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inkhead · Feb 28, 2006, 03:21 PM

According to Apple the new GMA950 graphics chipset has 64mb onboard and can share up to 250mb of ram from the memory you put in the mac mini, whichi is good i guess. Not too bad.

"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"

It also supports realtime playback of up to 2 1080p streams without stutter.

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/

turtle777 · Feb 28, 2006, 03:40 PM

Uhm, it doesn't sound like that on the Apple specs:

Graphics and Video Support

* 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.

http://www.apple.com/macmini/whatsinside.html

This sounds like classic shared GPU memory to me. WTF ?

Anyone know more ?

macintologist · Feb 28, 2006, 03:42 PM

Intel Integrated Graphics

Eug Wanker · Feb 28, 2006, 03:50 PM

I'd be surprised if Apple made use of the H.264 acceleration.

EDIT:

Does GMA 950 even do H.264 acceleration? It sounded more like they were talking about MPEG2 1080p.

cambro · Feb 28, 2006, 03:53 PM

OMFG.

Intel INTEGRATED FREAKING graphics on a MAC??!?!!?!?!?!?

Shipping with 2x256 on the low end at that!!!! WTF????

Lateralus · Feb 28, 2006, 03:54 PM

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

I'd be surprised if Apple made use of the H.264 acceleration.

Yeah, I can't see Apple putting any effort into exercising the H.264 capabilities of this dainty integrated graphics chip when they're not even doing it for the X1600.

brokenjago · Feb 28, 2006, 04:03 PM

Originally Posted by macintologist

Intel Integrated Graphics

Second that.

dwd3885 · Feb 28, 2006, 04:06 PM

and good luck doing ANYTHING else on the machine while watching any sort of h264 content. Because with all that power going to that, you'll have no ram left for anything else

Eug Wanker · Feb 28, 2006, 04:09 PM

Originally Posted by dwd3885

and good luck doing ANYTHING else on the machine while watching any sort of h264 content. Because with all that power going to that, you'll have no ram left for anything else

I'm not sure what you're talking about. You realize of course that there are 2 memory slots? Also, with HD H.264 playing, I don't really want to be doing too much work.

Velocity211 · Feb 28, 2006, 04:12 PM

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 Chipset
Terrible graphics, I have it on my HP laptop, can't play any games or run any graphics intensive app.

inkhead · Feb 28, 2006, 04:16 PM

I guess you didn't hear me when i said IT DOES play two h.264 1080p streams and decodes them. I was just at the town hall meeting and was told so by Apple.

It's all about the drivers and the ram you put in your mac mini.

Weyland-Yutani · Feb 28, 2006, 04:16 PM

Originally Posted by macintologist

Intel Integrated Graphics

Agreed. Bad call Apple. The rest of the hardware isn't anything to write home about either and I thinki it is rather pricy.

cheers

W-Y

insha · Feb 28, 2006, 04:17 PM

Originally Posted by cambro

OMFG.

Intel INTEGRATED FREAKING graphics on a MAC??!?!!?!?!?!?

Shipping with 2x256 on the low end at that!!!! WTF????

Seconded.

hakstooy · Feb 28, 2006, 04:21 PM

Jesus, I've been waiting since the mini's came out for one to ship with a decent graphics card. I realize I'm a geek and all, but doesn't Apple realize the sales they're losing?

Rumz · Feb 28, 2006, 04:23 PM

What kind of graphics did the G4 mac mini have, then?

sc_markt · Feb 28, 2006, 04:23 PM

Originally Posted by macintologist

Intel Integrated Graphics

Secondeded.

INTEL INTEGRATED VIDEO SUCKS!!

What an effing major dissapointment...

Lateralus · Feb 28, 2006, 04:28 PM

Originally Posted by Rumz

What kind of graphics did the G4 mac mini have, then?

64MB Radeon 9200.

cambro · Feb 28, 2006, 04:39 PM

NOTE:

The mac mini is now the ONLY machine to have ZERO mention of graphics capability on the apple hardware pages.

The old MacMini had a graphics performance page, the new one does not.

You be the judge of that one...

JKT · Feb 28, 2006, 04:43 PM

32MB Radeon 9200, not 64MB.

Good ****ing god, yet another "OMFG IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!!" thread at MacNN. What a bunch of mealy-mouthed, pathetic, whinging bastards we all are.

Peter753 · Feb 28, 2006, 04:45 PM

Do ya think tthat 9200 with 64 megs of dedicated ram would outperform the shared memory intel shizzles?

Eug Wanker · 04:56 PM

Originally Posted by inkhead

I guess you didn't hear me when i said IT DOES play two h.264 1080p streams and decodes them. I was just at the town hall meeting and was told so by Apple.

Intel's site doesn't mention H.264 decode support. It just mentions 1080p and MPEG2.

However, Core Duo on it's can already play HD H.264.

tooki · Feb 28, 2006, 04:50 PM

For the kind of user the Mac Mini is targeted at, the integrated graphics is probably just fine. Given the speed of the RAM used, and the fact that this fella has two RAM slots, I don't think it's actually going to be a huge problem for most of the targeted users.

tooki

Peter753 · Feb 28, 2006, 04:54 PM

Can you do any even moderate gaming on those kinda of graphics? Could it run oh say World of Warcraft alright?

Lateralus · Feb 28, 2006, 05:08 PM

Originally Posted by JKT

32MB Radeon 9200, not 64MB.

Incorrect.

Minis have been shipping as 1.33GHz/1.5GHz and 64MB for several months. For whatever reason, Apple never updated the specifications online.

lookmark · Feb 28, 2006, 05:35 PM

Originally Posted by Peter753

Can you do any even moderate gaming on those kinda of graphics? Could it run oh say World of Warcraft alright?

My guess is that WOW will run all right (not great) at medium-low settings. I await benchmarks tho.

Rumz · Feb 28, 2006, 05:38 PM

Originally Posted by JKT

32MB Radeon 9200, not 64MB.

Good ****ing god, yet another "OMFG IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!!" thread at MacNN. What a bunch of mealy-mouthed, pathetic, whinging bastards we all are.

Haha, it's true. Even though I find the tradeoffs to be nice (2 ram slots, more USB, optical in/out), I still find myself with reservations about onboard video.

The thing is, a lot of the Mac users I know have no clue about the guts of a Mac. We're all hardware enthusiasts so it makes a bigger deal to us.

polendo · Feb 28, 2006, 05:54 PM

On a recent article on PC World, they compare low budget discret video cards (sub $100 usd) vs. mem shared video cards and the result was that discrete video cards had a marginal gain over shared ones. Of course, the biggest difference was seen on games. Considering that a Mac mini is definetly not a gaming computer I think that its current video card is just fine. It got me thinking about the least video requirements (80MB) and its quite a lot though.

lightusr · Feb 28, 2006, 10:06 PM

What was apple thinking with this new Mac mini. I want to see a core duo with a 256mb radeon x1600 for $499.

Oh wait, that does exist. It's called an iMac and it costs $1299.

glideslope · Feb 28, 2006, 10:10 PM

Originally Posted by JKT

32MB Radeon 9200, not 64MB.

Good ****ing god, yet another "OMFG IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!!" thread at MacNN. What a bunch of mealy-mouthed, pathetic, whinging bastards we all are.

Your referring to your side of the Pond?

Weyland-Yutani · Feb 28, 2006, 10:25 PM

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Does GMA 950 even do H.264 acceleration?

Not a chance.

cheers

W-Y

Weyland-Yutani · Feb 28, 2006, 10:30 PM

Originally Posted by lightusr

What was apple thinking with this new Mac mini. I want to see a core duo with a 256mb radeon x1600 for $499.

Oh wait, that does exist. It's called an iMac and it costs $1299.

How about a core solo with a Radeon 9550 at $500? Heck I'd rather see a G5 1.6 GHz mini with a 9550 at $600 and a 1.8 GHz dual core G5 at $800. Dual and single core G5s aren't more expensive than the Intel x86s.

I'd say that would be a better deal.

cheers

W-Y

power142 · Feb 28, 2006, 10:40 PM

Well well well... it's a little sad to see Apple reduced to nothing more than a conjuror of cheap Intel tricks, I thought Dell had that base pretty well covered. To add insult to injury, they increased the price of the base model by $100!

Having said that, the specs on the $799 model seem reasonable besides the integrated graphics (surely the 9200 was better??), but once you get to that price point, the iMac is looking increasingly attractive....

Is the core duo man enough to decode H.264 at anything close to 1080?

lightusr · Feb 28, 2006, 10:41 PM

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

How about a core solo with a Radeon 9550 at $500? Heck I'd rather see a G5 1.6 GHz mini with a 9550 at $600 and a 1.8 GHz dual core G5 at $800. Dual and single core G5s aren't more expensive than the Intel x86s.

I'd say that would be a better deal.

cheers

W-Y

You can't disapate the heat that a single G5 puts off in that small little case that is a mini and I doubt a 9550 is better than the intel gpu. You simply can not put the hardware that is needed to decode 1080p and h.264 in a mac mini right now.

FireWire · Feb 28, 2006, 10:49 PM

Originally Posted by cambro

The mac mini is now the ONLY machine to have ZERO mention of graphics capability on the apple hardware pages.
The old MacMini had a graphics performance page, the new one does not.
You be the judge of that one...

Good point!

Given that the graphic needs are constantly growing and that with the way OS X manages its memory, you never have too much RAM to spare, I don't see how this change is consistant with the way Apple is going.

Eug Wanker · Feb 28, 2006, 10:54 PM

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

How about a core solo with a Radeon 9550 at $500? Heck I'd rather see a G5 1.6 GHz mini with a 9550 at $600 and a 1.8 GHz dual core G5 at $800. Dual and single core G5s aren't more expensive than the Intel x86s.

The G5 970MP 1.8 GHz dual-core is much too hot for a Mac mini.

Originally Posted by power142

Is the core duo man enough to decode H.264 at anything close to 1080?

Originally Posted by lightusr

You can't disapate the heat that a single G5 puts off in that small little case that is a mini and I doubt a 9550 is better than the intel gpu. You simply can not put the hardware that is needed to decode 1080p and h.264 in a mac mini right now.

???

The Mac mini CAN decode 1080p H.264.

Also, if you can put a 2.16 GHz Core Duo and Radeon X1600 in a MacBook Pro, you can most certainly put a 1.67 GHz Core Duo and Radeon 9550 into the much thicker Mac mini. But the point is moot now.

MaxPower2k3 · Feb 28, 2006, 11:01 PM

Originally Posted by lightusr

You simply can not put the hardware that is needed to decode 1080p and h.264 in a mac mini right now.

er, yes you can. and they did. video decoding in OS X is done on the CPU, there's no graphics acceleration in any model (despite the H.264 acceleration that the ATI x1--- series does have). But a Core Duo 1.6GHz should be able to decode a 1080p H.264 stream just fine. People have said that their iMacs can decode two without much of a problem. For HTPC use, the new minis really are a huge step forwards from the G4, which were pretty much incapable of anything in the HD realm, H.264 or not. The GPU (in OS X, at least) has very little to do with video performance, so the dedicated chip/VRAM was probably seen as an acceptable sacrifice to make the machines ready (or, at least, more ready than they were before) for the "year of HD"

edit: Eug beat me to it

k squared · Feb 28, 2006, 11:56 PM

All of you constantly set yourselves up for disappointment. Complaining about a computer you are never going to buy.

Weyland-Yutani · Mar 1, 2006, 12:14 AM

Originally Posted by lightusr

You can't disapate the heat that a single G5 puts off in that small little case that is a mini and I doubt a 9550 is better than the intel gpu. You simply can not put the hardware that is needed to decode 1080p and h.264 in a mac mini right now.

Nor do I care about hardware decoded h.264 in a mini. Or anyone in the demographic group who'd want a mini. Why you bring this up in a reply to me, I may never know.

Asides from that, a G5 - single or dual core - can be put in a mini if it can be put in an iMac. The mini is no portable and the main issue (if there is an issue with the G5) is power consumption. Heat dissipation to a much lesser extent, especially on the lower-power 750FX.

Oh and even a lowly Radeon 9550 is a far more advanced GPU than the GMA 950 and has dedicated video RAM. The two aren't in the same class.

cheers

W-Y

TETENAL · Mar 1, 2006, 12:23 AM

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

Asides from that, a G5 - single or dual core - can be put in a mini if it can be put in an iMac.

Look at the size of the heat sink.

Weyland-Yutani · Mar 1, 2006, 12:26 AM

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

The G5 970MP 1.8 GHz dual-core is much too hot for a Mac mini.

The Core Duo used in the mini is a laptop procesor, btw like all the "core" Intels. Don't expect a Core processor in the Apple towers. These used to be called Centrino.

A low power FX would fit nicely into a mini. There is a single core low power FX, no reason there couldn't be a dual core. That's what I'm saying.

cheers

W-Y

Weyland-Yutani · Mar 1, 2006, 12:28 AM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

Look at the size of the heat sink.

Nice. Nice heatsink.

cheers

W-Y

Eug Wanker · Mar 1, 2006, 12:52 AM

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

Nor do I care about hardware decoded h.264 in a mini. Or anyone in the demographic group who'd want a mini. Why you bring this up in a reply to me, I may never know.

No hardware decoded H.264 per se, but the ability to decode H.264 HD is VERY important for many people looking at the mini, because they'll be using it in their home theater systems.

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

The Core Duo used in the mini is a laptop procesor, btw like all the "core" Intels. Don't expect a Core processor in the Apple towers. These used to be called Centrino.

You seem to be confused as to the meaning of Centrino.

Anyways, the reason you won't find Core Duo in the towers is because it's a 32-bit chip, and it doesn't support dual-processor. ie. You can't make a 64-bit quad out of Core Duo chips.

A low power FX would fit nicely into a mini. There is a single core low power FX, no reason there couldn't be a dual core. That's what I'm saying.

The lower power FX in dual-core is essentially the 970MP, and that's already in (Power) Macs. You could make it low power enough to fit in the Mac mini, but not at anywhere near the performance per watt of the Core Duo line because you'd have to drop the clock speed far too low.

Weyland-Yutani · Mar 1, 2006, 01:20 AM

I know perfectly well what the Centrino is. First and foremost a laptop processor.

cheers

W-Y

FireWire · Mar 1, 2006, 01:21 AM

Originally Posted by inkhead

According to Apple the new GMA950 graphics chipset has 64mb onboard and can share up to 250mb of ram from the memory you put in the mac mini, whichi is good i guess. Not too bad.

Has this been confirmed by Apple? I didn't read anything on that subject on Apple's website. On the Intel page you linked to, it is stated that the card can use up to 224 MB of video memory.

If Apple enabled the full extent of this option, does anyone know if you can "preset" it to a given value, so the system doesn't have to page-out many files to make room for the video memory on-the-fly, which would cause performance to degrade?

Eug Wanker · Mar 1, 2006, 02:11 AM

"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."

So basically, the GMA 950 has ZERO on board memory, and uses a minimum of 64 MB system memory (with another 16 MB getting wasted).

lookmark · Mar 1, 2006, 02:26 AM

Yup. Meaning getting an extra 512MB of RAM goes from being a good idea to pretty much a necessity (unless you're really doing very little but browsing/E-mail). Meaning the mini is, for the moment, increasingly distant from being the low-budget computer it used to be.

Maybe one day, when the Core chips have gone down in price, it'll at least return to it's $499 price point...

lookmark · Mar 1, 2006, 02:44 AM

Originally Posted by Peter753

Can you do any even moderate gaming on those kinda of graphics? Could it run oh say World of Warcraft alright?

FYI - a little more on this from WOW's Mac people here.

krillbee · Mar 1, 2006, 04:50 AM

Originally Posted by k squared

All of you constantly set yourselves up for disappointment. Complaining about a computer you are never going to buy.

who knows, they may have bought it, had it had better video.

techtrucker · 07:41 AM

I don't normally whine or complain, esp. on these forums, but I had been waiting for the first Intel mini to be announced to order one, and I have to admit the integrated graphics + price increase is giving me pause. I have an iMac G5 that I am very happy with, but being a small time developer I need an Intel machine to test Universal binaries. So of course the video card really doesn't matter much to me, I'm just surprised.

I also wonder about the whole gaming question: I would think (but could be very much wrong) that the target market of the mini would be 1) Switchers and 2)Younger folks that can't afford an iMac or PowerMac. Wouldn't both those target customers be likely to be gamers? Maybe not, just thinking out loud...

rcleland2 · Mar 1, 2006, 09:14 AM

Quote

"I know perfectly well what the Centrino is. First and foremost a laptop processor.

cheers

W-Y"

The Centrino is not a processor. Its only a name used to decribe a combo of processor (Pentium M usually), motherboard chipset, and the wireless card.