The gaming world is so deeply ingrained with Windows technologies. Even with the GPK from Apple, I don't see the mods and patches that some Windows players enjoy.
I get that it is good for some games, but when people say "gaming PCs" on Windows, they usually mean AAA titles. The stuff on endcaps at BestBuy for sale for PC and console. Those games won't run well on Macs unless you spend insane amounts on a Max or Ultra variant.
The M5's GPU specs seem to put it near a high-end NVIDIA card from 2018. Impressive as all get out for a power-friendly chip, but not really what I think of when I hear "good for gaming"
A NVIDIA 2080 graphics card from 2018 still surpasses the M5 for gaming. The M5 Pro coming early next year will likely finally catch up with the 8-year-old 2080.
I'm happy to hear your games work well for you, but it sounds like the games you're playing aren't demanding compared to modern AAA titles. Most games released in the last year or two don't run well on my 2080 test system at anything approaching decent graphics.
A 2080 is about the same performance as a 5060 and every game is going to be able to run on a 5060. You might not be running it at 4K Ultra with ray tracing enabled but you should be able to run at like 1080p High or better.
Whether or not the M5 GPU is actually capable of that level of performance or whether the drivers will let it reach its potential is of course a completely different story. GPU performance is hard to estimate based on raw specs, you just have to run benchmarks and see what you end up with.
A 5060 outperforms a 2080 by roughly 20% on most titles, across the board, not cherry-picking for the best results. They are not about the same.
> you should be able to run at like 1080p High or better
This is disconnected from reality. 1080p low/medium, some games are playable but not enjoyable. Remember, I actually have a 2080, so I'm not just guessing.
> GPU performance is hard to estimate based on raw specs, you just have to run benchmarks and see what you end up with.
Rich coming from someone who claims a 7 year old graphics card is "about the same" as a card which has 2.5x better RayTracing, has 3x faster DLSS, faster VRAM, and much better AI capabilities. The 2080 can't even encode/decode AV1...
It's much higher in some categories, but in general across gameplay the 2080 is only about 20% slower than the 5060 in otherwise similar systems. NVIDIA's 3000 series was mostly worse than the 2080 except the 3090, which itself is still is incredible compared to today's 5xxx cards
Yeah, I totally hear you. People are always like "please, make sure my desktop computer only uses 30 watts of energy" and "I'm an eco-gamer, please turn off the RGB lights and let's all play the game on eco/low graphics settings, kumbaya"
> I know it’s silly, but I think I represent over 90% of apples customers in that way
You're not silly, you're just able to see reality.
Apple knows who is buying the bulk of their computers, and it isn't power users ... most people buying computers don't have a clue what RAM is even used for.
I'd hit beachballs, but macOS balances 8GB of RAM fine even with Tahoe for regular users
You can't expect Apple to make an argument against their own chips... you're asking them to admit that they are making ~20% a year improvements when they want buyers to think it's a multiples-of-X improvement.
> How did we already get to no-one being impressed by 20% better PER YEAR already.
When has 20% been impressive? When Intel to M1 happened, the jump was huge ... not 20%. I can't think of anything with a 20% jump that made waves, even outside of tech.
When I used to do user benchmarking, 20% was often the first data point where users would be able to notice something was faster.
4 minutes vs 5 minutes. That's great! Kind of expected that we'll make SOME progress, so what is the low bar... 10%? Then we should be impressed with 20?
People aren't upgrading from M1, M2, M3 in numbers... so I don't think it's just me that isn't wow'd.
It is only 20% at certain tasks, not all around and depends on what the specific bottlenecks are for a given workflow. I'm not saying it's bad, but not enough to fork over a few thousand every year to upgrade. In 1992 a 496 DX2 @66mhz was king... In 2000 (8 years later) there were Intel and AMD at over 1Ghz. By 2008 you had 4 cores, 8 threads at 3.2Ghz.
I used to upgrade about every year or two, there were massive gains... now, I'll hold out 3-5 years and not even think twice about it.
It’s a bit crazy to compare such massive time differences apart though isn’t it.
Also, who ok their right mind gets a new computer every year? No one (sane / without a giant disposable income) even gets a new phone every year anymore.
Intel chips were getting faster. It's well documented (and glaringly obvious in the i9 16") that Apple just didn't want to accommodate the full TDP. They tweaked their ACPI tables to run the chips until they hit the junction temp so they were both constantly hot and constantly throttling. Apple tweaked all of their Intel chips in this way, which was a software solution to the Apple-designed hardware simply being unable to cope with the thermal stress.
We know this because the Intel Macbook Pro chassis was only ever used to run Apple Silicon chips that were passively cooled, not Pro/Max variants. The old MBP chassis designs are so awful that Apple doesn't consider them viable for cooling ARM CPUs. I blame Ive, not Intel.
Do you consider margin-of-error, single-digit gains to be worth arguing over? Intel offered 14nm for 4 years straight: Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Coffee Lake Refresh—four different names, same process node, and 3-7% gains each year. Such fast.
> The old MBP chassis designs are so awful that Apple doesn't consider them viable for cooling ARM CPUs
You don't put a 15-20W chip into a thermal system built for 90W+. The old chassis wasn't "too awful" for Apple Silicon, it was completely unnecessary.
The 13" MBP chassis is not built for 90W though, let alone 50W. Intel was making 30W i7 chips and they were still throttling in that chassis. I think we have enough benefit of hindsight to blame Apple's egregious and power-hungry ACPI tables for not throttling to safe temps. I own several other laptops that do not hit 90c, ever.
What's pretty sad, is they could have just slightly underclocked and undervolted the Intel chips for around 95% of the performance without the janky throttling all the time. Whenever I'd spin up my background services in Docker the laptop was nearly unusable for 4-5 minutes and even then should have done better.
This gap makes no sense to me. I wonder if Apple is just leaning into this cycle because it's easier to make M5s than more advanced processors, so you can sell this sooner?
From a buyer's perspective, I don't like it at all.
Different Chip SKUs are often a TON of work. By trying to release all of them at the same time, you'll have a chip pipeline where you need tons of work, all at the same time, all in the same stages of the process. By staggering them, you spread this work out across the year.
M series chips are ridiculously massive, as Apple apparently does not want to transition to chiplets, so they can’t easily compose CPU. Thus refining the process and improving yields on the smaller parts probably makes sense.
As an other example the current ultra part is the M3, and it was released early 2025, after even the M4 Pro/Max, and a good 18 months after the M3 was unveiled. We might not see an M4 Ultra until 2027.
The issues I see people struggle with on a Mac is that development often needs things in a non-default and often less-secure setup.
There isn't a "dev switch" in macOS, so you have to know which setting is getting in your way. Apple doesn't like to EVER show error alerts if at all possible to suppress, so when things in your dev environment fail, you don't know why.
If you're a seasoned dev, you have an idea why and can track it down. If you're learning as you go or new to things, it can be a real problem to figure out if the package/IDE/runtime you're working with is the problem or if macOS Gatekeeper or some other system protection is in the way.
If you are on a M-series MacBook and aren't running a 3D Benchmark the entire time, your Mac is broken if it is dying after 2.5 hours.
Have you checked your Battery Health?
If you have an intel-based Mac, it's the same expected battery life as Windows and 2.5 hours on an intel MacBook battery sounds decent for something 5+ years old.
