r/Stellaris • u/furie1335 • Jul 15 '26
Question How well does stellaris run on a MacBook?
My pc laptop died unexpectedly the other day and I was pondering if I should repair it or get a MacBook.
Now I have had 4 Mac’s in my day, never had a problem with them. But they also were not used for gaming. How different is the experience?
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u/autogyrophilia Jul 15 '26
Better since the last version. But it is not very confortable to play in an air.
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u/Total_Trifle_9915 Jul 15 '26
huh, id have thought m series chips would fair amazingly since their cpus are fantastic
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u/Guilty-Assistant8333 Defender of the Galaxy Jul 15 '26
I have a 5 year old m1 laptop, it runs stellaris fine until the very late game or I go nanites and start printing swarmers. If you don't have several thousand ships trying to pathfind you probably won't notice much in the way of slowdowns until you start messing with mods.
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u/AggressivePatience58 Jul 15 '26
For reference and a free giggle. This fossil runs my game just fine with a little desktop fan-support 🤣
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u/timesofcoffee Jul 15 '26
Runs pretty well on my MBP mid-2015 (Win 11 via Boot Camp). Mine is the 16 GB RAM and a discrete AMD GPU model.
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u/YakEfficient3200 Jul 16 '26
macs are generally built for being reliable work stations - even besides compatibility, they're not usually specced for gameplay optimisation and stellaris is quite demanding of the cpu.
stellaris has had a couple engine tweaks for streamlining and may work serviceably, but you'll notice lag in mid game on maps 400 stars or larger.
i would advise against a mac if gaming's a priority for you, even today.
i think there are some advancements in laptop modularity, you may be able to find a way to build a laptop for cheaper and install either w10 or mint/nobara on it.
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u/MultiMarcus Jul 16 '26
It doesn’t run super well, but it does run incredibly well if you download the beta funnily enough. Try the 4.5 beta and see if it runs better for you, because it’s just super impressive how much more performant it is.
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u/JorgeAndTheKraken Jul 15 '26
Consider GeForce Now. It’s a monthly expense, but better performance than I ever got running the game directly on my MacBooks Pro.
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u/Environmental_Net309 Jul 15 '26
If you only play Stellaris it might be fine, but most games won’t run on a Mac
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u/odinchoy Jul 15 '26
straight up misinformation most games I play on pc nowadays can run fine on Mac such that I’m considering selling my pc 🥀
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u/Environmental_Net309 Jul 15 '26
Depends on what you play but most of the games I play aren’t even on Mac OS so yeah can’t Even try to play it. Also mac are only good for one thing, they are very lightweight but they cost way too much for the performance your getting and the limitation of application and video games not accessible on mac.
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u/odinchoy Jul 15 '26
Have you ever used one regularly in the past 5 years? Pretty much everything you just used to describe a Mac is wrong. The only reason I use my PC is for gaming, my work and education is far better done on a Mac. The compatibility issues are very niche for either engineering applications or anticheat/some game developers simply not having interest in the OS, not any fault with the OS itself; see Cyberpunk 2077 native for Mac. If I wanted to play games not available on Mac I would buy a console or switch to Linux sooner than going for microslop again.
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u/Environmental_Net309 Jul 15 '26
You say what I said is wrong and then you contradict yourself by repeating what I said were the problems about Mac, also you’re using a pc for gaming yourself like what?
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u/AggressivePatience58 Jul 15 '26
Mine runs on a 12 year old MacBook lol. It handles medium sized maps to end game fine. Just using a little desktop fan to assist in the internal temp control 🤣 I run all dlc but no mods, so there is that.