Something to look forward to: When macOS Tahoe launches later this year, Apple's Game Porting Toolkit and Wine will receive substantial upgrades that dramatically improve performance, stability, and compatibility for Windows games running on Mac hardware. For the first time, many previously unsupported titles will become playable on Apple Silicon, some even with advanced features like DLSS, cleverly translated into MetalFX upscaling. These improvements could mark a turning point for Mac users eager to break past longstanding gaming limitations.
PCGamingWiki founder Andrew Tsai recently shared encouraging results from testing the latest versions of CrossOver and the Game Porting Toolkit (GPTK) in a preview build of macOS Tahoe. Updates to both macOS and these Windows compatibility layer tools have substantially improved performance and expanded functionality.
Perhaps the most intriguing upgrade is DLSS compatibility. This is made possible by macOS Tahoe's introduction of Apple's Metal 4 graphics API, which supports the company's version of DLSS-like features – including machine learning-based super resolution, frame generation, and ray reconstruction.
Tsai's video offers detailed instructions for combining the Wine frontend CrossOver with Apple's GPTK to translate DLSS into MetalFX, Apple's native upscaling tech.
He benchmarked several demanding games using the compatibility layer, including Cyberpunk 2077, Star Wars Outlaws, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Starfield, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and Horizon Zero Dawn. While the results still fall short of high-end gaming PCs, the improvements make many AAA titles playable on popular Mac devices.
At 1080p with upscaling and frame generation enabled, Cyberpunk 2077 reached approximately 80 fps on an M3 Max MacBook Pro.
Similar titles ran at over 60 fps with graphics set to low, including Star Wars Outlaws, which requires ray tracing. Tsai also demonstrated decent performance in previously unplayable games such as Red Dead Redemption II, Jurassic World Evolution 2, and Horizon Forbidden West.
Using this setup requires a paid CrossOver license, which costs $74 for a year or $494 for a lifetime license. Additionally, installing GPTK requires registration as an Apple developer (as does accessing macOS Tahoe before its public release in September). Tsai advises users to restart each game after enabling DLSS to ensure proper translation to MetalFX.
Metal 4 will be key to enabling Apple Silicon devices to run high-end games with ray tracing, which remain relatively rare on macOS. Capcom recently released several Resident Evil titles for Mac to lukewarm sales, and a macOS version of Assassin's Creed: Shadows launched alongside the Windows version. CDPR is also porting Cyberpunk 2077 to Apple Silicon with path tracing support, a title that will certainly present a significant test for Apple's hardware and graphics API.