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Mac mini (2018) Intel UHD Graphics 630 :: Pros and Cons

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kazmac said:
That iGPU just killed this purchase for me. Not sure why they couldn’t bump it up more and still allow for eGPU if the jobs demand that.

I am not in a spot where I need or want an eGPU, but I need more than 630. So the Mini is a wash for me.
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Probably cost and heat. Whatever they could have added would have just increased the cost and not have provided enough benefit to the user. If you need a GPU for your work then what they could have put in likely wouldn't have been anywhere near enough.
And added more heat they would have to remove when they already have to cool a desktop CPU. And they really are going all in with egpu's.
 
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scrunchy said:
Look at this comparison.

The perfomance of the UHD 630 will be comparable to that of the discrete GPU of the mid 2012 retina Macbook Pro.
I've used that for 6 years now. I've run Tomb Raider 2013, Pillars of Eternity decently.
iMovie encoding also was okay.
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Thanks for linking that comparison. I have a 2012 MacBook Pro with the GT 650M GPU also and I’ve found the graphical performance to be adequate for anything I’ve thrown at it. It has worked fine with Photoshop editing large RAW files.
 
On a Mini 2012 with maxed 16GB real RAM, the max allocated shared VRAM is 1.5GB. Not sure if it is a hard limit or scaled, if it is proportionally scaled up, on the new mini it *could* be:

8GB > 768MB
16GB > 1.5GB
32GB > 3GB
64GB > 6GB
 
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archer75 said:
Probably cost and heat. Whatever they could have added would have just increased the cost and not have provided enough benefit to the user. If you need a GPU for your work then what they could have put in likely wouldn't have been anywhere near enough. And added more heat they would have to remove when they already have to cool a desktop CPU. And they really are going all in with egpu's.
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Yeah totally agree, I figured Apple weighed a dGPU vs. packaging, cost, heat, use case, and production/SKUs and figured, keep it simple, don't worry about targeting the "need a more powerful GPU" crowd with a mediocre option. For the folks thinking it was some profit play, do you think Apple wouldn't drop in some so-so dGPU and charge +$600 on the high end model if it was good business case? Clearly they just weren't onboard with a dGPU for the design roadmap this iteration.
 
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Chancha said:
On a Mini 2012 with maxed 16GB real RAM, the max allocated shared VRAM is 1.5GB. Not sure if it is a hard limit or scaled, if it is proportionally scaled up, on the new mini it *could* be:

8GB > 768MB
16GB > 1.5GB
32GB > 3GB
64GB > 6GB
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I vaguely remember an Apple document stating that integrated GPUs use up to 1.5G in macOS, without specifying individual models.

I'm honestly not sure if more memory dedicated to it would "help" anyway, would it?
 
Stephen.R said:
I vaguely remember an Apple document stating that integrated GPUs use up to 1.5G in macOS, without specifying individual models.

I'm honestly not sure if more memory dedicated to it would "help" anyway, would it?
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Not really. Most of the speed advantage we get from having larger VRAM pools is the ability to cache large assets (such as textures) so that they are not constantly swapped in and out of RAM while rendering frames. The UHD's texture rate is on the order of 10x slower than that of, say a GTX 1080, its instruction throughput is about 20x slower and pixel fill rate is ~30x slower. It just has no way to utilize extra RAM (of any type) dedicated to large assets beyond a certain level dictated by its physical limitations.

Put another way, ironically, the UHD630 is too slow to benefit from more RAM :p
 
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kazmac said:
That iGPU just killed this purchase for me. Not sure why they couldn’t bump it up more and still allow for eGPU if the jobs demand that.

I am not in a spot where I need or want an eGPU, but I need more than 630. So the Mini is a wash for me.
Click to expand...

For me, the worst is not the lack of a dedicated gpu... is the fact that we’d be paying as if we had a 1060 onboard.
[doublepost=1541626169][/doublepost]I like the idea of an egpu, but the casing itself is roughly the price of a mid gpu. That, combined with the mini’s price increase, is what keeps me from going for one right now.
 
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I don't trust the early reviews because none of them is critical of the graphics card, or lack there of. They all just mention getting an eGPU.

The mini would be perfect for me if it had a graphics card, as it doesn't I would need to put together an eGPU. So it's now making me seriously consider a Hackintosh.
 
Minxy said:
I don't trust the early reviews because none of them is critical of the graphics card, or lack there of. They all just mention getting an eGPU.

The mini would be perfect for me if it had a graphics card, as it doesn't I would need to put together an eGPU. So it's now making me seriously consider a Hackintosh.
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If it were legal, I'd do it. I'm considering Windows 10 but Logic Pro is what might tilt the balance towards a new Mac.
 
Isn't there a whole bunch of things that don't work so well on a hackintosh? Every time I had a look at it topics like sound, wifi, bluetooth and sleep/wake came up as potentially problematic - depending on specific hardware choices.

I'm not here for the case design, just for the reliability and overall pleasant experience. E.g. I'd really really like to have the OS run on any regular laptop and be free of Apple's soldered-on-storage and lack of (useful) ports on their ultra slimline devices. :)
 
th0masp said:
Isn't there a whole bunch of things that don't work so well on a hackintosh?
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I've always looked at it like this:

If i were going to spend my time futzing around with drivers and kernel patches and who knows what every time a mouse farts in my general direction, I might as well just be using Linux on a 'regular' PC.
 
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Minxy said:
I don't trust the early reviews because none of them is critical of the graphics card, or lack there of. They all just mention getting an eGPU.

The mini would be perfect for me if it had a graphics card, as it doesn't I would need to put together an eGPU. So it's now making me seriously consider a Hackintosh.
Click to expand...
What do you use that requires a beefy graphics card?
[doublepost=1541715429][/doublepost]
Stephen.R said:
I've always looked at it like this:

If i were going to spend my time futzing around with drivers and kernel patches and who knows what every time a mouse farts in my general direction, I might as well just be using Linux on a 'regular' PC.
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I’ve been using a 6-core i7 coffee lake hackintosh since February and I’ve had no problems with it. I have about $800 in it and the closest mini would be the top one with 16 gb of RAM. Quite a bit more money but a nicer footprint and TB ports.
 
Yeah, sometimes it takes an extra half hour to make sure all is stable after an update. Sometimes things break, like USB3 from 10.13.3 to 10.13.4. A patch came out a few days later and that fixed it for me. For me, the biggest issue was the lack of an update from Apple on the Mini, plus (now) the extraordinary cost of the mini. Functionally, I have the same computer as the top mini but at half the cost. The downside is it's in a mini ITX case, isn't dead silent (but not noisy by any stretch) and doesn't have TB3 ports (which I don't think I'll ever need, anyway). I do have a 512 gb SSD plus 2 TB hard drive, along with a 4k Blu-ray drive in it, though.
 
I have an i8700 Hackintosh build running Mojave with the UHD 630 GPU. I also have an RX 580 card feeding two 4k 27" monitors over DisplayPort. I have both GPUs enabled but don't have my displays connected to the 630. Maybe I'll check it out and see how the 630 performs with all of my DAW software and Adobe suite. I'm running Cubase, PT 2018, Logic, Live, pretty much all of them. ;)

I would like a no-fuss Mini or the yet to be announced Mac Pro to compliment my 15" 2015 Macbook Pro, but it would cost me more $ for a less expandable computer. I have TB3 running a UA Apollo interface and 5 internal SSD drives including a 1TB Samsung SSD boot drive (bought refurb for less than $150). I never hear the fans kick in since I carefully picked the components and a silent case. The only issue I have with the Hackintosh is my Watch unlock isn't working, not the end of the world and can probably be resolved if I look into it.

If I do pick up a mini I'll likely just throw my RX580 into a cheap eGPU chassis (likely modded with silent fans) and be done with it. I'd also need an external solution for my internal drives. So I'm thinking this is going to quickly add up to a $3k+ setup for not much gain performance wise. Waiting for the Mac Pro is starting to make sense for me. That said, the thought of racking the i7 Mini in one of these is very appealing: https://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacmini.html

I'm glad we have so many options!

D
 
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