Mid 2014 MacBook pro vs 2020 MacBook Air

[LeafsFanNL]

Hi Folks,

I currently use a Mid 2014 MacBook Pro. Aside from my job as a teacher, I use it to play World of Tanks. I used to play World of Warships, but later patches are too much for my machine.

I'm wondering how much of an upgrade would an i5 2020 MacBook air make to my limited gaming.

 

[LeafsFanNL]

Anyone with a thought to spare

 

[HopelesslyConfused]

Hi there,

From this review, World of Tanks enCore gets 92.9 FPS on the 2020 i5 MBA running at low graphics settings.

Apple MacBook Air 2020 Core i5 Review – The best MacBook you can get? – No

Notebookcheck reviews the new Apple MacBook Air with the quad-core i5 CPU. The keyboard has been improved, but the performance is still the Achilles heel of the laptop.

www.notebookcheck.net

I can't compare that with your 2014 Macbook Air on the site, but that should give you an idea of the kind of performance you're likely to get.

Cheers!

 

[s1lv3r]

Similar situation here.

I have a MBP 2014 Base-Model with a 512gb upgrade and I'm also considering buying a MBA 2020 i5, 256gb and maybe 16gb ram. Would you guys go with 16gb?

I'm not so sure if this would be worth the money extra money though.

 

[deeddawg]

@s1lv3r - you don't say anything about what you do with the system, so no way to know if you would or wouldn't benefit from 16GB RAM.

Generally speaking - if you can't say exactly why you need to upgrade the RAM, then you probably don't need to. 8GB RAM is going to be enough for most folks for whom an Air is a suitable computer.

Remember that RAM is not a "hard" limit -- macOS does a great job with virtual memory. Even if you exceed the physical memory, the SSD is fast and you'd unlikely notice in most circumstances. See https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-secure-virtual-memory-on-mac-mh11852/mac

You can also look memory usage with your existing system - See Memory Pressure in Activity monitor. https://support.apple.com/guide/activity-monitor/view-memory-usage-actmntr1004/mac

EDIT: and IMHO "future proofing" is a bunch of bull designed to scare people to spend more than they need. Evaluate your expected usage for the lifetime of the system and buy what meets that, with a bit of headroom for some growth. If your needs change sufficiently that you'd have wished you'd "future proofed" you probably will be replacing the current system for other reasons as well.

 

[AirBud]

The 2020 MBA should be able to run both games, benchmarks show the i5 MBA has around twice the performance.

If you play them frequently, it might be worth checking out the heatsink thread and think about doing the heatsink mod. It’s about $25 and 30 min of work and you’ll get lower temperatures (therefore less fan noise) and ~15% better performance while you play.