It is interesting to know how it compares in terms of performance to 500$ Mac Mini with Crossover?
Of course Crossover support is worse than Proton, so it will not be viable alternative in real gaming scenarios. But Proton is made by Crossover team.
And Apple hardware is 2x cheaper.
Due to the memory and storage crisis, you actually cannot buy the $500 mac mini anymore. It starts at $799
Just checked what your claim, and... its even worse – 1000$ in my part of EU (m4 + 16gb, aka base configuration)
Your mileage may vary, but I've never gotten reasonable performance out of Crossover. I have a decked out Mac for development and most of the games I've tried in Crossover still need you to turn the settings to damn near lowest possible.
If Mac Minis were viable for gaming, everyone would get one. Unfortunately, Crossover has very spotty support and GPTK starts fraying at the seams on CPU-heavy titles.
The upcoming Steam Frame will be the real make-or-break moment for ARM PC gaming. Up until now, nobody has seriously attempted to make ARM work for the "Steam Deck" segment of users.