Reflecting on the evolution of gaming, it’s remarkable to consider how far we’ve come since the days of Oregon Trail on the Apple II. As someone approaching 40, I recall the first gaming PC I encountered was an old Apple desktop tucked away in my grade school classroom. Fast forward to 2025, and we’re on the brink of seeing Cyberpunk 2077 running natively on Mac. The landscape of Mac gaming has undeniably transformed.
Last year, I had the opportunity to spend a week gaming on the Mac Studio M2 Ultra, a machine that redefined my expectations. The experience was nothing short of exhilarating. While not every game performs flawlessly on the latest M-series Macs, those that have been optimized for Apple silicon—especially on the high-end MacBooks—showcase impressive capabilities. This shift can be attributed to Apple’s concerted efforts to encourage game developers to port their titles to its platform, a movement that gained momentum with the introduction of the Game Porting Toolkit last summer.
Performance Insights
Recently, I fired up Baldur’s Gate 3 on the MacBook Pro 16-inch M3 Max. To my delight, the game ran seamlessly for 15-20 minutes, maintaining a smooth frame rate even during intense gameplay. Steam’s in-game FPS counter revealed nearly 90 frames per second during my initial playthrough. Even when I pushed the graphics and resolution to their limits, the performance remained commendable, dropping to around 50 FPS, which still looked stunning on the Pro’s 16-inch mini-LED display.
While some of the top gaming laptops on the market may still outperform the MacBook, the fact that the 16-inch M3 Max MacBook can compete at all is a testament to the strides Apple has made in recent years. A closer look at lab testing data from previous years reveals a clear trajectory of improvement in Mac gaming performance.
| Sid Meier’s Civilization VI | Rise of the Tomb Raider | Shadow of the Tomb Raider | |
| 16″ MacBook Pro M3 Max | 57 @ 2234p | DNR | 119 @ 1200p |
| 16″ MacBook Pro M2 Max | 57 @ 1200p | 91.7 @ 1200p | DNR |
| 16″ MacBook Pro M1 Max | 46.1 @ 1080p | 73.8 @ 1200p | DNR |
| 13″ MacBook Pro M1 | 38.2 @ 900p | 25.7 @ 900p | DNR |
The data illustrates a clear evolution; the original MacBook Pro M1 struggled with games like Rise of the Tomb Raider at 1080p, despite the game being five years old by the time the M1 Pro launched in 2020. Fast forward to today, and the MacBook Pro I’m using can run its sequel, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, at an impressive 120 frames per second—albeit at a lower resolution of 1200p. At the native resolution, maintaining a steady 60 FPS on high settings proves challenging, highlighting that while Apple’s on-chip GPUs are commendable, they still lag behind dedicated GPUs from competitors like AMD and Nvidia.
What will M4 MacBooks be capable of?
As I pen this piece, we stand on the threshold of new MacBooks equipped with the Apple M4 chip. While current data suggests that Macs have become unexpectedly viable for gaming, this information may soon be outdated. I anticipate that the M4 MacBook Pros may not surpass their Windows counterparts in gaming performance per dollar, yet the gap is likely to narrow further. Given that many leading Windows laptops are now powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips—known for their less-than-ideal compatibility with native PC games—MacBooks may, in some instances, emerge as superior gaming machines compared to their Windows 11 rivals.
We await the opportunity to conduct our own tests and reviews, but the evidence clearly indicates that gaming on Mac has advanced significantly over the past few years. The lingering question remains: how well will Cyberpunk 2077 perform on these new Macs?
