M2 MBA gaming experience vs 13" Intel MBP?

[filmbuff]

My 2018 MBP is starting to feel a little dated with everything new thats come out. It wasn't that great to begin with TBH. It's a quad core i5 with the Iris Plus 655 graphics. At this point I don't do very much 'intensive' work on my laptop but one thing I'm wondering about is gaming, since that requires sustained performance and the Air doesn't have fans. Is the M2 chip so much better than my i5 that it won't matter and I'll get the same or better performance? How about for games that would have to run in Rosetta 2? Am I going to see a huge drop in frame rates after 5 minutes? In another 4 years am I going to regret buying something without a fan that can't even run the latest games?

 

[leman]

Is the M2 chip so much better than my i5 that it won't matter and I'll get the same or better performance?

Yes. And you'll get much better performance. Like at least two to three times better.

How about for games that would have to run in Rosetta 2?

Doesn't matter.

Am I going to see a huge drop in frame rates after 5 minutes?

Not really. The Air has around 10-15W of sustained thermals which is sufficient to run GPU-bound games.

In another 4 years am I going to regret buying something without a fan that can't even run the latest games?

Maybe, who knows? That's for you to decide

 

[mr_jomo]

In another 4 years am I going to regret buying something without a fan that can't even run the latest games

You'll regret it today: macOS native games - let alone Arm - are far and few between. If you want to play the latest games on the M2 Air it's either through virtualisation of Windows on Arm or through several compatibility layers - both approaches are, at best, passable solutions currently. Only viable approach to play the latest games on macOS is through the Xbox or Gforce streaming services, which the M2 Air handles like a champ 😀

That said - any current macOS game your Intel macBook can handle - the M2 Air will ace!

 

[Velin]

Your best solution by far will be cloud-based platforms. Two good ones are Google Stadia or GeForce Now, both are excellent, and there are others. But a wired ethernet connection with low latency is preferred for cloud gaming platforms.

And if you are buying a laptop primarily to play games on, then acknowledge this fact and get a PC laptop with an OLED display and a discrete graphics card.