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2010 Mac Mini + Cataclysm @ 2560x1440

J

Johnf1285

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 25, 2010
965
63
Hey everyone!

I have a 27" ACD and I was looking to pick up another Mac, this time the new Mac Mini, the standard configuration. I was curious, how do you folks think the Mini would handle World of Warcraft at this high of a resolution? Can I expect a solid 30fps on medium settings? Does anyone have first hand experience and could they share their settings?

I do plan to upgrade to 4 or 8gb of ram and pop a 500gb Momentus XT inside of it.

Thanks!
 
I have a 2010 13" MBP, which has the same hardware your Mini does. It also has 8gb of ram and a SSD. It's worth noting that I still get occasional lag with settings on low at my 1280x800 resolution.
 
I was without a desktop for a bit and in the meantime I was playing on a 2008 aluminum Mac Book with the 9400m. I was raiding and everything and the lower settings grew on me - this was Wrath of the Lich King though, the graphics have seen a facelift since then. Well its coming Tuesday so I guess I will find out!
 
Ah it turns out I won't see it until Wednesday! If I knew the free shipping would take a week I would've paid extra!

Oh well, I'll post my findings on Wednesday evening then!
 
Johnf1285 said:
Hey everyone!

I have a 27" ACD and I was looking to pick up another Mac, this time the new Mac Mini, the standard configuration. I was curious, how do you folks think the Mini would handle World of Warcraft at this high of a resolution? Can I expect a solid 30fps on medium settings? Does anyone have first hand experience and could they share their settings?

I do plan to upgrade to 4 or 8gb of ram and pop a 500gb Momentus XT inside of it.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I would use a western digital 750gb scorpio black instead of the seagate. 8gb ram won't hurt. let us know how it works.
 
Is anyone familiar with how much ram the 320m will tap into? Or is it always 256mb. I've seen some integrated chips utilize up to 1024mb... I just hope I can get smooth FPS on such a high res. All the videos I've seen on youtube suggest that a solid 30fps with mid settings is totally do able!
 
Johnf1285 said:
Hey everyone!

I have a 27" ACD and I was looking to pick up another Mac, this time the new Mac Mini, the standard configuration. I was curious, how do you folks think the Mini would handle World of Warcraft at this high of a resolution? Can I expect a solid 30fps on medium settings? Does anyone have first hand experience and could they share their settings?

I do plan to upgrade to 4 or 8gb of ram and pop a 500gb Momentus XT inside of it.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Do let us know. I'd be interested in seeing how it runs. I've read both ways. I'm leaning towards a new imac at this point though, as opposed to the mini, merely because of that integrated graphics chip.

If it does run well though, it'd save me 500 or so. :)
 
With only 256MB VRAM, I've no doubt the 320M will lag like crazy at 2560x1440. At that resolution, you'd want to play with at the very least 512MB (Preferably a 1GB card, not to mentioned a dedicated graphics card vs the integrated 320M).
 
I've been playing Cat on a 2009 Mac Mini with the 9400m on an ACD at 1920x1200. It does fairly well on low. Sometimes it dips under 20fps, but for the most part, it's quite playable.

I can imagine that on the newest Mini it'll do much better, as the video chipset is 2-3 times faster. Let us know how it does when it comes in.
 
MattA said:
I've been playing Cat on a 2009 Mac Mini with the 9400m on an ACD at 1920x1200. It does fairly well on low. Sometimes it dips under 20fps, but for the most part, it's quite playable.

I can imagine that on the newest Mini it'll do much better, as the video chipset is 2-3 times faster. Let us know how it does when it comes in.
Click to expand...

Surely. I'm excited to post my findings. Currently on my Mac Pro with the HD 5770, I cap it to 30fps anyhow because the mac version sort of stutters a bit at higher settings. I typically leave the settings on the Good pre set. For kicks and giggles I flipped it to fair with 1x multisampling and trilinear and it looked fine to me! Will see if mini is capable of the same!
 
MattA said:
I've been playing Cat on a 2009 Mac Mini with the 9400m on an ACD at 1920x1200. It does fairly well on low. Sometimes it dips under 20fps, but for the most part, it's quite playable.

I can imagine that on the newest Mini it'll do much better, as the video chipset is 2-3 times faster. Let us know how it does when it comes in.
Click to expand...

My guess is the 2010 will not play better then 25fps .

As I understand it the new chipset is 20 to 30 percent faster not 2 to 3 x faster. 20 percent faster would mean 24fps to 26fps would be max. I am interested in this. if the 2010 graphic card is that much better then the 2009 it would be a good reason for getting a 2010 mini.

I have dissed the 2010 mini time and time again as a "christie brinkley" computer (ie looks hot but does not put out). I would prefer to be wrong. This game running at 30fps on a screen thats is 2560 by 1440 in a new mini would be a real proof that it is a good machine and a good upgrade.
 
philipma1957 said:
My guess is the 2010 will not play better then 25fps .

As I understand it the new chipset is 20 to 30 percent faster not 2 to 3 x faster. 20 percent faster would mean 24fps to 26fps would be max. I am interested in this. if the 2010 graphic card is that much better then the 2009 it would be a good reason for getting a 2010 mini.

I have dissed the 2010 mini time and time again as a "christie brinkley" computer (ie looks hot but does not put out). I would prefer to be wrong. This game running at 30fps on a screen thats is 2560 by 1440 in a new mini would be a real proof that it is a good machine and a good upgrade.
Click to expand...

According to Apple's site, it increased performance by 2x:

http://www.apple.com/macmini/features.html#performer

Not saying you're wrong, just sayin'...
 
I will have it tomorrow evening and will be sharing my results with screen shots! Keep your pants on everyone!
 
MattA said:
According to Apple's site, it increased performance by 2x:

http://www.apple.com/macmini/features.html#performer

Not saying you're wrong, just sayin'...
Click to expand...
I went to the link
the term "by up to 2x" has the same legal meaning as "from 0x to 2x "



if you buy a 2009 mac mini it can have 1gb ram inside it. if the 2009 mini has 1gb ram only 128mb goes towards graphics. if the 2009 mini has 4gb ram in it 256mb goes to graphics. the apple ad legally includes the 2009 mini with 1gb of ram. it is how the by up to 2x graphics speed statement is true.

I am not knocking the 2010 mac mini's graphics by saying they are worse or equal to the 2009. they are better but more like 20 to 30 percent at best. it will make a difference if you use a 27 inch apple display but not 2x better then a 4gb or better ram 2009 mini. Tomorrow the orig poster will give us results on his 27 inch screen. I am thinking 30fps is not going to be really good on the 27 inch. I would prefer to be wrong. time will tell.
 
philipma1957 said:
I went to the link
the term "by up to 2x" has the same legal meaning as "from 0x to 2x "



if you buy a 2009 mac mini it can have 1gb ram inside it. if the 2009 mini has 1gb ram only 128mb goes towards graphics. if the 2009 mini has 4gb ram in it 256mb goes to graphics. the apple ad legally includes the 2009 mini with 1gb of ram. it is how the by up to 2x graphics speed statement is true.

I am not knocking the 2010 mac mini's graphics by saying they are worse or equal to the 2009. they are better but more like 20 to 30 percent at best. it will make a difference if you use a 27 inch apple display but not 2x better then a 4gb or better ram 2009 mini. Tomorrow the orig poster will give us results on his 27 inch screen. I am thinking 30fps is not going to be really good on the 27 inch. I would prefer to be wrong. time will tell.
Click to expand...

One of the great misnomers in the graphics industry is that more graphics memory = faster graphics, when in actuality the GPU has far more to do with it than that.

I am actually very interested to see how the new mini performs with the 27". I'm not saying it'll get 60fps on ultimate, but I do suspect it will fare a lot better than the 9400m does.
 
Yeah I agree. Also I keep my frame rates locked at 30fps on the pro with 5770. If this mac mini can acheive a solid 30fps with medium settings, its a winner! With a screen of this resolution, the 1x multisampling actually is not as harsh either. I wish it came today instead :(
 
MattA said:
One of the great misnomers in the graphics industry is that more graphics memory = faster graphics, when in actuality the GPU has far more to do with it than that.

I am actually very interested to see how the new mini performs with the 27". I'm not saying it'll get 60fps on ultimate, but I do suspect it will fare a lot better than the 9400m does.
Click to expand...

Thing is higher the resolution, the more graphics memory is needed. At 2560x1440, I could easily see you needing more then 256MB VRAM.

Sure it will fare a lot better than the 9400m, the 320m is what, twice as fast?
 
I agree. I tried to research the 27" iMac 2009 Core 2 Duo with the 256mb HD4670 running Wow as it appears to be somewhat comparable. The 4670 is DDR3 as well. It seemed to handle mid settings very well, pre cataclysm. But, it has a higher clock rate, and probably a desktop version CPU. I'm sure its not the 8600 or whatever is in the current Mini.
 
Last edited:
Well it came this morning... as soon as I was walking out the door to go to work the Fedex guy dropped it off. Naturally I had to unbox it and take a look! Boy oh boy, its come a long way since the 1ghz G4 model I had years ago!

Will post some feedback tonight after the longest day of work
 
Johnf1285 said:
Well it came this morning... as soon as I was walking out the door to go to work the Fedex guy dropped it off. Naturally I had to unbox it and take a look! Boy oh boy, its come a long way since the 1ghz G4 model I had years ago!

Will post some feedback tonight after the longest day of work
Click to expand...

Please let us know I want to find out how well it does for you.
 
Well heres my results:

The most playable frame rates are at low with Trilinear filtering.

It gets about 30fps in busy SW during peak on my server. However, there is noticeable stutter and lag. Short of the stutter and lag, its not bad at all.

The ram is pushed to the max according to the activity monitor, as is the CPU. Right now writing this with wow in the background, I have 783mb in page ins with 273mb page outs. Not the best ratio. Free is 22mb, Wired is 552mb, Active is 988mb, Inactive is 489mb.

The cpu has about 20 - 15% idle available.

The hard drive is slower, but not insanely slow. I feel that a faster disk and more ram would curb the stuttering issue.
 
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