Factorio runs quite well on the M1. The graphics system (FPS) is partially decoupled from the factory simulation side (updates per second, or UPS), so there are two components to performance. UPS mostly depends on how big and complex your entire factory is, and on what mods you're running, and FPS mainly depends on how many sprites are on screen. FPS is limited to be <= UPS, since there's no point in redrawing until the game state changes, but UPS can be greater.
FPS: Despite being a 2D sprite game, sometimes it has trouble keeping FPS at 60, at least when running at max graphics and max zoom level with a graphically intensive mod. I would guess it's using OpenGL, and Apple's OpenGL stack isn't great. You can see the article mentioning the M1 Max only hitting 45 FPS in one of the tests, and this is without mods (but with a huge base and presumably a wide zoom level). In my experience, if you adjust the graphics settings appropriately (eg max sprite atlas size and max vram usage, since integrated graphics use unified memory), you can usually keep it at a smooth 60 FPS 99% of the time even in graphically-intensive setups with max or almost-max quality settings.
UPS: Scoring 199 UPS on the flame_sla 10k base puts the M1 Max above any other laptop processor for that benchmark. This matches my experience: the simulation part of the game almost never lags, except for unavoidably heavy operations (eg generating new worlds when playing with mods that do that). See a comparison at:
Yeah, Factorio is multithreaded, but in practice it usually only runs a few ways in parallel. Instead its performance is determined in large part by the memory subsystem, which is why the X3D processors do so well. It's probably also part of the M1's great performance: with a large cache and stacked DRAM, it has very competitive bandwidth and latency.
FPS: Despite being a 2D sprite game, sometimes it has trouble keeping FPS at 60, at least when running at max graphics and max zoom level with a graphically intensive mod. I would guess it's using OpenGL, and Apple's OpenGL stack isn't great. You can see the article mentioning the M1 Max only hitting 45 FPS in one of the tests, and this is without mods (but with a huge base and presumably a wide zoom level). In my experience, if you adjust the graphics settings appropriately (eg max sprite atlas size and max vram usage, since integrated graphics use unified memory), you can usually keep it at a smooth 60 FPS 99% of the time even in graphically-intensive setups with max or almost-max quality settings.
UPS: Scoring 199 UPS on the flame_sla 10k base puts the M1 Max above any other laptop processor for that benchmark. This matches my experience: the simulation part of the game almost never lags, except for unavoidably heavy operations (eg generating new worlds when playing with mods that do that). See a comparison at:
https://factoriobox.1au.us/results/cpus?map=4c5f65003d84370f...