Windows and Mac

Has anyone tried MSFS 2020 on a modern Mac with Boot Camp?

Thanks in advance.

Francisco Mateos

Read about a few people doing it, it works but the mac tends to become scorching hot since they typically aren’t exactly designed to run at constant full load…

Thanks

Francisco Mateos

I’m running it within Boot Camp on a 27" iMac 2019 model (i5-9600k @ 3.7GHz, 32G RAM, 2.12T fusion drive, and most importantly Radeon Pro 580X with 8G - not the Vega). I wasn’t part of the beta so the first day of public release was the first day I got my hands on it. I’ve been tweaking it ever since. I’ve been able to keep most settings around the medium setting, with some being lowered. I set my monitor resolution to 1080p and match the game setting to that. I can maintain between 30-50 FPS most of the time. Running MSI Afterburner for monitoring I see that I never use more than 16G of my RAM and my CPU handles it just fine. But the GPU is pinned out at 100% the entire time. As Kilrahvp said, this iMac runs HOT - the GPU is always above 170 degrees F from the time you launch the game to the time you shut it down. Also, I found that you will really want to use a PC keyboard instead of a Mac one.

Hope this helps.

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Thanks.

Francisco Mateos

Not a modern Mac, but a multiboot cMP tower, Mac 4,1 flashed to a 5,1, booting into Win 10. I am tethered to Mojave as an end-of-life release for the unit due to Catalina nuking 32-bit applications. I am running 3 screens (well, four, but not used in the sim) totalling 5760x1080 on an RX 580, using the single-windowed mode, and it’s OK. I haven’t benched framerates yet but It’s definitely not running at 60fps. There are distortions on the side screens which I am used to from my other flight sims, Rise of Flight and IL2.

overall, I would say there’s no reason I am aware of to be concerned that a modern Mac Bootcamping to Win 10 would be an issue beyond the apparently-entrenched Apple determination to cut Nvidia out of their supported architectures, which increases user cost and lowers performance.

I am quite interested to read about modern Mac eGPU rigs Bootcamping to run this sim, though, so I hope for more reports.

Mac = Overpriced â– â– â– â– 

Hello,

I’m also running the sim on a 2017 iMAC, with a Radeon pro 575, which unfortunately only has 4GB of memory.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at my performance–running 30FPS at 2560 x 1440. My settings are a hodge-podge taken from tweaking guides. I’m happy with how things look.

My i7 CPU runs the game with breath to spare–it’s never heavily tasked, but the GPU (as others have written) swings from 97-100% all the time.

I’ve noticed some strange things–not sure if these are unique to my rig, but I was mildly surprised when I turned volumetric clouds up to ultra while fiddling around and lost no performance at all.

I’ve also noticed that flying in a locally cached region that something is going on in the sim that when I start on the runway I’ll be around 18 FPS, but if I let things “settle down” for a minute or so it shoots up to 25-32 and stays there.

Overall my rig runs like a champ–chugging along at 25-35 FPS and looking good–which with a 4GB graphics card I find a bit surprising.

I’ve been on bootcamp for a lot of years, running both graphics programs and graphics intense games, and this sim is a bit odd. The swings in performance I’ve seen in terms of FPS often seem to be with something going on in the background–and I mean in the sim not outside of it (I’m monitoring other processes).

Sharing my experience running FS2020 on old iMac Late 2014 model. Using BootCamp, set FF2020 resolution to 1080p, Low-End and 20 FPS.

I could run the sim and FPS range from 14 to 20. It is usable but looking to buy a modern Gaming PC with better specs.

Hope this helps.

Ich habe es in meinem Bootcamp installiert. Es geht ohne Probleme, aber bis dato bin ich noch unzufrieden mit FS.

Unless you make a living from being creative.

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I dunno… photoshop is photoshop. I used it for a living for 20 years and half of those were spent working on a PC. It’s far more about not wanting to use the mess that is windows on a daily basis. Although given how obnoxious Apple has become as a company, I’m working toward switching back eventually. I won’t pay their stupid hardware tax for products with engineered failure anymore. My hackintosh has run flawlessly for nearly 4 years now so clearly it’s not that hard to build a system that works with OSX and off the shelf parts.

In any case, I can run the sim on my 7700/5700xt system at decent settings and that’s about it. I can’t imagine it’s gonna work well in bootcamp for most people. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend building a hackintosh for anyone that’s computer savvy, You can get the best of the SIM with your hardware and still run OSX for your “OS that isn’t so disorganized” needs.

Just a follow up on my Bootcamp MSFS 2020 experience…This may be old news to some of you.

This weekend I upgraded my AMD drivers for my Radeon Pro 575 (4MB) on my 2017 5K iMac in bootcamp.

I downloaded the drivers from here:

https://www.bootcampdrivers.com/

I went conservative and used the “blue enterprise” August 2020 version vice the “red” gaming version.

The install was relatively easy and my machine is running with no glitches at all.

I’ve seen a pretty big increase in FPS over the stock Apple AMD bootcamp drivers. I was able to up my render scaling from 80 to 110 in 1080P, or run in 1440 with a gain of about 10 FPS at 90 rendering.

Of course, it’s the users decision to do this, but for me I’ve seen a big boost in performance.

I have to admit, the Apple tax really is frustrating. It would be less so if you could later crack the box and put new hardware in as you go, but you can’t if you lock yourself in with an iMac with that delicious screen that comes with it. I run FS2020 on my 27" iMac which is only a year old. But it has to be on low or medium on every setting and my video card is at 100% even just in the menus and the CPU cooks at 100 degrees C. Anyone have any water that needs boiling?

I’m with you. I’m looking at making my way back to the PC world eventually too. It was different before Apple ruined their MacOS-only Final Cut Pro suite. It was a Mac or nothing. But now with many people abandoning Final Cut for platforms that have PC equivalents, it makes sense to stop paying the Apple tax, even if it means going back to the cluttered and crashable Windows OS. So again, I agree. I’m writing this reply on what will probably be my last Mac.

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In my experience using Macs since the iBook G4 (pre Intel) - and since Bootcamp was released… The Apple Bootcamp drivers tend to be woeful. If you have the option to use a Manufacturer driver (Intel, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom etc) - Generally, you’ll find a bit of a performance boost.

Have you tried the macfanscontrol program for windows? I installed it before upgrading to the new AMD drivers and it keeps my GPU at between 65-75C while flying.

No…but you better believe I’m going to now!

Thanks for the tip on bootcampdrivers.com. That was a fun little project. I can’t tell if I got much advantage, but it certainly didn’t make it worse and now I have the latest drivers.

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The fan control helps a lot. You can follow the recommendation he gives in the video, which will cause them to kick in much earlier.

Which video card do you have? I saw a really large increase in performance after I switched to the August 2020 blue version.

I’m currently running in 1080P with 100 rendering and quite a few settings in high or even ultra. I do have terrain detail turned down to 50, as it still looks good and for me this was a huge hit for my FPS. I’m getting a solid 28-32 FPS. I also noticed with the new drivers I’m not getting the huge swings in FPS I was getting before–down to 15, then back up to 28.

On the driver side turning on “Surface Format Optimization” gave my FPS a good boost.

Downloaded and installed the fan utility last night. Looks like I’m already spinning at maximum before the sim finishes loading to the initial menu. But thanks for the info on that app. It’s good to have.

I’m running a Radeon Pro 580X (8G). Wishing now I spent the extra and got the Vega option, but Apple really overprices those add ons and that option was ANOTHER $450.

I installed the August 2020 Blue also. Got lots of stuttering at one point during an ILS landing, but since I was locked on the loc and GS, I didn’t crash which was good. Like the old Northwest Airlines pilots, I like to turn flying into a drinking game. Every time I crash, I drink.

Great tip on the “Surface Format Optimization” setting. I’ll try that out later! Thanks again!

My pleasure! We can work through your GPU settings, if you like. Your card is much more of a heavyweight than mine, so I think you should be able to run circles around me performance-wise.