Cyberpunk 2077 tested on M1 Air, M1 Max, M3 Max, and M4 MacBook Pro: Here’s how well it runs on each
Cyberpunk 2077 is finally running natively on macOS, and popular Mac gaming YouTuber Andrew Tsai has already tested it across four generations of Apple Silicon. In a new video, the tech creator put the game through a series of benchmarks on the M1 Air, M1 Max, M3 Max, and the latest M4 MacBook Pro, digging into frame rates, thermal throttling, HDR support, and Apple’s MetalFX upscaling tech.
On the standard M4 chip in the Apple MacBook Pro, the game defaults to 30 FPS with dynamic resolution scaling enabled. In this instance, Cyberpunk 2077 is not ultra-smooth, but it’s stable. Andrew says this helps avoid thermal throttling. Pushing things further, with the FPS cap raised to 120 and VSync disabled, gets performance closer to the 50-55 FPS mark, though ray tracing quickly brings the game's performance on the base M4 MacBook Pro to a halt.
“The ultra setting just crushes the M4,” Andrew said. “Hardware ray tracing is technically supported, but there’s just not enough GPU power here to make it playable,” they added.
In the video, the M3 Max MacBook Pro, with its 40 GPU cores, delivers the best experience. The laptop handles Cyberpunk at 4K with MetalFX Quality upscaling. The game even handles a bit of path tracing, although Andrew wasn’t sold on its value. “I just don’t think the graphical jump justifies the hit in performance,” they said.
Andrew also noted that frame generation via FSR 3.1 feels jittery and off-timed, making it better to leave it disabled for now. Metal 4’s upcoming frame interpolation might improve this later in the year, but that’ll require macOS Tahoe.
Despite being technically unsupported, the 8GB RAM version of the M1 MacBook Air could boot the game at 720p with a 30FPS cap. But Andrew reports frequent stutters and frame drops, pointing out that the M1 MacBook Air just doesn’t have the memory headroom to keep things smooth.
With 32 GPU cores and plenty of RAM, the M1 Max delivers strong results at 1080p high with MetalFX enabled, hovering between 60-90 FPS in indoor areas and holding more than 40 FPS in open-world combat. Andrew said that no major thermal issues cropped up either, thanks to active cooling.
One surprising, and slightly annoying, twist is that the Mac App Store version of the game weighs in at a hefty 159GB, compared to 92GB on Steam. That’s because it includes all voiceover languages by default. Andrew recommends Steam, GOG, or Epic instead, especially since owning the Windows version gets you the Mac port for free.
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