M6 Mac Mini gaming: Crimson Desert
Crimson Desert from Minimum to Cinematic at 1080p, comparing native rendering with MetalFX Quality, plus Low and Cinematic at 1440p and 4K.
I struggled to enjoy Crimson Desert on my M1 Max, hitching and inconsistent motion made the experience uncomfortable. I didn't encounter the same problem on the M6 as you might expect, though that doesn't make this an easy game for the Mini to run.
I walked through the initial scene at each quality preset, first with MetalFX disabled and then with MetalFX Quality. Frame generation is off for every result in the graph and tables, with VSync and the FPS cap disabled too. These are separate walks in the same initial scene so expect some variation.
Minimum to Cinematic at 1080p
The game initially chose 'For This Mac', a mixture of Medium settings with ray tracing enabled and MetalFX upscaling turned on. For the preset ladder I used the named presets instead, from Minimum through Cinematic.
Crimson Desert · 1080p preset performance
Mac Mini M6, 24GB · average FPS · frame generation off
Medium with MetalFX Quality is the combination I could imagine myself playing at. It averages , compared with with MetalFX off. The game still looks good at Medium, but the performance falls short of what I'd call a great experience.
I noticed a distinct loss of visual clarity even with MetalFX disabled at Minimum settings, despite neither the Metal performance libraries nor the HUD reporting upscaling. I haven't established what causes it, so 'Native' in these results means MetalFX is off, but I suspected the 3D resolution is reduced compared to other presets and the engine is using some sort internal scaling.
Going beyond 1080p
I also tried 1440p and 4K, limiting the higher-resolution tests to Low and Cinematic in the interests of preserving my Sunday. I did not test the Minimum preset at higher resolutions because the drastic drop in quality gives me little confidence some other upscaling technique isn't skewing the results.
Native, MetalFX off
Crimson Desert · Native · average FPS
| Preset | 1080p | 1440p | 4K |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low | 36.81 | 25.61 | 13.92 |
| Cinematic | 23.51 | 16.15 | 9.28 |
One capture per setting. Hover averages for min / avg / max; min and max are one-second rates, not percentile lows. Colours: below 30 fps red, 30–59 yellow, 60–89 green, 90+ cyan.
nyaaBench capture
Walk through the initial scene; VSync and FPS cap disabled. Frame generation off. Manual route and capture durations vary. Minimum preset looks softer even with MetalFX off. Frame rate and latency are once-a-second summaries; telemetry is sampled every 250 ms. Dashed lines mark each capture's average.
MetalFX Quality
Crimson Desert · MetalFX Quality · average FPS
| Preset | 1080p | 1440p | 4K |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low | 49.72 | 36.15 | 21.92 |
| Cinematic | 30.5 | 21.53 | 14.57 |
One capture per setting. Hover averages for min / avg / max; min and max are one-second rates, not percentile lows. Colours: below 30 fps red, 30–59 yellow, 60–89 green, 90+ cyan.
nyaaBench capture
Walk through the initial scene; VSync and FPS cap disabled. Frame generation off. Manual route and capture durations vary. Minimum preset looks softer even with MetalFX off. Frame rate and latency are once-a-second summaries; telemetry is sampled every 250 ms. Dashed lines mark each capture's average.
At 1440p output, MetalFX Quality uses a 960p base image, and I'm comfortable saying it looked better than native 1080p. At 4K it uses a 1440p input. The performance is poor, even Low with MetalFX Quality averages only at 4K. I wouldn't recommend the M6 Mini for playing this game at those higher resolutions.
What about frame generation?
Combining the MetalFX Quality setting with frame generation turned on brought the Cinematic preset closer to a 60fps image at 1080p, but clarity suffered substantially and input lag was noticeable despite the smoother presentation.
I still think we're a decent way away from an entry level Mac being able to play this game well, but it's certainly a good showing from the M6 here, and players using controllers and less sensitive to ~30fps gameplay might fare better. For me personally, I'd give it a miss on the M6.