Gaming on a Mac gets another staggering performance boost with macOS Sonoma

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A jump from 8FPS to 18FPS for some games.

Elden Ring Game Porting Kit 1.0.2 update in macOS Sonoma
(Image credit: Andrew Tsai)

Announced at WWDC 2023, Apple has released a small update to its gaming feature in macOS Sonoma, which brings some big speed improvements to some games already.

Apple has explained it in a video over at its developer site, but Game Porting Toolkit is essentially similar to its Rosetta 2 feature, which enables Intel Mac apps to run on Apple silicon Macs by way of emulation.

Thanks to an app called Whisky, it takes this feature further, where you can contain a Windows-compatible game that you've bought, into what's called a wrapper, which will make it run on macOS Sonoma that has Apple's Game Porting Toolkit installed.

While we've been impressed with this feature so far, and this update does nothing to change that, it's still a developer feature that's allegedly not going to be available when Sonoma comes out for users in the fall, and there's still a chance this could fall by the wayside, as previous efforts have.

A lowly tarnished walks into a whisky bar..

Game Porting Toolkit's 1.0.2 beta update already gives an extra 6FPS to Elden Ring when you wrap it with Whisky, while the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 now work as expected with this kit.

But it's also worth mentioning that this now works with 32-bit games. This means that older releases that have long been made unavailable due to the latest chips that only run on 64-bit architecture, which applies to both Windows and Mac computers, could be revived for macOS Sonoma.

So there's a good chance now that we could see games like Tomb Raider III and G-Police from 1998 possibly make an appearance in all their glory once more.

While Digital Foundry tested out the first version of the toolkit this week (July 4), YouTuber Andrew Tsai has already released a video, shown above, where he's been testing out this latest update, and it's simply fascinating to see how well some games run on an Apple silicon Mac.

With Prime Day fast approaching, there's a good chance that we may see some good M1 Mac deals to come, which could give you a great start to use Whisky by the time macOS Sonoma arrives for everyone in the fall.

Daryl Baxter
Daryl Baxter
Features Editor

Daryl is iMore's Features Editor, overseeing long-form and in-depth articles and op-eds. Daryl loves using his experience as both a journalist and Apple fan to tell stories about Apple's products and its community, from the apps we use every day to the products that have been long forgotten in the Cupertino archives.

Previously Software & Downloads Writer at TechRadar, and Deputy Editor at StealthOptional, he's also written a book, 'The Making of Tomb Raider', which tells the story of the beginnings of Lara Croft and the series' early development. His second book, '50 Years of Boss Fights', came out in June 2024, and has a monthly newsletter called 'Springboard'. He's also written for many other publications including WIRED, MacFormat, Bloody Disgusting, VGC, GamesRadar, Nintendo Life, VRV Blog, The Loop Magazine, SUPER JUMP, Gizmodo, Film Stories, TopTenReviews, Miketendo64, and Daily Star.