MacBook Air M2 Performance

[Tenets.]

How about people, (at least from what I have been reading from the net) running this game "buttery smooth" on this system? (MBA M2 16GB and upwards in terms of specs)

i currently own a standard MacBook Air M2 16GB 256GB and am only getting at best(in some isolated areas) 40 FPS in act 1 with every single setting turned down and off.
Some of the things I've read is some people have more or less the same specs as me or lower but able to tune the settings to medium or so.

Even though they never mentioned FPS, but them claiming "buttery smooth" should AT LEAST be 30FPS.

What's up with that? Are they just exaggerating or have I somehow missed some important detail here?

[Thomas D.]

Plenty of people consider (at least constant) 40 FPS as buttery smooth, especially when its a slow paced round based game and especially if you think you made a great deal with buying a Mac for gameing...

And I guess you still can change the details on a Mac, dont you? Some might even reduce the details or never increase them to begin with.

But plenty of people will definetly exaggerate what their MacBooks can do, you literally can see it everywhere, but the reality just often doesnt match the exaggeration. Similar to console players that think that their (compared to PC) lowend spec beats gameing PCs. Like those that believed a few years ago for example that their XBox360 / PS3 for example could handle Full HD while they often even couldnt handle rendering in 720P in reality 🤣.

You for sure cant expect the same performance like a dedicated gameing PC and / or in general highend PC. If it runs at medium settings with mediocre amount of FPS you should be lucky, that it even runs that good.

Also on which resolution are you playing (real resolution, the one you couldnt even change in Mac 🤣 at least in I guess it was Ventura). Especially if you have a high resolution display this could explain it, while others might have a low resolution display.

Further considering it is a MacBook, probably one that is at least 1 or 2 years old: maybe your cooling isnt that good anymore (dirt / dust for example). In this case your system might end up running slower than some other systems.

[Tenets.]

Originally posted by Thomas D.:

Plenty of people consider (at least constant) 40 FPS as buttery smooth, especially when its a slow paced round based game and especially if you think you made a great deal with buying a Mac for gameing...

And I guess you still can change the details on a Mac, dont you? Some might even reduce the details or never increase them to begin with.

But plenty of people will definetly exaggerate what their MacBooks can do, you literally can see it everywhere, but the reality just often doesnt match the exaggeration. Similar to console players that think that their (compared to PC) lowend spec beats gameing PCs. Like those that believed a few years ago for example that their XBox360 / PS3 for example could handle Full HD while they often even couldnt handle rendering in 720P in reality 🤣.

You for sure cant expect the same performance like a dedicated gameing PC and / or in general highend PC. If it runs at medium settings with mediocre amount of FPS you should be lucky, that it even runs that good.

Also on which resolution are you playing (real resolution, the one you couldnt even change in Mac 🤣 at least in I guess it was Ventura). Especially if you have a high resolution display this could explain it, while others might have a low resolution display.

Further considering it is a MacBook, probably one that is at least 1 or 2 years old: maybe your cooling isnt that good anymore (dirt / dust for example). In this case your system might end up running slower than some other systems.

I certainly think that's the case, that they are making stuff up. "Buttery smooth" at the expense of making the game look like total crap does not exactly make for a marginally enjoyable experience when every character and enviromental detail look jagged, blurred and looks like a 2002 game.

From a technical standpoint, there's no real remedy it seems, to further tune anything downwards to further increase FPS on my system aside from some superficial remedies like,(I mean i get that they help sometimes) 'lower details, update your MacOS, keep your system cool when playing'

[Thomas D.]

Just look at this: https://doesitarm.com/game/baldurs-gate-3/benchmarks/
Runs horrible on a 8 GB M2: stuttering.

Lowered details (so I guess below of 8GB RAM usage, otherwise it would also stuttert) but still below 40 FPS (on lowered settings, especially with enabled FSR which reduces the resolution).

So it seems thats it...