Cheap MacBook Neo runs Crimson Desert pulling respectable 50 FPS at comically low resolution

Crimson Desert reviews are all over the place. While some critics are in love with the massive open-world game's visual fidelity, others have found in-game mechanics and the overall storyline to be unimpressive at best. However, the game runs pretty well on modest hardware, which is always a good thing for budget gamers.

iPhone SoC-powered MacBook Neo runs Crimson Desert

Speaking of budget, the MacBook Neo happens to be the first-ever laptop from Apple that prioritizes affordability over anything else, running on a last-generation iPhone SoC paired with a measly 8 GB of RAM to keep costs low. Interestingly, Crimson Desert runs natively on Apple Silicon, which includes the new MacBook Neo.

Popular Mac gaming YouTuber Andrew Tsai decided to test things out, and it appears that the MacBook Neo (currently $599 on Amazon) can indeed run the wildly popular game, albeit at laughably low settings. That is to be expected, considering that the minimum official requirements for running Crimson Desert on Mac happen to be an M2 Pro or M3-class SoC.

With the minimum preset, MetalFX upscaling from a laughable 180p to 540p, and frame-generation enabled, the MacBook Neo manages to run Crimson Desert at around 50 FPS. Considering that the A18 Pro with a 5-core GPU does have hardware-accelerated mesh shaders, performance appears to be almost as good as the M1.

With a slightly more playable resolution, a stable 30 FPS gameplay with the aid of frame-generation and upscaling should be possible on the system. Andrew did note that Crimson Desert with frame generation is a decently enjoyable experience, which is perhaps the saving grace for the lower-end Apple Silicon machines.

Needless to say, the MacBook Neo is far from a gaming machine, but the very fact that it manages to run Crimson Desert despite featuring just 8 GB of RAM shared between the CPU and the GPU proves just how seriously Pearl Abyss cares about low-end hardware optimization.