Performance on M4 Mac Mini

[Marcel]

Looking for others that could suggest any tweaks or settings for optimal performance.

Mine is running 24GB RAM by the way.

I gave Civ VI a shot and it looked and performed very well, but having just bought the new M4 Mini and Civ VII, I'm a bit bemused by the performance.

I'm still in the 30 day window to return the Mac Mini and wondering if its work upgrading to the Mac Mini Pro, which is about $500 more and so I'm not sure on the return on investment or if it will even run better,

[Skull]

Usually id recommend buying a PC as Macs are awful for gaming but I’ll be less sarcastic this once since you seem like a good person. I’d recommend running it on the option other than DX12 as that is better for “lower performance Pc’s”. I’d also recommend restarting your computer after the install and verifying your game files. Happy gaming!

[Marcel]

Ok, thanks for not giving the sarcastic reply! Haha

Of course I'd rather have bought a great new PC with all the good stuff, my current PC is almost 10.

I'm not sure what you mean by "running it on the option other than DX12" - MacOS just runs it and then the settings, graphics etc are configured within Civ.

[Skull]

Originally posted by Marcel:

Ok, thanks for not giving the sarcastic reply! Haha

Of course I'd rather have bought a great new PC with all the good stuff, my current PC is almost 10.

I'm not sure what you mean by "running it on the option other than DX12" - MacOS just runs it and then the settings, graphics etc are configured within Civ.

Ah I see. I would recommend verifying the files through steam’s interface (right click the game in your list and select properties it will be in that menu) and then restarting. Otherwise good luck!

[Tech Enthusiast]

Return that overpriced thing and spend about half of that on a real PC with twice the performance. Problem solved.

No idea why people keep thinking Mac have good performance... if you play Geekbench maybe, but not for real world use cases that most people use daily. Very few edge cases where a mac would be on par with a real PC.

Get the Mac, if you are 100% sure you know that it will be great for your work / software stack you run. If you are unsure about it, there is a 95% chance that it is the wrong tool for the job.
Basically, you are trying to pound a screw with a hammer. It will work eventually, but you could get a more fitting tool. ;-)

[Marcel]

Originally posted by Tech Enthusiast:

Return that overpriced thing and spend about half of that on a real PC with twice the performance. Problem solved.

No idea why people keep thinking Mac have good performance... if you play Geekbench maybe, but not for real world use cases that most people use daily. Very few edge cases where a mac would be on par with a real PC.

Get the Mac, if you are 100% sure you know that it will be great for your work / software stack you run. If you are unsure about it, there is a 95% chance that it is the wrong tool for the job.
Basically, you are trying to pound a screw with a hammer. It will work eventually, but you could get a more fitting tool. ;-)

I bought it mostly because I had almost $1K to spend from credits on my account and partly to use music/video software that isn't otherwise available on the PC. Otherwise, I agree with you - I would love to get a souped up new PC with a top notch GPU.

[Tech Enthusiast]

Originally posted by Marcel:

I bought it mostly because I had almost $1K to spend from credits on my account and partly to use music/video software that isn't otherwise available on the PC. Otherwise, I agree with you - I would love to get a souped up new PC with a top notch GPU.

That is a good reason to buy it tho.
Software exclusivity is also the main reason people still buy consoles.
Also the reason both consoles and apple pay a huge sum to keep those softwares / games exclusive,... but nothing you or I as an enduser could do about it. They are getting double digit millions for that. Nothing we could nudge, even if we bought 10s or hundreds of licences sadly.

Hate that practise,... but it remains a valid reason to buy Apple Hardware.

[RoyalFool]

I was thinking of getting the m4 mini for some casual civ 7, just how badly does it perform? Might have dodged a bullet finding your thread

[Tech Enthusiast]

A m4 is about the performance of a ryzen 7 7800x and a rtx 3080.
So about 5-6 year old tech. Granted, the M4 can not be as performant as BOTH at the same time, and civ 7 may push both GPU and CPU tasks... so to be save, reduce both tiers by 1, but expect slightly better than that.

Can compare possible performance from there.