Playing on Apple Silicon

Gregk · Mar 2, 2025

I was planning on buying a new computer, and I've got the chance to buy a new Macbook Air.
Currently, I play games inside a virtual machine (windows x64 guest), for privacy reasons.
These new Macs have ARM64 CPUs, so I think they can't virtualize x64 virtual machines.
I found UTM, which lets you emulate Windows x64.
I wonder what's the performance, if anyone tried.

Nadekai · Mar 3, 2025

Personally I use Parallels or Whisky.
Macbook Air was never performance focused, but it is decent.

Gregk · Mar 3, 2025

Nadekai said:
Personally I use Parallels or Whisky.
Macbook Air was never performance focused, but it is decent.

Thanks, I'll try those. I had heard of Wine but not of Whisky, it's like a GUI for Wine, sounds good.

FolksDS · Mar 5, 2025

You're correct that MacBook Air with ARM64 CPUs can't natively virtualize x64 VMs. UTM can emulate Windows x64, but performance may be slower compared to native x64 hardware since it's emulating instructions. While it works, expect lower performance for gaming and resource-heavy tasks.

Gregk · Mar 6, 2025

I've done some research and people are playing Renpy games on Windows ARM64 (Snapdragon chip on new MS Surface).
So we should be able to play Renpy games in a Win ARM64 VM with no problem.

I wonder if it's possible to play Unity or Unreal too.

Playing on Apple Silicon

Gregk

Newbie

Nadekai

Booty Pirate

Gregk

Newbie

FolksDS

New Member

Gregk

Newbie

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