[Darth-Apple]

I played these games quite a bit growing up. Simcity always ran alright on integrated graphics for its time. I never really had too much of an issue, although on bigger cities I definitely did notice that the frame rate got pretty bad. But the game more than made up for it. Simcity 4 was always the best to me.

But even on my 2012 Macbook Pro (2.5 ghz dual core i5, 3rd generation) makes playing Cities Skylines almost unbearably slow. We're talking in the ballpark of 2-3 FPS at best. I can deal with 10 FPS. But 2-3 is absolutely awful. 

But this is a fairly, ish I suppose, old computer nevertheless. Even 4th generation i5's were better on graphics, and I'm sure the current 7th and 8th generations have far outdone even the Haswells. AMD supposedly has good integrated graphics too. 

Anyone play these games today on integrated graphics? Have any advice on what works and what doesn't? I wouldn't mind playing skylines again if I had a computer that could handle it.  

[Thomas]

They're not bad. You could probably run Cities Skylines on any more modern CPU at medium settings. The big thing is that you have to adjust the resolution. Displays nowadays, and probably even on your 2012 Macbook Pro, are HiDPI or Retina (same thing). Just make sure that you're not running the game at the native resolution and something more manageable like 1080p or 900p and you should be good.

[SpookyZalost]

@ thomas, I could see that being a thing, I still use 1080p for most stuff but I'm an old fart as far as computers go lol.

@ darth, have you tried running linux in bootcamp then booting skylines in linux native? that should take away most of the overhead if you set it up right.

[Darth-Apple]

Wait there is overhead in running it via Mac OS via running it on Linux natively? Shoot if that's the case I might be in luck... I actually already have my Mac dual booted with Ubuntu 17.10, although I run it pretty rarely.

I'll have to give it a shot, thank you.

[SpookyZalost]

sure, oh btw I've been looking into a different more common kind of integrated graphics, the Asus APU's are actually pretty nice given the radeon graphics... but I wouldn't run linux on them, the Radeon drivers are just terrible... but for windows they seem to work well.

now if only nivida made an apu... besides the tegra for consoles.

[Darth-Apple]

Ah, that's interesting. And asus makes APUs? I thought that APUs were made only by the manufacturer of the processor.

I'm gonna give skylines a shot on the linux installation on my Mac fairly shortly... Gonna find out if 3rd generation Intel HD graphics are up for the job.

[SpookyZalost]

oh... oops, sorry I meant to say AMD... but the rest still stands.

got asus on the brain because they make good stuff lol.

[Darth-Apple]

Ah haha that makes sense. Yeah I like the AMD APUs. I think it's a fantastic concept and it's been giving AMD a bit of a competitive edge lately. My roomate has one of them and speaks well of it.

[SpookyZalost]

Still not a fan of their cross platform graphics support but I'll give them this, they do pack a hell of a wallop for their price point.