On raw performance might, the M4 really does live up to Apple’s promises, should deliver. Single core is up about 20% compared to all M3 chips and more than 40% compared to M2. The generational computational leap from the previous M2 iPad Pro is at least a 42% jump on single-core and multi-core.
I have a friend who said on his M2 MacBook, even before the Apple Silicon build of Factorio released, the game ran better in x86 emulation than on his previous machine. And much cooler.
The battery life and thermals that come out of these powerful ARM chips are amazing, and anything that can be multithreaded is going to perform brilliantly on these chips.
Obviously for stuff where thermals and power consumption aren’t as important the gains aren’t as large, but I can’t remember the last time I worked on an actual desktop machine rather than a laptop with or without a docking station.
That heavily depends on what the previous machine was. Like factorio runs on my laptop without taxing the system much more than just idling and on my desktop I can’t even tell it’s running based on performance monitoring. So yea, I’m not sure factorio is a good indicator.
I’ve got a high end Intel MacBook Pro and a low end M1 Mac Mini. The Mac Mini runs x86 apps live Civ 6 faster and smoother than the Intel MacBook can.
I don’t doubt it, Apple has never had good gaming performance. But a non apple laptop in the same price range with X86 aimed at gaming can run it a lot better.
Sure, definitely not a perfect benchmark. I’m not saying it’s going to outperform a current x86 machine in general. But if it can perform as well as or better than a relatively powerful x86 machine from a few years prior, while emulating, that’s impressive.
But I don’t know, I don’t have a MacBook.
I’m pretty sure the old AMD APUs from the Bulldozer era can run factorio and that’s like a decade old.
Like sure, it’s some metric but I’m pretty sure any computer produced currently can run factorio.