M6 Mac Mini gaming: World of Warcraft: Midnight
Stormwind and Dragon Isles testing, including the demanding Amirdrassil view. nyaaBench results on the 24GB M6 Mac Mini.
These tests use the 24GB M6 Mac Mini. See the overview and measurement notes for the shared setup.
World of Warcraft: Midnight client
Retail initially refused to install even though the Forever beta and Classic had worked. After a full restart, and the substantial download finished I was able to launch the game. I haven't bought the Midnight expansion, so these results cover Stormwind and the Dragon Isles in the retail client, not Midnight's expansion zones.
WoW Midnight (Retail) · Mac Mini M6, 24GB
| Settings / scene | Average FPS |
|---|---|
| Stormwind Preset 10 1080p | 122.92 |
| Preset 1 1080p | 425.64 |
| Dragon Isles Flyaround Preset 10 | 79.1 |
| Preset 10 3840x2160 amirdrassil flyaround | 27.81 |
| Preset 10 3840x2160 Amirdrassil Stress Static | 19.84 |
| Preset 10 1080p Amirdrassil Stress Static | 45.77 |
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
Stormwind/Dragon Isles flyaround or static Amirdrassil view, as labelled. Player populations and routes vary. Midnight expansion zones were not tested; unlabelled resolution was not recorded. Frame rate and latency are once-a-second summaries; telemetry is sampled every 250 ms. Dashed lines mark each capture's average.
Stormwind ran very well. Flying around the Dragon Isles was more demanding, and I eventually settled on a static view of Amirdrassil because it was the lowest frame rate I'd encountered in that session. Preset 10 averages 45.77fps there at 1080p, falling to 19.84fps at 4K.
I'd be comfortable playing on the Mini, but at 4K with the highest preset I'd expect to lower settings or render scale for a smooth experience. I haven't tested Silvermoon in Midnight and can't use these older zones to promise how it will behave.
I'm not usually one to advocate for upscalers, but offering FSR 1.0 as the only option for WoW here is underwhelming, and given how well MetalFX Quality seems to work for games like Control and Cyberpunk 2077, I'd imagine it would result in a greatly improved experience on the Mac.