So, instead of playing on my toaster of a PC, I decided to try my luck with my mid 2014 MacBook Pro, running BigSur. As much as I hate Apple, this thing does have much better stats than my ancient PC. Problem is, I'm experiencing several issues. I am using an HDMI cable to connect to an external monitor, which I believe is most likely besides the point, but there is that detail as well. Okay, here's the list of issues.
Cell Shader does not appear to work. The options appear, but none of the sliders do anything, except for the outlines slider, which has a binary effect. If it is on at all, all vfx will disappear (auras, portals, etc) but otherwise does nothing.
Occasionally the audio starts to gargle rather bad.
Certain building textures appear transparent.
Colors look really flat, even at higher gfx settings they look in some ways inferior to my ancient PC on lower settings. I'm guesing this one is a hardware/chipset issue with pos Mac.
I have a feeling there is nothing to be done about any of those, but if anyone has any insights they would be appreciated.