New Mac mini M4 Pro w Benchmarks

S

sultan1966

Crazy Train Engineer
Received my new Mac mini M4 Pro yesterday. 5x5x2 in size. Looking at Thunderbolt 5 drives to add to Mac Thunderbolt 5 but decided to hold off for now. I usually don't care about benchmarks and they are usually don't represent "real world" use but I ran some anyway. I am running Mac OS Sequoia 15.2 beta 2.

Geek Bench 6
Single - 3680
Multi - 20381

Cinebench 2024
Single - 2144
Multi - 18807
OpenCL - 59973
Metal - 95289
MP Ratio - 8.77

Anyway for a computer that is only 5x5x2 I am happy and have TRAINZ up and running. I am trying to decide if I should keep the TRAINZ db folder on the Mac 512GB SSD, on my RAID 0 Oyen DAS with a separate RAID 0 synchronizing or external Lacie 1TB drive w read speeds @ 1050MB/s. With 2 separate RAID 0's synchronizing I still backup to my old NAS Drobo.
I will be putting it thru the "TRAINZ punishment test" at various settings with of course Ultra will be 1st along w anti aliasing 8x.
 
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Going to Mac mini M4 Pro from a M3 MacBook Pro as expected Trainz sucked the life out of the battery and needed to be plugged in while using Trainz.

@pdkoester Not sure how you feel but - Personally - I feel Trainz 22 Plus is not programmed with any Apple silicon machines in mind and it is holding all Apple silicon machines back from running to their full potential. Not sure of this but there aren't many Trainz updates or betas for Mac OS and I can't find any kind of version Change logs or sales/ad statements specifically mentioning Apple silicon on website. Not sure about same on Steam as I don't use. Also, it is worth noting that I am running Mac OS 15.2 Sequoia Beta 2 and after all it is a beta. This is not a Trainz Only machine and is almost a direct copy of my M3 MacBook Pro. I am debating on moving Virtual Box w Linux Distros, Plex and some File Servers off my 2011 Mac mini server, which is running Sequoia via OCLP but it runs smooth as butter as a "headless" server... This 2011 Mac mini server (there was a reg and a server version).. won't die folks. LOL.

After a weekend of testing using Kickstarter County (TRS 22) for several hours at a time I found the "sweet spot" utilizing the machines SSD over RAID0 and an external SSD.
I have everything maxed out except Shadow and Post Processing which I set to High. Personally I demand 8x anti-aliasing over FPS, by choice, but still managed to stay in the range of 30-40 fps, as per the Trainz Profiler function. I will not give up 8x anti-aliasing so FPS takes a hit. I utilized between 14-20% CPU and 5-6GB RAM. In Route/Session Settings - Scenery Detail, Tree Detail and Post Processing are set to High.
For 5x5x2 box with all its power that only uses 140w at max and 5w at idle..you can't beat it.
Is Kickstarter County (TRS 22) a "machine buttkicker" or do I need to try another route that is more demanding?
 
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My understanding was that the current version of Trainz was optimized for silicon. Its hard to tell as I've never come across a review of any games site that has tested trainz 2022 for mac (or even PC ) with a view re frame rates or whether the program is optimized, I guess the audience for our hobby is so small its not worth bothering with as far as gaming sites are concerned..
In order to test the mac mini to its limits I guess you would need to load up a much larger route , one that is chock full of pbr, turf fx ( but that wont work on a mac anyway will it ? _) and which features HD ground . I can't think of anything that really fits the bill as i hardly ever drive any routes and HD is in its infancy as far as routes that feature it making their way to the DLS.
The only route I've tested on a silicon mac is west from denver on a macbook air , ( not my own so had limited time to play with it ) it choked when I ran it using its hard drive but it did quite well when we used an external ssd. ran pretty smoothly. i am tempted to go for an M4 but it will still cost me around $2800 au if I get a larger drive and or better processor /more RAM. if I am going to spend that much it would be my last computer ever ( I'm 73 in feb ) , so I'd need to future proof it. Makes more sense to hold out for a mac studio.
 
sultan1966 said:
Going to Mac mini M4 Pro from a M3 MacBook Pro as expected Trainz sucked the life out of the battery and needed to be plugged in while using Trainz.

@pdkoester Not sure how you feel but - Personally - I feel Trainz 22 Plus is not programmed with any Apple silicon machines in mind and it is holding all Apple silicon machines back from running to their full potential. Not sure of this but there aren't many Trainz updates or betas for Mac OS and I can't find any kind of version Change logs or sales/ad statements specifically mentioning Apple silicon on website. Not sure about same on Steam as I don't use. Also, it is worth noting that I am running Mac OS 15.2 Sequoia Beta 2 and after all it is a beta. This is not a Trainz Only machine and is almost a direct copy of my M3 MacBook Pro. I am debating on moving Virtual Box w Linux Distros, Plex and some File Servers off my 2011 Mac mini server, which is running Sequoia via OCLP but it runs smooth as butter as a "headless" server... This 2011 Mac mini server (there was a reg and a server version).. won't die folks. LOL.

After a weekend of testing using Kickstarter County (TRS 22) for several hours at a time I found the "sweet spot" utilizing the machines SSD over RAID0 and an external SSD.
I have everything maxed out except Shadow and Post Processing which I set to High. Personally I demand 8x anti-aliasing over FPS, by choice, but still managed to stay in the range of 30-40 fps, as per the Trainz Profiler function. I will not give up 8x anti-aliasing so FPS takes a hit. I utilized between 14-20% CPU and 5-6GB RAM. In Route/Session Settings - Scenery Detail, Tree Detail and Post Processing are set to High.
For 5x5x2 box with all its power that only uses 140w at max and 5w at idle..you can't beat it.
Is Kickstarter County (TRS 22) a "machine buttkicker" or do I need to try another route that is more demanding?
Click to expand...
Thank you very much for sharing your experiences.
I have 2 questions:
Did you buy it with 24 GB Ram?
When you maximate it with Trainz - Do the fan set in? If so how loud is it?
Thank you.
 
@Morten16c I could barely hear it running Kickstarter County (TRS 22) but at the suggestion of @dangavel I am going to run West from Denver today and see what happens. Like I said in post above, I utilized between 14-20% CPU and 5-6GB RAM running the route.
The Mac mini M4 - 1st two levels come with 16GB standard but can be upgraded to 32GB. The highest level Mac mini M4 and the Mac mini M4 Pro come with 24GB standard but can be upgraded to 64GB.
256GB of SSD space on the lowest level M4 wouldn't cut it for me but the other machines come with 512GB standard and can be upgraded to higher amounts.
Hope I answered your questions.
 
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Thanks for taking the time to test and report your findings.

It looks to me like the Mini M4 Pro will meet my requirements. I build and operate my own route, designed to run relatively smoothly at mid settings on a 14-year-old Mac Pro. However, running more than one consist causes the frame rates to drop too low. The Mini M4 Pro should be able to handle it and then some. Like dangavel, I’ll be 73 in January, so I expect this to be my last Mac as well (the 6th since 1984). If, at some point in the future, Trainz requirements become too demanding for the M4 Pro, I’ll just stick with whatever version works.

Still need to get my head around the fact that this little mini package will replace my big beautiful tower.
 
CaseyBerg said:
Thanks for taking the time to test and report your findings.

It looks to me like the Mini M4 Pro will meet my requirements. I build and operate my own route, designed to run relatively smoothly at mid settings on a 14-year-old Mac Pro. However, running more than one consist causes the frame rates to drop too low. The Mini M4 Pro should be able to handle it and then some. Like dangavel, I’ll be 73 in January, so I expect this to be my last Mac as well (the 6th since 1984). If, at some point in the future, Trainz requirements become too demanding for the M4 Pro, I’ll just stick with whatever version works.

Still need to get my head around the fact that this little mini package will replace my big beautiful tower.
Click to expand...
it will certainly run a lot cooler. i use the mac pro to warm up the back of the house in the cooler Australian seasons as we have good insulation, it works a treat, and as I'm using the power anyway its killing two birds with one stone, of course the obverse applies in the summer, it gets the computer room rather hot !! a Mac mini would be handy then !
if you have a lot of peripherals you will also need a decent hub, so factor that in if you have a lot of drives. my biggest issue with moving to something like this is i already have 11 hard drives connected, four in the tower, and i've also got another four sitting in an external drive bay and of course hardly any of them are USB c or thunderbolt, thats the problem with older tech , I still have 7 firewire drives !!!!!
 
OK last info on the testing. I found the perfect route to test, C&O Hinton - Session: Thurmond Empties. C&O Hinton pushed my new M4 Pro Mac mini harder than the other 2 routes I mentioned above. I am happy now that I have everything "dialed in". The C&O Hinton runs I made had the CPU around 30% and RAM usage between 13-14GB.. Bear in mind your Mac mini specs, your TRAINZ settings and what you run on the new Mac mini outside of TRAINZ will cause different results. Since temperature was mentioned I downloaded a system monitoring app that allows for CPU temps.
I am beyond happy to report that at idle I was at 125F/52C and that on the above mentioned route the high was 183F/84C. Once I closed down TRAINZ it took only 10mins or so for the amazing and new cooling concept to cool down back to normal. Folks that 10mins to cool down 58/F/32C and again just like at idle you could barely hear the cooling working. Same at load. The specs show it to be 5dB at idle..it's not scientific but I am going to go out on a limb and say a whisper, which is 30dB, at a 30% CPU load.
Maybe someone who gets one and does alot of route building in TRAINZ and is better than me at it can add to this thread.
Thanks for reading this long drawn out thread. I enjoyed it and hopefully it will help others and into the future who are or might be looking at an M4 Pro Mac mini
 
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CaseyBerg said:
What screen resolution are you using?
Thanks for the info.
casey
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Old age and vision not too hot but have at 1600x900 @ 60Hz in TRAINZ settings menu at full screen. Sometimes 1920x1080. I refuse to pay $1600 for an Apple display. Off from the question, but I forgot to mention I am using my old apple Superdrive CD/DVD Rom burner via USB-C adapter. Works perfect
 
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capdiamont said:
Trainz has had Metal and ASi code since Trainz 19 SP3, however required Big Sur at a minimum since then. This did improve the frame rates. One thread at the beginning of ASi support. I don't think they have added further optimizations.
Click to expand...
Excellent info but from 2021..Thanks for thinking about my question and posting the link. I am very happy it says Trainz is running on native code vs an emulator. Up to date native code or from 2021? There have been 4 new Mac OS's since Big Sur/2021. To be fair, I guess there are some that still able to run Trainz on Windows 7 and a majority of Trainz users don't use Macs. I do look forward to using the next Trainz Mac Beta to see if I and others get full better performance within the game from today's higher core CPUs and GPUs.
I need to check if the Windows side gets full use/performance of higher core CPU and GPUs in Trainz now? What results are they getting? Personally, I couldn't care about high FPS, as long as it's reasonable, I'm ok. I do demand AA 8X which I am getting now and very happy with. Maybe I am over zealous but as I stated above I am all "dialed in" and it runs well on Sequoia 15.2 Beta 3. All in all.. I am very happy with it all now and don't mean to sound negative.
 
Thanks for the thread, it’s good to keep up with the performance of the latest generation of Apple silicon.
 
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sultan1966 said:
Excellent info but from 2021..Thanks for thinking about my question and posting the link. I am very happy it says Trainz is running on native code vs an emulator. Up to date native code or from 2021? There have been 4 new Mac OS's since Big Sur/2021. To be fair, I guess there are some that still able to run Trainz on Windows 7 and a majority of Trainz users don't use Macs. I do look forward to using the next Trainz Mac Beta to see if I and others get full better performance within the game from today's higher core CPUs and GPUs.
I need to check if the Windows side gets full use/performance of higher core CPU and GPUs in Trainz now? What results are they getting? Personally, I couldn't care about high FPS, as long as it's reasonable, I'm ok. I do demand AA 8X which I am getting now and very happy with. Maybe I am over zealous but as I stated above I am all "dialed in" and it runs well on Sequoia 15.2 Beta 3. All in all.. I am very happy with it all now and don't mean to sound negative.
Click to expand...
Like I said, I don’t think they have done any further optimizations. It was that version that we finally got Metal optimizations. I think they were able to do ASi so fast as they already had iPad and iPhone code.
 
Not that it needs it but found out I can take the system out of Auto Mode and put it into High Power mode. This will work on specific M-series and devices only. Maybe this will handle the throttling I suspect is going on and allow things to run at full potential. Testing CPU, RAM, Temp and Fan speeds.
 
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In my 1st post above I mentioned Benchmarks and "Real World Use"...
I was/am not happy with TRAINZ using only 1/3 of the CPU and just over 1/2 of the RAM available on the Mac mini M4 Pro. It was like having a V8 with a 40mph "cap". Something was holding it back and nothing I did changed this in TRAINZ. While not as fast etc etc.. I have since moved TRAINZ back to my MB Pro M3 and am running LLMs (Large Language Models)/AI locally on the new Mac mini M4 Pro to make better use of its available resources. LLMs/AI are always being updated for modern Apple silicon so I am very pleased now. LLM's/AI pound the GPU so I know that wasn't the issue with TRAINZ. These are my experiences and my thoughts. I hope the info above will assist others.
 
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capdiamont said:
Best thing to do is submit a request to them with your findings and what you want them to improve.
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Not a big deal as I was running it on M3 before anyway. Easy to move things around/change install paths and put it back on M4 if a Trainz Mac OS beta becomes available.
Curious as to whether Trainz will bring my M4 Pro to its knees or not now that I have LLMs and other AI progs/tools running locally.
May try this week for $hitz and giggles.
 
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