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Eug Wanker · 01:25 PM

I know the Mac mini isn't a gaming machine, but I want to get an idea of just how bad GMA 950 is with 3D gaming. It certainly is VERY slow on the Windows side for games, but the few reviews I've seen don't compare it to say a Radeon 9200. My guess is that it's noticeably slower overall than even the already slow 9200 as well, except for possibly the latest shader games, but that's a moot point because the latest shader games will suck royally on both GPUs. It's gonna be hard to do GPU comparisons though, at least with the Core Duo since that CPU of the Mac mini is so massively better than any PowerBook, iBook, or G4 Mac mini ever released.

Anyone tried gaming on the Power Mac Intel developer boxes? That had a form of integrated graphics too.

It'd also be interesting to test the Mac mini with a single memory DIMM vs two (say 2x512 vs. 1x1024) since I'm guessing it supports dual-channel speeds, which would help the GPU since it shares system RAM.

In the meantime, here are some PC GMA 950 benches:

Digital-Daily.com:

AT:

P.S. The 9550 or X300 (or even X1300) is what I was hoping for with the new Mac mini...

Eug Wanker · Mar 1, 2006, 05:31 PM

Stolen from Tom's Hardware:

betasp · Mar 1, 2006, 05:59 PM

In the performance tests for office applications, (to be more precise, at doing most of the office tasks) Intel GMA950 offers more than enough performance (the result proved higher than 1000 marks), but it lags behind X300 SE.

Eug Wanker · Mar 2, 2006, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by betasp

In the performance tests for office applications, (to be more precise, at doing most of the office tasks) Intel GMA950 offers more than enough performance (the result proved higher than 1000 marks), but it lags behind X300 SE.

I agree that for office applications, GMA 950 is more than sufficient, and in fact is superior in some ways like full CoreImage support. However, that's not the purpose of this thread.

Anyways, here are some Cinebench results which I posted in the Intel Mac mini thread. Higher scores are better:

Mac mini G4 1.5 GHz:

Rendering (1 CPU): 152

C4D: 159
OpenGL Software Lighting: 414
OpenGL Hardware Lighting: 506
OpenGL Speedup: 3.18

Mac mini Core Solo 1.5 GHz:

Rendering (1 CPU): 213

C4D: 259
OpenGL Software Lighting: 885
OpenGL Hardware Lighting: 441
OpenGL Speedup: 3.41

ie. For GPU-accelerated OpenGL in Cinebench 9.5, the old G4 Radeon 9200 Mac mini is actually 15% faster. The Intel Core Solo GMA 950 Mac mini is 40% faster in CPU rendering though.

Again, this is not a gaming benchmark, but it does test OpenGL, which as everyone knows is of huge importance in Mac gaming. I don't think we can translate this directly into how games will perform, especially since CPU speed is very important too, but I think it does show just how poor GMA 950 can be in 3D graphics. The assumption by some that since the Radeon 9200 sucked, GMA 950 must be better, is not supported by these results.

Eug Wanker · Mar 3, 2006, 03:59 PM

Macworld says Unreal Tournament 2004 runs slower on the Intel Mac mini, whereas Apple says certain games (not specified) should be 10-40% faster.

Apple also apparently says that max usage of the GPU for system RAM is 80 MB (with 64 MB available to the GPU).

sniffer · Mar 3, 2006, 05:49 PM

Thanks for the update Eug. Hopefully we'll get a more accurate picture soon. (It can't get worse right?)

Eug Wanker · Mar 4, 2006, 02:17 AM

I put a * beside the fastest Mac mini for each test.

As expected, Core Duo wins all native CPU tests, but not surprisingly the G4 Mac mini with Radeon 9200 is the best mini in the 3D gaming test (although performance is still poor). The G4 Mac mini also dominates in the Photoshop test, which is running through Rosetta on the Intel Macs.

sniffer · Mar 4, 2006, 02:47 AM

Also Speedmark seems to include MS Office in its testing though its not UB yet. I wonder how much memory they have in the test machines? 512 MB will certainly not be good on any system with shared video (and OS X) for gaming.

Eug Wanker · Mar 4, 2006, 06:01 PM

Speedmark 4 is Macworld Lab’s standard test tool for benchmarking new and upgraded systems running Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). It uses real-world applications and everyday tasks. It is a general-purpose suite that includes tasks that everyone, from a high-end user to a new user, performs every day.

Macworld Lab follows a detailed script to perform the 15 tasks. Each task is performed three times. We compare the results to a 1.25 GHz Mac Mini with 512MB of RAM, which is assigned a score of 100. We then take the geometric mean of the normalized scores.

Speedmark 4 Task List
Mac OS X
• Startup
• Duplicate 500MB file
• Open Multiple Folders
• Create Archive of 1GB folder
• Unarchive 1GB file

Microsoft Office X
• Word Scroll
• Word Search/Replace
• Download E-mail

Adobe Reader 7
• PDF Scroll

iTunes 4.7
• Convert AAC files to MP3 from Hard Drive

iMovie HD
• Export to QuickTime for E-mail

Firefox 1.0.3
• Multiple Page Loading Test

Unreal Tournament 2004
• Antalus Botmatch at 1024x768 Max Settings - Average Frames Per Second

Adobe Photoshop CS2
• Suite of 10 tests

Cinema 4DXL 9.1
• Render

sniffer · Mar 5, 2006, 03:48 AM

In lack of people ready to post game fps results, at least macintouch have posted some interesting benches. They've tested a solo with 512MB ram against other Macs. I have just glanced trough the results but on the CPU side of things the new mini solo (1.5 GHz) is a step ahead of the old 1.5GHz mini. On the Geekbench test it also appears to be a step head of the base model for that particular test, a 1.6 GHz PowerMac ("uniprocessor?").

torifile · Mar 7, 2006, 11:52 AM

iTunes 4.7? In Speedmark? That's ridiculous. If there are universal versions of those apps, the benchmarking should use those.

Eug Wanker · 01:43 PM

Here are some gaming benches then, comparing the Core Duo 1.66 vs the G4 Mac mini:

Memory performance can make a huge difference with the Intel Mac mini:

U: unmatched memory
M: paired memory

Less difference with matched memory here, but there's still a difference:

On UT2004, the Intel Mac mini is absotively useless:

sniffer · 02:22 PM

UT2004 must really blow at software fallback.

smoke-tetsu · Mar 8, 2006, 06:04 PM

Medium in Doom 3 is too high for either mac mini it should be run on low even on the new mac mini as it only has 64mb (regardless of whether it's integrated or not). I'm surprised the G4 mini got 13fps on medium. It's also surprising (or not if you consider the GPU) that the new mac mini scored the same regardless of it being faster. Though again medium is too high that's for GPU's with 128mb.

Macworlds lab tests weren't so great either because they ran UT2004 on max settings when it really should be run on medium or high (not higher or highest)

exca1ibur · Mar 8, 2006, 06:52 PM

Ouch. Those benches are pretty pathetic. My old Dual 500 got higher speeds in Quake3 with the old first generation Radeon.

hotani · Mar 8, 2006, 10:17 PM

Oh well, so much for the mini. I had hopes of getting one if it would do halfway decent at gaming, but it's not even 1/4 decent!

Guess it's back to my original plan of holding out for bargain basement prices on G5s when the intel powermacs are released.

Weyland-Yutani · Mar 8, 2006, 11:39 PM

Look, I'm not big on buying Apple's marketing hype. However, they hit the nail on the head in their description of their earlier Mac mini when they said that because it had a dedicated GPU with dedicated video RAM it would be a lot better in games.

That is just irrefutably true. The GMA 950 is heck of a lot worse GPU for games than the 9200. And the 9200 is damn lousy.

The Mac mini has many good new qualities. Just not the GPU. It is arguably worse.

cheers

W-Y

Horsepoo!!! · Mar 9, 2006, 11:09 AM

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

Look, I'm not big on buying Apple's marketing hype. However, they hit the nail on the head in their description of their earlier Mac mini when they said that because it had a dedicated GPU with dedicated video RAM it would be a lot better in games.

That is just irrefutably true. The GMA 950 is heck of a lot worse GPU for games than the 9200. And the 9200 is damn lousy.

The Mac mini has many good new qualities. Just not the GPU. It is arguably worse.

cheers

W-Y

For comparison, the Mac mini Duo's gaming performance (FPS) is about on par with my 5 year old 2x800MHz G4 Quicksilver with a Radeon 8500...

...and that's pretty sad.

The CPU is top notch...the integrated graphics chips cripples it as a far as gaming is concerned. But the machine is excellent for everything else.

Brad Oliver · Mar 9, 2006, 05:06 PM

Originally Posted by sniffer

UT2004 must really blow at software fallback.

What software fallback are you referring to?

sniffer · Mar 10, 2006, 02:30 AM

Originally Posted by Brad Oliver

What software fallback are you referring to?

I am no OpenGL developer, but observing by the graphs UT04 is lagging behind near 1/4 of the framerate of a G4 mini, w/ATI 9200. This is while both system is on pair on the D3 benchmark and.. looking at the Macintouch Cinebench benchmark you can observe that while the GMA 950 might be lacking a bit compared, the system itself is really really fast:

Code:
.........................Mini PPC..........Mini Solo Intel
OpenGL
Software................427................869
OpenGL
Hardware................530................438
-------------------------------------------
Total:...................957................1307

Note that the Macintouch test ran on a solo and the Barefeet uses a duo. Now it might be difficult to leverage AltiVec or multiple cores/CPUs in games, but the new mini does support SSE3/2 witch is more commonly supported on the Windows side, so you do get the impression that the new minis should have the potential to run UT04 at least comparable to the old G4 minis, but it's not even close.

Eug Wanker · Mar 10, 2006, 10:42 AM

Perhaps Brad can comment since I'm no software developer, but I don't see how this is due to poor software fallback in UT2004.

Tell me if this sounds like it's in the right ballpark:

UT2004 will see that GMA 950 supports T&L because it reports that it supports it. Thus, UT2004 lets GMA 950 do T&L. The catch is that GMA 950's T&L support is software-only, and consequently T&L performance is extremely poor.

Big Mac · Mar 12, 2006, 02:17 AM

One has to assume the Intel mini uses pathetic integrated graphics because the Core Solo and Duo are so much more expensive than the G4.

Eug Wanker · Mar 14, 2006, 11:34 AM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

One has to assume the Intel mini uses pathetic integrated graphics because the Core Solo and Duo are so much more expensive than the G4.

Maybe that's part of it, but could it also be space and time-to-market issues?

I'm just hoping the next iteration of the Mac mini gets something like at least an X300 64 MB. An X1300 with H.264 acceleration in OS X would rock, but I think I'm just dreaming...

Eug Wanker · Mar 29, 2006, 08:23 AM

Some more benches of the Core Duo Mac mini here, vs. a PowerBook 1.67 and a Core Duo 2.0 MacBook Pro.

CPU · Mar 29, 2006, 11:06 AM

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Some more benches of the Core Duo Mac mini here, vs. a PowerBook 1.67 and a Core Duo 2.0 MacBook Pro.

ouch, the mini does not fare very well

Eug Wanker · Mar 29, 2006, 11:19 AM

Originally Posted by CPU

ouch, the mini does not fare very well

Well, I wouldn't expect it to fare very well against the PowerBooks, since the GPU in those is much, much better. I don't expect the Mac mini to get anything remotely like a Radeon 9700 or X1600.

However, I agree that it still doesn't fare well just in general. It would have been nice if they added a 1.5 GHz G4 Mac mini with Radeon 9200 and a 1.33 GHz G4 iBook with Radeon 9550 to the mix for comparison though.

CPU · Mar 29, 2006, 12:01 PM

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Well, I wouldn't expect it to fare very well against the PowerBooks, since the GPU in those is much, much better. I don't expect the Mac mini to get anything remotely like a Radeon 9700 or X1600.

However, I agree that it still doesn't fare well just in general. It would have been nice if they added a 1.5 GHz G4 Mac mini with Radeon 9200 and a 1.33 GHz G4 iBook with Radeon 9550 to the mix for comparison though.

I meant fare well in general. The marks should be much higher, imo. I have an older pc laptop* with a 9200 and it completely blows away the mini.

*yeah, i know pc vs mac game benchmarks aren't the best to go by. I was just surprised how low the mini scored.

magnificent 7 · 04:17 AM

Given the power of the core duo platform, if the system was equipped with a decent graphics card for gaming, I suspect it would have eaten into Powermac sales for people who wanted a Mac "box" for gaming to go with a display you already have.

With the mini crippled for gaming Apple have made sure that if you want to game on a Mac that you can use with a screen of your choice then you have to spend the big money on a Powermac

I have recently had a play around with World of Warcraft on my mini core duo, you can find the framerates in this thread

Brad Oliver · Mar 31, 2006, 08:28 PM

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Perhaps Brad can comment since I'm no software developer, but I don't see how this is due to poor software fallback in UT2004.

Tell me if this sounds like it's in the right ballpark:

UT2004 will see that GMA 950 supports T&L because it reports that it supports it. Thus, UT2004 lets GMA 950 do T&L. The catch is that GMA 950's T&L support is software-only, and consequently T&L performance is extremely poor.

This sounds like a reasonable explanation. Another factor is probably vertex shaders - UT2k4 sees that the Mini has it and goes for it. Unfortunately, those are also running on the CPU, competing with the T&L there as well. End result: crap.

Brad Oliver · Mar 31, 2006, 08:31 PM

Originally Posted by sniffer

I am no OpenGL developer, but observing by the graphs UT04 is lagging behind near 1/4 of the framerate of a G4 mini, w/ATI 9200.

What I was getting at is that I don't believe UT2k4 has a software fallback case. I don't think you can run it using a software OpenGL renderer - it's hardware or nothing. Most Mac games are this way, simply because there's no situation where enabling software GL helps.

sniffer · 01:53 AM

But isn't the GMA 9xx series extremely depended on the quality of the drivers and optimizations for this kind of hardware in the given application and so on? I installed Windows a couple of weeks ago testing the wow client in both environments and the difference was dramatic on my core solo (I think I was comparing with the first UB patch, it could be newer ones out now for all I know). Thanks for taking your time answering our concerns.

Eug Wanker · Apr 4, 2006, 10:09 AM

Originally Posted by ajw

Given the power of the core duo platform, if the system was equipped with a decent graphics card for gaming, I suspect it would have eaten into Powermac sales for people who wanted a Mac "box" for gaming to go with a display you already have.

Perhaps, but if the Power Mac can't stand on its own two feet, then there's definitely something wrong with it. Anyways, nobody is suggesting it's feasible putting a Radeon X1800 XT in the Mac mini. I was just hoping for something like an X300, with partially shared memory.

Eug Wanker · May 18, 2006, 10:52 PM

MacBook 13" benchmarks.

FWIW, UT2004 is slightly faster on the MacBook than the iBook 1.42 with Radeon 9550, but it's still not fast.

Eug Wanker · May 20, 2006, 07:24 PM

Intel GMA 950 game compatibility list