TESO Game Settings for Mac Mini M4, MacOS 26+

DVBURNSII · December 2025

I was wondering if there are any tools that would assist me with configuring "The Elder Scrolls Online" to run optimally, balancing between graphics and performance on my 2025 Apple. The game runs well using Medium settings if Subsampling is set to its lowest option. I haven't tinkered with it too much beyond that and would appreciate any pointers.

DVBURNSII · February 26

I am going to bump this. It’s been a while since checking back. I have read around a bit and it appears my Mac is capable of high subsampling but I can only play reasonably well with low. Would any readers have any graphics settings advice or recommendations for Apple gamers?

CharlieEcho101x · March 12

Hey

im just looking to get into ESO on my M4 Mac mini but have been reading some horror stories about performance etc. do you run the game natively on your mac? has the recent update changed anything at all?

Thanks

thedocbwarren · March 13

CharlieEcho101x wrote: »

Hey

im just looking to get into ESO on my M4 Mac mini but have been reading some horror stories about performance etc. do you run the game natively on your mac? has the recent update changed anything at all?

Thanks

Performance is good on my older M1 but the settings won't seem to persist between games.

DVBURNSII · March 20

CharlieEcho101x wrote: »

Hey

im just looking to get into ESO on my M4 Mac mini but have been reading some horror stories about performance etc. do you run the game natively on your mac? has the recent update changed anything at all?

Thanks

My apologies for a late reply and a long read ahead.
I play ESO on my only PC, an Apple Mac Mini M4 with a single display, a 27 Inch UltraGear™ IPS QHD 1440p 300Hz 1ms NVIDIA G-Sync Compatible Gaming Monitor.
It runs very well. I have had very limited problems although the game is not officially supported for ARM computers as I was disappointingly informed by their support agents. My Mac doesn't heat up much, it's fantastic. I'll never own a different brand computer or operating system again. My peripherals are the Apple Magic iTouch Keyboard and the CORSAIR M75 Mouse Apple Edition. Again, they are for the most part fantastic.

To allow myself some credit, I am almost 37 years old with a relative amount of time spent around electronics, computers, consoles, and games. That is to say that I am neither exaggerating, speaking ignorantly, or trying to sell you anything. I enjoy vocalizing my experience because there is a growing effort by Apple and developers to bring gaming to MacOS and now that I have seen it for myself I can tell you that the illusion of Windows being the better OS for games is a false one. It is simply that was the standard, everything up until recently has been written for Windows and Intel. No one had any ability to assert it was any better because there was never much of an alternative.

Thank you for reading and let me know if you have any more questions, I am happy to be of assistance!

-David II

^^v

keto3000 · March 21

I still play ESO on my M1 Mac Mini w and LG UltraGear monitor and it still runs well on medium settings:

Hope this is helpful!

DVBURNSII · May 29

I am still seeking insight(s) as to optimizing ESO for Apple Silicon computers.

Taucheranzug · August 13

Just picking up this thread after all this time to make something very clear here -

You can easily have an M4 that is performing WAYYY worse than an M1 running ESO. It's not about that number after the "M", it's about how many GPU cores your machine has AND how fast the memory bandwidth is. That said, a buddy of mine has a MacBook Air M4 (2025) which performs ridiculously worse than my Mac Studio M1 Max (2022). After some checking, we found out that my Mac Studio M1 Max has way more GPU cores and a much higher memory bandwidth, both are really making the difference here. On my Mac Studio M1 machine, ESO runs smoothly at about 40-50 FPS using the 3840x2160p resolution while his M4 MacBook Air doesn't even reach half of that. Go figure...

Best

DVBURNSII · August 17

Taucheranzug wrote: »

Just picking up this thread after all this time to make something very clear here -

You can easily have an M4 that is performing WAYYY worse than an M1 running ESO. It's not about that number after the "M", it's about how many GPU cores your machine has AND how fast the memory bandwidth is. That said, a buddy of mine has a MacBook Air M4 (2025) which performs ridiculously worse than my Mac Studio M1 Max (2022). After some checking, we found out that my Mac Studio M1 Max has way more GPU cores and a much higher memory bandwidth, both are really making the difference here. On my Mac Studio M1 machine, ESO runs smoothly at about 40-50 FPS using the 3840x2160p resolution while his M4 MacBook Air doesn't even reach half of that. Go figure...

Best

Unfortunately this isn’t entirely accurate but thank you for your response!

Taucheranzug · August 17

DVBURNSII wrote: »

Unfortunately this isn’t entirely accurate but thank you for your response!

What exactly isn't? That the Mac Studio M1 Max has a lot more GPU cores and/or that it has a higher memory bandwidth? Both things can be easily verified:

Mac Studio M1 Max: 24 GPU cores (there was even a version with 32 GPU cores) and 400 GB/s memory bandwidth,
MacBook Air M4: Only 10 GPU cores and only 120 GB/s memory bandwidth.

And that's why the MacBook Air M4 performs way worse than my Mac Studio M1 Max when it comes down to playing ESO, even if my machine is 3 years older.

Best