M4 Mac mini 16GB is AMAZING! 8 games tested

hey everyone today I am very excited to be testing gaming performance on the brand new M4 Mac Mini so these are the Mac Minis that I bought and I'm testing out the base model today so that's the base model with only 16 GB of RAM and 10 GPU cores and this new Mac Mini is extremely exciting as not only do we get a brand new redesign we also have a new level of Base performance in the entire Apple silicon lineup and that's the fact that we have 16 GB of RAM as a minimum on these base level machines and the max mini is very competitively priced so you can pick this up for £5.99 either P or dollars and you can find many discounts online you can get this even less than that for example I can buy this from Costco for £50 off making it the cheapest way to get into the Apple Mac ecosystem right now but also because it has 16 GB of RAM and Powerful M4 GPU cores it can also run many games very well that weren't possible on previous generations of Base chips so in the past many titles were limited by the fact that we only had 8 GB of RAM to play with but 16 GB is a really big deal it means you can crank up the setting on natively optimized titles we're going to have improved performance with things like console emulation and I'm also going to be showing you some windows games being run through the translation layer crossover and these are games being translated onto the arm 64 chip via Rosetta 2 it also makes use of wine and we're using Game porting toolkits d3d metal translate direct X into the Metal Graphics API and the performance thanks to the 16 GB of RAM and improved GPU performance of this Bas level machine is actually very impressive and it makes the new Mac Mini a very interesting gaming proposition especially at this price price point so first up we looking at the game death stranding one of the best optimized AAA native Mac ports that's currently available and I know you can't see the frame rate counter very well but we're running this at 4K default settings with metal effects set to Quality mode so we're using a little bit of upscaling to help this 4K resolution hitting about 35 FPS for more playable frame rate I recommend running this at 1080p here we're running on the default Graphics preset and metal effects is set to Quality mode and we're getting a very decent frame rate of about 80 to 90 FPS now to be fair any Apple silicon Mac can run this game really well even from the Bas M1 with only 8 GB of RAM to the lowly iPhone 15 but it also scales very nicely with the Mech mini with a base M4 chip which is definitely taking advantage of the 16 GB of extra Headroom next up we're looking at Resident Evil 7 another AAA Mac optimized port and this is pretty much a firsters horror game set in the Resident Evil Universe with a bigger emphasis on puzzle solving and atmosphere so again this is a very scalable game designed to work on iPhones all the way up to the highest end Apple silicon Max here the Mac Mini with the M4 chip is able to handle this very well we're even able to run at 4K default settings with metal FX upscaling set to Quality mode holding at around 45 FPS anyway this is seriously impressive considering the fact that this is a base model Mac Mini and if gaming is this good on the cheapest Mac that you can buy right now then this is very good news and the next game we're looking at is the cat puzzle game tray so this was natively ported to the mac and Remains What I Call one of the best doublea budget games that you can buy on the system so here we're running at 1080p at the high graphics preset and the frame rate hovers between 60 and 70 FPS we're not using any kind of upscaling here so this is the pure native resolution and this is a fantastically playable game on the lonely M4 Mac Mini so next up we're looking at something a little bit different this is Nintendo switch emulation using the emulator called ryujinx so yes Ryu Jinx was shut down by its cre jdk Chan some time ago however a contributor called gream has continued the project which still continues to get regular updates I'll definitely be doing an updated tutorial on how to get Nintendo switch emulation working on the Apple silicon Mac but for now this is Prince of Persia lost Crown being run through reings and most switch games are capped at 30 or 60 FPS and here we're able to run at basically maximum frame rate and it's virtually Flawless so you can't play the windows version of this game however there is going to be a Mac Port natively optimized for Apple silicon Hardware coming out in the very near future so I'll be covering that as soon as it releases and the next game we are looking at is of course cyberpunk 2077 one of the most demanding games that you can run on the Apple silicon Mac especially because this is a Windows game being run through the crossover preview translation layer now again this is another game that's actually going to be coming out natively optimized for Apple silicon early in 2025 but if you wanted to test this out now it works great through crossover and game porting toolkits D2D metal now what's cool about the base level M4 chips is the fact that we have a minimum of 16 GB of RAM which actually makes games like cyberpunk 2077 very playable these windows direct X12 games require a lot of system memory and video memory as well even at 1080p at medium settings with FSR set to 2.1 balanced we are only using about 8.3 GB of system memory which would have definitely overloaded a base chip from the previous generations for example the M1 8 GB can't really run this game very well but it's cool to see that there's basically a new flaw in performance that's now available this minimum spec can easily run cyber Punk 2077 next up we're looking at Final Fantasy 7 remake so again this is a game that struggles on the base chips of the previous generations especially if they only had 8 GB of RAM and that's because we're running a Windows game through all of these translation layers the overhead of this kind of game is much more demanding than a typically natively optimized title here we're running at 1080p on the low Graphics preset and it's hovering about 50 to 60 or so FPS which isn't too bad because this Wall Street Scene is a relatively demonic part of the game there's loads of NPCs on screen the game also fares very well during the combat scenes as well so here we're fighting one of the big houses I think this seem to make a lot more sense in the original game from 1997 but here we get to see it all rendered in high definition on the Apple silicon Mac in 2024 on the M4 Mac Mini next we're looking at another Windows title being run through crossover and this of course is the fighting game Street Fighter 6 so what's really impressive about the M4 chip is the fact that we are able to get nearly 60 FPS at the standard setting at 1080p so you could easily hit pure 60 FPS if we just turn down one or two settings here we're not making use of any kind of upscaling so there's a lot of room for improvement here and already it's extremely impressive especially considering that this is a Windows game being run through all of these translation layers if you look at the frame timing on the right it's all flatlined and pretty smooth making this a great title to play on a Mac now I believe this doesn't actually work online at the moment in the future I'll be testing out Tekken 8 which does allow online multiplayer to work but anyway this is cool to see that this game is running espe because I didn't do any pre-shaded compilation that's available in the settings this is all just pure vanilla gameplay anyway it would be really cool to see Capcom bring this natively to the Mac especially as it uses the re engine the same engine used in the natively optimized Resident Evil games the Mac could really use with some proper multiplayer online titles and lastly we're looking at one of my favorite games of 2024 which is the pc windows Port of ghost of sushima running on Apple cic Mac via crossover this is one of those games through actual testing on the Mac which I've actually fallen in love with playing there's an expansive open world with interesting Dynamic gameplay and the combat and reward progression system is really addictive anyway this is a Windows title being run through crossover if you want to get this to work then you need to use the f-16c patch provided by Vladimir prog I'll leave a link to this in the description this helps to bypass certain checks that the game is looking for when running on certain older Windows CPUs stuff like AVX which is actually supported on Mac AIA but also f-16c as well anyway it's cool to see that 108 ATP medium is possible on this game I've had to upscale it a bit in order to get a better frame rate but anyway the fact that this is possible through translation layers on the Mac is seriously impressive anyway please let me know in the comments what you think about the gaming performance of this brand new M4 Mac Mini how does it stack up against other Alternatives I'll be doing testing on the M4 pro version of the Mac Mini in the very near future on live stream and on video so please make sure to check it out thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video

Download CrossOver ►► https://www.codeweavers.com/store?ad=835;deal=APPLEGAMINGWIKINEW - APPLEGAMINGWIKINEW for 20% OFF! CrossOver 24 + Game Porting Toolkit 2.0b3 tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whwjc53Qxew Testing 8 games on the M4 base Mac mini with 16GB RAM, 10 GPU cores. Big thanks to everyone who joined the livestream and superchatted to suggest games to test. I actually had an issue with my recording so I had to redo the entire recording but glad I could make this video and looking forward to even more testing on the M4 Pro in the next video. Timestamps: 00:00 M4 Mac mini 16GB is amazing for gaming! 01:30 Death Stranding 02:18 Resident Evil 7 02:57 Stray 03:22 Switch emulation - Lost Crown 04:03 Cyberpunk 2077 05:03 Final Fantasy 7 Remake 05:46 Street Fighter 6 06:47 Ghost of Tsushima ► Links: Master M1 game compatibility list: https://www.applegamingwiki.com/wiki/M1_compatible_games_master_list Please join me on Discord here: https://discord.gg/28CAAr6SpB Check out AppleGamingWiki: https://applegamingwiki.com ►► Mac: Record screen audio and gameplay (Mac): https://youtu.be/i6UewWGWfe0 Set 16:9 aspect ratio (Mac): https://youtu.be/TtKNqoCbOaI Highlight mouse cursor (Mac): https://youtu.be/jDJECtQO97Y Display keystrokes (Mac): https://youtu.be/1MRQ9DmxmU0 Snap windows (Rectangle, Mac): https://youtu.be/qUPSnDYJU6A OBS setup (Mac): https://youtu.be/rpYxhzlaDj8 Temperature/fan monitor (Mac): https://youtu.be/ovnDeHiXnKU ►► General: Microphone setup (Blue Yeti): https://youtu.be/81DsMgR2Qd4 Greenscreen setup (OBS): https://youtu.be/mO4QhV-1rKo Note-taking (Notion, Mac): https://youtu.be/DaMPeS8Bet8 Highlight mouse cursor (Windows): https://youtu.be/kM0RgM7TDFc DIY 2TB SSD USB-C (Mac and Windows): https://youtu.be/43X3Mk5vQK4 ► Windows gaming on Mac: ►► Windows on M1 Mac Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVxzCteaWnc ►► CrossOver FREE 14 DAY TRIAL - use coupon APPLEGAMINGWIKINEW for 20% DISCOUNT: https://www.codeweavers.com/store?ad=835;deal=applegamingwikinew ►► Parallels use code APPLEWIKI10 for 10% DISCOUNT: https://prf.hn/click/camref:1101lfR6V Amazon Affiliates Disclosure: Andrew Tsai is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites as well as other affiliate programs.