Apple M4 Mac mini Runs AAA Titles Like Death Stranding at 60+ FPS

Apple's M4 chip may have come to the gaming party a little late, but it seems up to serving reasonable frame rates for somewhat aging AAA titles such as Death…

By Ishika Setia

November 10, 2024

3 min read

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Apple‘s M4 chip may have come to the gaming party a little late, but it seems up to serving reasonable frame rates for somewhat aging AAA titles such as Death Stranding. Running at ‘Very High’ on the new Mac mini, the machine delivers an effective cooling system making for an enjoyable game running. We don’t yet know how well the latest Mac mini will perform with more recent games, though, so for now we’re talking about Death Stranding here.

Apple’s M4 Mac mini Delivers Smooth Performance in AAA Titles Like Death Stranding – Is Mac Gaming Finally Here?

The M4’s 10-core CPU and GPU require Apple’s MetalFX upscaling set to Quality to maintain smooth performance—though, as with many games, upscaling is essential for stable frame rates. MrMacRightPlus on YouTube shows that the exterior temperature of the Mac mini tops out at 38.1°C, indicating that the hardware can handle M4 thermal load without any issue.

For performance, the test shows the game hitting 90 FPS at first but then stabilizing between 60 and 75 FPS for most of the time during typical missions at least at 1080p. Minor dips below 60 FPS occur when moving through densely foliated areas, but nothing drastic. On 16GB of unified RAM, the game only uses 8GB, suggesting developers might not need much memory.

And finally, given the seemingly all but inevitable Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition onto macOS next year with ray tracing and Frame Generation in tow, it will be interesting to see how much VRAM it will ask for since this game may very easily be a resource hog. At least for now, the M4 — first introduced alongside the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro models — runs Death Stranding without issue so you can play games that are around four or five years old that still look beautiful.

Its effective cooling system keeps the Mac mini from thermal throttling, which was seen in a previous Premiere Pro 4K export test where it just edged out the same chip-equipped MacBook Pro. Additionally, for those interested, the base Mac mini model with 16GB RAM and 256GB storage is currently available for $579 on Amazon, while the 512GB model is discounted to $749.