From AAA games native to the Mac, to Windows games running through translation layers, to Switch emulated games, Andrew Tsai set out to find whether the MacBook Neo can actually run games well. Here’s how it did.
MacBook Neo once again performs better than expected
As soon as Apple announced the A18 Pro-powered MacBook Neo, with its 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, and 8GB of unified memory, people naturally started asking: Will that be enough?
Of course, the answer was obvious from the start: Well, that depends. What do you plan on using it for?
That said, as reviews of the MacBook Neo rolled out yesterday, it quickly became clear that Apple’s low-cost computer could handle much more than many initially assumed when it came to productivity and general work tools.
Gaming, however, tends to be a very different story. And despite Apple’s best efforts to position the Mac as a gaming powerhouse, the truth is the gaming community never quite embraced it as vigorously as Apple hoped.
With that in mind, Andrew Tsai decided to run the following 10 games on a 512GB MacBook Neo, in addition to Switch emulation:
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Minecraft
- World of Warcraft
- Control
- Resident Evil Requiem
- Resident Evil 2 (remake)
- Counter-Strike 2
- Elden Ring
- Dark Souls Remastered
- Mewgenics
In general, the MacBook Neo held its own better than most would have expected, with its 8 GB of memory as its biggest constraint. Naturally, native macOS games performed better than Windows games running through translation layers, and in all cases, performance depended heavily on how memory-intensive the game was.
Cyberpunk 2077, for instance, only ran well with all settings set to the lowest possible and at 720p, while Minecraft ran between 50 and 300 fps at 1080p, depending on the presets.
When it came to games running through translation layers, results varied wildly, with titles such as Counter-Strike 2 being “completely unplayable,” while Mewgenics ran “pretty much flawlessly. It is, after all, a basic 2D game running through OpenGL.”
If you’re into games, and even if some of these conclusions may seem instinctively obvious, it is still worth watching Tsai’s video, as it includes interesting insights into what the MacBook Neo might do for the Mac-based gaming community both right now and in the long run.
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