Proper testing and benchmarks don’t lie. I’m not sure why you think this is an impossible feat.
https://youtu.be/Xjkzb-j6nKI
12:00 mark, you can see panther lake performs better in Cyberpunk 2077 than the M5 with less power draw.
6:25, Panther Lake is barely behind the M5 chip at Cinebench. Just a slightly lower score at the same wattage.
And don’t forget, the M5 is years away from supporting Linux fully. We are just talking about the M3 getting decent support.
If you’re the kind of person that wants a thin and light laptop for productivity and also wants to fire up some light games here and there, it’s hard to argue that an M5 MacBook Air is the right system for you. Even with recent strides in game compatibility, macOS is a terrible gaming platform that really can’t hold a candle to Windows or Linux x86, and Panther Lake graphics smokes the M5.
Obviously a Mac with macOS is a better choice for things like video editing.