Just how bad is a gma 950?

[theusualsuspect]

I used a mini with the 950 in it until a few months ago. I never really had an issue with it, but I didn't play many games either. I did use final Cut Express on it without much trouble though.

I think the monitor is causing the problems. My resolution was in the 1280x1024 range, and it was pretty smooth. Obviously H264 HD content with stress the processor too much, but for general use it should be fine.

 

[corvus32]

I used a mini with the 950 in it until a few months ago. I never really had an issue with it, but I didn't play many games either. I did use final Cut Express on it without much trouble though.

I think the monitor is causing the problems. My resolution was in the 1280x1024 range, and it was pretty smooth. Obviously H264 HD content with stress the processor too much, but for general use it should be fine.

2006 Mini or mid-2007?

Both used the GMA 950, but the C2D processor in the latter was a significant improvement over its predecessor, and those unofficially support 4GB of RAM.

 

[Madd the Sane]

2006 Mini or mid-2007?

Both used the GMA 950, but the C2D processor in the latter was a significant improvement over its predecessor, and those unofficially support 4GB of RAM.

I thought the 2007 model can only address 3 GB RAM. Sure, you can put two 2 GB modules in it, but aside from the speed boost of interleaving, you'll still only get 3 GB of RAM.
As such, I only have 3 GB in my 2007 that I turned into Lion Server (I had hoped to use the software update server, then Mountain Lion came out).

But yes, the GMA 950 is a very poor GPU. Older games would play, but what really angered me is that the Spore Creature Creator (and Spore) would run on a GMA 950 on Windows, but not on Mac (This also made me hate Wine wrappers).

 

[jav6454]

[...]

The thing seems to run fine and then sometimes go to a sideshow for a couple seconds. Is the gma 950 really horrible?

[...]

I'll put it the sweetest way possible. The GMA950 was the worst thing Intel did to the computing world (or humanity, depending how much you hate Intel iGPUs).

 

[Zellio]

Hey, the intel 4000 and haswell are decent and good. You can't really hate intel gpus nowadays..

Btw, is there a way to compress images in chrome? That would help the slowdown issue when lots of images are on screen..

 

[Zellio]

Well this is just sad.

I turned off hardware acceleration on google and now macrumours loads perfectly and I can play youtube at 720p without slowdowns... the gma 950 couldn't play youtube at 480p without slowdowns..

Over half the ram is available..

Anyway, does anyone know how to compress images in chrome? I don't want to overtax this cpu, even though it is a secondary pc..

 

[Intell]

I thought the 2007 model can only address 3 GB RAM. Sure, you can put two 2 GB modules in it, but aside from the speed boost of interleaving, you'll still only get 3 GB of RAM.
As such, I only have 3 GB in my 2007 that I turned into Lion Server (I had hoped to use the software update server, then Mountain Lion came out).

But yes, the GMA 950 is a very poor GPU. Older games would play, but what really angered me is that the Spore Creature Creator (and Spore) would run on a GMA 950 on Windows, but not on Mac (This also made me hate Wine wrappers).

They technically can read and use all 4GB of ram, but about 700MB of it is reserved for system MMIO use. You'd get much more performance out of the 4GB, with 3.3GB usable, than you would with 3GB because of how the system does MMIO.