> At this point I'm mostly interested in the Air's performance with its missing fan.
I think the clear store here is that the Air will definitely be slower than the rest over time. This isn't a 10W SoC, clearly, so it definitely can't run at its best while being passively cooled.
How it behaves when throttled will be interesting for sure though.
Seeing reddit reports of gaming throttling more quickly than that, which would make sense since the GPU is going to sit at or near 100% pretty easily with a game and you'll still be seeing a decent CPU load.
The macbook air is probably the worst machine you can think of for gaming. Even without the M1 you won't have a great time. Its the perfect machine for students because it can last all day in a browser and word.
I think the clear store here is that the Air will definitely be slower than the rest over time. This isn't a 10W SoC, clearly, so it definitely can't run at its best while being passively cooled.
How it behaves when throttled will be interesting for sure though.