Hands up who bought an Apple Macbook Neo thinking it would be a good option for playing PC games? Anyone? Well, if that was you, AMD just came out swinging to prove why you made a bad choice.
Testing 20 of the most popular PC games, AMD showed that the MacBook Neo was incapable of playing 15 of them, or more specifically, that only five of them could run natively on the Apple machine. Meanwhile, a budget Windows laptop, powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 220, is able to run all 20.
The astonishing revelation was made as part of an “Unleash Your Potential with Ryzen AI Processors” promotion, currently showing on the company’s website. Under the heading “The Competition Made Compromises. You Don’t Have To” AMD leads front and center with its point about gaming performance, pointing out that “While 15 of the top 20 PC games do not run on Macbook Neo natively, AMD systems give you access to massive game libraries across Steam, Epic Games Store, and PC Game Pass.”
The full list of games isn’t given, but a screenshot next to the text shows thumbnails for Hollow Knight: Silksong, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Dune Awakening, Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Elden Ring Nightreign, Civ 7, Arc Raiders, Borderlands 4, Schedule 1, and Battlefield 6. If those are some of the tested games, and the ones AMD has chosen to highlight, it’s an odd choice given how many more popular games there are, but nonetheless is a strong list of games many of us wouldn’t like to miss out on.
That said, nothing about the Macbook Neo has ever really screamed “suitable for PC gaming.” It’s an ultra-budget laptop built on a mobile phone processor and meant for long battery life doing simple tasks. Plus, if you do want to game, you can get access to a heck of a lot via the likes of Nvidia GeForce Now, which, incidentally, has a sale on its annual plans.
Back to the AMD system, though, and you might also be tempted to think that the Windows machine is more expensive than the $599 Macbook Neo. However, AMD compares to an HP Omnibook X Flip with an AMD Ryzen 5 220, which is a machine you can currently buy for $689. Obviously, that’s technically slightly more, but not enough to quibble over, especially as it’s a convertible laptop with a touchscreen.
As to the gaming prowess of this machine, AMD doesn’t quote gaming numbers, but Ryzen 5 220 is shown to include a Radeon 740M GPU, which is roughly a third of the power of the Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip used in the Asus ROG Ally X. That means you can expect in the region of 70fps in CS2 with low settings at 1080p, but more like between 10-20fps in most other more modern titles at low/1080p.
So, it’s not a gaming powerhouse, but instead simply means you can at least get some gaming done, even if its with compromised performance and visuals. Meanwhile, AMD also points out that a laptop like this HP Omnibook X Flip has more SSD storage (512GB vs 256GB) and up to
57% better multitasking, 38% faster content creation, 2x faster Wifi. If such a combination does sound appealing to you, you can check that machine out via this link.
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