Switching from PC to Mac 4K gaming

[Kimbie]

So after some advice, been a long time since had a Mac but fancy a change back.

My current gaming PC is around 5 years old and looking at upgrading it but whole new machine is rather pricey more than the cost of a Mac Mini M4

I was looking at the Mac Mini M4 Pro the 20gpu with 24gb memory, gaming wise mostly play World of Warcraft at 4K, does anyone know how good WoW performs at 4K on the M4 Pro? I know I can use Crossover for other games, over half my steam library has a mac version plus have a Xbox and potentially a Steam Deck.

I also mainly use my PC for Discord, Office apps, YouTube, OBS, Davinci Resolve.

So am I crazy in wanting to make the swap to MacOS?

Thanks

 

[russell_314]

So after some advice, been a long time since had a Mac but fancy a change back.

My current gaming PC is around 5 years old and looking at upgrading it but whole new machine is rather pricey more than the cost of a Mac Mini M4

I was looking at the Mac Mini M4 Pro the 20gpu with 24gb memory, gaming wise mostly play World of Warcraft at 4K, does anyone know how good WoW performs at 4K on the M4 Pro? I know I can use Crossover for other games, over half my steam library has a mac version plus have a Xbox and potentially a Steam Deck.

I also mainly use my PC for Discord, Office apps, YouTube, OBS, Davinci Resolve.

So am I crazy in wanting to make the swap to MacOS?

Thanks

In my opinion, a little because if your main purpose is gaming, you’re going to purposely put yourself into some struggles. In this configuration with a 1 TB SSD which you’re going to need at least for gaming that’s $1800. For that price, you can get a fairly decent gaming desktop that will perform better.

If you feel like playing with macOS, just get a base Mac mini have fun with it. It’s awesome for everything except not ideal for gaming.

 

[marryammlee]

So after some advice, been a long time since had a Mac but fancy a change back.

My current gaming PC is around 5 years old and looking at upgrading it but whole new machine is rather pricey more than the cost of a Mac Mini M4

I was looking at the Mac Mini M4 Pro the 20gpu with 24gb memory, gaming wise mostly play World of Warcraft at 4K, does anyone know how good WoW performs at 4K on the M4 Pro? I know I can use Crossover for other games, over half my steam library has a mac version plus have a Xbox and potentially a Steam Deck.

I also mainly use my PC for Discord, Office apps, YouTube, OBS, Davinci Resolve.

So am I crazy in wanting to make the swap to MacOS?

Thanks

Yeah, maybe just a little

 

[Huntn]

So after some advice, been a long time since had a Mac but fancy a change back.

My current gaming PC is around 5 years old and looking at upgrading it but whole new machine is rather pricey more than the cost of a Mac Mini M4

I was looking at the Mac Mini M4 Pro the 20gpu with 24gb memory, gaming wise mostly play World of Warcraft at 4K, does anyone know how good WoW performs at 4K on the M4 Pro? I know I can use Crossover for other games, over half my steam library has a mac version plus have a Xbox and potentially a Steam Deck.

I also mainly use my PC for Discord, Office apps, YouTube, OBS, Davinci Resolve.

So am I crazy in wanting to make the swap to MacOS?

Thanks

I love my MBP for daily all around use, but I’d never switch back to Mac as a primary gaming platform. I like being able to easily upgrade components at the equivalent of bargain prices. Arguably it is more economical flexible especially if you do your own upgrades. My current PC (signature) started life in 2013. I’ve updated it two times , 2 motherboard/cpu/memory replacements and 3 graphic card replacements. It’s in a full size tower, so there’s lots of room.

 

[cateye]

All those office tasks you listed? And Resolve? The Mini, even the base model, will be great at all of them. The XBox (and SteamDeck, if you choose) will provide a much broader catalog of games, and a better experience, at a lower price. Maybe get another PC if you're really committed to the scene and want to make sure you have access to everything when it actually releases. But if you're only using it for gaming, you can tailor your build (and budget) accordingly.

Best tool for the job, always.

 

[groove-agent]

So after some advice, been a long time since had a Mac but fancy a change back.

My current gaming PC is around 5 years old and looking at upgrading it but whole new machine is rather pricey more than the cost of a Mac Mini M4

I was looking at the Mac Mini M4 Pro the 20gpu with 24gb memory, gaming wise mostly play World of Warcraft at 4K, does anyone know how good WoW performs at 4K on the M4 Pro? I know I can use Crossover for other games, over half my steam library has a mac version plus have a Xbox and potentially a Steam Deck.

I also mainly use my PC for Discord, Office apps, YouTube, OBS, Davinci Resolve.

So am I crazy in wanting to make the swap to MacOS?

Thanks

Not crazy, but it's debatable if it's worth it. Only you can be the judge of that.

I think if you're already going to buy a Mac for creative or work reasons, and gaming is something you're not too serious about, it could make sense to use a Mac especially if you want the simplicity of only one computer at your desk. I used to use a Macbook Pro mostly for productivity, and would casually play World of Warcraft in my spare time. It worked adequately, but not ideally.

Gaming eats a lot of disk space which is an extremely expensive upgrade on Macs. You can get around it with external drives and possibly something like a BaseQI SD card adapter but load times are going to suffer.

These days I run a PC and a MBP at my desk. I think the gaming experience is much better, even with games such as WoW. Plus I absolutely hate cooling fan noise, and the larger chassis means better cooling and my PC sits on the floor instead of on my desk like most Macs. However, I would understand if a casual gamer would prefer to use that money from a PC and upgrade their Mac purchase if productivity was more important.

 

[Plutonius]

So after some advice, been a long time since had a Mac but fancy a change back.

My current gaming PC is around 5 years old and looking at upgrading it but whole new machine is rather pricey more than the cost of a Mac Mini M4

I was looking at the Mac Mini M4 Pro the 20gpu with 24gb memory, gaming wise mostly play World of Warcraft at 4K, does anyone know how good WoW performs at 4K on the M4 Pro? I know I can use Crossover for other games, over half my steam library has a mac version plus have a Xbox and potentially a Steam Deck.

I also mainly use my PC for Discord, Office apps, YouTube, OBS, Davinci Resolve.

So am I crazy in wanting to make the swap to MacOS?

Thanks

Doing a search, it looks like most people are claiming 70-90 fps in WoW on max quality at 4K.

I have an M2 Studio Max at 1080p so I'm unable to answer your question from personal experience (I also dropped WoW years ago ).

You could order the M4 from Apple and try it out. If it doesn't work well for you, you could return it within the return window.

 

[throAU]

You won't be doing 4k gaming on a current Mac.

 

[Mac_fan75]

I just switched from 1440p to 4k (Asus PG27UCDM) with WoW and it is running still fine, have to set some stuff a bit lower and I am using a M2 Max 64GB. I think the M2 Max GPU wise is a bit faster then the M4 Pro but CPU wise deffo not and WoW is a big CPU game so should be fine for 60FPS+ which really depends where you are. Raid stuff with 30men is still limited by the WoW servers and can be terrible on all systems. I will buy the M4 Max Studio when it is out, that will be overkill for WoW but I like high FPS.

The other game I am playing is CIV 7 which runs beautiful on 4K which everything to highest.
I think the M2 Max GPU wise is a bit faster then the M4 Pro but CPU wise deffo not and WoW is a big CPU game.

 

[throAU]

Not crazy, but it's debatable if it's worth it. Only you can be the judge of that.

I think if you're already going to buy a Mac for creative or work reasons, and gaming is something you're not too serious about, it could make sense to use a Mac especially if you want the simplicity of only one computer at your desk. I used to use a Macbook Pro mostly for productivity, and would casually play World of Warcraft in my spare time. It worked adequately, but not ideally.

This is exactly what I'm doing, but lets be realistic here:

My M4 max is nowhere near as capable as the RX6900XT from... 4 years ago in my desktop PC, and that's decent at 4k rasterisation, but turn on RT and it chokes. Can run RT at say, 1080p with FSR working pretty hard, etc.

I'd estimate my m4 max to be less than half the capability of that card. And that's fine, its running in like 1/4 of the power budget... but this is the reality.

Sure, you can set resolution to 4k, but you'll get a better experience at 1080p or 1440p with more details or better frame rate in modern games. WoW runs on a potato though so if that's all you care about then .... sure.

 

[panhandlemac]

If you are buying a Mac with gaming in mind, you will be disappointed. WOW will run natively on a current setup just fine, but other gaming options will be limited. As someone who moved to the Mac about 3 months ago, other than WOW, I don't have a single game installed. Running it on a MBP M4 Pro without any issues.

 

[kiranmk2]

I think we are going to see the early M-series base chips struggle to keep up with the latest games. We're already in a position where M2 is needed to hold a consistent 30 fps at low settings for a lot of the recent AAA games (RE4, Death Stranding etc), but the Assassin's Creed Shadows Mac specs were released earlier this week and an M1 Max or M2 Pro chip is needed for 720p/low/30 fps with no RT.

https://gamegpu.com/images/1_2025/NEWS/q1/Asset-5.png

 

[Kimbie]

Some good options/advice something to think about, but knowing me I will procrastinate long enough for the M5 to roll around.

Also why did the mac mini never get a M4 Max chip?

 

[dmr727]

Also why did the mac mini never get a M4 Max chip?

Apple would rather you buy the upcoming Studio.

 

[Mac_fan75]

Apple would rather you buy the upcoming Studio.

Well Mac Studio the fans never spin up, I believe the new Mac Mini fans can hit (correct me if I am wrong) up so I would prefer the Studio size to keep it noiseless as a Max will definitely make more heat.

 

[Kimbie]

Apple would rather you buy the upcoming Studio.

Ah fair point