Cyberpunk 2077 Mac benchmarks show most Apple Silicon can run the game at over 30 FPS on medium settings — results vary from a smooth 130+ FPS to a unplayable 24 FPS

Screenshots from Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition for Mac

(Image credit: CD Projekt RED)

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the few AAA games to run natively on Macs, and many gamers have anticipated its arrival. More than four years after it first dropped on PCs and consoles, the game finally arrived on macOS, alongside the release of patch 2.3. To gauge how the game will perform on the limited number of Mac and MacBook variants available on the market, ComputerBase has released a call to the community to benchmark the game. This is the third time that it has done this for Cyberpunk 2077, with the first community benchmark run completed in 2022 with patch 1.5.

The editors at ComputerBase asked the community to run three benchmarks — Medium Preset, Ultra Preset, and Ray Tracing Medium Preset — under two resolutions: 1920 x 1200 and 2560 x 1600. Upscaling must be enabled, with MetalFX set to Balanced when ray tracing is disabled, and to Performance when the feature is activated. Furthermore, the user running the benchmark must set the following options: VSync (Off), Maximum FPS (Off), and Windowed Mode (Full Screen).

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FPS benchmarks	1920x1200, Medium Preset, MetalFX Balanced	1920x1200, Ultra Preset, MetalFX Balanced	1920x1200, Ray Tracing: Medium, MetalFX Performance	2500x1600, Medium Preset, MetalFX Balanced	2500x1600, Ultra Preset, MetalFX Balanced	2500x1600, Ray Tracing: Medium, MetalFX Performance
M4 Max (14 CPU + 32 GPU), 36GB – MBP14	132.35	96.69	70.65	91.70	63.23	47.51
M3 Max (14 CPU + 30 GPU), 36GB – MBP16	105.08	78.27	56.81	74.28	50.68	37.74
M4 Pro (14 CPU + 20 GPU), 48GB – Mac mini	102.18	67.24	49.70	63.21	42.87	32.77
M4 Pro (14 CPU + 20 GPU), 24GB – MBP16	95.81	67.18	49.91	63.24	42.79	32.76
M4 Pro (12 CPU + 16 GPU), 24GB – MBP	86.06	59.72	44.85	56.29	37.55	28.84
M4 Pro (11 CPU + 16 GPU), 24GB – MBP14	85.73	59.52	44.37	55.73	37.29	28.73
M1 Max (10 CPU + 32 GPU), 32GB – MBP	84.20	74.19	-	56.37	34.43	-
M1 Max (10 CPU + 32 GPU), 32GB – MBP14	71.49	61.74	-	48.38	32.84	-
M1 Max (10 CPU + 32 GPU), 32GB – MBP14	-	52.93	-	-	-	-
M3 Pro (12 CPU + 18 GPU), 18GB – MBP14	66.98	47.81	35.73	44.43	30.64	22.98
M2 Pro (10 CPU + 16 GPU), 16GB – Mac mini	62.35	45.48	-	40.76	28.75	-
M3 Pro (11 CPU + 14 GPU), 18GB – MBP14	61.04	42.68	31.60	39.74	26.83	20.03
M4 (10 CPU + 10 GPU), 16GB – MBP	50.50	34.39	-	32.98	-	-
M1 Pro (10 CPU + 16 GPU), 32GB – MBP	48.51	33.59	-	31.92	20.73	-
M1 Pro (10 CPU + 16 GPU), 32GB – MBP14	45.20	32.10	-	30.10	20.20	-
M1 Pro (8 CPU + 14 GPU), 16GB – MBP14	44.82	31.36	-	29.30	19.40	-
M3 (8 CPU + 10 GPU), 16GB – MBP14	42.50	29.60	21.60	27.90	18.50	13.60
M4 (10 CPU + 8 GPU), 16GB – MBA13	33.68	23.40	17.04	21.44	14.92	-
M3 (8 CPU + 8 GPU), 8GB – MBA13	31.94	20.55	-	15.98	11.59	-
M2 (8 CPU + 10 GPU), 24GB – MBA13	31.13	22.03	-	17.45	12.28	-
M2 (8 CPU + 10 GPU), 16GB – MBA13	25.36	17.77	-	15.46	11.10	-
M1 (8 CPU + 8 GPU), 8GB – Mac mini	25.16	-	-	-	-	-

The majority of the tested devices run Cyberpunk 2077 (Phantom Liberty) at a barely usable 24 FPS, even those that do not hit the minimum 16GB of memory required to run the game. However, when you start cranking up the image quality and resolution, performance drops off precipitously for several models. Nevertheless, these numbers align with the benchmarks a creator ran soon after the game's launch on macOS.

Aside from this, we expect these numbers to improve as CD Projekt Red gets more feedback from gamers running their title on Apple computers. This would enable them to optimize Cyberpunk 2077 for Apple hardware, finally unlocking the raw horsepower hidden within Apple silicon chips. However, even though the game runs on Apple M chips, they are still not supported on iPadOS devices that run the same hardware with 16GB of memory. Hopefully, both parties will change their mind in the future and allow us to play AAA games on our iPads. Well, one can dream.

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

24 Comments Comment from the forums

Notton

This puts into perspective the real performance of the GPUs in M-series macs. They suck.
I can't wait to hear the mac fanbois blame the game for being poorly optimized, rather than the hardware sucking.
Reply
magbarn

I still remember all the M1Max>3090 comparisons 4 years ago. What a crock.
Reply
emayekayee

I love how 24 FPS is suddenly "cinematic" when in any other gaming context, the correct phrasing would be "slide show" :rolleyes:
Reply
Dr3ams

You'll need an M4 Max to play at higher resolutions or for better image quality.
Or, you could just not buy a Mac.
Reply
wicked-warlock

Not sure why they didn't use the 40GPU. The CPU isn't the issue. It is the integrated GPU.

My only complaint, is my mobile Asus 17" Rog Strix 2k 4080 laptop and Razor Blade 16" 4k 2024 4090 dies on max settings in about an hour on battery. No one ever talks about that.
Reply
razor512

Often the weird comparisons to high end GPUs are based on weird of obscure use cases, e.g., there may be one specific calculation where it performs similarly. Outside of that, the claims were always seen as meaningless considering that they never. Made a breakthrough in GPU compute efficiency compared to Nvidia and AMD.
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ezst036

This is really bad.

If I'm reading this correctly, the M3 are basically at 2080 levels of performance.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cyberpunk-2077-pc-benchmarks-settings-performance-analysis
The M4s are basically 3080 levels - this is impressive for onboard video to be sure but its a very far cry from the promises that Apple made where an M4 was said to be faster than an Nvidia RTX 6090. (Yes, I put a six.)

I suspect that the only things M chips are competing against effectively are AMD's and Intel's onboard video offerings. I would like to see that in a comparison. M4 vs AMD Ryzen 350 AI or whatever the high end halo chip was.
Reply
Matrix8000

How would an M4 compete with a 600w, 5090 behemoth? Some common sense here guys. It’s like asking a laptop speaker to have more bass than a 100lb, 16” subwoofer.

I have a 3090, but play on my PS5 Pro. It’s more comfortable in my home theater.
Reply
joey121215

So basically it runs worse on a brand new Mac than it runs on my nearly 5 year old PC that was cheaper?
Reply
jlake3

Matrix8000 said:
How would an M4 compete with a 600w, 5090 behemoth? Some common sense here guys. It’s like asking a laptop speaker to have more bass than a 100lb, 16” subwoofer.

I have a 3090, but play on my PS5 Pro. It’s more comfortable in my home theater.
It’s implausible for an APU to compete with a flagship GPU that has more transistors and more power budget to put into graphics, but with the M1 generation Apple themselves came out and claimed the M1 Ultra was faster than the “Highest-end discrete GPU” (which at the time would have been the RTX 3090). That seems to have created an association in everyone’s mind between the top Apple Silicon and the top Nvidia product that Apple has not been able to shake.

https://i0.wp.com/9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2022/03/Apples-M1-Ultra-GPU-comparison-with-Nvidia-was-misleading.jpg?w=1500&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1
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