Gaming auf dem Mac: Die besten Titel für Apple Silicon & Co in 2025

My son is playing X-Plane 12 flight simulation quite often on a Mac. While flight sims have historically been the domain of beefy PC rigs, the M4 generation has officially closed the gap. Why the experience is actually top-tier on Apple’s latest CPUs:

1) Flight simulators are notoriously "CPU bound," meaning they rely heavily on a single core to handle complex flight physics. The M4 chip currently holds some of the highest single-core scores in the world. This translates to a smoother simulation loop, fewer "stutters" when you’re hand-flying on short final, and better handling of complex aircraft like the Zibo 737.

2) X-Plane 12 was built from the ground up for the Metal API. On the M4, a player benefit from:

• Hardware Ray Tracing: While the sim is still evolving its lighting engine, the M4's dedicated ray-tracing hardware allows for more efficient rendering of shadows and reflections.
• Mesh Shading: This helps the M4 handle dense 3D vegetation and airport ground clutter without the massive FPS hit seen on older Macs.

3) The M4 Pro offer incredible memory bandwidth (up to 273 GB/s or more). In a sim where 4K textures and high-resolution scenery need to swap in and out of memory constantly, this prevents the "texture popping" and lag spikes that plague systems with slower, discrete VRAM.

4) Unlike a PC that sounds like a jet engine during takeoff, the M4 is incredibly efficient. Even under heavy load at a busy airport, sim-link for collaborative flight traffic scenarios with multiple player over the internet, the fans on a M4 Pro remain remarkably quiet, allowing you to actually hear the subtle engine sounds and ATC chatter without headphones...

Drei weitere Grössen die ebenfalls nicht unerwähnt bleiben sollten:

- Assassin's Creed Shadows
- Death Stranding
- Resident Evil 7

Meine Erfahrungen sind gemischt. Obwohl es beeindruckend ist, dass AC Shadows überhaupt auf dem Mac läuft, muss man aber kritisieren, dass die Portierung schlecht optimiert ist. Selbst auf einem M4 Max läuft das gerade mal so mit 40 - 50 FPS. Das könnte Ubisoft besser, denn selbst die Version für die Nintendo Switch 2 läuft deutlich runder.

Aus der Liste würde mich jetzt grad Sid Meier’s Civilization VII interessieren.

Was habe ich früher Die Siedler gespielt. Stunden…