Basically The rule for testing games on the new M4 is this, If the game runs on Stram Deck with steam Os there is a 99% chances that it will also run on Mac OS
@@MrQuay03it matters for your external ssd. Tb4 is the same speed as the internal ssd of the base model, tb5 is faster than the internal ssd of the pro model. So it allows you to match internal read/write speed.
@@luipaardprint irrelevant for 99.9% of users for years. Save your money, tb5 drives are also more expensive than tb4, tb3 drives. And if you are the people who do 8k video edit, you use more powerful machines.
Correction: The Base M4 Mac Mini has 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports on the back, not Thunderbolt 5. The M4 Pro gets the 3 Thunderbolt 5 ports on the back. Hope this helps.
Great review, but all the “native” games you showed are older non-native intel games that are running though Rosetta 2. Here are handful of native Apple silicon games that are available now: Death Stranding Resident Evil 4 Resident Evil 7 Resident Evil Village Grid Legends Lies of P Frostpunk 2 Firmament (HW Ray Tracing) Layers of Fear (HW Ray Tracing)
It’s still tough to compare when Mac is still in its early stages of encouraging developers to create games specifically for it. I’m excited to see how the game space evolves over the years! 👍
I wasn’t so much interested in the gaming but was interested in the comparison of these two models. Every other comparison I’ve seen is between the base M4 model and a beefed up M4 Pro model. I’ve been waiting for a comparison of the two base models for a while.
For this to be possible on high setting, I think you'll have to wait for the Mac Studio with M4 Max chip and 40 GPU cores. Will also be much more silent, the M4 Pro Mac Mini's fan can get quite audible at high usage. As much as I'm tempted by the Mac Mini with 20 GPU cores, for this reason I'll wait for the Studio. Will also be much faster on video exports.
@@valuemasteryyou talk as the studio only has advantages 🤣 it’s much bigger and much more expensive with that Max version. The Mac Mini 20 core GPU costs almost half as much as the Studio Max version. Of course each one must know what they need.
@@ricarmig Well, I highlighted the advantages that make me wait for the Studio M4, because it's a better fit for my needs. I didn't deny the Mini has advantages over the Studio, I just didn't talk about them. You are right, it's smaller and cheaper.
The Mac Studio is also a MUCH better overall deal. Base Studio will come with 36GB RAM, 1TB SSD, SDXC, 10Gig Ethernet, 14/32 Cores and 5 Thunderbolt Ports. Upgrade to 40 Core GPU is only 300$. It is not expected that the price will increase compared to the M2 Studio, so the entry-level model will still cost only cheap $2,000, _only 600bucks more than the mac mini pro_ .
I would still recommend GeForce Now Ultimate for gaming on the mac. Costs a monthly fee, but the performance you get is unbeatable. Especially if you connect a 4k 120hz display via HDMI 2.1, you can even use Gsync and have really solid latency.
It’s sad that years later, we still have the same problems. I finally became that guy that is using his Mac as a paperweight and has turned to PC. Loved the apple ecosystem and I miss it from time to time, but I’ve had my PC for a couple of months now and the difference is crazy. We used to always say “I can’t wait til apple fully uses their hardware for gaming. Imagine how good things would be with this technology.” Apple has been too late to the party for a long time now. I’m glad I made the switch.
You made a point about SSD speeds being better but it's not because M4 pro is faster, it's because apple loves to put a single 256 gig chips to handle all the tasks on base models, if you take a 512 gig base model the speeds would be equal because both 256 gig chips are working in parallel and it makes the transfer speed twice as fast. Also dlss is Nvidia chip exclusive feature if I recall correctly, you can use the AMD equivalent on all GPUs.
Been playing World of Warcraft on my M4 pro Mac mini and I'm surprised this thing is getting >150fps with settings pretty cranked up. When I played it on my intel MacBook Pro a few years ago the framerate struggled to stay above 70 with lower settings.
@@DeusRegum Unfortunately I couldn't tell ya on that one. I do play FFXIV but strictly on my PC because I didn't want to have to pay for the mac client separately.
Thanks for the video! I just picked up my mini pro a few days ago. I was playing POE2 and noticed my GPU clusters getting hot. They were around 100-102 C... The fan did not kick up so I manually turned it up and it cooled back down. I am hoping its just the game and not a mini issue. I did notice the fans kick on during cinebench once but I don't know what temp it was at at the time. I received a similar score as you at 1481 multi and 175 single (GPU 7831).
Nice review. It would have been nice to see games that are natively on Mac (like Tomb Raider) be reviewed in 6 settings M4 - Mac M4 - Crossover M4 - VM M4P - Mac M4P - Crossover M4P - VM This would give some direct comparisons for real world games across all the combinations.
So I have a 2011 i7 Mac mini server with 16 gig of memory and 2 1tb drives mirrored. I’m running this as my multimedia server for my house. I stream downloaded and purchased movies and music in addition to pictures. Is a standard M4 Mac mini server with 24 gig of memory and 2tb drives plenty to update to and future proof or would the M4 Pro with 24 gig of memory and 2tb drive space be better for future proofing? This units also runs 24/7 so needs to run cool. Any info is appreciated.
Thanks for the tests. What about StarCraft 2? Do you have any information on that? I know it didn't run well on the M1-M2 Apple silicon processors. Any changes for the M4?
Finally a side by side comparison! I was looking to trade in my iMac 2019 to a Mac mini m4. I like to play games that are normally heavy intensive graphics. Pro seems overkill for me since I would do web browsing and gaming. I was going to go with 24 gb but what is your recommendation?
Can I play league of legends on this? That’s all I want to know please help. I don’t want any lagging or issues just hoping for a smooth running gameplay. Thank you
The M4 has Thunderbolt 4 and the M4 Pro has Thunderbolt 5. How did you miss that? It's a major difference going forward for the lifespan of these two models.
Thanks for this video! So little of this benchmark stuff available, as most of it is very meta in terms of people who make youTube videos talking about how the macs perform ... making youTube videos - which doesn't really help anyone except ... people who make videos. Mac gaming? - It's getting better, for sure, but it's unlikely to ever match the successes that Linux has had for Steam gaming. Unless Valve provide the same level of support they've put into Linux and put that into macOS, it's always going to be the crossover route. And Valve certainly aren't going to waste their time. A lot of the reasoning behind Linux and Valve is Gabe wanting control, loving Linux and the company placing their bets on Linux for the Steam Deck. Ironically, Apple Silicon initially pushed Steam gaming back a notch or two, till Game Porting Toolkit was released. I still have a PC gaming rig, despite the fact that macOS is absolutely my daily driver. That rig dual boots windows and Linux. Lately, I've been spending most my time back in windows for VR gaming - and that's something which macOS doesn't have. It has to be said that getting it to work on Linux is such a pain, you really require a compelling reason and hatred of windows to even try. You benchmarks have left me a little bit gutted. I got the base model with the assumption the performance wouldn't be THAT much better. Boy, was I wrong - it's over double! Still, it's double the price for the Pro. Talking about saving money, if you are really in the cheap seats, you can try Whisky (not the booze!) getwhisky.app/ It's not nearly as easy to use as Crossover, but it's free - and performance is the same. Huge caveat on that, some games may require a lot of tinkering - your money for Crossover goes a long way in terms of ease of use!
I already have a big PC desktop that draws too much energy. So I’m getting the base Mini to handle every day tasks like web browsing. And my desktop will be used only for games!
Honestly you can probably do almost all your tasks including 4k video editing (if you are doing that sort of things) in mac mini m4 base. And just keep the gaming pc for games
That's a huge missed. Should be corrected/clearified. TB5 is max 120 Gbps, that is 3 folded speed of TB4 and almost touch 16 GB/s of 8x PCIe speed. Ext GPU will be back soon if Apple is open to this.
First Time for me to watching you review the content is sharp, smart explain , and very useful for Mac user to decision to purchase Mac Mini M4 or Maqc Mini M4Pro for Gaming. Thank you for best comparison video.
I play COD Black Ops 3 on my Mac Studio M1 Max. Thing is a beast. It looks way the hell better compared to the version of it on my PS5 and it runs smoother too. Mac computers are gaming beasts now but I just wish there was more support from development side of things. Hopefully it picks up someday
Great subject. But the real content starts at 7:15. You simply talked too much - you can move all the preface to the end as a background info for those who needs to know.
Great video, very helpful! I'm either going to buy a Mac M4 Pro Mini or wait for the Studio upgrade. Either way, I'd like to be play Left4Dead 2 on Steam thru Crossover, but I can't find out if the game can be played online. That's a hole in these comparisons from what I've seen is they don't tell us whether the games will let us play online. Please consider making a video testing that out.
Thanks for running these tests, now I know what to expect from my new mac mini. It will be m4 with 32Gb of RAM and 512 ssd. And I think I will continue playing gamesnon ps5 pro 😂 but hope one day to see gaming console from Apple
So to get an idea of performance you get 20% over a GTX 980… so it should be between 1070 and 1080 on base m4. Not that bad actually. I wonder if apple will have an M6, M6 Pro, and an M6 enthusiast, with more accent on gpu cores then the PRO version, in order to close the gap to nVidia GPU. If I would get falcon BMS to run on my M4 pro laptop will be so cool
if there no mac arm port, won't work on crossover or apple porting tool due to anti cheat just due to dev won't aloud it to work even if the game will work just fine
Unfortunately, the game won’t work on Mac because of anti-cheat software. Games with anti-cheat software don’t work on Mac unless they have a native port, and Call of Duty hasn’t done that since Black Ops 3.
Yeah I would say 24GB should be fine. 32GB even better. I use Figma, Framer and I’ve dabbled with Blender and Spline and I am planning to upgrade my M1 Pro 16GB to a M4 Pro 48GB or 64GB
Never listen to people telling you not to get more RAM. I've NEVER seen someone own a computer two years and say "damn I shouldn't have got more RAM." Especially on a computer that runs VMs, other OS, and translation layers
Minor gripe: Saying OS X ("OS ten") is VERY out of date. We're on macOS 15 now, the last version of OS X came out in 2019 (10.15) and is impossible to run those on these arm based Mac Mini M4/M4 pros. You can just say macOS.
I'm trying to get Crossover/Whisky to play Steam content on my Mac Mini M4 - and failing in every direction 😂 take Sonic x Shadow Generations for example, no matter what settings I toggle (Metal etc) it always says I don't meet the system requirements. Which I know isn't true because I've seen people on here playing it! 😖
Eventually, I think launching games on Mac will become a more regular part of publisher release strategies, as the ease of doing so increases. May not become a serious force for a while though unless Apple decides to do a huge marketing campaign for Mac gaming.
Soon be jumping the "shark" and buying a M series Mac although my 2017 27" iMac is running great. Looks like the Mac Mini M4 Pro is my best option for performance. Thought about a Mac Studio, but they start off at $2k for a M2 chip...nope. I price compared a base Mac Mini vs the same spec 24" iMac and was shocked that you end up paying $900 for that 24" screen...heck no !!
Oh i think it is. Especially with asahi Linux, if it gets better with the Vulkan driver than it will be a great portable gaming machine with a real good p/l especially the base model.
@@chidorirasenganz ??? This does not make sense. Sure its a ton of work, but asahi has vulkan drivers and macos simply not (because apple dont want them they could "easily" make a vulkan driver), But when the driver on Asahi is fully working without the hacks atm than games will run better on asahi simply because it wont need a translation layer like crossover (or atleast one translation layer less).
@@dotnetapp It's always going to have a translation layer. Also your arguement is that they are going to be able to make best use of GPU they didn't design and that Apple designed an API that wouldn't take advantage of the hardware they designed?
@@chidorirasenganz they didnt implement vulkan because they didnt want to. Metal will be allways more performant when a game is made with metal. But a translation layer will allways have a bigger performance impact than native drivers. And i know that there is a Translation layer. MoltenVK to be specific. Many games running than to work with dxvk (directx to vulkan) and than with moltenvk(vulkan to metal). Apple also released a direct translation with the gameporting toolkit a translation layer of directX to Metal which is really good but not as good as Proton for example, and with a native vulkan driver you could run Proton. And i never said that apple couldnt make a API that takes the advantage of the gpu, what im saying is that game devs don't bother with metal as the playerbase is to low.
Probably not well. Software is only fast when it is optimised, which in this case is mostly with Apple specific creative tools. Doubt nvidia will be panicking!
thank you for taking the time to make this video, i got the base m4 mini, i ll pick up a pro as well now, i can run diablo 4 around 70 fps at 1080p medium setting, i cant wait to see the difference with the pro
It would be much more interesting if you gave examples of games that people actually play. Check the top list of steam and try games like: Gta5, Helldivers 2, Space Marine 2, SF6 not 4. All games which you show are dead or playing by very small amount of people. Exc., Cyberpank. And some games like CS nobody will be play on mac.
I am just about to change my intel iMac for a M4 Mini. I probably only need the base M4 Mini for my day to day stuff but then I need to get a good 4k mid range screen. I also thought I might like to set up a flight Sim so what spec do I need for that to run well? I am coming to the conclusion that I probably need to just have a M4 Mini office set up and then get a fairly cheap gaming monitor and games console to run the flight sim on. Probably a bit cheaper than speccing up the M4 Mini and having a fancy 4k gaming monitor plus I would not be restricted to Mac games / sims. I can also have the sim hardware all connected up. Any advice from experts out there please??
hmm i just ran geekbench 6 compute 220,000 seems its not so pro after all. My 2009 Mac Pro gets 82,000 points splitting the 2024 M4 and M4pro congrats apple on catching a 15yr old mac.
Thanks for the video. Still anyone who play pc games will not bother cause why buy something thats limited in so many way to just play a game while almost everyone has pc even up to 5-10 years old that can run many games comfortably, without needing to worry about all those uncertainties. Also i am a opposer for apple touching any of pc games. Apple will not benefit any game dev and gaming scene as it is not going to increase player base, it WILL eat into dev revenue as apple will put a huge apple cut, and it will try to monopolize whenever it can. There are already court cases in progress. I strongly suggest influencer dont try to influence and at the end created a gloomy game scene that you cant reverse.
Basically The rule for testing games on the new M4 is this, If the game runs on Stram Deck with steam Os there is a 99% chances that it will also run on Mac OS
so why hasn't valve patched the game to run natively?
The base version does not have thunderbolt 5. They are thunderbolt 4
Does it even matter?
No
@@MrQuay03Naaa
@@MrQuay03it matters for your external ssd. Tb4 is the same speed as the internal ssd of the base model, tb5 is faster than the internal ssd of the pro model. So it allows you to match internal read/write speed.
@@luipaardprint irrelevant for 99.9% of users for years. Save your money, tb5 drives are also more expensive than tb4, tb3 drives.
And if you are the people who do 8k video edit, you use more powerful machines.
Finally found a comparison between the two base models. Thank you very much.
Correction: The Base M4 Mac Mini has 3 Thunderbolt 4 ports on the back, not Thunderbolt 5.
The M4 Pro gets the 3 Thunderbolt 5 ports on the back. Hope this helps.
Thanks for the correction!! Sorry about that error.
Since you can't buy Thunderbolt 5 peripherals yet, doesn't matter.
@@tonyburzio4107 zollotech already did video on TB5 disk soo... you are wrong
So even the M4pro isn't fit for 1080p60 which would be entry level PC gaming. Just get the M4 and a PS5pro. Still cheaper and better at gaming.
Hell, build a PC if you wish to combine both
@@BBWahooA lot of people just don’t want to use Windows, me included.
@@cawashka
Too bad for you, even a pre-built with linux installed would be great, but normies gonna normie.
Mac mini m4 + steam deck, good 👍🏻
@minray
That sounds awesome
Calling MacOS - OS X (10) is confusing. I thought at first you're testing on the old system. We are on MacOS 15 already, not OS X
The verge vibes 😂
👍
that is a bad tendency of mine. Should just say "Mac OS"
It's not that confusing, it would only matter to people running os9 which isn't Unix based
To get even nerdier, while the official marketing did call it "OS 10", we all know it's really "OS X" in reference to the underlying XNU kernel
Great review, but all the “native” games you showed are older non-native intel games that are running though Rosetta 2. Here are handful of native Apple silicon games that are available now:
Death Stranding
Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil 7
Resident Evil Village
Grid Legends
Lies of P
Frostpunk 2
Firmament (HW Ray Tracing)
Layers of Fear (HW Ray Tracing)
And they all perform terrible compared to any PC with an RTX card.
@@JFinns given RTX is a discrete GPU, they should. M Series are all integrated, which is impressive in its own right.
@@JFinns But they perform really well when compared to equivalent PC hardware.
@@josephnorris4095Not really...
@@JFinns so confident, so wrong.
It’s still tough to compare when Mac is still in its early stages of encouraging developers to create games specifically for it. I’m excited to see how the game space evolves over the years! 👍
I wasn’t so much interested in the gaming but was interested in the comparison of these two models. Every other comparison I’ve seen is between the base M4 model and a beefed up M4 Pro model. I’ve been waiting for a comparison of the two base models for a while.
You haven’t been waiting too long. This product was just released hahahaha
How did you get CS2 working natively?
It's not. He misspoke. CS2 will play through Crossover.
The video is showing csgo but he says its cs2. Totally misleading and makes me doubt everything else in the video.
The game is called cs2 in steam but in macos only csgo legacy version runs so that might have been the reason for the confusion.
Long shot - but is it possible to test Division 2 on either Mac to give an indication if it works decently? Thank you in advance
Any of these games run at 4K (at some playable 40-60 fPS) on either the M4 or M4 Pro?
I think M4 pro could handle 4k res on low-mid settings, base m4 neither have so much chip performance and ram+vram
For this to be possible on high setting, I think you'll have to wait for the Mac Studio with M4 Max chip and 40 GPU cores. Will also be much more silent, the M4 Pro Mac Mini's fan can get quite audible at high usage.
As much as I'm tempted by the Mac Mini with 20 GPU cores, for this reason I'll wait for the Studio. Will also be much faster on video exports.
@@valuemasteryyou talk as the studio only has advantages 🤣 it’s much bigger and much more expensive with that Max version. The Mac Mini 20 core GPU costs almost half as much as the Studio Max version. Of course each one must know what they need.
@@ricarmig Well, I highlighted the advantages that make me wait for the Studio M4, because it's a better fit for my needs. I didn't deny the Mini has advantages over the Studio, I just didn't talk about them. You are right, it's smaller and cheaper.
The Mac Studio is also a MUCH better overall deal. Base Studio will come with 36GB RAM, 1TB SSD, SDXC, 10Gig Ethernet, 14/32 Cores and 5 Thunderbolt Ports. Upgrade to 40 Core GPU is only 300$. It is not expected that the price will increase compared to the M2 Studio, so the entry-level model will still cost only cheap $2,000, _only 600bucks more than the mac mini pro_ .
I would still recommend GeForce Now Ultimate for gaming on the mac. Costs a monthly fee, but the performance you get is unbeatable. Especially if you connect a 4k 120hz display via HDMI 2.1, you can even use Gsync and have really solid latency.
It’s sad that years later, we still have the same problems. I finally became that guy that is using his Mac as a paperweight and has turned to PC. Loved the apple ecosystem and I miss it from time to time, but I’ve had my PC for a couple of months now and the difference is crazy. We used to always say “I can’t wait til apple fully uses their hardware for gaming. Imagine how good things would be with this technology.” Apple has been too late to the party for a long time now. I’m glad I made the switch.
Thank you needed this comparison 🙌🤝
That isn’t CS2. That’s CSGO. 8:42
Running an outdated version of CS at a poor framerate does not make for a good sell on this glorified tablet CPU lol
@@JFinnstrue
You made a point about SSD speeds being better but it's not because M4 pro is faster, it's because apple loves to put a single 256 gig chips to handle all the tasks on base models, if you take a 512 gig base model the speeds would be equal because both 256 gig chips are working in parallel and it makes the transfer speed twice as fast.
Also dlss is Nvidia chip exclusive feature if I recall correctly, you can use the AMD equivalent on all GPUs.
Been playing World of Warcraft on my M4 pro Mac mini and I'm surprised this thing is getting >150fps with settings pretty cranked up. When I played it on my intel MacBook Pro a few years ago the framerate struggled to stay above 70 with lower settings.
How about FFXIV? What's your FPS on that one? These are the two games I play most on my Macs. Anything else more serious, I just use my Xbox.
@@DeusRegum Unfortunately I couldn't tell ya on that one. I do play FFXIV but strictly on my PC because I didn't want to have to pay for the mac client separately.
Thanks for the video! I just picked up my mini pro a few days ago. I was playing POE2 and noticed my GPU clusters getting hot. They were around 100-102 C... The fan did not kick up so I manually turned it up and it cooled back down. I am hoping its just the game and not a mini issue. I did notice the fans kick on during cinebench once but I don't know what temp it was at at the time. I received a similar score as you at 1481 multi and 175 single (GPU 7831).
Great video. Possible to test m4 pro 20 gpu vs m4 max 32 gpu? Wonder if the additional 12 gpu makes a big diff in gaming.
Thank u very much for this vid. It was just what I want.
Could you test MsFS 2024 on Mac? No one is testing that and it's a huge question, how it would run under m4. Huge audience for that
Nice review.
It would have been nice to see games that are natively on Mac (like Tomb Raider) be reviewed in 6 settings
M4 - Mac
M4 - Crossover
M4 - VM
M4P - Mac
M4P - Crossover
M4P - VM
This would give some direct comparisons for real world games across all
the combinations.
So I have a 2011 i7 Mac mini server with 16 gig of memory and 2 1tb drives mirrored. I’m running this as my multimedia server for my house. I stream downloaded and purchased movies and music in addition to pictures. Is a standard M4 Mac mini server with 24 gig of memory and 2tb drives plenty to update to and future proof or would the M4 Pro with 24 gig of memory and 2tb drive space be better for future proofing? This units also runs 24/7 so needs to run cool. Any info is appreciated.
The odd mouse movement/acceleration is a turn-off for me for gaming on macOS
U can turn that off tho?
@@Cr4zyJ0n some utilities can help
use linearmouse, its what I use on my machine
Why do you keep calling it macOS 10? You do realize that they are now on macOS 15?!
This happens when you disable automatic updates and call it a day for the next decade or so 😅
😂
Some of us have been around long enough to have called it, rightfully, “OS 10” for well over a decade.
Can the Game Porting Toolkit overlay that shows the performance graphs & FPS etc. be hidden while playing?
Thanks for the tests. What about StarCraft 2? Do you have any information on that? I know it didn't run well on the M1-M2 Apple silicon processors. Any changes for the M4?
GeForce Now just added Star Craft 2 this week so you could use that to run it on any Mac.
How fast is the single CPU, MHz speed wise in the Mac Mini Standard? and how fast is the single CPU, MHz speed wise in the Mac Mini Pro?
Great review - however can we get 1 same video for Mac mini m4 pro vs windows pc of same budget
Finally a side by side comparison! I was looking to trade in my iMac 2019 to a Mac mini m4. I like to play games that are normally heavy intensive graphics. Pro seems overkill for me since I would do web browsing and gaming. I was going to go with 24 gb but what is your recommendation?
Can I play league of legends on this? That’s all I want to know please help. I don’t want any lagging or issues just hoping for a smooth running gameplay.
Thank you
I am happy I chose the base model with 32 gigs
Why would one test gaming on 1080p, when main setup these days is 1440p?
because the mac would shit itself
you got portal to run with x-over?
Mesa boogie dual rectifier?!
have you tried with Geforce now?
Nice test ty, maybe you can test dota 2 as well. thank you
Have you played cs2 with crossover or parallels?
Is Starcraft II now working on a Mac?
The M4 has Thunderbolt 4 and the M4 Pro has Thunderbolt 5. How did you miss that? It's a major difference going forward for the lifespan of these two models.
what were temperatures on those mac minis?
Stay calm and wait for the Mac Studio with the M4 Max or Ultra. With that, 4K or 5K gaming via Crossover will also be achievable.
Thanks for this video!
So little of this benchmark stuff available, as most of it is very meta in terms of people who make youTube videos talking about how the macs perform ... making youTube videos - which doesn't really help anyone except ... people who make videos.
Mac gaming? - It's getting better, for sure, but it's unlikely to ever match the successes that Linux has had for Steam gaming.
Unless Valve provide the same level of support they've put into Linux and put that into macOS, it's always going to be the crossover route.
And Valve certainly aren't going to waste their time. A lot of the reasoning behind Linux and Valve is Gabe wanting control, loving Linux and the company placing their bets on Linux for the Steam Deck.
Ironically, Apple Silicon initially pushed Steam gaming back a notch or two, till Game Porting Toolkit was released.
I still have a PC gaming rig, despite the fact that macOS is absolutely my daily driver.
That rig dual boots windows and Linux.
Lately, I've been spending most my time back in windows for VR gaming - and that's something which macOS doesn't have.
It has to be said that getting it to work on Linux is such a pain, you really require a compelling reason and hatred of windows to even try.
You benchmarks have left me a little bit gutted.
I got the base model with the assumption the performance wouldn't be THAT much better.
Boy, was I wrong - it's over double!
Still, it's double the price for the Pro.
Talking about saving money, if you are really in the cheap seats, you can try Whisky (not the booze!)
getwhisky.app/
It's not nearly as easy to use as Crossover, but it's free - and performance is the same.
Huge caveat on that, some games may require a lot of tinkering - your money for Crossover goes a long way in terms of ease of use!
I already have a big PC desktop that draws too much energy. So I’m getting the base Mini to handle every day tasks like web browsing. And my desktop will be used only for games!
Honestly you can probably do almost all your tasks including 4k video editing (if you are doing that sort of things) in mac mini m4 base. And just keep the gaming pc for games
Weird no mention of GeForce NOW which is by far the best option on Mac. Really wish we could've seen some testing there.
M4 MacMini has Thunderbolt 4 ports - M4 Pro MacMini Thunderbolt 5 ports
That's a huge missed. Should be corrected/clearified. TB5 is max 120 Gbps, that is 3 folded speed of TB4 and almost touch 16 GB/s of 8x PCIe speed. Ext GPU will be back soon if Apple is open to this.
First Time for me to watching you review the content is sharp, smart explain , and very useful for Mac user to decision to purchase Mac Mini M4 or Maqc Mini M4Pro for Gaming.
Thank you for best comparison video.
I play COD Black Ops 3 on my Mac Studio M1 Max. Thing is a beast. It looks way the hell better compared to the version of it on my PS5 and it runs smoother too. Mac computers are gaming beasts now but I just wish there was more support from development side of things. Hopefully it picks up someday
SSD 98% full during disk performance measure ?
How much does the ram matter in mac performance??
Do people actually play games at 1080p?
No
the majority of steam users funnily enough
most of the gamers
Yes! Dead Cells is my go to and Apple has so much down for this, but this also shows my simple video editing will be just fine, if not really good.
Great subject. But the real content starts at 7:15. You simply talked too much - you can move all the preface to the end as a background info for those who needs to know.
Rude.. he made an effort. You didn’t.
Great video, very helpful! I'm either going to buy a Mac M4 Pro Mini or wait for the Studio upgrade. Either way, I'd like to be play Left4Dead 2 on Steam thru Crossover, but I can't find out if the game can be played online. That's a hole in these comparisons from what I've seen is they don't tell us whether the games will let us play online. Please consider making a video testing that out.
99% of the time, any emulated/VM ran game will NOT WORK online, due to anti cheat systems.
@@Geonade Ouch! That's unfortunate. Thanks for the reply!
So could you get steam to run?
Cyberpunk worth buying as there will be native version on Mac next year
How does baldur gate 3 play?
Great job!
What’s the racing game at 5’20 ?
Take a close look at 5:20, and you can read for yourself, it's literally written there on the screen. It's Trackmania from Ubisoft Nadeo.
@ thanks man. Hard to see on a small screen.
Thanks for running these tests, now I know what to expect from my new mac mini. It will be m4 with 32Gb of RAM and 512 ssd. And I think I will continue playing gamesnon ps5 pro 😂 but hope one day to see gaming console from Apple
So to get an idea of performance you get 20% over a GTX 980… so it should be between 1070 and 1080 on base m4. Not that bad actually. I wonder if apple will have an M6, M6 Pro, and an M6 enthusiast, with more accent on gpu cores then the PRO version, in order to close the gap to nVidia GPU. If I would get falcon BMS to run on my M4 pro laptop will be so cool
so the anticheat on CS 2 works fine on mac ?
Soo.. it’s all the same both of them ? I didn’t understand your conclusion
Warzone test plz
if there no mac arm port, won't work on crossover or apple porting tool due to anti cheat just due to dev won't aloud it to work even if the game will work just fine
Unfortunately, the game won’t work on Mac because of anti-cheat software. Games with anti-cheat software don’t work on Mac unless they have a native port, and Call of Duty hasn’t done that since Black Ops 3.
I thinking to get M4 Base model but upgrading just the RAM. I do 3D websites on Figma, Spline and Framer. What do you think?
you need more than 16GB ram? Apple stopped scamming so bad and base ram is now 16GB.
@@MicahDaRhuler on my m1 pro 16gb Figma sometimes swaped 4GB of memory, so I was thinking 24GB
@@alessandromanuel728 ohh makes sense
Yeah I would say 24GB should be fine. 32GB even better. I use Figma, Framer and I’ve dabbled with Blender and Spline and I am planning to upgrade my M1 Pro 16GB to a M4 Pro 48GB or 64GB
Never listen to people telling you not to get more RAM. I've NEVER seen someone own a computer two years and say "damn I shouldn't have got more RAM." Especially on a computer that runs VMs, other OS, and translation layers
Honestly was going to go with the Pro but after doing simple tests the Base model easily plenty really did not need the the Extra thunder
Minor gripe: Saying OS X ("OS ten") is VERY out of date. We're on macOS 15 now, the last version of OS X came out in 2019 (10.15) and is impossible to run those on these arm based Mac Mini M4/M4 pros. You can just say macOS.
To those of us who've been on the Mac since 1984, it'll always be OS-X (version 15). If you have a problem with that, take it up with Big Brother. 😂
I'm trying to get Crossover/Whisky to play Steam content on my Mac Mini M4 - and failing in every direction 😂 take Sonic x Shadow Generations for example, no matter what settings I toggle (Metal etc) it always says I don't meet the system requirements. Which I know isn't true because I've seen people on here playing it! 😖
Testing games vs playing games. Got it.
I have the M4 Pro with the 14/20 chip upgrade. I would like to see a comparison between Base M4 Pro and the M4 Pro with the chip upgrade.
Wanting this one too. Deciding which upgrades to get :(
Two other nice racing games for Crossover are Wreckfest and Dirt Rally 2.0.
Eventually, I think launching games on Mac will become a more regular part of publisher release strategies, as the ease of doing so increases. May not become a serious force for a while though unless Apple decides to do a huge marketing campaign for Mac gaming.
🙏🏽 please do all remastered age of empires games including mythology retold
Just to clarify, at least from the first few minutes of the video, the M4Pro model has Thunderbolt 5 vs Thunderbolt 4 on the core models.
As long as apple stick on they prices for upgraded RAM and storage I‘ll never get one
Soon be jumping the "shark" and buying a M series Mac although my 2017 27" iMac is running great. Looks like the Mac Mini M4 Pro is my best option for performance. Thought about a Mac Studio, but they start off at $2k for a M2 chip...nope. I price compared a base Mac Mini vs the same spec 24" iMac and was shocked that you end up paying $900 for that 24" screen...heck no !!
The base model is a steal! If you do pro stuff, ger the pro! If you wanna play, get the PS 😅
8:27 this is CS-GO, not CS2 😊
Please use cyberpunk benchmark its right in The options
What about Farming Simulator 25?
Hope there's some proper native games testing
Like, lies of P, baldurs gate 3 tec
Oh i think it is.
Especially with asahi Linux, if it gets better with the Vulkan driver than it will be a great portable gaming machine with a real good p/l especially the base model.
tbh I think asahi is always gonna be behind macOS in terms of graphics
@@chidorirasenganz ??? This does not make sense.
Sure its a ton of work, but asahi has vulkan drivers and macos simply not (because apple dont want them they could "easily" make a vulkan driver),
But when the driver on Asahi is fully working without the hacks atm than games will run better on asahi simply because it wont need a translation layer like crossover (or atleast one translation layer less).
@@dotnetapp It's always going to have a translation layer. Also your arguement is that they are going to be able to make best use of GPU they didn't design and that Apple designed an API that wouldn't take advantage of the hardware they designed?
@@dotnetapp also vulkan can be run through a translation layer with little penalty. So no need for additional drivers
@@chidorirasenganz they didnt implement vulkan because they didnt want to.
Metal will be allways more performant when a game is made with metal.
But a translation layer will allways have a bigger performance impact than native drivers.
And i know that there is a Translation layer.
MoltenVK to be specific.
Many games running than to work with dxvk (directx to vulkan) and than with moltenvk(vulkan to metal).
Apple also released a direct translation with the gameporting toolkit a translation layer of directX to Metal which is really good but not as good as Proton for example, and with a native vulkan driver you could run Proton.
And i never said that apple couldnt make a API that takes the advantage of the gpu, what im saying is that game devs don't bother with metal as the playerbase is to low.
I looking forward to seeing how the mac mini can handle Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024?
Probably not well. Software is only fast when it is optimised, which in this case is mostly with Apple specific creative tools. Doubt nvidia will be panicking!
thank you for taking the time to make this video, i got the base m4 mini, i ll pick up a pro as well now, i can run diablo 4 around 70 fps at 1080p medium setting, i cant wait to see the difference with the pro
it's pretty much capable these days, i;m on Mac M1 and i can do play using Whisky
It would be much more interesting if you gave examples of games that people actually play. Check the top list of steam and try games like: Gta5, Helldivers 2, Space Marine 2, SF6 not 4. All games which you show are dead or playing by very small amount of people. Exc., Cyberpank. And some games like CS nobody will be play on mac.
Please test EAFc and E-football ❤
The internals are different also the ssd is completely different and the cooling system is beefier. 😊
30+fps is playable, 60+fps is good and competitive- its base console power, 120+ is ideal
An Apples-to-Apples comparison.
Could you please test Dota 2 for both models? Thank you.
I’m thinking comparable performance cuz dota is more cpu heavy and would largely depend on single core performance.
Why are people talking about gaming on this bro aren’t these like over clocked iPhone chips
I def want to game with it. Prob get the pro.
...the base model is not really "under $600".
Currently can be had for $500-$550, so yeah, under $600.
@jasonhurdlow6607 the base model is 599 without tax, so over 600 out of pocket
@@Brolicherbs $559 at B&H this minute. Also trivial to get EDU pricing at $499.
@@Brolicherbs Of course you still need a monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc....
Basically… just use a pc or console (xbox/PS5) for gaming …
I am just about to change my intel iMac for a M4 Mini. I probably only need the base M4 Mini for my day to day stuff but then I need to get a good 4k mid range screen. I also thought I might like to set up a flight Sim so what spec do I need for that to run well? I am coming to the conclusion that I probably need to just have a M4 Mini office set up and then get a fairly cheap gaming monitor and games console to run the flight sim on. Probably a bit cheaper than speccing up the M4 Mini and having a fancy 4k gaming monitor plus I would not be restricted to Mac games / sims. I can also have the sim hardware all connected up. Any advice from experts out there please??
hmm i just ran geekbench 6 compute 220,000 seems its not so pro after all. My 2009 Mac Pro gets 82,000 points splitting the 2024 M4 and M4pro congrats apple on catching a 15yr old mac.
Gaming and Mac in one sentense is not possible.
Thanks for the video. Still anyone who play pc games will not bother cause why buy something thats limited in so many way to just play a game while almost everyone has pc even up to 5-10 years old that can run many games comfortably, without needing to worry about all those uncertainties.
Also i am a opposer for apple touching any of pc games. Apple will not benefit any game dev and gaming scene as it is not going to increase player base, it WILL eat into dev revenue as apple will put a huge apple cut, and it will try to monopolize whenever it can. There are already court cases in progress.
I strongly suggest influencer dont try to influence and at the end created a gloomy game scene that you cant reverse.