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Windows 11’s place because the default working system for PC avid gamers may ultimately be coming underneath risk, with an growing listing of video games being natively ported to rival platforms reminiscent of Linux and macOS.
A primary instance of that is the current launch of Cyberpunk 2077 on Macs. After a rocky launch on PCs and consoles in 2020, it has blossomed into certainly one of my favourite video games of all time, and I’m thrilled that folks with appropriate Macs, in addition to new Nintendo Switch 2 house owners, can now expertise this good recreation.
Cyberpunk 2077’s arrival on Macs is especially thrilling for me. Despite certainly one of my earliest recollections of PC gaming being enjoying Lemmings on a Macintosh (in black and white!), it’s honest to say that gaming on Macs hasn’t actually taken off, with solely a fraction of PC video games being ported to macOS.
This has led to PC avid gamers solely having one alternative: purchase a Windows machine. For individuals who don’t like Microsoft and its approach of doing issues, this was lower than ideally suited.
With the rise of gaming-centric Linux distros like SteamOS and excessive profile video games lastly making their method to Macs, may this be the beginning of an thrilling new chapter for PC avid gamers on the lookout for Windows alternate options? Might we even at some point see a few of the greatest MacBooks additionally seem in our greatest gaming laptops shopping for information?
Another thrilling facet about Cyberpunk 2077 arriving on Macs, is that it is a recreation that continues to be a graphical showcase with superior results, reminiscent of path tracing for ultra-realistic lighting and reflections, which except you’re enjoying on the newest consoles, normally means you want a reasonably high-end (learn: costly) gaming rig with a contemporary graphics card.
Modern Macs don’t have that; as an alternative, Apple’s M-class chips that energy the gadgets mix the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU), with shared (Apple calls it ‘unified’) reminiscence. This design, primarily based on Arm structure and typically often known as a system-on-chip (SoC), enormously differs from conventional gaming PCs and gaming laptops, which have separate CPU and GPUs, with GPUs having their very own devoted reminiscence.
The standard knowledge has been that for a recreation that’s as graphically-demanding as Cyberpunk 2077 when enjoying at excessive PC presets, you want a system with a devoted GPU (usually this implies a graphics card just like the Nvidia RTX 5080).
With Cyberpunk 2077 now obtainable for Macs with built-in graphics, whereas promising to supply PC-level graphical constancy (learn: superior to console graphics), that is an thrilling second for PC avid gamers – may it show that you simply don’t want a discrete GPU for enjoying trendy AAA video games, as nicely making macOS a viable various to Windows 11 for gaming?
Go huge or go dwelling
While Cyberpunk 2077 is now that can be purchased by Apple’s App Store on the Mac, you can even purchase it from storefronts reminiscent of Steam and GOG – and in case you’ve already bought it for PC, it’s best to be capable of set up it in your Mac with out having to purchase it once more – I used to be in a position to obtain it onto my Macs by way of GOG Galaxy with out having to rebuy – and it additionally allowed me to proceed my playthrough from the place I’d left off on PC due to cloud saves and cross development, which makes switching to Mac fairly painless for PC avid gamers.
I’m fortunate sufficient to have entry to a variety of recent Macs and MacBooks, in order quickly as Cyberpunk 2077 grew to become obtainable, I needed to try it out on probably the most highly effective Mac I may get my palms on – and that simply so occurred to be the Apple Mac Studio (M3 Ultra), kitted out with a 32-core CPU, 80-core GPU and 256GB of unified reminiscence.
It’s one of the crucial highly effective Macs Apple has ever made – and likewise one of the crucial costly, with a $8,099 / £8,299 / AU$13,149 asking worth that will make even probably the most devoted PC gamer wince.
While the Mac Studio, even with these specs, just isn’t a gaming machine, I used to be trying ahead to seeing what it was able to with Cyberpunk 2077.
To be sincere, that was in all probability a mistake.
Taking inspiration from the Steam Deck?
Unlike PCs, that are made up of assorted elements from totally different producers, and that are normally constructed by different corporations (or customers themselves), Apple has a good grip over the {hardware} of its Macs, and that has allowed it, together with the builders of Cyberpunk 2077 to supply a bespoke graphics preset known as ‘For this Mac’ which ought to provide the greatest graphics and efficiency for the Mac or MacGuide you’re operating the sport on.
It’s a cool function on paper, because it ought to imply that Mac customers who aren’t as snug with tweaking each graphical setting in a recreation to eke out as a lot efficiency as potential as seasoned PC avid gamers are, ought to be capable of play Cyberpunk 2077 and get the very best expertise with out even having to open the settings menu (because the ‘For this Mac’ preset is chosen by default).
This jogs my memory of an analogous function of Valve’s Steam Deck gaming handheld PC, the place ‘Steam Deck verified’ video games use a default graphics preset for Steam Deck {hardware}, once more to supply the absolute best expertise with out customers having to delve into the settings menu of every recreation.
Both of those options promise to make enjoying PC video games much more like enjoying video games on a console, the place tweaking is saved to a minimal so you’ll be able to simply soar straight right into a recreation and begin enjoying. It’s additionally a function that PCs can’t actually provide because of the sheer amount of {hardware} configurations there are.
When operating Cyberpunk 2077 on the Mac Studio utilizing the ‘For this Mac’ preset, I believed it was enjoying it a bit too secure, because it set the decision of 2560 x 1440 (regardless of being plugged right into a 4K gaming monitor), ray tracing turned off, and Apple’s personal MetalFX expertise, which like tech from AMD, Nvidia and Intel, renders the sport at a decrease decision, then upscales it for impressive-looking video games that don’t stress out your {hardware} an excessive amount of.
With MetalFX set to ‘Dynamic Resolution Scaling’, on the goal framerate set at 60fps, the quantity of upscaling will fluctuate to maintain the sport feeling easy, and in my exams it did a very good job of sticking to 60fps.
However, the sport didn’t look practically pretty much as good because it does on my gaming PC. Now, admittedly I normally play Cyberpunk 2077 on a PC with an Nvidia RTX 5090 graphics card put in, which is an extremely highly effective GPU, so I is likely to be a bit spoiled in the case of evaluating the sport’s efficiency on PC and Mac, although over time I’ve additionally performed the sport on a lot weaker {hardware}.
Part of the difficulty is the shorter draw distance, and anti-aliasing appears to introduce a extra pixelated look on some objects. Also, within the neon-lit world of Night City (the place the sport takes place), ray tracing lighting results make a big impact, particularly when the lighting displays off puddles and different reflective surfaces (utilizing much more superior path tracing tech). Without ray tracing, the general look of the sport takes an enormous hit.
So, having established that the Mac Studio can play Cyberpunk 2077 out of the field at 60fps, my subsequent mission was to tweak the settings to see if I may enhance the visible high quality of the sport, whereas protecting framerates playable.
Keeping a lot of the settings the identical, I upped the decision to 4K (3840 x 2160), turned on ray tracing (to its highest settings) and path tracing. This time, the typical body charge dropped to twenty.74fps – far too low to provide something near a playable body charge.
Turning on AMD FSR 3.1 Frame Generation, a function that makes use of AI to generate frames that get inserted in-between regular rendered frames with the goal of accelerating the frames per second with out impacting the {hardware} an excessive amount of, and altering the MetalFX scaling to ‘Quality’ to see if that helped enhance the look of the sport did lead to an enchancment in graphics, however the slight bump in framerate to 25.69fps was nonetheless too low.
Switching MetalFX to ‘Balanced’ upped the framerate once more to an truly playable, although removed from ideally suited, 30.82fps.
Turning MetalFX’s setting to ‘Performance’, which lowers the rendered decision for improved efficiency, and depends extra on upscaling (at the price of visible constancy), boosted the body charge additional to 38.61fps.
Dropping the decision again right down to 1440p (and turning off ray tracing) noticed an enormous uptick in body charges to 89.67fps. You’re not simply counting on MetalFX to upscale the sport, nevertheless, as you’ll be able to swap to AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) tech, which is utilized in a variety of PC video games already, and in contrast to Nvidia’s rival DLSS tech, which is proscribed to Nvidia’s most up-to-date GPUs, AMD FSR isn’t unique to AMD {hardware}. The tech is much more established than MetalFX for upscaling video games, and switching to FSR noticed body charges greater than double to 196.98fps.
This result’s way more in keeping with what I used to be anticipating from the {hardware}, and it meant I had headroom to extend a few of the settings to enhance the graphical constancy of the sport. Increasing the decision again as much as 4K introduced an anticipated hit to border charges, however it nonetheless hit on common 135.51fps, which remains to be glorious (and because the 4K monitor I’m enjoying on has a most refresh charge of 120Hz, it means I nonetheless have some headroom to extend settings, as something above 120fps shall be a bonus).
With that in thoughts, I turned ray tracing again on, however restricted it to reflections and medium settings for ray-traced lighting. The recreation regarded significantly better, although the framerate dropped to 69.59fps, a significant fall that reveals how demanding ray tracing is on the GPU.
As the Mac Studio just isn’t a gaming machine, I needed to maintain the body charge at an achievable 60fps, slightly than sacrificing too many graphical bells and whistles to spice up the body charge into triple digits.
So, altering AMD FSR to ‘Performance’ I turned on extra ray tracing options, together with solar shadows, and upped ray-traced lighting to ‘Ultra’. This dropped the framerate to 60.83fps on common, which meant I’d hit the candy spot between efficiency and graphical constancy.
M3 Ultra isn’t any RTX 5090 killer
Now, getting an $8,000 PC to hit 60fps could appear disappointing, particularly for PC avid gamers who’re used to forking out plenty of cash and getting unbelievable outcomes. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 on my PC with the RTX 5090 means I’m used to having all of the graphical settings at their very highest settings, together with the demanding path tracing function additionally enabled, and seeing body charges within the excessive 100s.
This reveals that regardless of its energy, the Mac Studio is not a gaming machine, however the addition of Cyberpunk 2077 and its strong efficiency signifies that it’s a workstation PC that may additionally play video games – and with good (if not spectacular) outcomes.
What about MacBooks?
I additionally tried out Cyberpunk 2077 on a 15-inch MacGuide Air (M4), a way more mainstream and inexpensive Mac. While it affords solely a fraction of the efficiency of the Mac Studio, it’s way more fashionable – and it’s this sort of Mac that most individuals shall be enjoying on.
Because of the entry-level specs of the MacGuide Air, which options an M4 chip with 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU, plus 16GB of unified reminiscence, I left Cyberpunk 2077 on the default ‘For this Mac’ preset, which makes use of the ‘medium’ texture high quality and a decision of 1710 x 1068, which is a step down from the native Retina decision of the MacGuide Air’s display screen, which is 2880 x 1864.
MetalFX is ready to Dynamic Resolution Scaling with a goal of 30fps, and ray tracing is (unsurprisingly) turned off. With these settings, the sport hit a rock-steady 30fps – and it truly impressed me excess of the Mac Studio efficiency. Let me clarify.
Set your expectations
The motive I wasn’t that impressed with the Mac Studio’s efficiency with Cyberpunk 2077 is that my expectations had been too excessive, whereas with the MacGuide Air, my expectations had been a lot decrease (and extra real looking), and that meant they had been surpassed.
While 30fps may not sound like a lot (it’s definitely the bottom body charge I’d contemplate playable), the truth that you’re operating such a graphically-ambitious recreation on a tool that not solely doesn’t have a discrete GPU, but in addition a laptop computer that doesn’t even function followers, is severely spectacular.
This is a really skinny and lightweight laptop computer and runs utterly silently – an enormous distinction to most gaming laptops which can be normally huge and ponderous, and fairly noisy when the built-in followers kick in to maintain the {hardware} cool.
The strong out-of-the-box efficiency additionally means it’s an amazing instance of how bringing Cyberpunk 2077 to the MacGuide Air, a laptop computer that’s inexpensive than a variety of gaming laptops, permits individuals who wouldn’t normally purchase a gaming PC to play among the best PC video games ever made.
The smaller display screen of the 15-inch MacGuide Air in comparison with the bigger 4K monitor I examined on additionally helped, as tough edges and different graphical blemishes that may be visable while you begin reducing graphics settings and resolutions are far much less noticeable (and extra forgivable) on a smaller display screen.
Using what I discovered from enjoying the sport on the Mac Studio, I turned on Frame Generation and switched the upscaling to FSR, and obtained a frankly glorious 69.83fps. This gave me scope to extend the feel high quality to ‘High’, and it seems with minimal impression as I then obtained 65.32fps on common. But would turning on ray tracing show an excessive amount of?
Yes. Turning ray traced lighting to ‘Medium’ noticed the body charge drop to 39.12fps. Not disastrous, however it undoubtedly makes the sport really feel much less easy. Changing AMD FSR 3.1 to Dynamic Resolution Scaling with a goal of 60fps noticed the framerate climb to 51fps, however the fluctuating picture high quality used to try to preserve that concentrate on meant it wasn’t definitely worth the sacrifice for ray tracing. Turning it off, I used to be again to nicely over 60fps, and the sport regarded good and performed nicely regardless of operating on a non-gaming laptop computer. However, whereas the fanless design of the MacGuide Air means the laptop computer stays silent, it does get fairly toasty, with the area between the highest of the keyboard and the hinge of the display screen getting noticeably heat.
I do fear that in lengthy play periods (which many individuals, myself included, usually bask in with video games like this) the MacGuide Air may overheat which may lead to lowered efficiency and even crashes the place the sport turns into unresponsive. However, throughout my time enjoying on the MacGuide Air or the Mac Studio, I didn’t get any game-ending crashes.
After playing on both ends of the Mac spectrum, with the ultra high-end Mac Studio and affordable MacBook Air, I have to say I was most impressed with the MacBook Air, especially after a bit of tweaking that allowed me to play the game at above 60fps. For people who have never set foot into Night City, the Mac versions are a great choice, though PC gamers might not be that impressed.
There were also three surprising things that really stood out to me while playing Cyberpunk 2077 on the Mac, some of which I’d love to see in the PC version.
1. Spatial audio could be a killer app
Cyberpunk 2077 on Mac supports spatial audio via Apple’s AirPods earbuds, and I was very impressed with the results. Apple has a lot of experience in this field, with its AirPods devices offing impressive virtual surround effects for films, TV shows and music mixed for Dolby Atmos.
I used the AirPods Max while playing Cyberpunk 2077 and was extremely impressed with the results. The audio quality was fantastic, and the noise from the hustle and bustle of Night City really did feel like it was coming from all around me, making the game world feel even more immersive.
It was far better than most virtual surround sound systems I’ve tested with gaming headsets, though it still doesn’t quite compare to a real, physical surround sound setup.
The reason why it’s so successful is because Apple incorporates head tracking into the AirPods’ spatial audio, so the way you move your head influences the volume of the sounds you’re hearing in each ear. I’m massively oversimplifying it, but it’s an element I’ve not experienced with PC gaming headsets, and I was impressed with how well it worked with this game.
It’s limited to Apple’s own headphones, which (especially in the case of the AirPods Max) are quite expensive, but I could definitely see spatial audio support becoming a real selling point for gaming on Macs in the future.
2. ‘For this Mac’ presets are a great idea
When I first heard about the ‘For this Mac’ presets, I thought it was a good idea, allowing non-technically minded people get a solid gaming experience that’s tailored to the hardware you’re using.
In practise, it does mean you can fire up the game and get playing without any tweaking, which takes away some of the complexity that PC gaming has developed a (not entirely unfair) reputation for.
It’s definitely something I’d like to see more of with Mac gaming – especially considering it’s not really possible to do on a Windows PC – and it could encourage more people to try out gaming.
However, I found the settings were a bit on the cautious side, which is understandable but does mean that some Mac gamers could miss out on performance and effects if they stick to the preset.
It does offer a good springboard, however, for tweaking if a gamer does want to push the hardware and eke out better performance.
3. Cross platform saves mean Macs can be a great gaming backup
One thing I really liked was that the Mac version of Cyberpunk 2077 is available on the Steam and GOG game stores (as well as through the App store), and as I had already bought the PC version from GOG, the Mac version was sitting there for me to install without having to repurchase it.
It also offers cross platform progression, so when loading up the Mac version I was able to carry on from my last cloud-based save, essentially letting me continue from where I left off on my gaming PC.
This means my MacBook Air is now a viable gaming alternative if I’m travelling away from my gaming PC and desperately want to play Cyberpunk 2077 (it happens) – and it could make a MacBook a more enticing prospect for PC gamers looking for a non-gaming laptop.
It could work the other way as well, with Mac gamers who fall in love with the game potentially investing in a gaming PC, though if you buy the App store version you’ll need to buy it again on PC, as the App store isn’t available in Windows 11. You won’t have to buy a copy for every Mac you use, however.
Overall, Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t mean gamers can throw out their graphics cards and dump Windows 11 for good, as gaming PCs are still the best place to play a game like this, but it’s an exciting glimpse of what the future holds for gaming on Macs.
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