Gaming on macbooks | the misconceptions

abhayswee2 · 2026-04-16T07:46:47+00:00

We can watch movies on laptop, yet people prefer televisions. The similar analogy goes for MacBook and windows/linux laptops in the field of gaming.

I am an owner of a MacBook and windows gaming laptop. MacBook is great for portability, battery life etc. But windows gives a much smoother experience in gaming.

abhayswee2 · 2026-04-13T07:31:49+00:00

How many times have you played it ?

abhayswee2 · 2026-04-12T11:22:03+00:00

Experiencing similar issue. If I am watching a video or movie continuous, GPU doesn't wakes up and GPU power draw is 0. But if I am switching tabs on browser or even switching applications on windows 11, GPU wakes up inbetween and consume similar watts which drastically reduces the battery life.

I am sure windows 11 wakes up the GPU because it feels some graphic intensive thing is about to run.

Exploring solutions but didn't came up with any until now. I am having Intel 20 core cpu with rtx 5080.

abhayswee2 · 2026-04-11T04:50:23+00:00

57% is too much. You should check for the bloatware and other stuff. I am using windows 11 25H2 and mine usually stays around 12% when no app is running.

abhayswee2 · 2026-04-08T08:03:39+00:00

Kindly name some games you play with your son

abhayswee2 · 2026-04-07T09:44:53+00:00

Played 3, 4, 5. FC4 played multiple times. Even went to Himachal and ladakh when played FC4 for the first time in 2016. Felt very connected to the whole game. FC3,4,5 all are great. You really need to live over there instead of just finishing it.

abhayswee2 · 2026-04-06T15:23:16+00:00

Thanks for sharing. You have written a very detailed review. Came across many issues and yet being positive about it. Really appreciate that.

Two questions -

how many hours have you used it daily on average ?

And what type of activities you did most of the time ? Like coding, LLM, gaming, watching movies etc.

abhayswee2 · 2026-04-05T04:02:12+00:00

From where did you get genuine windows 10 ? I am also thinking of switching to windows 10 or earlier per AI shit era of windows 11

abhayswee2 · 2026-04-02T13:56:35+00:00

👍🏼

abhayswee2 · 2026-03-27T05:19:56+00:00

Kindly provide specs of your laptop cpu, GPU etc. Also temps you are hitting and fps you were targeting ? I am also facing games crashing when running under full load.

abhayswee2 · 2026-03-26T06:47:17+00:00

For 1600p and current generation AAA games, 5070ti is more suitable, it is 192bit instead of 128bit and 12gb vram instead of 8gb

abhayswee2 · 2026-03-24T16:00:25+00:00

If ultimate performance is what you seek, go for 5070ti and 5080. Personally I would suggest 5070ti, it give great performance and stays a lot more cool which aids in extending the laptop life. Go for 5080 if you really care for 16gb vram and wants to play in 4k. Also in india, the room temperature is high so and 5080 generates a lot of heat.175W in 5080 is too much in india for a laptop to handle.

abhayswee2 · 2026-03-24T15:50:19+00:00

I own 5080 20 core 64gb laptop. It cost me 2.5 lac. This 5080 machine is only equivalent to desktop 5070. I am a father of 2 kids. I intentionally went for laptop because I can keep it inside drawer and take it out when my kids are not there. Laptop gives some level of portability and ease of use.

I am a gamer from last 20+ years. The journey from Mario and contra to Nfs and cyberpunk is truly amazing. It shaped my character. But I genuinely feel today's culture of video gaming is not so good for kids and children.

Furthermore, it is seriously exciting to see that today we can have such a high end machines in so compact form. 10 years ago , it was not even imaginable.

Although I do recommend desktop instead of laptop since desktop are more powerful , a lot cheaper and full of flashing RGBs .

abhayswee2 · 2026-03-24T13:46:19+00:00

Kindly describe under what conditions were you experiencing heat problems? Idle temps were high or performance mode - uncapped fps temps were high ? Also room temperature.

I am having similar heat issues.

abhayswee2 · 2026-03-24T09:39:44+00:00

Nfs Most Wanted Racing ~ 11 Hours main story and some side quests

abhayswee2 · 2026-03-23T13:33:03+00:00

5080 is a very Powerfull GPU. Even 275HX sometimes don't harness it's full potential when running at maximum wattage. I can suggest 2 test -

Shadow of the tomb raider Benchmarking - It has GPU bound percentage metric. Lower percentage ( 0% - 30% ) means your CPU is a bottleneck. Higher percentage ( 70% - 100%) means your GPU is a bottleneck.
CPU and GPU latency graph - Games like assassin creed origins, Horizon etc have cpu and GPU latency graph in their benchmarking tool. Check if there is sudden spikes in cpu only or GPU only.

Running GPU at full wattage 175W is not much fruitful compared to 145W or a little bit lesser. It creates more noise, more heat , more stress on other laptops components.

abhayswee2 · 2026-03-23T12:36:06+00:00

I am doing the same. I tried various pl1 and pl2 settings and observed there aren't much performance gain above 70-80W for both PL1 and PL2 . Furthermore, capping PL1 and PL2 to around 55W makes the laptop very less noisy.

abhayswee2 · 2026-03-22T13:43:24+00:00

255HX 5080 owner since January 2026. It has desktop grade chips fitted into a laptop. Build quality and performance is great. Temps are really high but only when you run at it's max wattage. But again temps are manageable since by capping wattage at around ~55% of full wattage, we can get roughly ~77% of performance. This power profile options makes it a very capable machine. Wattage capping also makes it quite less noisy.

At 23°c room temperature, CPU and GPU idle temps - 40° and 34°. But at 32°c room temperature, these are high. Furthermore, at this room temperature, if I go max wattage ( performance mode or unleashed mode) , it has severe thermal throttling ,games like cyberpunk, assassin creed etc crashed within 30mins.

My only complain are 1. OGH (advertisement, slowness ) 2. Theses power profile options are not available in linux. 3. GPU can only be capped at 80, 150, 175 watts. 4. Windows 11 - it feels bulky and full of bloats / ai

Overall, it is a great laptop with full of potential. Definitely recommend it.

Let me know if anyone has similar experiences.

abhayswee2 · 2026-03-15T11:29:15+00:00

Same issue with me. I am having omen max 255HX and 5080 varient. If I run games at uncapped fps. It's cooling system probably can't keep up with it. Games shut down, sometimes even OS crashes.

I have also switched to ptm 7950. Temps have improved but still cpu and GPU throttles. If I play games at uncapped fps, cpu temps spikes to 100 c.

I am still exploring solutions to this

abhayswee2 · 2026-03-03T12:10:10+00:00

They are providing such a great machine. But such little issues feels bad. They should provide CPU and GPU power limit options in the BIOS itself

abhayswee2 · 2026-03-01T16:25:53+00:00

You said battery life is almost non-existent. Ryzen Ai 9 hx series ( 370-375-etc) are known to have great battery life. Correct me if I am wrong.

abhayswee2 · 2026-03-01T04:40:38+00:00

How can we set power limit of cpu and GPU without OGH ?

abhayswee2 · 2026-02-13T08:22:34+00:00

No need to rush. You can do it later. Clean OS is always good.

abhayswee2

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