Entry-level 2024 Apple Mac mini impresses with solid gaming and emulation performance

Apple's new Mac mini comes with the latest Apple M4 line of SoCs, with the top-end variant featuring the M4 Pro. Even the base variant with the non-Pro M4 has what it takes to power through moderately heavy workloads, and as ETA Prime has showcased, it also holds pretty well in gaming and emulation.

ETA Prime first ran games with native Apple silicon support. Hades 2 at 1080p and high graphics settings ran at 120 FPS. The macOS version of Shadow of the Tomb Raider averaged 49 FPS at 1080p resolution on medium settings. As ETA Prime notes, this is about 6 FPS higher than what the Radeon 780M generally delivers with the same settings.

Next, the YouTuber tested Metro Exodus at 1080p on medium graphics settings, with the M4 Mac mini managing to run the game with an average FPS of 68. Moving to non-native gaming tests, ETA Prime showed off Spider-Man Remastered running with CrossOver at 1080p and medium visuals. With the built-in IGTI upscaling, the game averaged 88 FPS.

Elden Ring was also tested with CrossOver. At 900p resolution and on medium settings, the game was captured running on the base 2024 Mac mini at around 50 FPS. The last game tested with the application is Cyberpunk 2077. At 1080p low and with AMD FSR 3 and frame generation, the average was about 73 FPS.

When it comes to emulation, ETA Prime ran a couple of PlayStation 3 games with RPCS3. One of them is Skate 3, running with the Vulkan backend at 720p, which had an average of around 60 FPS. God of War 3 was also tested with the emulator, and with the same settings, the game hovers around 50 FPS.

Overall, it seems that the base Apple Mac mini with M4 can play games relatively well. With native support for more games, it can possibly stand as a great, affordable macOS gaming system (Ryzen 7 7840HS-equipped Beelink SER7 curr. $509.14 on Amazon).