Borderlands 4 might be the best-looking game from the series, but an upgrade in visuals is a double-edged sword, meaning, in this case, you will require exceptionally powerful and pricey hardware to obtain acceptable framerates. In our previous testing, the beefy RTX 5090 cannot even manage 60FPS at the native 4K resolution, so what hope could Apple’s portable M4 MacBook Air have in running the game? One courageous individual took the leap of faith, but after checking out the results, you should probably stay away from adopting the same approach.
One Redditor was brave enough to run Borderlands 4 on his M4 MacBook Air using CrossOver, but only managed 10FPS during combat
Even though Apple continues to clamor that it is widely adopting gaming on its Macs powered by the company’s in-house silicon, it will take a while before a massive library of games are available for the platform. During this time, Mac owners rely on software such as CrossOver, which is a Windows compatibility layer that helps users run applications programmed to run on Microsoft’s desktop operating system, including Borderlands 4.
One Redditor who goes by the handle ‘Ialsofuckedyourdad’ demonstrated why it is a terrible idea to fire up the AAA title on something like the M4 MacBook Air, because in the post below, he reveals that the portable Mac was getting around 10FPS in combat, and around 20FPS indoors. We could not get a look at the graphics settings, but we are confident that the M4 MacBook Air was running Borderlands 4 at the lowest visual options.
In the replies, one Redditor managed to get the game running at the ‘high’ graphics preset and managed to get 60FPS, but that was with the M4 Max coupled with 48GB of unified RAM, which costs a decent chunk of change. The M4 MacBook Air also does not have an active cooling solution and relies on a fanless heatsink, with the bottom cover acting as a heat spreader, so it is no surprise that the machine would easily thermal throttle when running Borderlands 4.
Thankfully, there are a ton of titles that you can initiate using CrossOver for playing AAA games on your M4 MacBook Air, and if Borderlands 4 struggles to output respectable framerates on dedicated hardware, then it is an optimization problem that needs to be addressed by the developers.
News Source: Reddit
About the author: Omar Sohail is a reporter and analyst for Wccftech's mobile section, specializing in the technology and business of the mobile industry. His expertise lies in the intricate hardware supply chain, covering developments in semiconductor manufacturing, chip lithography, and camera sensor technology.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
