Mac Mini M4 vs Mac Mini M4 Pro - Gaming Performance Comparison

[@skeyko4688]

Finally found a comparison between the two base models. Thank you very much.

[@y4lnux]

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

[@bioglassmusic]

so why hasn't valve patched the game to run natively?

[@Zel-kr3qj]

​@@bioglassmusic Valve doesn't own any of the games and can't make any decisions for game developers or publishers.

[@bioglassmusic]

@@Zel-kr3qj doesn't valve own the half-life 2 engine? isn't portal along with portal 2 and LFD, all the counterstrike and gary's mod based on HL2 engine? I remember the whole original story about Gabe's relationship with Steve Jobs.

[@Kevin6t8]

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.

[@mwtechno]

Thanks for the correction!! Sorry about that error.

[@tonyburzio4107]

Since you can't buy Thunderbolt 5 peripherals yet, doesn't matter.

[@michalrybinski3233]

@@tonyburzio4107 zollotech already did video on TB5 disk soo... you are wrong

[@kjltube]

@@tonyburzio4107 you can, but more to the point, is the functionality of TB5 really needed? when you have 3000Mb/s and multi monitor support with TB4 there isn't really a bottleneck anyway,

[@seppeseppe-jq7nr]

tipical youtube tech kiddys making videos 😂😂😂

[@thisaintart]

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! 👍

[@adamant_27]

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

[@chinochao]

The verge vibes 😂

[@thisaintart]

👍

[@mwtechno]

that is a bad tendency of mine. Should just say "Mac OS"

[@brendywatson]

It's not that confusing, it would only matter to people running os9 which isn't Unix based

[@dreamdrifter]

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

[@colinstock325]

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.

[@maxwell5159]

You haven’t been waiting too long. This product was just released hahahaha

[@thoreberlin]

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.

[@BBWahoo]

Hell, build a PC if you wish to combine both

[@suwooshi]

@@BBWahooA lot of people just don’t want to use Windows, me included.

[@BBWahoo]

@@suwooshi Too bad for you, even a pre-built with linux installed would be great, but normies gonna normie.

[@minray]

Mac mini m4 + steam deck, good 👍🏻

[@BBWahoo]

@minray That sounds awesome

[@chrisryan8894]

The base version does not have thunderbolt 5. They are thunderbolt 4

[@MrQuay03]

Does it even matter?

[@cosettapessa6417]

No

[@BenjiProres]

@@MrQuay03Naaa

[@luipaardprint]

@@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.

[@MrQuay03]

@@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.

[@mroseneo]

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)

[@JFinns]

And they all perform terrible compared to any PC with an RTX card.

[@onedyingwish2]

​@@JFinns given RTX is a discrete GPU, they should. M Series are all integrated, which is impressive in its own right.

[@josephnorris4095]

@@JFinns But they perform really well when compared to equivalent PC hardware.

[@gearsgamer7115]

​@@josephnorris4095Not really...

[@blkbyrd]

@@JFinns so confident, so wrong.

[@JoaoCardoso-ky3zu]

This is definitely the best review I've seen, the video was very well done.

[@dasvintage2182]

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.

[@martyjay75]

Have you tested out the 2 different M4 Pro variants? (12-Core CPU/16-Core GPU/16-Core Neural Engine vs. 14-Core CPU/20-Core GPU/16-Core Neural Engine) I'm looking at the Mini M4 Pro to replace our aging Intel-based iMac (2015). It's mostly for work but I occasionally love a good game like Civilization/Stellaris and I'm looking forward to the release of Civ 7. Looks like either way this machine (or even the base M4) has the specs to run games like these but I was curious to see how much of a practical difference the faster chip or bumping up the RAM from 24 to 48 or 64 GB would yield.

[@Battlevader]

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.

[@aliday9968]

Yeah it’s works amazing. My old Mac is absolute cold. Magic of optimisation

[@changez77654]

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

[@dilip.rajkumar]

Any of these games run at 4K (at some playable 40-60 fPS) on either the M4 or M4 Pro?

[@Zxchess]

I think M4 pro could handle 4k res on low-mid settings, base m4 neither have so much chip performance and ram+vram

[@valuemastery]

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.

[@ricarmig]

@@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.

[@valuemastery]

@@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.

[@REFORGER_2023]

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_ .

[@avinamatya3892]

Thank you needed this comparison 🙌🤝

[@AviralBajpai]

That isn’t CS2. That’s CSGO. 8:42

[@JFinns]

Running an outdated version of CS at a poor framerate does not make for a good sell on this glorified tablet CPU lol

[@gearsgamer7115]

​@@JFinnstrue

[@willx27]

How did you get CS2 working natively?

[@kevinmckenna5682]

It's not. He misspoke. CS2 will play through Crossover.

[@maxmaidment96]

The video is showing csgo but he says its cs2. Totally misleading and makes me doubt everything else in the video.

[@PriyanujKashyap]

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.

[@hassaluli]

Why do you keep calling it macOS 10? You do realize that they are now on macOS 15?!

[@valuemastery]

This happens when you disable automatic updates and call it a day for the next decade or so 😅

[@hassaluli]

😂

[@mutoneon]

Some of us have been around long enough to have called it, rightfully, “OS 10” for well over a decade.

[@PoFamily_gaming]

Thank u very much for this vid. It was just what I want.

[@imacgiochi]

I have a gaming channel with Mac mini M1 (very light) and from the release of these mini I’m thinking of upgrading. Having the idea to start doing some live and some streams, in your opinion the basic model can be enough, or is it necessary to go directly to the pro model? Sorry for the question, but I don’t know what impact a stream or live on the Mac could have without having tested it...

[@shem44]

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.

[@TRUMP_WQN]

This is about to be an exciting purchase for me when mine arirves tomorrow I'm getting a box that I don't need to use as a desktop but rather as a home server, home theater PC & retro gaming rig (once I buy a new TV).

[@lizkatari]

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.

[@NoahNorton]

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.

[@maclock101]

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.

[@marh122]

I am happy I chose the base model with 32 gigs

[@KentRoads]

Mesa boogie dual rectifier?!

[@Peruvian.Lama74]

Apple needs to set up its own AAA game studio. There is real value in buying a game once and having it run on Mac, iphone, ipad, and Apple tv. Mac is in desperate need of a FPS that rivals Call of Duty.

[@GbyG_Ruslan]

Apple themselves hinder the development of games for macOS. 1) A developer certificate is required. 2) You need a macOS device to build the game. Considering that older devices often have limited RAM and lack a dedicated GPU, transferring a project from Unreal, optimizing it, and configuring it is quite a challenge. For most indie developers, this is a significant problem. Renting a cloud-based Mac is an option, but having to do so every time a bug needs fixing isn't practical. In contrast, on Windows or Linux, all you need to do is package the game on any available device. I doubt this situation will change in the future. The same applies to iOS versus Android. For Android, you only need a functional application, while for iOS, you need a macOS device and a developer certificate. Even if your app is built using a cross-platform framework like React Native or Cordova, it still requires macOS and a certificate for iOS development.

[@sirflimflam]

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]

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.

[@sirflimflam]

@@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.

[@TheHeadman]

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).

[@peteherrera1502]

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?

[@Moncubus]

The odd mouse movement/acceleration is a turn-off for me for gaming on macOS

[@Cr4zyJ0n]

U can turn that off tho?

[@denok137]

@@Cr4zyJ0n some utilities can help

[@ahmeryaa865]

use linearmouse, its what I use on my machine

[@ericchen8795]

there are 4th way of playing games on MAC which is online streaming like Geforce Now won't cost the space of precious HDD and game effects are High

[@nazzario9968]

Which tools do you use to connect keyboard and mouse?

[@Kumar_Krishanu]

One of tools used is called “USB”

[@ichigen511]

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.

[@jakejoyride]

what were temperatures on those mac minis?

[@GamerBeautyxo]

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?

[@skellener]

M4 MacMini has Thunderbolt 4 ports - M4 Pro MacMini Thunderbolt 5 ports

[@JohnWilliams-gy5yc]

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.

[@Mistygio]

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

[@АлександрЛосев-ч2ч]

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?

[@26jdowns]

GeForce Now just added Star Craft 2 this week so you could use that to run it on any Mac.

[@RichieKeane]

have you tried with Geforce now?

[@kanishksharma5132]

Great review - however can we get 1 same video for Mac mini m4 pro vs windows pc of same budget

[@bioglassmusic]

you got portal to run with x-over?

[@VSilchenko]

Why would one test gaming on 1080p, when main setup these days is 1440p?

[@huiAPPOAJ]

because the mac would shit itself

[@8bit239]

Have you played cs2 with crossover or parallels?

[@Ku5i]

SSD 98% full during disk performance measure ?

[@maxamgilbert]

Is Starcraft II now working on a Mac?

[@alexanderkaminsky8644]

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.

[@darodaro4436]

Great job!

[@Rob-z1e3j]

Great video keep it up😊

[@soniccinos]

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!

[@killcomfortzone]

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

[@tonysmitch1519]

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.

[@AV-fh7rp]

So could you get steam to run?

[@donato77]

Weird no mention of GeForce NOW which is by far the best option on Mac. Really wish we could've seen some testing there.

[@singh94021]

How much does the ram matter in mac performance??

[@jakejoyride]

Cyberpunk worth buying as there will be native version on Mac next year

[@ARCtheIsmaster]

Do people actually play games at 1080p?

[@AJCoReTV]

No

[@ahmeryaa865]

the majority of steam users funnily enough

[@TheBeleon]

most of the gamers

[@billnguyen5160]

at 144hz, 1080p is significantly cheaper than 1440p. I don't go back to 1080p once I've gone 1440p though.

[@alexislopez4165]

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

[@billnguyen5160]

I've been running League of Legends on my M3 Macbook Pro, 1440p monitor at above 200fps with some occational drops. Capped at 144fps gives you consistency, no drops at all.

[@razzledazzle84921]

Can the Game Porting Toolkit overlay that shows the performance graphs & FPS etc. be hidden while playing?

[@JarradShaw]

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.

[@therealxoleras]

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

[@matthewtrow5698]

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!

[@7hx89]

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.

[@davidlewis1787]

Rude.. he made an effort. You didn’t.

[@HurricaneGX1]

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

[@_Yolandi]

Nice test ty, maybe you can test dota 2 as well. thank you

[@cchristner]

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.

[@Geonade]

99% of the time, any emulated/VM ran game will NOT WORK online, due to anti cheat systems.

[@cchristner]

@@Geonade Ouch! That's unfortunate. Thanks for the reply!

[@captainlogic4684]

WHY does no one who do these tests use NVIDIA game subscriptions service? For a minimal fee, ANY computer can run PC/console games on any client. How does that look? 1440 p? Do we even need to truly care about native performance today?

[@aleweed157]

Soo.. it’s all the same both of them ? I didn’t understand your conclusion

[@jlotrio]

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.

[@aliday9968]

Can you try steam vr with half life Alyx under cross over with meta quest 2 or 3 with virtual desktop?

[@dkthebeast92]

Counter strike 2 running natively? I thought it didn’t work on Mac anymore?!

[@ashm3697]

so the anticheat on CS 2 works fine on mac ?

[@fightingmink]

Testing games vs playing games. Got it.

[@onedyingwish2]

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.

[@kurt120032002]

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

[@conradchung3103]

How does baldur gate 3 play?

[@HRKnight]

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.

[@jasonhurdlow6607]

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. 😂

[@MacinMindSoftware]

Two other nice racing games for Crossover are Wreckfest and Dirt Rally 2.0.

[@chrisryan8894]

What’s the racing game at 5’20 ?

[@valuemastery]

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.

[@chrisryan8894]

@ thanks man. Hard to see on a small screen.

[@abikunwar810]

Warzone test plz

[@ZaberfangX]

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

[@bongag3803]

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.

[@AIhackers]

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

[@Johnassu]

Hope there's some proper native games testing Like, lies of P, baldurs gate 3 tec

[@JohnPMiller]

An Apples-to-Apples comparison.

[@ReviewThisTestThat]

The internals are different also the ssd is completely different and the cooling system is beefier. 😊

[@sergeyk9060]

Please use cyberpunk benchmark its right in The options

[@thraxas79]

As long as apple stick on they prices for upgraded RAM and storage I‘ll never get one

[@kanu7915]

8:27 this is CS-GO, not CS2 😊

[@VadimSemjonov]

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.

[@elefterian]

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

[@maxharrower2424]

What about Farming Simulator 25?

[@thesevenscars]

I def want to game with it. Prob get the pro.

[@richreid45]

Thanks!

[@deepdive_adventures]

it's pretty much capable these days, i;m on Mac M1 and i can do play using Whisky

[@flyingpuck15]

I looking forward to seeing how the mac mini can handle Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024?

[@christophery8927]

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!

[@SinkaNoah]

🙏🏽 please do all remastered age of empires games including mythology retold

[@Kevin6t8]

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.

[@sleepypenguiiin]

Wanting this one too. Deciding which upgrades to get :(

[@dotnetapp]

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]

tbh I think asahi is always gonna be behind macOS in terms of graphics

[@dotnetapp]

​@@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).

[@chidorirasenganz]

@@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]

@@dotnetapp also vulkan can be run through a translation layer with little penalty. So no need for additional drivers

[@dotnetapp]

​@@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.

[@bennym1956]

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 !!