New Mac Mini has integrated graphics: So?
February 28, 2006 12:46 PM Subscribe
Is the new Mac Mini hamstrung by its integrated graphics?
This is somewhat of a follow-up to Matt's earlier question.
With today's announcement of new Intel-based Mac Minis, I'm left to wonder about what impact integrated graphics will have on performance, especially video encoding and decoding. Since having dedicated graphics chips, even if they were just from laptops, was always hailed as an advantage, this change seems like Bad News.
This page from Apple seems to rule out the new Mini for 720p HD playback based on processor performance alone.
But then there's that bit about 64 or 128 MB graphics card for higher quality playback... It looks like the integrated chip has 64, and shares system memory. Does this mean that if I spec the mini out with RAM (up to a 2GB max, even), the integrated graphics chip will be able to perform better? Or is it's performance capped at 64 MB?
And then there's non-video graphics performance. What might I expect there?
Here's the relevant bits from Apple:
Intel GMA950 graphics processor with 64MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory1
1. Memory available to Mac OS X may vary depending on graphics needs. Minimum graphics memory usage is 80MB, resulting in 432MB of system memory available.
That certainly sounds to me like the graphics chip will accept more system memory if it's available, but what do I know. I turn to you...
This is somewhat of a follow-up to Matt's earlier question.
With today's announcement of new Intel-based Mac Minis, I'm left to wonder about what impact integrated graphics will have on performance, especially video encoding and decoding. Since having dedicated graphics chips, even if they were just from laptops, was always hailed as an advantage, this change seems like Bad News.
This page from Apple seems to rule out the new Mini for 720p HD playback based on processor performance alone.
But then there's that bit about 64 or 128 MB graphics card for higher quality playback... It looks like the integrated chip has 64, and shares system memory. Does this mean that if I spec the mini out with RAM (up to a 2GB max, even), the integrated graphics chip will be able to perform better? Or is it's performance capped at 64 MB?
And then there's non-video graphics performance. What might I expect there?
Here's the relevant bits from Apple:
Intel GMA950 graphics processor with 64MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory1
1. Memory available to Mac OS X may vary depending on graphics needs. Minimum graphics memory usage is 80MB, resulting in 432MB of system memory available.
That certainly sounds to me like the graphics chip will accept more system memory if it's available, but what do I know. I turn to you...
Response by poster: Found on the Engadget comments: here's a spec sheet from Intel on the GMA950 chipset.
The important bit:
"Dynamic Video Memory Technology (DVMT) 3.0 supports up to 224MB of video memory; system memory is allocated where it is needed dynamically."
And
"HDTV 480i/p, 576i/p, 720i/p and 1080i/p display resolution support."
Along with support for OpenGL 1.4.
Does this mean this mainly isn't good gaming machine, but otherwise doesn't suffer terribly? Upgrade the RAM, and relatively no ill effects?
As you might notice, I'm considering buying one.
posted by cramer at 1:11 PM on February 28, 2006
The important bit:
"Dynamic Video Memory Technology (DVMT) 3.0 supports up to 224MB of video memory; system memory is allocated where it is needed dynamically."
And
"HDTV 480i/p, 576i/p, 720i/p and 1080i/p display resolution support."
Along with support for OpenGL 1.4.
Does this mean this mainly isn't good gaming machine, but otherwise doesn't suffer terribly? Upgrade the RAM, and relatively no ill effects?
As you might notice, I'm considering buying one.
posted by cramer at 1:11 PM on February 28, 2006
Best answer: In discussion about this on a mailing list right now, I dug up a couple of articles that compare the GMA950 chipset to nVidia and ATI offerings:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2427
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1821811,00.asp
In short: Great for 2D / basic 3D, watching movies, etc. Really bad for modern 3D games.
posted by mrbill at 1:17 PM on February 28, 2006
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2427
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1821811,00.asp
In short: Great for 2D / basic 3D, watching movies, etc. Really bad for modern 3D games.
posted by mrbill at 1:17 PM on February 28, 2006
The graphics look perfectly fine as long as you aren't doing any 3d gaming. It even appears that the GPU does provide some degree of acceleration for video playback, though I don't know if apple is currently making use of it.
posted by Good Brain at 1:20 PM on February 28, 2006
posted by Good Brain at 1:20 PM on February 28, 2006
I don't think thatit's hamstrung.. although I feel a bit screwed myself. I recently (within 4 months) purchased a Mac Mini, and now they release one that I would have rather purchased.
Meh, such is the way of the computer.
posted by jackofsaxons at 1:20 PM on February 28, 2006
Meh, such is the way of the computer.
posted by jackofsaxons at 1:20 PM on February 28, 2006
One issue would be that you would be losing some chunk of memory normally available to applications to your video card. 512mb might be a bit tight.
posted by chunking express at 1:25 PM on February 28, 2006
posted by chunking express at 1:25 PM on February 28, 2006
I'm glad that I bought the 20" Core Duo iMac back in January though, rather than waiting for the Intel-based mini as originally planned. The shared-memory graphics, combined with being forced to pay $100 more than the previous price for wireless that I don't need, is a turnoff.
posted by mrbill at 1:27 PM on February 28, 2006
posted by mrbill at 1:27 PM on February 28, 2006
Christ, didn't the Amiga do this? I suppose this will rule out Aperture, boo hiss curses.
posted by bonaldi at 1:32 PM on February 28, 2006
posted by bonaldi at 1:32 PM on February 28, 2006
One issue would be that you would be losing some chunk of memory normally available to applications to your video card.
From Apple's specs page, footnote #1:
"Memory available to Mac OS X may vary depending on graphics needs. Minimum graphics memory usage is 80MB, resulting in 432MB of system memory available."
posted by mrbill at 1:34 PM on February 28, 2006
From Apple's specs page, footnote #1:
"Memory available to Mac OS X may vary depending on graphics needs. Minimum graphics memory usage is 80MB, resulting in 432MB of system memory available."
posted by mrbill at 1:34 PM on February 28, 2006
Apple on the original Mac mini
Go ahead, just try to play Halo on a budget PC. Most say they’re good for 2D games only. That’s because an “integrated Intel graphics” chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. You’d have to buy an extra card to get the graphics performance of Mac mini, and some cheaper PCs don’t even have an open slot to let you add one.
via
posted by bonaldi at 1:41 PM on February 28, 2006
Go ahead, just try to play Halo on a budget PC. Most say they’re good for 2D games only. That’s because an “integrated Intel graphics” chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. You’d have to buy an extra card to get the graphics performance of Mac mini, and some cheaper PCs don’t even have an open slot to let you add one.
via
posted by bonaldi at 1:41 PM on February 28, 2006
Best answer: Apple on the original Mac mini
Go ahead, just try to play Halo on a budget PC. Most say they’re good for 2D games only. That’s because an “integrated Intel graphics” chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. You’d have to buy an extra card to get the graphics performance of Mac mini, and some cheaper PCs don’t even have an open slot to let you add one.
via
posted by bonaldi
we have always been at war with Eurasia. we have always been friends with Eastasia.
posted by ShawnString at 2:02 PM on February 28, 2006
Go ahead, just try to play Halo on a budget PC. Most say they’re good for 2D games only. That’s because an “integrated Intel graphics” chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. You’d have to buy an extra card to get the graphics performance of Mac mini, and some cheaper PCs don’t even have an open slot to let you add one.
via
posted by bonaldi
we have always been at war with Eurasia. we have always been friends with Eastasia.
posted by ShawnString at 2:02 PM on February 28, 2006
The graphic card is a non-issue unless you are a 3D gamer (in which case, why were you considering a Mac Mini?) or a 3-D graphics or high-end video editor (again, why were you considering a Mac Mini?).
You just have to remember to add more memory than what you'd normally think you'd need, as the graphics card is going to steal a chunk of it.
It's really a non-issue for the Mac Mini's target market.
posted by teece at 2:03 PM on February 28, 2006
You just have to remember to add more memory than what you'd normally think you'd need, as the graphics card is going to steal a chunk of it.
It's really a non-issue for the Mac Mini's target market.
posted by teece at 2:03 PM on February 28, 2006
why were you considering a Mac Mini?
Because you're on a budget? And if this choice hadn't been made, you could have done exactly what you wanted on that budget.
Isn't there also going to be an issue with memory bandwidth? It's not so much about the amount of memory it takes (though that will be a problem on 512mb machines), but the bottleneck as the card fights the CPUs for memory. That was the problem on the Amiga, anyway.
posted by bonaldi at 2:08 PM on February 28, 2006
Because you're on a budget? And if this choice hadn't been made, you could have done exactly what you wanted on that budget.
Isn't there also going to be an issue with memory bandwidth? It's not so much about the amount of memory it takes (though that will be a problem on 512mb machines), but the bottleneck as the card fights the CPUs for memory. That was the problem on the Amiga, anyway.
posted by bonaldi at 2:08 PM on February 28, 2006
Because you're on a budget? And if this choice hadn't been made, you could have done exactly what you wanted on that budget.
Right. Never mind that Apple wouldn't turn a profit....
The Intel chips are considerably more expensive than G4s. I was surprised that the Intel iMac didn't see a price hike. It was inevitable in the Mini.
It's not a gaming, 3D or video editing machine. It's not meant to be. If you are buying it for that, you're going to take a hit. For all other uses, the penalty the shared memory graphics card implies will not be significant.
(Apple did not do it in the G4 Mini because it would have probably been more expensive, as I don't know of any such chipsets for a G4. They're cheep and commodity for the Intel line, and save costs for Apple).
posted by teece at 2:44 PM on February 28, 2006
Right. Never mind that Apple wouldn't turn a profit....
The Intel chips are considerably more expensive than G4s. I was surprised that the Intel iMac didn't see a price hike. It was inevitable in the Mini.
It's not a gaming, 3D or video editing machine. It's not meant to be. If you are buying it for that, you're going to take a hit. For all other uses, the penalty the shared memory graphics card implies will not be significant.
(Apple did not do it in the G4 Mini because it would have probably been more expensive, as I don't know of any such chipsets for a G4. They're cheep and commodity for the Intel line, and save costs for Apple).
posted by teece at 2:44 PM on February 28, 2006
Response by poster: I'm not a gamer, and find myself considering a 17" iMac or a mini. Thanks for the input.
Certainly, if it is the mini, more memory is the way to go.
posted by cramer at 2:54 PM on February 28, 2006
Certainly, if it is the mini, more memory is the way to go.
posted by cramer at 2:54 PM on February 28, 2006
given apple's push into h.264 and "convergence" i'd be very surprised if this thing could not decode at least 720p h.264 in real time.
the core solo is a very, very fast processor.
if its true that the intel integrated graphics chip can do motion compensation for mpeg4/h.264 i'd say even with the core solo you could probably do HD resolutions. with the core duo almost certainly so.
i went to the apple store today to try it out, but they didnt have any. i think it would be worth taking mplayer and some HD mpeg4s down to the store to try this out...
posted by joeblough at 3:26 PM on February 28, 2006
the core solo is a very, very fast processor.
if its true that the intel integrated graphics chip can do motion compensation for mpeg4/h.264 i'd say even with the core solo you could probably do HD resolutions. with the core duo almost certainly so.
i went to the apple store today to try it out, but they didnt have any. i think it would be worth taking mplayer and some HD mpeg4s down to the store to try this out...
posted by joeblough at 3:26 PM on February 28, 2006
I'd wait to see some benchmarks and reviews from people who have actually looked at this system. It's all bullshit until someone actually gets their hands on a system and actually sees what happens.
My hunch is that both versions will be a hefty improvement over the G4 mini it replaces, even with the shift to a shared memory graphics card. The original G4 mini drew complaints due to its hard drive and memory. It's a controversial platform, and I suspect that some people will be unhappy with any attempt to negotiate the tradeoffs involved.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:53 PM on February 28, 2006
My hunch is that both versions will be a hefty improvement over the G4 mini it replaces, even with the shift to a shared memory graphics card. The original G4 mini drew complaints due to its hard drive and memory. It's a controversial platform, and I suspect that some people will be unhappy with any attempt to negotiate the tradeoffs involved.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 3:53 PM on February 28, 2006
the core solo is a very, very fast processor.
Just to put things into perspective, the core duo is a juiced-up ULV Pentium 3, with wider bus and some more cache, and a rather simple on-die interconnect between two processing units. Intel kept the P3 line running right through the P4 era (boosting it to 1.5 GHz and 512MB cache) because it ran cool aqnd efficiently compared to the P4 monster.
It doesn't have an intelligent on-die memory controller like the Opteron and so can't compete, but it does quite well against the Athlon, especially in power consumption. It does lag Athlons in typical content creation tasks though, and especially lags it in games. It's an impressive mobile chip, but only a reasonable desktop chip. Putting it in a speudo-desktop like the mini seems like a bad fit, especially considering the small range of low-cost desktop motherboards available for the core duo.
It seems that Apple, like Dell, is now locked in so tight with Intel that it can't use alternative, better CPUs for specific platforms.
posted by meehawl at 4:27 PM on February 28, 2006
Just to put things into perspective, the core duo is a juiced-up ULV Pentium 3, with wider bus and some more cache, and a rather simple on-die interconnect between two processing units. Intel kept the P3 line running right through the P4 era (boosting it to 1.5 GHz and 512MB cache) because it ran cool aqnd efficiently compared to the P4 monster.
It doesn't have an intelligent on-die memory controller like the Opteron and so can't compete, but it does quite well against the Athlon, especially in power consumption. It does lag Athlons in typical content creation tasks though, and especially lags it in games. It's an impressive mobile chip, but only a reasonable desktop chip. Putting it in a speudo-desktop like the mini seems like a bad fit, especially considering the small range of low-cost desktop motherboards available for the core duo.
It seems that Apple, like Dell, is now locked in so tight with Intel that it can't use alternative, better CPUs for specific platforms.
posted by meehawl at 4:27 PM on February 28, 2006
meehawl: It's an impressive mobile chip, but only a reasonable desktop chip. Putting it in a speudo-desktop like the mini seems like a bad fit, especially considering the small range of low-cost desktop motherboards available for the core duo.
I don't know. The mini is not just a desktop, it's an ultra-SFF desktop with approx. 4 square inches of vent. Most of the ultra-SFF designs I've seen either use mobile CPUs or low-power systems like the VIA EPIA. Certainly, a strong criticism can be made that Apple could have built a more powerful budget box by revisiting the pizza-box Centris or by imitating the midi-SFF Shuttle XPC.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:57 PM on February 28, 2006
I don't know. The mini is not just a desktop, it's an ultra-SFF desktop with approx. 4 square inches of vent. Most of the ultra-SFF designs I've seen either use mobile CPUs or low-power systems like the VIA EPIA. Certainly, a strong criticism can be made that Apple could have built a more powerful budget box by revisiting the pizza-box Centris or by imitating the midi-SFF Shuttle XPC.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 4:57 PM on February 28, 2006
The mini is not just a desktop, it's an ultra-SFF desktop with approx. 4 square inches of vent.
Indeed, the mini is explicitly marketed as a second box: hence the 'bring your own--' line. I don't think that having this integrated graphics chipset is necessarily being cheap (though the G4 marketing aimed at gamers was BS); however, the lack of RAM for the factory-build spec is being cheap.
posted by holgate at 5:11 PM on February 28, 2006
Indeed, the mini is explicitly marketed as a second box: hence the 'bring your own--' line. I don't think that having this integrated graphics chipset is necessarily being cheap (though the G4 marketing aimed at gamers was BS); however, the lack of RAM for the factory-build spec is being cheap.
posted by holgate at 5:11 PM on February 28, 2006
For video decoding, as far as I can tell the video card really has next to nothing to do with it. It might provide iDCT offloading, or accelerated colorspace conversion functions, but that's about it. It's mostly the CPU that gets worked. It certainly doesn't involve any of the 3d vertex or pixel shaders, or any significant amount of video RAM past what the 2D framebuffer occupies (i.e. the things that make expensive gaming video cards expensive.) And it does even less for video encoding, since that's typically done offline (i.e. not real time) and entirely with the CPU. Thus just about any video card on the face of the earth should be fine for encoding/decoding video, as long as the CPU is relatively modern.
posted by Rhomboid at 5:41 PM on February 28, 2006
posted by Rhomboid at 5:41 PM on February 28, 2006
holgate: It's meant to replace a PC, not to be a second computer. The latter would be a fairly a small market because people tend to sell or hand off their old PCs.
posted by abcde at 7:30 PM on February 28, 2006
posted by abcde at 7:30 PM on February 28, 2006
rhomboid: some GPUs can do most, if not all of the decoding necessary for mpeg2, which means everything you mentioned, plus motion compensation. intel advertises this one as having an mpeg2 decoder, and since they talk about motion compensation separately, i wonder if perhaps they can do mpeg4 MC as well.
consider that a 1080i ATSC stream is at most 19mbit/sec, and 60fps video at 1920x1080@60hz is almost 4gbit/sec worth of data. if you can DMA 19mbits to the video card and get 4gbit/sec out, almost any CPU can be used. on the other hand you need (in my experience) at least an athlon XP 3000+ to decode and deinterlace 1080i for display on a 1080p panel, if you are going to do it all in software.
meehawl: see this review for some performance comparisons. i agree that the athlon has a huge advantage with the integrated memory controller, but assuming SSE2/3 has cache prefetch instructions you should be able to hide the increased memory latency since media memory access patterns are pretty predictable.
imho the P3+P4 bus (which is what yonah amounts to) is a kickass processor. the P4's pipeline is just way, way too deep and you need to get the clock rates up so high to get comparable performance that the mips/watt of the P4 ends up being completely pathetic.
posted by joeblough at 9:41 PM on February 28, 2006
consider that a 1080i ATSC stream is at most 19mbit/sec, and 60fps video at 1920x1080@60hz is almost 4gbit/sec worth of data. if you can DMA 19mbits to the video card and get 4gbit/sec out, almost any CPU can be used. on the other hand you need (in my experience) at least an athlon XP 3000+ to decode and deinterlace 1080i for display on a 1080p panel, if you are going to do it all in software.
meehawl: see this review for some performance comparisons. i agree that the athlon has a huge advantage with the integrated memory controller, but assuming SSE2/3 has cache prefetch instructions you should be able to hide the increased memory latency since media memory access patterns are pretty predictable.
imho the P3+P4 bus (which is what yonah amounts to) is a kickass processor. the P4's pipeline is just way, way too deep and you need to get the clock rates up so high to get comparable performance that the mips/watt of the P4 ends up being completely pathetic.
posted by joeblough at 9:41 PM on February 28, 2006
also, yeah, i should have prefaced my comment about core duo being "very fast" as "very fast for the power consumption", because there are definitely faster x86 processors around...
posted by joeblough at 9:49 PM on February 28, 2006
posted by joeblough at 9:49 PM on February 28, 2006
Apparently this thing handles HD really well. Not so much the 3D gaming, but it's been designed for 2D video display and can decode 2 HD streams at the same time.
bbum on the mac mini's video & Intel's product sheet
posted by rschroed at 10:13 PM on February 28, 2006
bbum on the mac mini's video & Intel's product sheet
posted by rschroed at 10:13 PM on February 28, 2006
well.. there ya go. if i wasnt married to the idea of having ~1TB of disk in my htpc, the new mac mini would be for me...
posted by joeblough at 1:08 AM on March 1, 2006
posted by joeblough at 1:08 AM on March 1, 2006
i wasnt married to the idea of having ~1TB of disk in my htpc
My HTPC has 200GB. But the *network* has 2.5 TB of storage available. Why do you need to have all your disks physically inside the same machine? That's a lot of heat, and noise. If you're just playing a few video and audio streams then ethernet is way fast enough, and 802.11g reasonably acceptable.
posted by meehawl at 5:12 AM on March 1, 2006
My HTPC has 200GB. But the *network* has 2.5 TB of storage available. Why do you need to have all your disks physically inside the same machine? That's a lot of heat, and noise. If you're just playing a few video and audio streams then ethernet is way fast enough, and 802.11g reasonably acceptable.
posted by meehawl at 5:12 AM on March 1, 2006
because the only link between my living room and my office is a somewhat unreliable 11g network. i dont want to tear the walls apart to run cat5. i experimented with the netgear powerline networking, but it doesnt give me anywhere near the 80mbps they advertise. more like 10mbit...
posted by joeblough at 2:22 PM on March 1, 2006
posted by joeblough at 2:22 PM on March 1, 2006
for anyone still following this thread, i just saw the following on macintouch:
Video/Graphics
MacInTouch Reader
I ran 3 videos thru a Mac mini dual core at the Apple Store last night, and it played all 3 1080p h.264 videos without dropping frames in its default config. Note the CPU meter on the bottom left side of the screen.
http://homepage.mac.com/gsf/macminidualcorespecs.png
http://homepage.mac.com/gsf/mac_mini_dual_core_mi3_trailer_screenshot.png
http://homepage.mac.com/gsf/mac_mini_dual_core_superman_trailer_screenshot.png
http://homepage.mac.com/gsf/mac_mini_dual_core_xmen3_trailer_screenshot.png
There were no single core machines there to test.
The running applications were QuickTime Pro, Safari, and Activity Monitor only. I had not started any Widgets.
In short - i've proven to myself the Mac mini DC can be an excellent home media hub with even a 1080p screen (such as a Sharp Aquos 45"). I suggest people try it themselves as well - but if they can't - this should give them solice that its really possible.
David Charlap
posted by joeblough at 1:20 PM on March 4, 2006
Video/Graphics
MacInTouch Reader
I ran 3 videos thru a Mac mini dual core at the Apple Store last night, and it played all 3 1080p h.264 videos without dropping frames in its default config. Note the CPU meter on the bottom left side of the screen.
http://homepage.mac.com/gsf/macminidualcorespecs.png
http://homepage.mac.com/gsf/mac_mini_dual_core_mi3_trailer_screenshot.png
http://homepage.mac.com/gsf/mac_mini_dual_core_superman_trailer_screenshot.png
http://homepage.mac.com/gsf/mac_mini_dual_core_xmen3_trailer_screenshot.png
There were no single core machines there to test.
The running applications were QuickTime Pro, Safari, and Activity Monitor only. I had not started any Widgets.
In short - i've proven to myself the Mac mini DC can be an excellent home media hub with even a 1080p screen (such as a Sharp Aquos 45"). I suggest people try it themselves as well - but if they can't - this should give them solice that its really possible.
David Charlap
posted by joeblough at 1:20 PM on March 4, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
It looks like the integrated chip has 64, and shares system memory.
The integrated chip has none. It grabs a chunk of system memory, 64MB by default.
posted by cillit bang at 12:56 PM on February 28, 2006