With the new WWDC coming out, Apple boasts about its performance using applications like video editing, encoding, etc. However, I keep hearing that despite the “power” it has, macs are not good for gaming (I know the Apple silicon processors aren’t just a CPU but my point still stands).
Why is this the case? Even with CPUs, I see that some are marketed as doing different things, like the AMD Ryzen X3D line for gaming, versus others that are better for productivity tasks. Shouldn’t a good CPU be able to do both things? What makes them different?
In: 100
Whenever this is mentioned, there’s an assumption:
* Most games are optimized for only one processing thread
* Most productivity apps are optimized for as many processing threads are available
When you have an application that runs on only one thread, the highest possible processing speed will have the highest performance ceiling. 3.0 gHz will always be better than 2.5 gHz, regardless of threads because it’ll only ever use one.
When you have an application that runs on every thread, the highest total cumulative processing power will offer the highest performance ceiling. So, a 3.0 gHz Dual Core would offer (for the sake of explanation) 6 gHz of bandwidth (2×3), whereas a 2.5 gHz Quad Core would offer 10 gHz of bandwidth (4×2.5).
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However, this isn’t always the case, but is generally the case. Although, more games are being developed with multi-core processing in mind these days, although it still generally isn’t likely a big consideration unless it’s heavy on simulation/calculation, like Cities Skylines 2.
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