Would a 2011 macbook air be good for a lightweight dedicated doom machine?

[invictius]

Not necessarily mac os, perhaps lubuntu. And gles enabled of course. I've run lubuntu on 512mb. Although it might have trouble with blade of agony...

[Phredreeke]

Sure, it has a crappy GPU but there is plenty of content that will run on it and even if recent GZDoom content is too much for it people keep making vanilla and boom-compatible map sets.

[Professor Hastig]

2011 most likely means it will have an Intel HD2000 or 3000 GPU.
That's acceptable if you want to run the software renderer, but for the hardware renderer you should prepare yourself for a lot of pain.
I once had the opportunity to run GZDoom on such a system many years ago - before ZDoom retired, and it barely managed to hold 60 fps on more complex vanilla maps.
Limit removing will most likely be enough to tank the frame rate to unacceptable values.

[Rachael]

I actually ran GZDoom on this exact same machine and it wasn't too bad, but it was in Mac OS. I ran it on Vulkan/Metal, though, not OpenGL. OpenGL ES wouldn't even start.

[Phredreeke]

I didn't think the HD3000 (Apple never shipped anything with a HD2000 AFAIK) supported Metal.

[Graf Zahl]

Most likely not. But the successor, the HD4000 wasn't being shipped in 2011 if I am not mistaken. It is better than the HD3000 but for any serious consideration I'd avoid buying anything below HD4600

I once had a Mac of such a vintage as a work computer, but that was a long time ago when such a system wasn't ancient tech-crap - around 2014 or so. Yes, it ran GZDoom but the poor hardware performance got compounded by the low quality OpenGL implementation on macOS and it ran like shit.

[Rachael]

I was wrong, this machine is a "MacBook Air (11-inch, Early 2014)" - I actually thought it was much earlier due to a lack of Retina screen, and also because of how weak the hardware actually is. Furthermore, it will not upgrade beyond Mac OS 11.

It is an Intel HD 5000 on a Dual-Core Intel i5, the EFI reads the model as a "MacBookAir6,1".

Regardless, this is still the weakest system that I have currently that I haven't yet decommissioned, and I would not consider it for any serious Dooming. If anything it makes a nice test bed for performance tests, in order to ensure that maps are up to spec and run smoothly on outdated hardware. It's also a very nice remote thin-client for video streaming from a more serious gaming machine.

If I do use GZDoom on it for an extended period of time, it does pretty much become a stove, as expected from a machine that is this tiny.

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP699?locale=en_US

[Phredreeke]

Yeah, the HD5000 has 2.5 times as many execution units as the HD3000 (which would be the GPU in a 2011 Mac)

I got a 1st gen GPD Win, with a slightly newer GPU but with a similar performance (and far worse CPU), I haven't used it in like two years but I played through a bunch of Doom WADs on it, though mainly vanilla/Boom stuff, and my recollection is that it ran fine. Ion Fury was a different matter but that was probably cause of the weak CPU cores.

[invictius]

How about a 2015 macbook air? Still no vulkan and no opengl 4.5... but does that matter if you're using a metal wrapper?

[Rachael]

No it does not matter. But it's Mac OS only. It will run better though, and on Mac OS, you will have Metal access. All Macs since 2012 can run Metal.

I think on Linux it will still run Vulkan too. Just not on Windows.

What I said previously still applies though - it'll be good for lightweight Dooming but anything more serious it probably won't handle it. Macbook Airs are gimped in specs in order to fit more "power" inside a thin chassis - if you want anything with power at all in it, it'll have to be at least a Macbook Pro.