Path of Exile on Mac: How to Play & Benchmarks

Path of Exile is not yet another Action RPG, as it is considered the only true competitor to the critically acclaimed Diablo series. GGG did a fantastic job with Path of Exile, and it seems like a tribute to Diablo 2, if anything.

Where Diablo 4 holds your hand along the way, Path of Exile punishes you at every turn. We’re currently going through the campaign using a Monk leveling build, and the experience feels as brutal as it is rewarding. But how does Path of Exile run on MacOS and MacBooks these days?

Art	Genre	64-bit	API	M1 Support	Performance	Optimizations
	Adventure		Metal	Native	Poor	None
	Racing		Metal	Native	Excellent	MetalFX
	Action		Metal	Native	Good	MetalFX
	Action		Metal	Native	Excellent	MetalFX
	Adventure		Metal	Native	Good	MetalFX
	Simulation		Metal	Native	Good	None
	Simulation		OpenGL	Rosetta	Good	None
	RPG		Vulkan	Rosetta	Good	None

Can you play Path of Exile on Mac?

You can absolutely run Path of Exile on Mac natively. In fact, on top of offering support for Intel Macs, Path of Exile has been updated to offer native ARM support for Apple Silicon Macs, including M1, M2, and M3 models.

While the official system requirements don’t mention Apple’s M1, M2, or M3 chips, we can confirm they are supported, and the game runs beautifully on any of them at a steady frame rate. Hopefully, Path of Exile 2 on Mac will run this well.

Path of Exile on M1 Pro MacBook Pro

Path of Exile Mac Requirements

If you have an Apple M1 Silicon chip or higher under the hood, you’re pretty much good to go. Intel-based MacBooks can handle the game surprisingly well.

There were a few problems with running the game on M1 MacBooks, but GGG has fixed this problem with an update. Still, if you’re concerned about the spec sheet, here are the game’s official Mac requirements:

Initially, Path of Exile was unsupported on M1-based Macs. For some reason, the game would systematically crash at launch, which was surprising because most “unsupported” games run just fine on M1 Macs, thanks to Rosetta 2. Luckily, developer Grinding Gear Games eventually found and released a fix:

Owners of M1 Macs can now play Path of Exile through Rosetta, with minimal impact on performance. A native version will be available in a future update.

Path of Exile Mac Settings

Can Your Mac Run Path of Exile? Benchmarks and Performance

These are the benchmarks we have gathered so far for Path of Exile, including tests from friend of the channel MrMacRight:

If you own an M1 MacBook Pro 8GB, then you can expect to garner a solid 70 FPS at 1080 with all the settings cranked to the maximum.  You can also flawlessly run this game on the base MacBook Air at High Settings at 1080p and get a solid 60 FPS.

Previously, users reported instances of crashes when trying to boot Path of Exile on M1-based MacBooks, particularly on Patch 3.17.4. Fortunately, GGG, or Grinding Gear Games, quickly released a patch with no hits in performance. The game runs on the Vulkan API (Molten VK) via Rosetta with 64-bit support.

While many macOS gamers were expecting the Metal API to be utilized, the hard truth is that Metal is not widely used for games that have been previously published.

Path of Exile Mac Gameplay

Path of Exile requires Rosetta 2 to work on Apple Silicon MacBooks. But thanks to macOS updates and Rosetta improvements made along the way, the game tends to run flawlessly. The whole installation process is as seamless as it is playing the game on Windows.

While owners of Path of Exile can play the game using Rosetta for the time being, M1 owners will get a native Apple Silicon Mac version of the title, as promised by GGG in the future. Will it run on the Metal 3 API? Time will tell.

Path of Exile Mac Download

You can download the Mac version of Path of Exile from Steam. While GGG does provide a standalone Mac client to play the game, the game is barely updated over the standalone client. The game is capped at 60 FPS from the get-go on the Mac Client. You can download Path of Exile for free by signing up on their website.

Path of Exile Mac Support

The forums have been flooded with many bugs and artifacts, yet few have been addressed. Your best bet would be to go for the Steam Version, which receives updates slightly slower.