Why Apple’s M6 Chip Can’t Hold Its Own Against Any NVIDIA GPU

Apple’s M6 chip offers capable everyday performance, but the article argues it falls well behind dedicated NVIDIA GPUs in gaming and other real-time graphics work. That gap matters most to people seeking high visual settings or a system that will keep up with future games; for ordinary productivity and video exports, the difference may be less noticeable.

The M6 Mac mini has 12 CPU and 12 GPU cores and costs $900, while its Metal benchmark score of 93,217 is nearly four times lower than the M5 Ultra’s 366,744. The article says the M5 Ultra’s OpenCL performance is roughly comparable to an RTX 4080, a 2022-generation card; nevertheless, the M6 Mini averaged 55 frames per second in Cyberpunk 2077 at default Mac settings. NVIDIA cards can add substantial cost, but Macs also have fewer compatible games, and the Mini does not include a display or input devices.