Testing Cyberpunk 2077 On Our M4 Max-Powered Mac Studio

Last month, Cyberpunk 2077 officially made its Mac debut on all Apple Silicon-powered models, so all users on modern-day Macs can now experience this blockbuster regardless of which form factor you currently have. That said, this does pose the age-old question: how good does it run on Apple’s hardware? Here’s our findings.

Cyberpunk 2077 On Mac: What’s Different?

The Mac-specific version of CP2077 does have some unique features like MetalFX upscaling support, but functionally they’re identical to PC’s equivalents in the form of NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR or Intel XeSS. The game also introduces “For This Mac” preset under its graphics settings, but other than that, what you see in PCs is what you get in Macs.

As a reminder, you do not need to purchase the game separately on Macs – if you already own a copy on one of the existing PC storefronts (GOG Galaxy, Steam, or Epic Games Store), simply download the store client in the Mac and you’re all set. Alternatively, you can also purchase the game directly on Mac App Store.

Benchmarks & Testing

For our testing, we use our own Apple Mac Studio with the latest M4 Max chipset inside. It’s one of the most powerful Apple Silicon Macs currently available, so this should give a good indication on the upper end of CP2077’s performance potential in Mac-powered devices. We’ll also be comparing it against PC, courtesy of our benchmark system with the parts specified as follows:

Specs	Mac Studio (Our unit)	PC (Our benchmark system)
CPU	Apple M4 Max 16-core 12P+4E, Arm-based	Intel Core i9-13900K 8P+16E, x86-based
GPU	Apple M4 Max 40-core 5,120 ALUs	ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 5060 Ti OC 16GB 4,608 CUDAs / 16GB GDDR7
RAM	128GB unified memory LPDDR5X-8533	ADATA XPG CASTER DDR5 32GB (2x16GB), 6400MT/s CL32
Operating System	macOS 15.5 Sequoia	Windows 11 Home 24H2

In the case of our Mac Studio, the game’s optimized preset settles on a setting mostly identical to Ultra preset, with a few exceptions – resolution is locked at 1440p, VSync is on (locked to 60FPS), while the upscaling method uses Apple’s MetalFX upscaling algorithm, with Dynamic Resolution Scaling as its upscaling method to prioritize framerate stability.

So let’s start by looking at Cyberpunk 2077’s performance on the M4 Max-powered Mac Studio – we’ll talk about the PC comparisons later on. As a reference point, ‘For This Mac’ preset unsurprisingly gives us a very stable 60 FPS at 1440p resolution, as seen below.

We also found out that by removing the FPS limit with the same settings, the framerate rises slightly to 75 FPS average, with 64 FPS low and 91 FPS high. Throughout our testing, we found that the game very much needs upscaling in order to reliably hit 60 FPS target at 1440p resolution. Here’s all the numbers all laid out:

Display Resolution / Graphics Quality	Upscaling Preset	Average FPS (Min/Max)
2560 x 1440 For This Mac	MetalFX Dynamic Resolution Scaling 50-80% scaling factor, 60FPS target	60.0 59.2 / 60.8
2560 x 1440 For This Mac (VSync off)	MetalFX Dynamic Resolution Scaling 50-80% scaling factor, VSync off	75.3 64.1 / 90.8
2560 x 1440 For This Mac	AMD FSR3 Quality 67% (effective 1707 x 960)	94.2 78.4 / 116.4
2560 x 1440 For This Mac	AMD FSR3 Native AA Native Resolution	55.6 47.8 / 65.6
2560 x 1440 Ultra	MetalFX Quality 67% (effective 1707 x 960)	71.3 61.6 / 87.4
2560 x 1440 Ultra	AMD FSR3 Quality 67% (effective 1707 x 960)	72.2 61.7 / 90.3
2560 x 1440 Ultra	AMD FSR3 Native AA Native Resolution	38.3 30.0 / 60.2
1920 x 1080 Ultra	AMD FSR3 Native AA Native Resolution	64.4 55.8 / 81.7

Of course, since new Apple Silicon GPUs today support Ray Tracing, you can also enable this graphical setting in-game as well. Here are the results:

Display Resolution / Graphics Quality	Upscaling Preset	Average FPS (Min/Max)
2560 x 1440 Ray Tracing: Low	MetalFX Automatic	73.6 61.1 / 90.2
2560 x 1440 Ray Tracing: Low	AMD FSR3 Quality 67% (effective 1707 x 960)	64.5 53.7 / 79.1
2560 x 1440 Ray Tracing: Overdrive	MetalFX Automatic	23.7 19.9 / 30.2
1920 x 1080 Ray Tracing: Overdrive	MetalFX Automatic	31.2 26.6 / 35.8
1920 x 1080 Ray Tracing: Overdrive	AMD FSR3 Automatic FSR3.1 Frame Generation enabled	59.4 51.0 / 68.0
1920 x 1080 Ray Tracing: Medium	AMD FSR3 Quality 67% (effective 1707 x 960)	66.4 56.0 / 79.5

There’s one thing we should mention and it’s Frame Generation. While none of the graphical presets enable this feature by default, it is available if you need it to boost framerates – in theory. Our observation saw what looked to be a potential bug that didn’t end up actually applying frame generation despite the game claiming as such, but realistically you shouldn’t enable this feature unless you’re targeting 120 FPS or greater, since the latency will be too high in low native framerate situations, affecting the gaming experience.

That being said, the RT performance is not yet indicative of M4 Max’s true potential. Apple is set to release MetalFX Denoising and MetalFX Frame Interpolation – both native implementations of ray tracing and frame generation technologies that will likely improve graphical quality while providing additional performance improvements.

Mac vs PC

We’re also comparing the Mac Studio against our benchmark system with identical settings, to see how good Macs are for gaming when it comes to performance. Do note that we opted for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB as our PC’s GPU for a specific reason: in order to eliminate the possibility of VRAM limitations, we want to pick a GPU with 16GB of video memory to ensure PCs don’t get bottlenecked.

In the current RTX 50 series (and AMD’s Radeon RX 9000 series), we found the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB to be the cheapest available offering with 16GB VRAM onboard, while its performance are relatively close to what we expect from M4 Max silicon. So here are our results:

Display Resolution / Graphics Quality	Upscaling Preset	Mac Studio Average FPS (Min/Max)	PC Bench Average FPS (Min/Max)
2560 x 1440 Ultra	AMD FSR3 Native AA Native Resolution	38.3 30.0 / 60.2	52.7 46.7 / 68.1
2560 x 1440 Ultra	AMD FSR3 Quality 67% (effective 1707 x 960)	72.2 61.7 / 90.3	101.8 88.0 / 124.1
1920 x 1080 Ultra	AMD FSR3 Native AA Native Resolution	64.4 56.0 / 79.5	89.7 77.8 / 112.4
1920 x 1080 Ray Tracing: Medium	AMD FSR3 Quality 67% (effective 1707 x 960)	66.4 56.0 / 79.5	104.3 91.5 / 119.8

While the RTX 5060 Ti representing PCs pull out a convincing win over the Mac Studio, there’s one thing Macs are especially good at these days – power efficiency. We measured the power draw of both system during testing via a power meter, which measures the socket power draw, not the inherent power draw of the components themselves. Still, tests reveal just how little power the Mac Studio consumes while being not far behind the PC system’s performance:

That’s less than one-third the power required for two-thirds the performance, which I have to say, a very good showing on Mac’s part when it comes to the sheer power efficiency of these unified silicons.

Our Takeaway

All things considered, gaming on a Mac isn’t as far fetched of an idea as it used to be, and the latest debut of Cyberpunk 2077 on Macs definitely proves that. That said, you must keep your expectations reasonable in regards of performance; if you’re coming from consoles like PlayStation and Xbox, the experience on Macs should be somewhat similar.

Of course, if you want the most complete experience, a PC may still be the way to go, especially in the graphics department. Windows-based PCs also offer a more mature platform for games, but it’s something that Apple can catch up over long term if they’re willing to keep investing into the ecosystem – though they won’t be the only one sharing the pie as Linux, with the likes of SteamOS under its belt, is attracting gamers in recent years as well.