Is the new Macbook Air M1 good for running CS with mods and assets?

[prasad.ravitej]

Around 1000 mods and assets. Most basic mods and some heavy assets. Please suggest if the Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 AMD Ryzen 7 5800H is a better option than Macbook Air. This is the only game I play, so wondering if the Air is better investment than a Gaming laptop.

[Verullus Forgefire]

Anything is better than a Mac for playing as they are not made for gaming..

[crowbar.mdl]

Originally posted by prasad.ravitej:

Around 1000 mods and assets. Most basic mods and some heavy assets. Please suggest if the Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 AMD Ryzen 7 5800H is a better option than Macbook Air. This is the only game I play, so wondering if the Air is better investment than a Gaming laptop.

Apple-products are not investments so youre better off buying anything else. Apple products are not good for anything except light browsing and maybe using certain productivity-software, like Adobe CC. There are much better options though, especially when your budget seems to be $1000 and you want to game on it or use some more specialized software, that wont ever run on a Macintosh.

Generally speaking, you should not get a laptop if you can use a desktop-PC instead.
The "Great" PC on <https://www.logicalincrements.com/> costs around $1000, but will provide much more value for your money.
Used monitors are quite cheap and shouldnt cost more than $50, although you can get very nice 1280x1024 ones for much less. I use a few myself and they provide much better productivity, as you have more vertical space, than horizontal. 16:9 monitors only make sense, if youre planning on watching many movies on the computer. Everything else is better in 5:4 or 4:3.

If you have to constantly shift around on a daily basis and absolutely cannot work without a laptop, because you have to fly on a daily basis or you are a perpetual-traveler, then I would recommend a laptop with a long battery-life, as "gaming-laptops" are a meme, since you wont be able to play for 10+ without having to charge it - thereby defeating the purpose of a laptop.

Since it seems, that youll mostly be gaming anyways, do yourself a favor and buy a desktop-PC.

[prasad.ravitej]

Originally posted by crowbar.mdl:

Originally posted by prasad.ravitej:

Around 1000 mods and assets. Most basic mods and some heavy assets. Please suggest if the Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 AMD Ryzen 7 5800H is a better option than Macbook Air. This is the only game I play, so wondering if the Air is better investment than a Gaming laptop.

Apple-products are not investments so youre better off buying anything else. Apple products are not good for anything except light browsing and maybe using certain productivity-software, like Adobe CC. There are much better options though, especially when your budget seems to be $1000 and you want to game on it or use some more specialized software, that wont ever run on a Macintosh.

Generally speaking, you should not get a laptop if you can use a desktop-PC instead.
The "Great" PC on <https://www.logicalincrements.com/> costs around $1000, but will provide much more value for your money.
Used monitors are quite cheap and shouldnt cost more than $50, although you can get very nice 1280x1024 ones for much less. I use a few myself and they provide much better productivity, as you have more vertical space, than horizontal. 16:9 monitors only make sense, if youre planning on watching many movies on the computer. Everything else is better in 5:4 or 4:3.

If you have to constantly shift around on a daily basis and absolutely cannot work without a laptop, because you have to fly on a daily basis or you are a perpetual-traveler, then I would recommend a laptop with a long battery-life, as "gaming-laptops" are a meme, since you wont be able to play for 10+ without having to charge it - thereby defeating the purpose of a laptop.

Since it seems, that youll mostly be gaming anyways, do yourself a favor and buy a desktop-PC.

Thanks for your reply. In my case, I won't be able to manage with a desktop PC as I will be moving around.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by prasad.ravitej:

Around 1000 mods and assets. Most basic mods and some heavy assets. Please suggest if the Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 AMD Ryzen 7 5800H is a better option than Macbook Air. This is the only game I play, so wondering if the Air is better investment than a Gaming laptop.

Is there a reason you need a Macbook Air? The M1 chips aren't well supported yet, they are a first gen chip and will need time to mature and gain support.

I have a 5700G desktop version of that chip and it plays very nicely with this game. However, you will be way better off with a laptop with a dedicated GPU with it's own memory.

What GPU comes wit the laptop? Also, memory will be important. 16GB would be minimum, but with 1,000+ workshop 32GB would be better supported.

The idea 3 may be a little thin. If you don't mind a heavier laptop, then the higher end gaming laptops are much better suited, as they have much better cooling to allow your system to maintain its performance over time. Most any GPU will be fine for this game, but other games would prefer a GTX 3060/RX 6600 or better.

Maybe link the laptop in question to better gauge if it will be fine or not.

[hjo]

A lot of people don't have any clue about the power of an M1 processor... I'm running CS on a MacBookPro with M1pro and 16MB RAM - it runs just perfect, no problems, better than any noisy window crap....

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by hjo:

A lot of people don't have any clue about the power of an M1 processor... I'm running CS on a MacBookPro with M1pro and 16MB RAM - it runs just perfect, no problems, better than any noisy window crap....

If you can do me a favor and load this city of mine? I want a better idea on getting an M1 mac vs waiting for the M2 Mac.

How long does a 24/hour day take to cycle. 10-seconds at x1 speed is default. Although I think I'm past that on windows. I think 30-seconds per 24/hour day at x1 speed.

How is memory usage?

Here is my city. It requires no workshop nor DLC, so it will load on any system:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=723204559

Thanks for any help.

[hjo]

@Mark: 21 seconds for one 24/hour day. CS utilizes 8 of 10 cores to the max, CPU usage is 53% user, 11% sys, 35% idle. PhysMem of course is used heavily ;): 14G used, 2G swap in use. The M1s are known for using swap very efficiently and handling swapped areas almost without any drawback (that's the reason I only choose the 16GB ram version - I never regret that decision). And for me the most important point: I'm running CS in absolute silence - no noisy vent on the lap, no air vertical for a gpu I don't need...

[MarkJohnson]

That is pretty good. I might wait for M2, I want more RAM. I like to use some workshop, but this game is very power hungry. I own all DLC, it can consume 40GB of memory with a few light apps open while I play without workshop. So adding more workshop will be a challenge, even with 32GB of RAM. Too bad the M1 doesn't come with dedicated GPU. It could get some memory back with video RAM.

Thank you for do these tests for me. I very much appreciate it. Hopefully M2 comes out for x-mass, then I might be able to pull the trigger and get one.

[hjo]

Yes, i know. I'm using all DLCs, too, and many workshop objects (although primary mods, not thousands of assets). But swapping is one of the major benefits of the new arm architecture. I never run in memory issues up to now, and CS isn't the most memory intensive application, I'm running ;) Of course the M2 is another level, but if you choose an actual M1 pro, I'm quite sure, that 16MB on the board is enough for almost all applications - at least for CS. And if you don't trust it, M1s with 32GB are also available ;)

[Intellection]

@Mark: For just another data point, I loaded your city up on my 32GB, M1 Pro, MacBook Pro with all my normal DLCs, assets, and mods. Loading Screen Mod reported 1:15 load time, the day cycle was 21 sec (same as hjo reported), memory use was 17.9 GB for C:S and total memory use for the entire system was at 26 GB.

[neodrew]

Originally posted by prasad.ravitej:

Around 1000 mods and assets. Most basic mods and some heavy assets. Please suggest if the Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 AMD Ryzen 7 5800H is a better option than Macbook Air. This is the only game I play, so wondering if the Air is better investment than a Gaming laptop.

I'm running CS with DLC and about 800 mods + assets on a 1st gen M1 Mac Mini with 16GB and it seems to be fine. Given that the mini and the Air have pretty much the same configuration, I'd expect similiar results on the Air. I DO think that the game would run much more smoothly and get a higher frame rate if I were playing on an MBP or Studio using a Pro, Max or Ultra version of the M1, but for my personal enjoyment of CS, the Mini is doing a good job.