Your ideal gaming Mac

[Lenny M]

But an M4 Max AND a gaming laptop is infinitely more expensive and leans directly into diminishing returns.

But a console to supplements your Mac which you’ll own anyway. Makes far more sense.

Gaming is the side gig here, it’s the nice to have. Not the main event.

agreed,

I think there are 2 different audiences. If you're buying a computer purely for gaming, I'd absolutely recommend a Windows gaming PC.

But if you already own a Mac or you're buying one mainly for work or study, gaming on Apple Silicon isn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be. There are plenty of native games, plus CrossOver and cloud gaming if you're a casual player.

No, it won't outperform an RTX gaming laptop, but if you just want to relax with a few games after work, a Mac does the job just fine.

 

[SauRoNZA]

agreed,

I think there are 2 different audiences. If you're buying a computer purely for gaming, I'd absolutely recommend a Windows gaming PC.

But if you already own a Mac or you're buying one mainly for work or study, gaming on Apple Silicon isn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be. There are plenty of native games, plus CrossOver and cloud gaming if you're a casual player.

No, it won't outperform an RTX gaming laptop, but if you just want to relax with a few games after work, a Mac does the job just fine.

EXACTLY!

I'm never going to buy a gaming PC, but now having the ability to play some games on my Mac I'll venture there while I never really had the choice previously. It's about already having the Mac and stretching its use case further....the fact that windows gaming laptops exist is as irrelevant and Androids to iPhones.

It's an entire untapped market. Not everyone wants to go hardcore.

We'll just ignore the fact that I only end up playing Magic The Gathering anyway.

 

[Mirai]

But an M4 Max AND a gaming laptop is infinitely more expensive and leans directly into diminishing returns.

But a console to supplements your Mac which you’ll own anyway. Makes far more sense.

Gaming is the side gig here, it’s the nice to have. Not the main event.

I think the idea was to talk about an ideal gaming Mac.

 

[Mirai]

Ja, it's honestly a bit of both depending on what you're playing. Native Apple Silicon games (Baldur's Gate 3, Resident Evil stuff, No Man's Sky) actually run really well now — genuinely surprised me. But anything relying on Windows-only anti-cheat (most competitive shooters) is basically a dead end, and even with GPTK/CrossOver, translated games take a real performance hit compared to a PC with equivalent specs.

So if you're mostly into single-player/story stuff, a Mac's a lot more capable than people give it credit for. If you're chasing esports titles or the newest AAA releases day one, you're going to have a bad time, and a PC is still the easy answer.

I actually wrote up some articles on this going into a little more depth :

why-arent-macs-built-for-hardcore-gaming-like-windows-pcs-are
Can you game on a Mac or should you just get a Windows PC

Macs are not built for gaming. Maybe low power stuff, but not the AAA stuff. The whole Mac thing is lower power = low thermals.

With poorly optimized games these days, you need good thermals and power.

And I've been disappointed. I wanted to try Mac gaming but it just made the computer overheat. I purchased a year worth of Cross Over, much of the stuff didn't run or PS3 era stuff ran so poorly the fans were spinning up. Native Mac Resident Evil also disappointing.

I value my Mac. I don't want it to be running in the 80-90s Celsius so I won't be messing with gaming on it.

 

[longboy]

What monstrosity is this - a gaming MAC?