The base M6 Mac mini isn’t the machine anyone builds for gaming. It features the cheapest 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU configuration Apple sells, just 16GB of memory, and a 256GB SSD. Yet the M6 chip inside it carries a genuine generational jump in GPU performance, which raised an obvious question for anyone eyeing the $899 entry model as a secondary gaming box.
YouTuber Andrew Tsai put that question to the test. He ran seven AAA titles on the base M6 Mac mini, mixing native Metal ports with Windows games running through the CrossOver translation layer, and posted the full breakdown on his YouTube channel.
Cyberpunk 2077 Hits 40 FPS at 1440p on the Native Mac Port
Cyberpunk 2077’s native Mac port, released last year, ran at 1440p on the high graphics preset with MetalFX set to quality mode, landing around 40 FPS. Dropping to 1080p with MetalFX upscaling from a 720p base got performance much closer to a smooth 60 FPS, with a small hit to image sharpness that Tsai called a fair tradeoff.
Crimson Desert and Civilization VII Both Hold a Steady 60 FPS
Crimson Desert ran at a 4K medium preset with aggressive upscaling from 720p and frame generation switched on, capping the output at 60 FPS while the actual render rate sat closer to 30 FPS. Tsai noted the frame generation showed no noticeable input lag and produced a smooth frame time graph throughout. The developers recently announced that Crimson Desert’s upcoming DLC will only land on the Steam version of the game, not the Mac App Store release, which leaves the Mac version’s future update path uncertain.
Civilization VII fared just as well, two versions exist on the Mac, an Apple Arcade release synced across iPhone, iPad, and Mac but capped at the base game through patch 1.25, and the full Steam version with multiplayer and every current and future DLC. Tsai tested the Steam version at 4K medium with MetalFX upscaling from 1080p, and it held a steady 60 FPS cap with an average AI turn time of 11.6 seconds.
League of Legends Maxes Out Its Frame Cap While WoW Forever Hits a Beta Bug
League of Legends made the jump to a native ARM build earlier this year, though its launcher still runs as an Intel app. At a 4K medium preset, it frequently hit the game’s own frame rate ceiling of 240 FPS on the base M6 Mac mini.
World of Warcraft’s new Forever beta mode had a rougher time. At the time of testing, certain graphics settings triggered a kernel panic and restarted the whole machine, a bug serious enough that Tsai linked a workaround thread in his video description. Even with settings adjusted to avoid the crash, performance in the beta was well below what WoW’s retail client delivers, which easily cleared 140 FPS in older zones under similar settings on the same machine. Commenters on the video noted that Blizzard shipped a fix for the bug the day after the video went up.
Silent Hill: Townfall and Elden Ring Run Through CrossOver
Silent Hill: Townfall, which just released, ran through CrossOver at a letterboxed resolution with MetalFX quality mode standing in for the game’s built-in DLSS setting, at a medium preset. Tsai called it some of the best-looking gameplay he’s captured on a Mac, and said it worked on day one with no external patches needed, a notable result for a freshly launched Windows title running through a translation layer.
Elden Ring, also running through CrossOver, is limited to single-player since the game’s anti-cheat blocks online multiplayer unless a mod called smooth Co-op is installed. The game engine hard-caps frame rate at 60 FPS regardless of hardware. At 1440p on the high preset, the base M6 Mac mini fluctuated around 45 FPS and touched that 60 FPS ceiling during lighter scenes.
Every one of these seven games ran, and five of the seven held 60 FPS or higher for at least part of the test, on the same $899 base configuration Apple sells as its cheapest Mac mini.
Our Take
The cheapest Mac mini Apple sells can now run a modern open-world RPG like Crimson Desert and a freshly released Windows horror game like Silent Hill: Townfall in the same afternoon. That would have been a stretch for the base M4 Mac mini, and it says more about how far MetalFX and CrossOver have matured than it does about raw silicon performance.
