Last October Apple announced Cyberpunk 2077 was coming to macOS with full optimization for Metal and Apple Silicon. The second I heard that, I got excited because that meant Cyberpunk 2077 was the first AAA game to get proper care and optimization to make sure it ran well on macOS and Apple Silicon. This was the first time there was a game that was optimized properly for macOS and Windows, meaning we could properly compare performance in a fair way!
Expand for Apple Silicon Mac Performance
Note, recommended for this Mac is the recommended setting for each Mac and SoC, and is not
consistent. The only tweak made was removing the FPS limit, so we could see how high it gets!
M3 is supposed to target 30 fps with the settings, while M3 Max, M3 Ultra, and M4 Max are targeting
60 fps with the settings.
Use the chart above as a frame of reference as to what’s expected for each SoC, not a comparison across generation.
The reason I want to start off with this is because I’ve wanted to test the Apple Silicon GPU against similar GPUs from Nvidia, Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm for a while, specifically in laptops. So, I thought the best way to do it is find a game that was properly optimized for Metal and run it! Now that Cyberpunk 2077 is on the market, I’m actually able to do that and oh boy, these are some INTERESTING results.
While I didn’t test the entire lineup of computers, I wanted to just go for the best laptop GPUs (more on this later): Apple M4 Max 40-core and Nvidia RTX 5090 Mobile. The M4 Max is housed in a 16-inch MacBook Pro, sporting 128GB of Unified Memory and a 4TB SSD. The Nvidia RTX 5090 Mobile is housed in an Alienware 18 Area 51, and is paired with an Intel Core Ultra 9 295HX. Everything is on the latest stable version with the latest drivers.
The other quesiton you might be wondering is why Cyberpunk 2077? Simply, it’s the most well optimized game on every platform. It uses proper shader conversions for macOS with the latest Metal 3 and fully native Arm binaries, on Windows it uses the latest DirectX 12 with proper optimization for the CPU and GPU being tested. There is is only one game that provides the most fair comparison of a heavy, big, popular AAA game on two platforms, and that game is Cyberpunk 2077.
Now, before we get into the results and a little analysis on this, I want to bring up the two key points I wanted to test for with Cyberpunk and these computers:
- Apple Silicon GPUs are actually really good for gaming!
- SoCs a great platform for gaming, but Arm SoCs can provide an as good or better net experience.
Sorry to spoil the report, but this testing actually proved both are true!
Apple GPUs for Gaming
Yes, Apple GPUs are really good. Beyond really good, actually. I would actually say Apple has some of the strongest GPUs in the respective chipset classes on the market. The limiting factor of the GPU in the past and present for Apple silicon wasn’t pure performance, but rather developer support for APIs like Metal. Popular alternatives like MoltenVK add as much as 40% compute overhead vs. native Metal shaders. Add emulation of x86 compiled binaries to Arm in there, and it
When we have a game that’s properly developed for macOS with Metal 3 on macOS 15.5, we actually get great performance!
I think one of the most impressive parts of these tests was the power draw on the SoC, and specifically the GPU block. I can just throw numbers at you and hope they make sense, but what I think is a more interesting metric for this is Average FPS/Watt. Basically, when we average the FPS in the benchmark and the average power draw, how many frames were rendered per watt of power.
This number, Avg. FPS/W gives us a consistent view of GPU efficiency across silicon and is important for laptops. The reason I think this is important to test Apple Silicon for is, well, the majority of Apple Silicon devices are laptops, roughly 86% of Mac computers shipped are MacBooks.
I also want to add this Nvidia RTX 5090M comparison in here, and I want to be clear about a few things: This is not supposed to be a meaningful comparison, but more of a frame of reference. The reality is, the consumers looking for an M4 Max MacBook Pro and a gaming laptop with an RTX 5090M likely won’t be the same consumer. Gamers don’t usually consider Macs, and Mac users aren’t usually gamers who would want an RTX 5090M.
With all that being said, the RTX 5090M is the most powerful dedicated GPU available for a laptop today. There’s a few reasons for this, the main one is the thermal envelope and TDP are significantly higher, the GPU alone in the laptop I tested had a TDP of 175W, which is over 150% more than the M4 Max package as a whole! This makes it an interesting device to use as a frame of reference, and admittedly comparison even if that isn’t the intent.
When we put both machines on battery, we throttle the GPU into a far more efficient state. Silicon power consumption is not linear to performance, and there are points of diminishing returns even if you can properly cool the chip. Keeping both the M4 Max and RTX 5090M at roughly the same efficient state on battery before point of diminishing return in performance, this keeps these devices at roughly a fair state to test efficiency in the relative OEMs recommended settings and default tuning.
With all of this being said, I ran each of these benchmarking, testing 3 times each. Below are the averaged results per test. Both laptops were in their balanced/automatic power modes, on battery, and confirmed not in a thermally throttled state. I set the video resolution on both displays to 1440p as well, technically 1460p on macOS. HDR was disabled on both machines.
There it is! What we basically see if M4 Max and RTX 5090M have roughly the same performance, while M4 Max is significantly more efficient depending on the workout. The one outlier is with Ray Tracing, where efficiency of RTX 5090M and M4 Max are about equal. With Ray Tracing + Path Tracing, RTX 5090M becomes more efficient and more performant, Nvidia seems to have a major advantage here. These were tested without Ray Reconstruction from the DLSS stack, so you could imagine that would be even better with.
Basically, Apple Silicon is really good. Unbelievably good, in my opinion! To be able to match an RTX 5090M in gaming is no small feat, and Apple does it. Not only do that they do it, in most use cases they do it more efficiently!
Arm SoCs are really great for gaming computers
Ok now that we’ve seen how good M4 Max is (really good), what does that really means? Well, up until recently gamers had to choose either performance or battery life.
One of my good friends, YouTuber Mark Linsangan, ended up testing the same devices I was above. I’m not going to spoil his video, but in his testing the Alienware laptop we both had on battery lasted roughly 45 minutes playing Cyberpunk 2077 while the MacBook Pro lasted about 2 hours! On battery, if we can get nearly identical performance but over 2x the battery life, this is a great tradeoff for a laptop!
These hyper-efficient SoCs keep total package power far lower while providing a nearly equal gaming experience! When it comes to laptops, the idea of an SoC that can game scaled to a laptop, we don’t need to choose between a good experience and good performance anymore. Apple Silicon proves this. You absolutely can have the best of both worlds.
This isn’t to say the dGPU does have a place, it absolutely does! When looking for maximum performance in a non-power constrained environment, like plugged in gaming laptops, a dGPU can significantly outperform an SoC! This is because of the thermal envelope and pure TDP increase that the dedicated silicon can support can go above.
The other important part of this comes down to thermals. When we have a separate GPU and CPU, they don’t throttle with each other. If the GPU is getting hot at it’s peak 175W TDP, this generally won’t slow down your CPU. If the CPU is getting hot, this generally won’t slow down your GPU. This isn’t the case with SoCs, where it’s one package, one physical chip for all compute for the device.
There is obviously a time and a place for both. I think the appeal of a laptop that can get you nearly best in class performance while also having great battery life is insanely compelling. If you want something portable with the absolute maximum performance, the dGPU and CPU combo is great!
Today, the only laptop that gets you the best of both worlds is the MacBook Pro. Things change quickly in the market, 6 months from now it might not be the only option. It’s always good to see where things are going!