Can the Air M4 run Crysis? Seriously :)

[Gill Bates]

Thinking about getting an Air M4 with 10-core gpu, to replace my old good but big and noisy desktop windows PC.

I have played the game Crysis on/off since it was launched in 2007. Love that game

Do you think I can play Crysis on an Air M4 and have decent framerate etc.? (80-120 fps). Has anyone here tried?

I heard the M1 did it "almost okay" but far from great. But now we have M4 and better graphics performance

 

[uacd]

Gotta be honest: I don’t know since I haven’t done any game testing on my M1 Air.

BUT. Since Crysis (classic question: “but can it run Crysis?” ) is quite an old game, it should run at 60FPS on Windows 11 Parallels VM. Do not ever try Crossover since it will fry your mac, I’ve tried it back in the days and it produced way more heat vs dedicated Parallels VM.

Beware that you might have to play at lower resolution than the one of Mac’s display (720p or 1080p).

After all, if I was able to finish FarCry 3 at low settings, 1080p 30fps on my late iMac 2012 on Parallels, and it was much newer game, why Crysis shouldn’t run on 2025 device with tons of RAM and state-of-the-art ARM GPU? I think it will work but you definitely need to find it out yourself.

Btw, Stalker Call of Prypiat ran at solid 50FPS and high settings. Surprisingly very good gfx.

On the other hand, emulation will eat more resources than originally intended so it may be tricky.

My best advice would be not to get rid of your “noisy old PC”: leave it specifically in case you wanna play some games that don’t run well on Mac. But I think it should run!

 

[maflynn]

I did a bit of googling and I see that its running on a M1 MBA - not well but running in the mid 20 FPS range, you'll see a higher FPS with the M4, but given the passive cooling, I doubt you'll hit 60 FPS, but that's just a wild guess.

 

[Gill Bates]

I see, thanks
Hmm maybe I should keep my desktop rig and just get an ipad on the side instead

 

[maflynn]

I see, thanks
Hmm maybe I should keep my desktop rig and just get an ipad on the side instead

I can't tell you what to get, but if gaming is high on your list, then think about maybe a steam deck, or the gaming handhelds from Lenovo or Asus. You'll get native gaming, albeit in a smaller screen.

 

[Gill Bates]

I can't tell you what to get, but if gaming is high on your list, then think about maybe a steam deck, or the gaming handhelds from Lenovo or Asus. You'll get native gaming, albeit in a smaller screen.

I really want a Macbook Air M4
But not ready to give up gaming completly
I was hoping I could move forward from the desktop and still play Crysis casually once in a while..
Hey maybe I can.. I could try it out

 

[uacd]

I really want a Macbook Air M4
But not ready to give up gaming completly
I was hoping I could move forward from the desktop and still play Crysis casually once in a while..
Hey maybe I can.. I could try it out

I see, so you are thinking about iPad vs MacBook. Well, that’s a hard choice and I know it personally. Really depends on your use cases. If you are going to mainly have it as a leisure device (light gaming, photo & video storage+editing, watching movies etc) then iPad Air M3 might get you covered. But if you want “classic desktop” experience, for example if you type texts, do videoconferencing a lot, want some more freedom on what you can install and do with your machine, then maybe MBA M4 might be good.

Imo, since PC is still a PC, if I were you I would have upgraded it to max possible state that your current motherboard allows (max ram, newer GPU maybe, especially an SSD: a must-have!) and got an iPad, since it is more versatile and doesn’t need keyboard and touchpad to function, as well as iPadOS 26 looks very promising – preview app, new design, Mac-style multitasking

 

[Gill Bates]

I see, so you are thinking about iPad vs MacBook. Well, that’s a hard choice and I know it personally. Really depends on your use cases. If you are going to mainly have it as a leisure device (light gaming, photo & video storage+editing, watching movies etc) then iPad Air M3 might get you covered. But if you want “classic desktop” experience, for example if you type texts, do videoconferencing a lot, want some more freedom on what you can install and do with your machine, then maybe MBA M4 might be good.

Imo, since PC is still a PC, if I were you I would have upgraded it to max possible state that your current motherboard allows (max ram, newer GPU maybe, especially an SSD: a must-have!) and got an iPad, since it is more versatile and doesn’t need keyboard and touchpad to function, as well as iPadOS 26 looks very promising – preview app, new design, Mac-style multitasking

Yeah. I would also do some music making and production
I see that Logic Pro now exists for ipad, that's great
So if I can get an ipad going almost like a laptop then it would be great for on-the-road

My gaming PC is solid tho and doesn't need upgrades. I have even limited it so it stays at 120 fps and has very little heat/noise
That's one of the things I love about the Air.. no fan or noise
Maybe the M5 or M6 Air will have enough performance for some gaming so I can switch to that. It will happen some day!

 

[Plutonius]

I really want a Macbook Air M4
But not ready to give up gaming completly
I was hoping I could move forward from the desktop and still play Crysis casually once in a while..
Hey maybe I can.. I could try it out

Buy an M4 Air from Apple, install the Crossover trial and then try out the game. If the game doesn't perform to your satisfaction, just return the M4 Air with no questions asked.

Note - The m series shares memory so you will get better performance in Crossover games with more memory for graphics.

 

[Gill Bates]

How about this uacd said: "Do not ever try Crossover since it will fry your mac"? o.0
I assume it was some years ago
But surely a macbook can't fry from that since it has built in heat safety with downthrottling etc.?

 

[iRock1]

This might be useful to you (notice it's the 8-core GPU version though)

Since Crysis is a fairly old game at this point and the M4 can even run GTA V at around 60fps, I'd say it's perfectly fine for casual gaming (casual being the important word here).

 

[Regulus67]

This is a joke, but you might have a laugh (I hope)

 

[dmr727]

I assume it was some years ago
But surely a macbook can't fry from that since it has built in heat safety with downthrottling etc.?

I run Crossover to game on my M4 Air all the time. Hasn't fried itself yet!

 

[dmccloud]

How about this uacd said: "Do not ever try Crossover since it will fry your mac"? o.0
I assume it was some years ago
But surely a macbook can't fry from that since it has built in heat safety with downthrottling etc.?

uacd is way off base there. I can play Cyberpunk 2077 via Crossover without the system "frying", so Crysis shouldn't be an issue at all. Crossover also introduces far less system overhead than running Windows 11 in a virtual machine, which means more available system resources for the games themselves.

 

[JtheLemur]

Is it available on GeForceNow? If so, problem solved.

 

[macnavarra]

Prepare before you run! crysis on the Air M4, you should either Wash you're Hair and dry it with an hairdryer.