M1 Max to M5 Max Gaming (fReAkY)
First off, not clickbait title, apparently Mac gaming is still freaky. And this is not a troll post. I genuinely think the MBP is good for gaming.
Anyway, I’ve really enjoyed my M1 Max. I have the 32GB-1TB model and I think I’ve outgrown it, ironic given my casual workload. It brought me through nursing school, acts as a client for my remote desktops, ran various local LLMs for fun, browsed Reddit, encoded over 2000 hours of x265 media, and most importantly… I’m a Mac gamer.
Sure, I have my desktop, but desktops are built for speed, not efficiency. This matters when you don’t want to pull 500 watts to play a game you can run on 40W on a MBP.
Anyway, between all of my background apps, and whatever else is running, I constantly am hitting the point where swap is needed. Maybe 2-8GB of swap in use after about 10 minutes into a reboot. I also run parallels because it was a no frills option to run games like early Bethesda titles… it’s where I played fallout 2&3 because they needed so many modifications to the OS, I figured VM was the way to go and it just worked…
Anyway, given the fact that I’m into swap territory, I want more memory. I think the 48GB is probably enough but I’m tempted to get 64GB because there is more headroom. I’m also in the U.S. and have Best Buy’s “total” so I get AC+ included for 2 years, so that’s where I’d be buying it probably.
Anyone have some based thoughts on getting an “M5 Max” and if I should get the 48 or 64 GB variant? My local Best Buy doesn’t have the “nano texture” on display so I can’t demo it but I’m hoping someone that has may have some insight as to if the apple tax is worth $150. I have no issues with my M1 Max currently so I am highly considering skipping it.
I know I’m weird for this too, but I have over 200 hours on Rust with my MBP, it runs ultra at 60FPS without drops and many other of my Steam games, including “Dave the Diver” my favorite. Tim Cook was clearly overzealous selling “Mac Gaming” but I think for performance per watt and the kilowatt cost currently plus AC bill, it just makes sense to game on it.
So help me pick which model please. 48GB or 64GB memory? Nano texture display or not? Also reply if you game on Mac!