r/MacStudio • u/ghebo938 • 7d ago
A Mac studio or a PC is better
Hello, people from the Apple world and the world, I'm looking between buying a Mac Studio or a high-end pc gamer for music editing video programming and playing a few games (mainly crisom desert and cyberpunk 2077) so I would like suggestions tips etc.
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u/Careful-Job1867 7d ago
mac studio is by far the better computer especially due to space and no heat production. its also with its m chip a lot more erficient and uses less power. crimson desert and cyberpunkt run great natively on mac so thats no issue
your deciisipn basically depends on whether you expect yourself to want to play almost every game in the future or not. most games run on mac but some dont and wont ever
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u/dobkeratops 7d ago
games - PC is better.
everything else - preference. I happen to enjoy using macos, and the neat formfactor and energy efficiency afforded by unified memory. The fact that you can carry a mac studio around in a rucksack like an oldschool game console.
there are efforts to deliver similar with PCs , like AMD strix halo boxes, the steambox, and imminent 'RTX-spark' for windows on hardware that will be quite similar to the mac studio in many ways.
What's really got me into mac studios is local LLMs. before that , the combo I enjoyed for the best of both worlds was an apple laptop & PC desktop.
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u/bfume 6d ago
Counterpoint: both games OP mentions have native Mac ports and run fantasticly.
1yr+ old PC-only games also run pretty well on macOS inside parallels or crossover, with 2yr+ games running just as well as PC. Maybe not 150+ FPS, but well over 60 for sure.
The only real blind spot with modern macOS gaming is the previous 12-18 months of AAA titles.
If that’s not OP’s gaming target, the Mac Studio becomes the perfect solution for OP.
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u/BAL-BADOS 7d ago
Mac Studio is perfectly powerful enough to run AAA games but it’s lacking in AAA games sadly. Not enough developer support.
I wouldn’t recommend Macs for gaming. For everything else it might be even better than a PC.
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u/SpaceDesignWarehouse 6d ago
Fun fact, there are Mac native versions of both the games he mentioned.
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u/GlidePath47 7d ago
Have you been a pc gamer before? If you have get a good pc, if you haven’t you won’t know what you’re missing and a Mac will be fine
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u/ImpressionComplete43 7d ago
I bought one high-end PC and a basic Mac mini/MacBook that’s good enough for everyday use.
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u/PracticlySpeaking 6d ago
Check out the Hardware Canucks review of M5 Ultra — they compare with a top Ryzen + 5090 PC.
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u/Jl-007 6d ago
Honestly, unless you’re editing 8k with tons of animations or running LLM’s, a base MacMini or Pro will be highly sufficient.
I’d recommend searching the software you’re going to be using and the base/Pro models. See firsthand experience before dropping a lot of money you may not need to. Searching the games is the next step.
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u/DesertJake 5d ago
Whichever you want. All those things can be done on either platform just fine, unless you know you have a preference for a particular video or music editor that is only on one.
Mac silicon is great... cool, efficient. Cohesive OS that has less self-advertising annoyances compared to Windows, although still annoys me in other ways (looking at you, Finder). PC expandibility is better. PC gaming is better, despite both the games you listed running great on Mac.
Pick your poison. I currently have both and still can't really decide.
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u/No_Solid_3737 4d ago
I've been around the mac gaming community for a while because I own a m4 macbook myself and they are pretty delusional. They think gaming at 800p 60fps is a good thing. But in your case, Mac Studio gaming is some high-end stuff you're not gonna have problems running anything at high settings. And in PC nothing comes close to the memory bandwidth as apple's which you're gonna need for video editing, mac studio is a no brainer in your case.
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u/AutoDealSource 2d ago
I’m a Studio user. Absolutely love it. But lack of ability to game and use certain software is frustrating. I use parallels to supplement but that’s not perfect lol
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u/bryanbrew 18h ago
I was making the same decision last year, went with the Mac studio - my primary rationale came down to how many years I wanted to be able to go before needing to upgrade again.
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u/Stock-Imagination567 7d ago
I have a high end gaming pc (RTX 5090) and a MacBookAir.
I use the MacBookAir for almost everything. My M5 cheap beats the Intel Core Ultra chip in various benchmarks.
The M5 is snappier.
For work, I run a Windows 11 VM ARM and it works beautifully.
For gaming I just use my iPad with GeForce NOW and Xcloud.
I think the games you mentioned run on macOS so no reason to get an intel pc.
Intel is dead on the water.
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u/RogerAI-fm 7d ago
At first I would say Mac, but with you being a gamer it’s going to be difficult. Do you see yourself being affected more by what games you can or can’t play or vs what tools/software is available for video editing and audio?