I'd love to get the Mac Studio for gaming, but one thing is holding me back
These days, I often feel like I'm one of those rare breeds: a gamer who also loves Macs. My home office work is split between my M1 Mac mini and my small-form-factor Windows PC, and to be honest it's annoying to have to switch between the two all the time.
Unfortunately, my love of gaming — and Apple's relative inexperience here — means that I've had to stick with both macOS and Windows for some time now. Sure, I'd love to drop Windows once and for all, but it just doesn't feel as though the Mac is quite there yet in terms of gaming performance.
That said, Apple's M4 chips have made gaming much more viable on a Mac. As we saw in our Mac Studio review, the M4 Max chip is very capable when it comes to gaming performance.
I've previously talked about how the Mac mini's gaming performance has made it difficult to resist ditching my Windows PC and going all-in on macOS. Now, the Mac Studio is making the whole situation even more confusing.
Pricing-wise, the Mac mini and the Mac Studio seem to be fairly far apart, even when you boost the former's chip for better gaming output. Get a Mac mini with M4 Pro chip and you'll pay around $1,399 — for the mac Studio with M4 Max chip, you're looking at starting price of $1,999. That $600 difference is sizeable.
But things get a bit more interesting when gaming becomes a more serious consideration. Because there's no discrete GPU in these Macs, and because the M4 Pro is far from Apple's strongest chip, you'll probably want the beefiest M4 Pro you can get. Upgrade to the version with a 14-core CPU and a 20-core GPU and you're looking at a $1,599 price — a more reasonable $400 less than the Mac Studio.
That's important because the M4 Max is much better for gaming than the M4 Pro. In our Mac Studio review, the M4 Max hit 114fps in Civilization VI and managed smooth frame rates when running Baldur's Gate 3 at 4K resolution, for example. It also outdid the M3 Ultra in gaming performance, which we were not expecting.
When we tested the Mac mini, it performed worse than the previous-generation M3 Max chip. While we don't have a direct comparison of the M4 Pro and M4 Max yet, it's clear that the latter should be way ahead.
This has upended things a bit for me. When the M4 Mac mini came out, I was so taken by its dinky size and so impressed by its overall performance (despite it lacking a little in gaming) that I was almost ready to get rid of my M1 Mac mini and my Windows PC together and replace them with Apple's tiny desktop machine.
Now that the Mac Studio with M4 Max is here, it's looking like the more attractive option for gamers. Sure, you'll have to pay more, but it offers more reliable gaming performance while simultaneously outdoing even the M3 Ultra in terms of frame rates. That's obviously pretty confusing, but if it means I don't have to spend $4,000 and up for an M3 Ultra Mac Studio, that's fine by me.
So, does that mean that the Mac Studio is the best option for Apple gamers in search of a desktop machine? Maybe, but Apple still hasn't solved the biggest problem here: a lack of native games.
The recent addition of Cyberpunk 2077 was a big win for Mac gamers, but it really feels like the exception that proves the rule. Illustrating the gulf with Windows, there's still no native support for Grand Theft Auto V, Call of Duty, Elden Ring and other AAA games and franchises on the Mac.
Sure, you could supplement your Mac with Nvidia GeForce Now, and that's something I've considered before. But that can get expensive and doesn't cover every game. And really, I'd like to game natively rather than relying on another pricey subscription that drains my bank account every month.
It's a shame that you have to spend Mac Studio money to get decent gaming performance within Apple's ecosystem. Considering current GPU prices for Windows machines, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. But I'd still rather not have to sell a kidney to enjoy a spot of Mac gaming at smooth, stable frame rates.
Still, I can't deny that we're seeing progress. That the M4 Max can offer solid gaming performance at all is a welcome improvement over previous years. Hopefully 2025 will be the year of top-tier games coming to the Mac — and of Apple solving the biggest problem Mac gamers are currently facing.
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