You can find more details about the first tests with Dolphin Emulator on the M1 Macs here. And the poor Intel MacBook Pro just can't compare.įor now, the native version of the Dolphin Emulator app for M1 is only available as a developer version. Compared to an absolute monstrosity of a desktop PC, it uses less than 1 / 10th of the power while delivering ~ 65% of the performance. We were so impressed that we decided to make a second graphic to express it.Įfficiency is almost literally off the table. Dolphin Emulator is a version of the excellent Nintendo Gamecube and Wii. It absolutely wipes out a two-and-a-half-year-old Intel MacBook Pro that was more than three times its price while still being within ARM's reach of a powerful desktop computer. You can use emulator to play the GameCube games on your Windows PC, Mac. It is undeniable MacOS M1 hardware gives a serious kick. As the developers have shown, the emulator on M1 can render 8,94 frames per watt of power, while the Intel MacBook Pro renders 1,38 frames per watt. What is even more impressive, however, is the energy efficiency of the ARM architecture. Still, the results were better than most Intel Macs. Things aren't perfect yet, as there are still things to implement in the ARM version of Dolphin. Using Super Smash Bros as an example again, the game runs at 120 fps with the native version of Dolphin on the Mac M1. In other games like Star Wards Rogue Squadron II, the performance difference was even more noticeable: only 16 fps on the Intel MacBook Pro versus 49 fps on the Mac M1 with Rosetta 2.īut what about running the emulator in native mode? Since Dolphin Emulator relies on JIT compilation, recompiling it for the M1 and 64-bit ARM architecture was much more complicated - but not impossible.

Most games performed well and overall performance was better than a 2018 MacBook Pro with an Intel Core i7 processor.ĭolphin on the Intel MacBook Pro can run Super Smash Bros at 71 fps, while the Mac M1 runs the same game at 79 fps. Apple Silicon form.Įven with the fact that applications running through the Rosetta 2 do not reach the maximum performance provided by the M1 chip, the results have been quite impressive. First, the team has already successfully run several games using Dolphin Emulator on M1 Macs with only the Rosetta 2 translation layer, which allows users to run applications compiled for Intel processors on the platform. Now, the first tests shared by the developers of Dolphin show that it works twice as fast on M1 as on some Intel Macs.Įmulating games from older consoles like GameCube and Wii might seem easy, but the process is quite complex and requires good hardware. Since the introduction of the first Macs with M1 last year, the team behind Dolphin - which is a popular Nintendo GameCube and Wii emulator - has been working on support for the M1 Macs. Apple's M1 chip has been around for a while now and at this point we all know it performs amazingly well in different situations.

Dolphon emulator for mac