Apple has announced the M6 chip for its new Mac mini, claiming significant CPU and performance boosts. However, benchmark results reveal a significant gap against NVIDIA GPUs. While the M6 performs well in standard productivity tasks like photo editing and 4K video transcoding, it struggles in graphics-intensive workloads.
In gaming benchmarks, most NVIDIA GPUs outperform the M6, with the M5 Ultra only keeping pace with last-generation RTX 4080 performance. The M6 achieves a Metal score of 93,217, roughly four times lower than the RTX 4080. Despite this, the M6 offers a compelling value proposition.
Priced at $900, it undercuts the cost of building a comparable NVIDIA-powered PC. High-end RTX 5080 cards exceed $2,000, making the Mac mini a cost-effective entry point for users not requiring maximum gaming detail. For users invested in the Apple ecosystem, the M6 delivers adequate performance for less, though it cannot compete with dedicated graphics cards for serious gaming or real-time rendering tasks.
Source: Engadget · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing