You can find more information about the early tests with Dolphin Emulator on M1 Macs here.

And the bad Intel MacBook Pro just can not compare.Ĭurrently, the original version of the Dolphin Emulator app for M1 is only available as a developer release. Compared to an absolute monstrosity on a desktop PC, it uses less than 1/10 of the energy while providing ~ 65% of the performance. We were so impressed that we decided to make a new graph to express it.Įfficiency is almost literally off the chart. It certainly obliterates a two-and-a-half-year-old Intel MacBook Pro that was over three times the price, while staying within ARM’s reach for a powerful desktop computer. It can not be denied macOS M1 hardware kicks some serious butt. As shown by developers, the emulator on the M1 can render 8.94 images with one watt of power, while the Intel MacBook Pro renders 1.38 images per watt. What is even more impressive, however, is the energy efficiency of the ARM architecture. Still, the results were better than on most Intel Macs.

Things are not perfect yet, as there are still some things to be implemented in the ARM version of Dolphin. again as an example, the game runs at 120 frames per second with the Dolphins’ original version on the M1 Mac. In other games like the Star Wars Rogue Squadron II, the performance difference was even more noticeable: just 16 frames per second on the Intel MacBook Pro versus 49 frames per second on the M1 Mac with the Rosetta 2.īut how about running the emulator naturally? Since Dolphin Emulator relies on JIT compilation, compiling it for the M1 and 64-bit ARM architecture was much more complicated – but not impossible. Its an open-source and cross-platform project that is suitable for a number of devices (Linux, Android, Mac, and Windows). Players choose it because of its unprecedented level of accuracy, enhancement options, and powerful performance features. Most games went well, and the overall performance was better than on a MacBook Pro 2018 with an Intel Core i7 processor.ĭolphin on the Intel MacBook Pro can run Super Smash Bros at 71 frames per second, while the M1 Mac runs the same game at 79 frames per second. The Dolphin emulator is probably the most widely-used tool in this case. Macs with only the Rosetta 2 translation layer, which allows users to run apps compiled for Intel processors on the Apple Silicon platform.Įven though apps running through the Rosetta 2 do not reach maximum performance from the M1 chip, the results were quite impressive.

Dolphin emulator fo mac