Mac Mini M4 Pro or iMac M4?

[HisShadowX]

Hey everyone,

So I made a post a couple years back about Macintosh and gaming, regarding buying my next PC, and I ended up going with a Razer laptop, which served me well for a couple of years.

However, with Windows 10’s final update coming soon, I do not want to upgrade to Windows 11.

I just watched some videos on the Mac Mini M4 Pro, and I’m seriously interested. But I’m having trouble deciding between a beefed-up Mac Mini M4 Pro or an iMac.

Here’s what I’ve gathered so far:
1. The M4 Pro seems to be a lot better than the regular M4.
2. The Mac Mini is getting good reviews for performance, even for gaming, which is a plus.
3. I like to spec out my machine or get something that will last me at least 5–6 years.

What I typically do is get a high-end model (like an Ultra), and it usually lasts me for half a decade.

From what I’ve seen, the iMac only comes with the regular M4, while the Mac Mini can go up to the M4 Pro depending on configuration.

So, I’m a bit clueless here—what’s the better choice?

Should I go for the iMac for its all-in-one design, or get the Mac Mini M4 Pro and pair it with my own monitor and peripherals?

Looking forward to hearing your suggestions!

[alexmaru]

with iMac you will stuck with 60Hz small screen forever.

[Necronomicon]

If you even vaguely plan on gaming, the M4 Pro has double the GPU cores of the M4.

[HisShadowX]

Necronomicon a écrit :

If you even vaguely plan on gaming, the M4 Pro has double the GPU cores of the M4.

Can you verify if what this dude said is true with Resident Evil 4?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwf3Lpv39qk

[Homy]

Nothing to be clueless about. Forget iMac. It was good for gaming before when you could choose different GPUs but now it only offers the base GPU. It can still handle games wth M4 but it doesn't offer M4 Pro, only Mac Mini does and for best gaming performance you need Pro. Remember that there are two M4 Pros with 16 and 20 cores.

If you can wait until early/mid 2025 when the next Mac Studio with M4 Max/Ultra is released you could buy a Mac Studio M2 Max on sale for the same price as Mac mini M4 Pro 20c. M2 Max has a memory bandwidth of 400GB/s compared to 273 for M4 Pro. You get 32GB memory too instead of 24, more ports and 32 GPU cores. It is faster than M4 Pro. It doesn’t have RT cores but RT decreases the performance by 50% so I don’t think you would want to use it on M4 Pro. With M2 Max you could also get better performance in Crossover, Parallels or VMware Fusion thanks to larger memory.

For gaming benchmarks check out Andrew Tsai and MrMacRight on YT.

[HisShadowX]

Homy a écrit :

Nothing to be clueless about. Forget iMac. It was good for gaming before when you could choose different GPUs but now it only offers the base GPU. It can still handle games wth M4 but it doesn't offer M4 Pro, only Mac Mini does and for best gaming performance you need Pro. Remember that there are two M4 Pros with 16 and 20 cores.

If you can wait until early/mid 2025 when the next Mac Studio with M4 Max/Ultra is released you could buy a Mac Studio M2 Max on sale for the same price as Mac mini M4 Pro 20c. M2 Max has a memory bandwidth of 400GB/s compared to 273 for M4 Pro. You get 32GB memory too instead of 24, more ports and 32 GPU cores. It is faster than M4 Pro. It doesn’t have RT cores but RT decreases the performance by 50% so I don’t think you would want to use it on M4 Pro. With M2 Max you could also get better performance in Crossover, Parallels or VMware Fusion thanks to larger memory.

For gaming benchmarks check out Andrew Tsai and MrMacRight on YT.

Will do, thank you.

[Necronomicon]

HisShadowX a écrit :

Necronomicon a écrit :

If you even vaguely plan on gaming, the M4 Pro has double the GPU cores of the M4.

Can you verify if what this dude said is true with Resident Evil 4?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwf3Lpv39qk

I don't have RE4 for mac and I can't verify it but the guy is definitely right since we're talking about 16 GPU cores vs 10 of the M4.