Apple M4 vs M2 vs M1 Minecraft Performance Tests - 1.21.5
I love to play Minecraft on Macs. In this video, we’re comparing how M1, M2 and M4 Macs perform in Minecraft 1.21.5
Mojang updated Minecraft several years ago to natively support the ARM architecture of Apple Silicon, but have made several performance enhancements since, so with the launch of 1.21.5 and the M4 MacBook Air and Mac Mini it felt like a good time to re-test the game on these new processors.
Specifics about the tests:
Testing in 3 environments people most commonly play: Single player, Server Multi-Player and HyPixel
Tested at a resolution of 2560x1600, the native fullscreen resolution of the 13/14" MacBook screens
All video settings to maximum, with render distance set to 32 chunks where possible (had to be reduced for M1 as explained in video)
Tested in a brand new empty single-player world (seed: m4mactests), in a heavily populated SMP server (Ignitor SMP), and HyPixel, where so many people also play
Played for 30 mins in each world on each machine, taking readings every 30 seconds or so, that I averaged into 1% lows, 1% highs and average mean values to give you a good idea of the range of performance you may see.
Performed the same tests both in vanilla Minecraft, then also with Sodium performance mod to see how much of a boost this provides.
The three machines I tested with were:
M1 MacBook Pro 2020, 8GB Ram, 4 performance and 4 efficiency CPU cores, 8-Core GPU.
M2 MacBook Air 2022, 16GB Ram, 4 performance and 4 efficiency CPU cores, 8-Core GPU.
M4 Mac Mini 2024, 16GB Ram, 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency CPU cores, 10-core GPU.
I didn’t have an M3 processor available for my tests, but you can imagine they fall somewhere between M2 and M4.
**Update**
If you're intersted in how the MacBook Neo performs with Minecraft - you can assume its about the same performance as the the M2, based on the cabailities of the chip I've seen so far. Lets see when more details are available. This entry level laptop being introduced is not meant for gaming, but it may surpirse some folks how capable it can be for such a low price.
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Intentional Game Design Podcast: • Intentional Game Design Podcast
Auto-TerrafirmaCraft: • Auto-TerraFirmaCraft (#ATFC), Ep 1: Unders...
Ignitor SMP: • Ignitor SMP Forever (seasons 3 & 4)
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#m4 #m2 #m1 #performance #minecraft #sodium
0:00 Intro
1:19 How these test are performed
2:13 Single-player environment
2:57 How render distance scales in Minecraft
4:57 Single player FPS results for M1, M2, M4, vanilla and sodium
7:15 Server environment
8:58 Server FPS results for M1, M2, M4, vanilla and sodium
9:58 HyPixel FPS results for M1, M2, M4, vanilla and sodium
11:25 Summary of Mac Silicon M1, M2, M4 performance testing