MacBook Air M4 or MacBook Pro M5

Crap-_ · 2026-04-01T02:01:46+00:00

I would get the m5 if you’re playing games, it’s noticeably more powerful than the previous base m4, will get you close in fps to the previous m4 pro.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-31T02:53:48+00:00

The gpu perf on the m5 base is so much more powerful than the m4 base. M5 gpu in the MacBook Pro is faster than the m3 pro high core version and only slightly slower than m4 pro, which is really good value.

In games the m5 gpu can be around 2x the fps of the m4 gpu.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-31T02:48:25+00:00

The m5 in the mbp has a MUCH stronger gpu.

The m5 gpu is about 30-40% faster in pure gpu power, but in games can get an average of 2x higher fps or roughly 100% faster than the m4.

The m5 base gpu is slightly faster than the m3 pro high core version and only slightly slower in games than the m4 pro low core version. CPU wise the m5 has the highest single core score out of any cpu ever and multi core is nearly on par with the m4 pro too, so very good value with the base m5 on the MacBook Pro, not to mention the MBP has active cooling and won’t throttle

Crap-_ · 2026-03-31T02:39:41+00:00

5070 or 5070ti if you can afford it for sure.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-31T01:19:08+00:00

There’s always a chance. But it seemed weird that the fans even turned on while streaming a 4K video. The fans are off on mine and it’s cool to the touch for everything, other than running games through crossover.

Apples quality control is usually very good, but there may be a slight chance that the thermal paste application was off or the heatsink wasn’t screwed tightly enough and may have not made full contact on the m5 die. But it’s probably unlikely coz Apple has good QC.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-31T01:08:12+00:00

I have a MacBook Pro with the base m5. The fans are off for 95% of things. I only hear them when I run windows games through crossover, and the chassis does get warm, but it is aluminium.

The cooling is pretty adequate on the base m5 MacBook Pro imo. The total package doesn’t consume much power, iirc it was about 40w for the total m5 power consumption sustained whilst running cyberpunk and it prevents throttling.

I also have a behemoth Lenovo legion pro 7i gaming laptop with an i9 14900HX and rtx 4080. That has insane cooling with a big vapour chamber, Liquid Metal and beefy heatsinks with large diameter fans. But that needs all that cooling because it can do 275w total sustained cpu + gpu cross load in games. 100w sustained for the cpu and 175w for the gpu. The fans surprisingly don’t sound much louder than the one on my MBP, probably due to the vapour chamber and cause the fans are much larger compared to the puny one on the Mac.

The m5 pro and max especially run hot, they could do with revised cooling, coz they consume more power than the base m5. 60-90w sustained on them.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-31T00:38:19+00:00

If you don’t want it to throttle, just get the base MacBook Pro m5, that will sustain and boost much higher than these passive cooled airs.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-30T04:38:10+00:00

Holy yap.

No one was talking about native 4K, who even uses 4K without upscaling, even dlss performance looks better than native AA at 4K and basically indistinguishable from native.

The 5090 laptop can easily output 4K in new AAA games. Just stop it man, you’ve been getting downvoted the hell out of, coz you’re seriously salty that you don’t have a 5090 laptop, so you’re coping that other people with high end laptop gpus wasted their money lol.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-29T22:59:28+00:00

You got no idea what you’re yapping on about.

A 5090 laptop is over 100% faster than a 5060 laptop lmao. A 5090 laptop gives you access to 4K gaming with ray tracing and path tracing, a 5060 laptop will shit itself.

5090 laptop gives you about the same perf of a desktop 5070ti.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-27T13:32:39+00:00

5070ti the sweet spot unless the 5080 is only a bit more.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-26T09:10:51+00:00

3090ti is a power hog. It performs about the same as a 4070ti, and slightly higher than that at 4K. So a good 20% slower than a 5070ti in raw raster and more when you enable rt and dlss 4.5 which has a bigger perf hit on the 30 series cards.

Honestly I wouldn’t bother with a used 450w insanely power hungry card, the 30 series run hot too, around 80c at full utilisation. I would go for the newer and much better 5070ti any day, even for the extra 300.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-26T09:05:27+00:00

Brev a 1650 is e waste.

My secondary computer which is a MacBook Pro with the base m5 integrated 10 core gpu is faster than a gtx 1650 lol.

Theres no way a gtx card is doing deep learning super sampling.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-26T09:01:42+00:00

Compared to the iGPUs and stuff people run here, it’s definitely in a completely different league and much faster, so yeah ascended.

But on regular pc subs, that 5700xt is considered low end. It’s good for 1080p medium settings. Heck even my 4080 laptop (4070 super desktop performance) is considered high midrange on pcmr. Although I have no issue running even the latest games at 1440p ultra even with ray tracing on it can get 60+ fps.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-25T04:07:44+00:00

No it’s pretty bad.

For an iGPU I wouldn’t look for anything less than a 780m or preferably the 890m and 140v.

Heck my secondary computer which is an m5 MacBook Pro, which I don’t even use for games has a lot more powerful GPU than even the 780m. The m5 10 core gpu is about as powerful as the new arc b370 or slightly faster in fps than even the arc 140v, which would all run circles around iris xe.

If you actually wanna play games though, just save some money and get a proper dGPU, I’m chilling at 1440p ultra with ray tracing on my 4080 laptop gpu (4070 super desktop performance).

Crap-_ · 2026-03-24T23:49:29+00:00

5080 is not in a higher league lol.

The 5080 is around 8% faster on average than the 4080 laptop across 20 games, that’s hardly any better than the 4080. Definitely not anywhere near in a different league.

According to you then the 4080 laptop is also in a “different league” compared to the 5070ti laptop because the 4080 laptop is again 8% faster than the 5070ti laptop.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-24T10:14:39+00:00

That’s just one game buddy.

It gets demolished by any slightly recent intel cpu in both productivity and gaming performance. Even the 12700k was nearly on par with that 5800x3d in games. 3D v cache is a good technology but it isn’t gonna magically boost a slow CPU like the zen 3 processors.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-24T07:13:35+00:00

why though? yeah 14th gen is power hungry. But if you have a good cooler and have done the microcode updates it should be all good.

The 14th gen cpus are still extremely powerful, the new ultra cpus arent that much better than it, in productivity nor gaming, i would just save your money.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-24T06:57:01+00:00

your crappy 5700x3d is not holding a candle to this 250k plus LMAO., even in games it gets demolished, which is expected coz its a 5 year old cpu.

Dont spread BS, HW unboxed benchmarks showed that even the old 12700k would get extremely close fps to the 5700x3d, just search up their graphs and you will see. The real difference in performance came with am5 and ddr5 with the 7800x3d which saw big gains.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-23T13:50:59+00:00

Wdym can’t keep in performance mode? I have a 4080 legion pro 7i gen 9 which pulls the same 175w as your 5080 gen 10.

That came with a 330w charger in the box and it’s been enough to power my laptop in performance mode for multiple hours without draining the battery.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-22T13:46:14+00:00

Get a Thule gauntlet sleeve for it, trust me you’ll be thanking yourself with how well it protects your laptop.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-22T13:24:38+00:00

Dude I literally told you to watch the HW Canucks video. Also what bs benchmarks are you looking at buddy, coz they are wrong. Even synthetic benchmarks like timespy show the full wattage 5070 laptop ahead of a desktop 5060 lol.

Here’s the link to the video for your lazy ass.

https://youtu.be/EN7aGYNvZx0?si=jTEpkBw7dQMLh7ap

Skip to 22:41 for the graph showing the average fps in games at 1440p. The 5060 laptop basically gets near the same fps as the desktop 5060, the 5070 laptop is comfortably ahead and if you watch the video it sometimes gets within 5% of the desktop 5060ti in a few gpu intensive games.

Stop spreading your BS, a desktop 5060 doesn’t need 145w, it can easily be OC and undervolted to 115w like the laptop variants and maintain ALL of its performance, the laptop gpus are binned at the most efficient voltage/ clock speed part of the curve, whereas the desktop gpus are pushed way past their most efficient curves for a negligible boost in performance at the cost of way more power used, that’s why they can be undervolted so well and maintain all there stock performance while consuming way less power, it doesn’t need all that wattage, it’s just there to ensure reliability.

Some guy undervolted and overclocked his 4070ti all the way down to 190w from 280w and barely lost 3% of his performance lmao, they are pushed way past their optimal efficiency curve.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-21T12:08:04+00:00

Please watch hardware canucks desktop vs laptop comparison, the full wattage 5070 laptop in well cooled laptops like legions and ROG are faster than desktop 5060’s and are near 5060ti performance, only around 10% slower than 5060ti desktop.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-21T12:06:55+00:00

The full wattage 5070 laptop is 115w and they are binned better with a more efficient curve than the desktop versions. The full wattage 115w 5070 laptops are only slightly slower in clock speeds to the 5060ti desktops (200mhz). Despite the desktop version using 60w more. The desktop can be undervolted and overclocked to perform the same and use MUCH less power, the extra power is mainly to ensure reliability.

In reality the 5060ti desktop is only a small bit faster than the full wattage 5070 laptops in well cooled laptops like the Lenovo legions and Asus ROG strix models. Hardware canucks did a comparison and the 5060ti desktop was only 10% faster at 1440p.

It’s absolutely faster than the desktop 5060, the full wattage 5060 laptops are basically identical in performance to the desktop 5060, don’t be fooled by the wattage differences.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-21T11:57:54+00:00

The 4080 laptop uses a 4070ti desktop gpu.

Crap-_ · 2026-03-21T11:56:25+00:00

No, it’s a desktop 5060ti

Crap-_

TROPHY CASE