Cyberpunk 2077 Mac DF Review - Mac Mini/MacBook Pro/Mac Studio Tested - PC Perf Comparisons + More!

Cyberpunk 2077 is a massive game and now it's finally out on Macs. Nearly 5 years on from its original release, CD Project Red has delivered a version of the RPG Epic for Apple Silicon Mac computers and they promise ray tracing support and advanced metal effects features. So, how does the sci-fi adventure hold up on Apple's current gen computer lineup? and what should gamers expect in performance and stability. [Music] Out of the box, the Mac version of Cyberpunk 2077 is fairly straightforward. The game boots without issue on my M4 Max MacBook Pro, and it presents a settings menu that is essentially identical to the PC version of the game. There are very few items of note here except for the presence of Apple's Metal Effects Temporal Upscaler, which is available here alongside the analytically based FSRs 2.1 and 3.0. The game supports any M series Mac chip with at least 16 GB of RAM, so no 8 GB machines or Intel-based Macs. I'm testing three machines today, including a lower-end M4 Mac Mini and an M4 Max MacBook Pro and M3 Ultra Mac Studio. in essentially maxed out configurations. When you load your first save, the game seems to undergo a rapid burn of shader compilation. As we can observe using the detailed Mac OS 26 Metal Performance HUD, the number of compiled shaders explodes during the first load here on a fresh Mac OS 26 install. And during gameplay, there's very little apparent shader compilation activity. Loading another save in a different segment of the world fires up another round of shader burn and shader compilation while in game is fairly limited. The game doesn't appear to suffer from shader compilation stutter during gameplay. So this solution seems pretty effective. I ran Cyberpunk under Mac OS 15.5 for the testing in this video, but I did dip into Mac OS 26 beta 3 to surface some of these metrics. By default, the game kicks you into the for this Mac graphics preset, which changes graphical settings based on the chip you're using. For the M4 Max, we're essentially getting ultra settings at 1440p with Metal Effects as the upscaler of choice. Dynamic resolution scaling is enabled to balance GPU load against a 60fps frame rate target. This default setting seems to work pretty well on the MacBook, generally logging a 60fps update without issue. There are some slightly concerning drops though during open world traversal where the game suffers from pronounced stutters for a few moments. Heavy combat moments can drag down the frame rate graph as well with brief but harsh tumbles down into the 50s. Lengthy stutters pop up in these sequences, too, which momentarily pause the action. I'm not sure exactly what's going on here. I did try changing the metal effects preset to performance to eliminate any DRS driven variants and that seemed to alleviate the issues to some degree, but I struggled to replicate the problems on a consistent enough basis to be sure. It's hard to tell exactly where these drops stem from because the game's GPU time readout in the middle performance HUD doesn't seem to correspond with actual in-game load. I wouldn't be too concerned generally speaking and I played through lengthy stretches of gameplay with no performance issues whatsoever, but you may not enjoy a totally faultless run of play here. Apple's Metal Effects temporal upscaler is key to the visual results we've achieved as it's a very capable upscaling solution for this title. Raw Metal Effects resolution metrics are a perfect match for AMD's FSR scaling presets and line up closely with Nvidia's DLSS presets as well. Using metal effects with DRS appears to expose a wider range compared to the presets with a floor at 50% axis res and a ceiling at 80% axis res in my testing at 1440p. If we compare Metal Effects down the preset ladder, we're looking at a near doubling of performance going from native 4K with TAA to Metal Effects quality with the performance preset yielding about a 130% bump in frame rates. 1440p carries somewhat less compelling boosts. topping out at roughly double the performance with the largest scaling factor. Metal effects should yield some satisfying outcomes here, especially towards the higher end of the resolution range. Image quality comparisons prove quite compelling for Metal Effects. FSR3 is easily conquered here at 1440p resolution with performance mode upscaling with less troublesome breakup and discclusion when propelled forward through the environment. Curiously though, it actually compares somewhat favorably to Transformer model DLSS on PC, producing a more stable, though softer image in this driving sequence. Slower traversal, though exposes more of that Metal FX softness, and shimmering issues tend to be fairly obvious on both machines. Our prior tests found that Metal Effects is competitive with PC ML-based upscalers, and that trend is broadly holding true here. Unfortunately, that isn't quite true when the game's lighting is path- traced. RT Overdrive tends to be pretty messy using metal effects on our MacBook. While the LSS4 ray reconstruction manages to clean up the image effectively, the splotchy, shimmery reflections on the lobby floor in this shot reflect the disadvantage Macs have without a ray reconstruction alternative. Image quality with ray reconstruction isn't perfect, but it's a far cry from the super resolutiononly solutions we would otherwise use. Apple is set to debut the metal effects dinoised upscaler in Mac OS 26 later this year, which replaces handtuned deninoisers with one machine learning based denoising pass. This will hopefully produce a more competitive visual result with the likes of DLSS ray reconstruction with which it shares a range of common inputs. The Mac version of Cyberpunk is a pretty solid experience on the MacBook Pro I've been testing so far in ways that aren't strictly performancedriven. HDR on the internal display, for instance, looks highly impactful with searing bright highlights and dimmed blacks. Mac OS does a superb job integrating HDR and SDR content in the same interface, something Windows doesn't really even attempt to manage. So, Cyberpunk can operate in HDR, while the rest of the OS looks perfectly fine mapped within a more limited, dimmer luminance space. No built-in Mac screen supports VRR, but the MacBook Pro does support Apple's prootion tech, which allows for different fixed refresh rates up to 120 Hz. I had no issue capping Cyberpunk to 30 FPS, 40 FPS, or 60 FPS through the in-game VSSync options, and those frame rates presented without frame time inconsistencies. Battery life on the MacBook Pro was pretty solid for a laptop under heavy gaming load, running for about an hour and 18 minutes on the default for this Mac settings with HDR enabled at max display brightness. That's a good result for a gaming laptop running at essentially full tilt. Most gaming laptops can't even supply full power to their GPU and CPU under battery, but the MacBook fully maintains its performance level, whether connected to the mains or running solo. That's driven by the impressive efficiency of Apple's SOC's. Under load, we're pulling about 55 watts at peak for the CPU, GPU, and Apple neural engine combined. It would be interesting to see these figures compared against AMD's stricks Halo, which adopts a similar power sipping system on a chip design. Apple is packing a 99.6Wh battery that's calibrated right to the FAA 100Wh limit. So, this is about as good as it gets for Mac staying power. Cyberpunk on the Mac also packs support for Apple's spatial audio with headtracking tech, which is exclusive to Apple's AirPods headphones and earphones. Though I didn't have the opportunity to give this a try. As an overall experience on a high-end Mac, I'm pretty satisfied with Cyberpunk 2077. It's a well done port that doesn't step into prior Mac port pitfalls, and it comes packed with plenty of Apple specific technology to justify its place on the Mac platform. But we do need to test performance a little more thoroughly to see how Apple's Macs fare against popular PC chips in the Windows ecosystem. We have three Macs to test today. Two representing the high-end of Apple's current gen offerings and one more characteristic of its lower-end parts. The M4 Max and M3 Ultra in the MacBook Pro and Mac Studio are those higherend chips. And the M3 Ultra ends up beating its weaker counterpart by 35% to 41% in these tests across ultra settings and RT overdrive, falling to about 23% in Ultra RT. Despite its name, the M3 Ultra was actually introduced after the M4 Max and consists of two M3 Max chips connected over a silicon interposer. Apple has indicated they may be skipping an ultra chip for the M4 generation. So, this is probably going to stand as the fastest Apple chip available for some time to come. If we add the Mac Mini to the mix, we're logging a performance level that is very good for an iGPU, but is a small fraction of the throughput of the larger chips. The Mac Mini has about a quarter of the M4 Max's GPU resources and comes in at about a quarter of its frame rate in these tests. The M4 Max MacBook Pro's closest PC competition in this game is probably the RTX 4060, which trades blows with it in our raster only ultra benchmarking. Though, keep in mind the MacBook Pro is managing with a small fraction of the RTX 4060's 115W TDP. It's a pretty impressive accomplishment for such a low power chip operating in the spelt MacBook chassis. These PC settings do appear to match their Mac counterparts. So, these should be like forl like tests. When we dial in rate tracing though, the M4 Max starts to trail the RTX 4060 a little bit. It's not a huge deficit, but it is noticeable. M3 Ultra falls somewhere between the 4060 and 5060Ti in matched raster tests at ultra settings. Closer to the 4060, but still straddling the two cards. But when we throw ray tracing into the mix, it drops a little again and falls into lock step with the 4060. This is a pretty comfortable level of performance for rasterized cyberpunk. And I wouldn't expect any real issues with reasonable settings. The Mac Mini proves a bit of a trickier prospect. Measured against a relatively weak modern discrete GPU, the AMD RX6600, it falls substantially behind. The difference between the cards is actually a bit larger with ray tracing, which perhaps suggests a persistent Mac OS deficit here given the relative weakness of RDNA2's RT acceleration. But compared to something like a Steam Deck, which has integrated graphics and is more in line with the power consumption of an M4 chip, the M4 scores a superior result with 47% better performance in this raster benchmark. Your point of reference matters a lot here, but compared to most PC integrated graphics, I suspect the M4 will fare just fine. I think the Mac port of Cyberpunk 2077 is quite good. Barring some hard to reproduce initial hitches, it runs smoothly, is easy to understand and configure, and supports key Apple tech like Metal Effects upscaling. This is definitely one of the best AAA ports to Mac OS I've seen. Evaluating the PC performance comparison is a little tricky. In a lot of benchmarks, higherend Mac GPU hardware lands somewhere around the 70 series Nvidia products, sometimes even reaching the 80 series chips. That's especially true in productivity tasks or in more synthetic rendering tests, but performance in actual retail games tends to slip a little, often closer to lower-end desktop kit and mid-range laptop parts. This is something I hope to test more thoroughly in the near future. But relative to PC parts, power efficiency is highly impressive, and Mac hardware can squeeze into relatively slim enclosures with minimal thermal load and fan noise. Getting full performance on battery and well over an hour of gaming time under load at max brightness is something the MacBook Pro can deliver, and most gaming laptops can't. Plus, the Mac carries a console-like simplicity that is reassuring. There are no driver updates to contend with. There's no need to worry about some obscure parts combination that could cause headaches, and Macs have highquality built-in displays that are perfectly calibrated to the needs of the operating system and games. Apple eliminates a lot of the troubleshooting that Windows PC users are probably used to, which leaves more time to actually enjoy software. So, I'm relatively pleased with the overall experience of playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Macs. If you have the kit, this is a pretty solid iteration of Cyberpunk. If you enjoyed this video, please like, subscribe, and press the bell for YouTube notifications. Check out the Patreon at digitalfoundry.net for exclusive and early access content, and to get in touch, use social media. Thanks for watching.

Cyberpunk 2077 remains prolific five years on from its original release, with Switch 2 and now Apple Mac versions arriving. A visual benchmark in many ways and a literal benchmark in terms of hardware testing, we were extremely eager to put CD Projekt RED's latest port to the test. Oliver checks out the game running across the stack of the latest Apple Silicon, from M4-powered Mac Mini through to the mighty M3 Ultra in Mac Studio. And of course, we have the PC performance comparisons you may have been looking for... Many thanks to Apple for supplying the test hardware. Correction: there is an issue with the game's Mac presets that caused the "Psycho" reflections setting to be mistakenly enabled on Mac for the non-ray traced Mac/PC Ultra performance comparisons. We regret the error. Join the DF Supporter Program for pristine video downloads, behind the scenes content, early access to new videos, early access to DF Direct Weekly and much, much more: https://bit.ly/3jEGjvx Go here to check out DF merch! https://store.digitalfoundry.net Subscribe for more Digital Foundry: http://bit.ly/DFSubscribe 00:00 Overview 00:36 Configuration and shader management 02:29 M4 Max MacBook Pro performance 03:32 MetalFX upscaling comparisons 06:01 Other factors: HDR, FPS capping, battery life, and efficiency 08:34 Mac performance face-off and PC comparisons 11:35 Analysis and conclusion