seems like a great on-the-go dev machine. Especially with no performance drop when unplugged.

[CinematographyDatabase]

Great news that UE5 ER2 works so well on these machines. Thanks for this video.

[coffeemagic]

thank you so much for the video, it is very informative, i needed something like this to see if I should get a Mac book to work abroad, as I am a windows user who have not been using any apple computer before.

[xrplayground]

Really appreciate you showing real use cases rather than just benchmarks. Have you tried VR on this machine? I know that as there’s no Oculus app available for Mac, you have to use windows but still wondering if you can do ( unity) VR development/ VR gaming on this beast.

[mahesh]

At ~16:15 you - while Blender sculpting test, you said the status figure is about the half, that's because in sculpt mode it was showing 'Faces' count and in object mode it was 'Triangles', hence double. Great video though, I was sceptical about M1's 3D performance especially realtime content development, but this video really helped a lot. Thanks! Love your contents!

[Audiojack_]

I have a base model M1 Air and it's already more powerful than what I need. The only thing it's lacking for me is some I/O.

[jasonchinn]

I actually got a 2021 mac book pro from a job/ school program through the VA (VR&E). Thanks for the video! Haha I like godot...