First thoughts with gaming MBA

[TheColtr]

My first impressions with my base model MBA is incredible. I immediately downloaded steam and loaded up Cities Skyline (I know someone in the forum had asked about it). It stuttered at first, maybe thirty seconds or so, and then became the most smooth experience I’ve had from a Mac laptop. It also tried a few iOS games which obviously ran well since they aren’t as intensive.

my next test is to run Planet Coaster and see how well that does. Keep in mind all this is in Rosetta and the freaking thing is fanless!

for reference I am coming from a 2017 MacBook Pro 13” with 4 ports.

 

[Lord Flashheart]

Do you play World of Warcraft? Would love to see and hear more experiences of WoW on the new M1 air. trying to decide between MBP and MBA, don’t game all the time on my MacBooks as I have a Xbox Series X and PS4... but still game on my MacBook and would love to see if it throttles too much without a fan.

 

[MuckrakerJG]

Do you play World of Warcraft? Would love to see and hear more experiences of WoW on the new M1 air. trying to decide between MBP and MBA, don’t game all the time on my MacBooks as I have a Xbox Series X and PS4... but still game on my MacBook and would love to see if it throttles too much without a fan.

There’s a video in another thread here of a guy playing WoW on the base model air. He had graphics on 10 and was getting 45 FPS in a starting area. 2K resolution. So could def get 60 or more if you take graphics down a bit or lower to 1080p. He did also say in the description of the video that he noticed the Air getting hot and WoW is the only game that the heat became noticeable...after about 10 minutes. So it definitely looks doable but I‘m thinking of getting the Pro for the fan so it doesn’t overheat and throttle when I’m in a raid or something.

 

[Mortalias]

Tested American Truck Simulator through Steam on my new MBA. Running on medium-high settings incredibly smoothly, including texture set to highest setting. Very impressed so far! ATS, CIV and Cities:Skylines are the only games I play on Mac, so I'm stoked.

 

[langl3y]

Tested American Truck Simulator through Steam on my new MBA. Running on medium-high settings incredibly smoothly, including texture set to highest setting. Very impressed so far! ATS, CIV and Cities:Skylines are the only games I play on Mac, so I'm stoked.

I have been looking for a review of ATS and maybe euro truck simulator 2 on steam with the new M1, i'm thinking of getting the M1 mac mini and mainly play these games myself. (could I ask if that is running with the 8GB Ram?)

It's great to hear such good feedback in regards from the smoothness etc even running on high settings. I'll be coming from a late '13 21.5 iMac

 

[whateverandever]

To anyone running games -- what's the battery impact of something that's pushing the GPU like World of Warcraft? Is it reasonable to expect iPad level battery life while gaming (6+ hours)?

 

[acastic]

 

[Mortalias]

I have been looking for a review of ATS and maybe euro truck simulator 2 on steam with the new M1, i'm thinking of getting the M1 mac mini and mainly play these games myself. (could I ask if that is running with the 8GB Ram?)

It's great to hear such good feedback in regards from the smoothness etc even running on high settings. I'll be coming from a late '13 21.5 iMac

Yep, this is on the 8 core, 8GB ram version of the Air. It was noticeably smooth even at a resolution of > 2000, I imagine at 1080 or similar it will be buttery smooth. From a '13 iMac you should definitely notice a vast difference!

 

[UltimateSyn]

I think the M1X is going to provide a really phenomenal gaming ability on the 14"/16" MacBook Pros next year. I'm excited for that. And as it is the M1 seems to do an excellent job already.

 

[yngrshr]

It's quite stunning just how good my new M1 MBP (16GB) is doing with Civ. Civ was just awful on my outgoing 13" i5.

 

[YonTom]

My first impressions with my base model MBA is incredible. I immediately downloaded steam and loaded up Cities Skyline (I know someone in the forum had asked about it). It stuttered at first, maybe thirty seconds or so, and then became the most smooth experience I’ve had from a Mac laptop. It also tried a few iOS games which obviously ran well since they aren’t as intensive.

my next test is to run Planet Coaster and see how well that does. Keep in mind all this is in Rosetta and the freaking thing is fanless!

for reference I am coming from a 2017 MacBook Pro 13” with 4 ports.

Did you try out Planet Coaster yet? I am thinking of getting the Mac Mini M1 and I would love to play Planet Coaster in it, so feedback about how well (or badly) it runs on M1 would be appreciated. Did you get 8 or 16 GB RAM for your MBA?

 

[YonTom]

Did you try out Planet Coaster yet? I am thinking of getting the Mac Mini M1 and I would love to play Planet Coaster in it, so feedback about how well (or badly) it runs on M1 would be appreciated. Did you get 8 or 16 GB RAM for your MBA?

Nevermind, you said base model, so I assume 8GB. My bad. Still, how was Planet Coaster on it?

 

[lJoSquaredl]

Been seeing people stream games while using OBS on the Pro model, curious if anyone know's how well the Air does it for long amounts of time too. Obviously not super stressful games (unless maybe at low-med settings/resolution) but I gotta assume with what i've been seeing that the Air may even be able to handle playing stuff like LoL for hours on end while streaming at 1080p. That'd be HUGE if it's doable.

 

[Lord Flashheart]

I saw a video of someone playing WoW on the new MBA and it was running fine. I asked him if it throttled and slowed down or got too hot after extended, 1-3 hour sessions. He said it did not. Said got warm, that the usb c dock he was using got hotter than the MBA, but no throttling and no losses of FPS that he noticed. He played over 2 hours I believe.