M3 MacBook Air 8GB: 9 games tested

Use the code WineNine for 24% off until 2nd March 2024!

Quick video showing MacBook Air with the new M3 chip playing various games. Is 8GB enough or should you upgrade?

Timestamps:
00:00 MacBook Air with new M3 chip
00:34 Resident Evil 4
01:27 Death Stranding
02:05 No Man's Sky
03:05 Baldur's Gate 3
04:41 Apple Arcade: BEAST, NBA2K24
05:43 FF7 Remake
06:55 GTA V
07:40 Thermals
08:10 8GB memory pressure
08:35 MacBook Air, can it game?

► Links:

►► Mac:
►► General:

► Windows gaming on Mac:

[poetic.voyage]

It would be really interesting to compare these results with a 16gb model.

[EyesOfByes]

My biggest wish is for GTA V to arrive on ARM at some point. The very single threaded game would run like a charm if it were ported like the older titles

[thewhitesaucecompany]

an iPad with a m series chip is now powerful enough to run gta v. If all companies decide to port their old games (specially pre 2014), iPad would be an absolute unit of a gaming device.

[MaschinenKopf]

I think 16GB shared memory could've helped tremendously.

[crazy]

i’d love to see more thermal tests on all the macbooks you test games on

[patrickthomalla]

Can’t wait for the Mac mini with an m3. Will definitely buy one

[LumpyMoose]

If you are a gamer or know anything about computers with shared memory architectures you should know that if you want to play games then 16gb ram min is a requirement. This isn’t a criticism of Apple choosing the base ram to be 8gb, as quite a lot of users that don’t push their machine won’t need more. If you know you need it, you know you need it.

[PieStudios]

If Apple wanted to be cheap they should at least give us 12GB

[blackninja]

thanks for the review! It's important to me to know that games work on the MacBook Air. This also shows what kind of performance the MacBook has, which is important in other applications. I also think it's great that you tested the 8GB RAM version because you can see what you get for the smallest amount of money spent and since my budget is small it was very important to me that the tests were done with the 8GB RAM version.

[kosta]

actually crazy this thing can do that. I have zero intent on using this for gaming but nice to know if I really REALLY wanted to I could. No need for that though as I have a beastly PC and a steam deck. Bought the base model m3 air for super basic use.

[nunuvyurbiz]

Sweet. I just ordered a 13” Air 24/1. If anything I might play BG3. You should retest with 16GB which will also come with a 10 core GPU, for a ~20% boost.

[SR-bukz]

Apple should give a shot at a gaming laptop

[rannim]

I legit ordered this MacBook it comes this week let’s go

[UshankaMaster]

the thermals are a huge surprise, insane

[a-alex-p]

I wish with M4 apple would start from 12GB of ram, its 50% more than 8GB and they certainly can do it(they sell 24GB variant, just halve it) Not everybody needs 16GB and 8GB is too less, so 12GB would be a nice middle ground. Only people who use their macbooks as chromebooks can live with 8GB but if you really want to use it then you need more RAM

[hacorn]

Dude gta is so op. That game is compatible everywhere. I played it first on my 2015 macbook pro (intel core i5 5th gen). Still worked well enough on lowest quality settings for me to finish the main story.

[STEX]

8gb ram in 2024 computers at 1000+ EUR is terribly ridiculous 😂 (and mbp 14” 8gb 2000+ is SUPER terribly ridiculous…!!) 👎🏻

[Scarhoof]

You should add Factorio to your list of games to benchmark. Download a huge factory and it will really tax the CPU.

[Johnston.Carliferanda]

Cool, though it looks like most of these games have their graphical fidelity scaled down. This was especially noticeable with No Man's Sky.

[adol__f]

Could you add to the tests snowrunner? It would be great)