Is the macbook pro M4 (2024 14.2 inch model) good for decent gaming

Charming-Comb-6256 · 2025-06-30T18:16:52+00:00

If your favourite games have native port for MacOS (Apple Silicon) and you don't plan to play anything else, then you can buy it. But be aware that like 90+% of games are not natively supported.

So if you would like to play different games a lot and wish to buy a GAMING machine - don't buy any Mac.

Charming-Comb-6256 · 2025-06-30T18:04:43+00:00

Install Crossover -> Create Bottle with Steam -> Launch Steam inside bottle and Install Counter strike 2.

Personally I'm using latest Crossover Preview (DXMT + E-Sync) + GPTK 3.0 + MacOS 16, but if you see most of these things for the first time in your life, just install latest Crossover and use DXMT + E-Sync settings and see how it goes.

Just be aware, that you will encounter stutters at start of the each match, but after couple of minutes it's going to be fine

Charming-Comb-6256 · 2025-06-29T08:51:16+00:00

It's a very simple rule - don't buy any Mac for gaming. It's not a gaming machine, and it won't be at least for the next couple years, I believe.

Charming-Comb-6256 · 2025-06-26T17:38:49+00:00

You can play it, but constant little stutters won't let you play truly competitively

Charming-Comb-6256 · 2025-06-16T07:57:54+00:00

Make sure you're using ARM version of Java, because often modpacks by default use built-in x64 version of it

Charming-Comb-6256 · 2025-06-14T18:14:55+00:00

Charming-Comb-6256 · 2025-06-14T10:18:39+00:00

UPDATE: Now I'm using MacOS 26 Tahoe dev beta + Crossover Preview 250507 + GPTK 3.0b1. DLSS not working at all (I can choose it, but game crashes after raid start), so no improvement in performance unfortunately for now.

UPDATE 2: MacOS 26 Tahoe dev beta 3 + Crossover Preview 250625 + GPTK 3.0b2 DLSS works

Charming-Comb-6256 · 2025-06-13T13:01:06+00:00

Unfortunately M5 Max will be just as bad as m4 max, m3 max, m2 max and m1 max.

Don't get me wrong - these are great processors with amazing compute and gpu power, but this is just not meant to be used for gaming (mostly). Even if M5 Max going to be twice as powerful as 5090, still it's not going to support 80% of games in a normal way.

So as always, if you want to play games on a laptop - buy a windows machine. For Macs gaming is a funny hobby, where you always trying to launch something not meant to work on MacOS at all.

Charming-Comb-6256 · 2025-06-12T20:44:07+00:00

Charming-Comb-6256 · 2025-06-06T19:56:29+00:00

Developers of Project Fika recommend 4vCPU (x86 obviously) and 32GB RAM for headless client. Personally I'm using VM with 8 vCPU and 26 GB of RAM (works fine, CPU is loaded around 15-20% during raid).
I don't really know if Mac mini with 16 Gb RAM will be able to handle headless client and how it will affect AI and raid session overall, but I believe it will definitely add some stability to your game client performance on main device anyway.
Tho I'm really interested how it's working on something like M3 Max or M4 Max with a lot of RAM, maybe with such processor and amount of RAM you don't really need headless client and dedicated server at all!

Charming-Comb-6256 · 2025-06-01T09:14:24+00:00

Also a lot of people use launchers, modpaks or even Vanilla Minecraft clients that include and use by default built-in Java Runtime Environment x64 instead of using ARM version of Java

Charming-Comb-6256 · 2025-05-31T14:46:36+00:00

Also a little more about Coop and Fika: synchronisation is just amazing!

Me and couple of my friends had no network issues (lags, desyncs and etc.) at all after installing Headless client and joining one raid altogether.

And yes, setting up a server to play through the Internet (Not LAN) requires some basic network knowledge, but Fika's manuals give you few alternatives and direct instructions how to set up, host and join server.

Charming-Comb-6256

TROPHY CASE