AAA Gaming on Asahi Linux

If you mean "I have a mac, is it better to run linux to game?"

Then there's a case for it, since you can run AAA games that apple + macos doesn't support / allow.

Nothing prevents you from running games under emulation on MacOS.

Apple and Wine provide the tools, and apps like Whisky make them easy to use.

> Essentially, this app combines multiple translation layers into a single translation tool. It uses Wine, a translation layer that allows Windows apps and games to run on POSIX-based operating systems, like macOS and Linux. It also uses Rosetta and the Game Porting Toolkit, which are two official Apple tools that allow x86 programs to run on Apple Silicon and serve as a framework for porting Windows games to macOS, respectively.

Normally, this sort of process would require users to manually port games to Mac. But by combining Wine, Rosetta, and the Game Porting Toolkit, this can all happen automatically.

https://www.xda-developers.com/hands-on-whisky-macos-gaming/

However, as aleays, running games under emulation has a performance cost.

You’d need to compare with what can be done on macOS including with things like crossover and the GPT. AFAICT, the Linux side is making progress, but still more games can be run from macOS.

> AFAICT, the Linux side is making progress, but still more games can be run from macOS.

I don't believe that's true. According to ProtonDB, 80% of the top-1000 most-played games on Steam are confirmed working on Linux: https://www.protondb.com/dashboard

I haven't seen any source documenting nearly similar success rates with Mac but I also haven't seriously tried gaming on Apple Silicon.

steam deck is x86

What a coincidence! So are a variety of Macs that shipped with hardware supporting Linux and Vulkan on day 1.

Yes, but this thread is about Asahi Linux, which is for M series Macbooks. Not x86.

The Mac efforts rely on MoltenVK for and Vulkan needs which itself relies on the underlying Metal API. As I understand it Asahi/Honeykrisp driver for Vulkan does not rely on the Metal API so it actually can do more conformant Vulkan than Crossover/Whisky can. For example tranform feedback and other geometry shader stuff will work on Asahi. MoltenVK is working on it, but not there yet.

You’re ignoring D3DMetal which is what is most commonly going to be used and equivalent to what Proton is doing to convert D3D to VK.

Most games are D3D. A very small minority are Vulkan from the get go.

On many games I have tried DX => DXVK => MoltenVk => Metal is significantly faster than DX => D3DMetal. For example XCOM2 is about twice the frames per second (yeah it has an official Mac version but it is even slower).