Mac mini (M6, 2026)
M6
The cheapest way into a Mac and the first Mac mini with Apple's M6: 12 CPU cores, a 12-core GPU with AI accelerators in every core, and fast enough at 1080p to play Cyberpunk 2077 at its "For This Mac" preset in the mid-50s fps. The 16GB base model runs 7-8B language models comfortably (a 4-bit 7B model is about 3.5GB) and its memory bandwidth is 153GB/s; the 24GB and 32GB options raise that to 170GB/s and leave room for 14B-class models. For bigger models or more than 32GB, step up to the M5 Pro.
Against the line-up
Geekbench 6 CPU
Geekbench 6 CPU
Cyberpunk 2077
Blender Benchmark
The whole Mac mini line-up side by side, with prices
Every benchmark
Quoted from the publications that ran them; we don't test hardware ourselves. Figures from different publications were run on different systems and scenes, so compare within a row's source.
Cyberpunk 2077
| Setting | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1080p Default Mac settings |
55fps | Engadget, Sep 21, 2026 Mac mini M6, 24GB, 1TB review unit Engadget: "an average of 55 fps in 1080p with the default Mac graphics settings" |
| 1080p For This Mac |
57fps | Tom's Guide, Sep 21, 2026 Mac mini M6, 24GB review unit |
Local LLM (llama.cpp / Ollama)
| Setting | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Llama 2 7B Q4_0, Generation |
35.7tok/s | llama.cpp community benchmarks (GitHub), Oct 19, 2026 Mac mini M6, 12-core GPU, 32GB (170GB/s), macOS 27.0.1 llama-bench tg128 (generating 128 tokens), all layers on the GPU. The 16GB base model has 153GB/s. |
| Llama 2 7B Q4_0, Prompt processing |
989tok/s | llama.cpp community benchmarks (GitHub), Oct 19, 2026 Mac mini M6, 12-core GPU, 32GB (170GB/s), macOS 27.0.1 llama-bench pp512 (reading a 512-token prompt), all layers on the GPU. |
| Llama 2 7B Q8_0, Generation |
21tok/s | llama.cpp community benchmarks (GitHub), Oct 19, 2026 Mac mini M6, 12-core GPU, 32GB (170GB/s), macOS 27.0.1 llama-bench tg128 (generating 128 tokens), all layers on the GPU. |
Blender Benchmark
| Setting | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Standard run |
2,656samples/min | Blender Open Data, Oct 19, 2026 Apple M6 (GPU - 12 cores), Metal, Blender 5.2.0 Median score over the three scenes, 17 submitted runs |
| CPU |
335samples/min | Blender Open Data, Oct 19, 2026 Apple M6 CPU, Blender 5.2.0 Median score over the three scenes, 16 submitted runs. |
Geekbench 6 CPU
| Setting | Result | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-core |
21,405points | Tom's Guide, Sep 21, 2026 Mac mini M6, 24GB review unit Geekbench 6.7 |
| Single-core |
4,708points | Tom's Guide, Sep 21, 2026 Mac mini M6, 24GB review unit Geekbench 6.7 |
Sources
- Blender Open Data (results database)
- Engadget (review)
- Tom's Guide (review)
- llama.cpp community benchmarks (GitHub) (results database)
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