I want to preface that my MacBook Pro 13″ was not the highest-end configuration. The system also came with a 13.3-inch built-in retina display at 2560 x 1600 resolution and 500GB of storage.

It came with the latest macOS Big Sur, Apple M1 processor, and 8GB of RAM. I used my new Apple MacBook Pro 13″ notebook for the full duration of my testing. I will add that the Apple M1-optimized software screamed and was performant. My recent testing of new, unreleased M1-optimized versions of Office 365 (sans Teams and OneDrive) and Edge reduced power draw and improved compatibility a lot. This review is a follow-up to my first review using the new M1 MacBook as my primary productivity tool for nearly a week, where I had a mixed experience with some productivity software titles. Therefore, I wanted to see how playable AAA games were on the new M1-based Mac, given the giant M1 GPU and its UMA architecture that should speed up memory reads and writes between CPU and GPU. I am confident the company is talking more about iOS developers’ games, but it did demonstrate AAA games like Tomb Raider, which led me to believe that AAA games were a target. Gaming has not been much of a focus for the Mac operating system, but it has been a significant point of success for Apple on iOS. At Apple’s WWDC and Mac product launch, gaming (game/games/gaming) was cited 23 times, so I believe Apple intended to create a good gaming experience.

My expectations for AAA gaming on any 13″ notebook with integrated graphics are low for any IGP notebook brand.

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