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Mac Mini on way, what's the graphics card like for games?

jnc

jnc

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jan 7, 2007
2,311
15
Nunya, Business TX
Just curious if anyone's loaded up games on their new Mac Minis, and how they fare. I spotted someone saying they could play COD4 on it.

Last summer I had the current (at the time) entry level MacBook Pro, it could handle Gears of War & BioShock through Boot Camp with no hassle. Anyone have any idea how that MBP would compare to my new Mini?

2.4GHz MacBook Pro
GeForce 8600M GT, 256MB RAM
2GB DDR2 RAM

2.26GHz Mac Mini
GeForce 9400M, 256MB vRAM
4GB DDR3 RAM

I mean, the processors are pretty close, and there's more, faster RAM... if there's a huge gap, maybe someone could explain why?

Looking forward to some GoW and Geometry Wars on my new machine hopefully :p
 
While the 9400M is decent for an integrated solution, its still not much of a gaming chip. Shader heavy games are going to struggle on the 9400M, and thats only going to get worse as games become more and more shader reliant in the future. GoW btw, is a very shader heavy game.
 
jnc said:
Just curious if anyone's loaded up games on their new Mac Minis, and how they fare. I spotted someone saying they could play COD4 on it.

Last summer I had the current (at the time) entry level MacBook Pro, it could handle Gears of War & BioShock through Boot Camp with no hassle. Anyone have any idea how that MBP would compare to my new Mini?

2.4GHz MacBook Pro
GeForce 8600M GT, 256MB RAM
2GB DDR2 RAM

2.26GHz Mac Mini
GeForce 9400M, 256MB vRAM
4GB DDR3 RAM

I mean, the processors are pretty close, and there's more, faster RAM... if there's a huge gap, maybe someone could explain why?

Looking forward to some GoW and Geometry Wars on my new machine hopefully :p
Click to expand...
yes i ve played cod4 on my x3100, it was playble i guess u could say on low settings, my friend set it to low settings on his 9400m and it blew my x3100 out of the water, not a great chip but can do its job
 
elcid said:
Discrete Graphics vs Integrate Graphics.


Huge difference.
Click to expand...

E - LA - BO - RATE. I've given the specs, the RAM, etc. The dispairty is down to the MBP's GPU from, what, 2007? I can't get my head around what a dedicated GPU does, I suppose?
 
jnc said:
E - LA - BO - RATE. I've given the specs, the RAM, etc. The dispairty is down to the MBP's GPU from, what, 2007? I can't get my head around what a dedicated GPU does, I suppose?
Click to expand...

Here's what elcid means, I believe...

An integrated graphics card utilizes regular system RAM. Thus, the graphics processor is limited by system RAM bandwidth and overall logic board speed, and memory available to applications is consequently reduced.

A discrete or dedicated graphics card has its own video memory, distinct from system memory and running on its own internal bus to the graphics chip. The CPU simply sends graphics commands to the graphics card, which renders the command at its top speed without the system RAM bottleneck.

Because of this, the same graphics processor model will perform much faster as a dedicated card than as an integrated processor.
 
you wil be okay as far as HD movies and things like that go - however if you run a game like Spore... you might have some problems (as did i).

Macs, IMHO have never been know for gaming
 
yeah as s/he said. lets also remember that the Mac Mini is running on a mobile chipset! so don't be too disappointed
 
See here and here. As others said, better than the x3100 but not as good as the 8600.

I remember back in about 2003 I had a desktop PC with the latest integrated graphics, which was absolutely crushed by a 3D card from c. 1997 - a Diamond Monster 3D card using the Voodoo 1 chip. We're talking old here.

Dedicated graphics simply are better. It's a shame Apple doesn't make a Mac Pro Mini - a small "tower" with one or two slots only.

The processor comparison here is also pretty cool. My Macbook has the T7500, the 2.0 mini has the P7350 and the 2.26 mini has the P8400.
 
dXTC said:
Here's what elcid means, I believe...

An integrated graphics card utilizes regular system RAM. Thus, the graphics processor is limited by system RAM bandwidth and overall logic board speed, and memory available to applications is consequently reduced.

A discrete or dedicated graphics card has its own video memory, distinct from system memory and running on its own internal bus to the graphics chip. The CPU simply sends graphics commands to the graphics card, which renders the command at its top speed without the system RAM bottleneck.

Because of this, the same graphics processor model will perform much faster as a dedicated card than as an integrated processor.
Click to expand...

Thanks! Now I understand it better. Dedicated GPUs don't borrow from system processes and integrated ones do, right? That's why I maxed the RAM and processor... hoped doing that would alleviate that burden of an integrated chip.

I was kinda on the right track, but it seems there's ultimately only so much that can be done. I've followed the Mini on its 4 year run and it seems this is the best we may get for a while. :p I had a Mac Pro because I liked running dual displays, but its size, cost etc didn't agree with my lifestyle. Now the Mini has two outputs, I'll have to make do - I'll whack some games on myself and see how they perform once it arrives! Tomorrow I think.

Sun Baked said:
You can expect the integrated 9400m card to be about half as good as your MBP 8600.

But its performance is a tons better than the last Mac Mini solution.

http://www.barefeats.com/mbpp05.html
Click to expand...

So.... games will run but at half the speed? Half the res?? Will they run at all?

Undecided said:
See here and here. As others said, better than the x3100 but not as good as the 8600.
Click to expand...

Interesting to see the 9400 is only next down on the chart from the 8600M GT. As said above, I wonder how much the extra RAM on my new machine will "bridge the gap" per se, or will it still not really matter?

thanks everyone for clarifying
 
have a MBA 1.86/SSD. Crysis, everything on low, 1280x800, 15-25fps.

I think the MBA 9400m may be slightly underclocked and Mac Mini has a slightly faster CPU. Figure around 20% faster.
 
michael.lauden said:
you wil be okay as far as HD movies and things like that go - however if you run a game like Spore... you might have some problems (as did i).
Click to expand...

I run Spore fine on my MBA. 1280x800, everything on high, 30fps (Spore is locked to 30fps). Were you running on OSX side?
 
drjsway said:
I run Spore fine on my MBA. 1280x800, everything on high, 30fps (Spore is locked to 30fps). Were you running on OSX side?
Click to expand...

if you mean was i running on OS X or Windows. i was running on OS X. spore was very buggy i had it when it first came out. stupid grox
 
I'd say the gaming performance is decent. You will need at least 2 GB's of ram though, in order to get the GPU memory up to 256 MB. COD4 is playable, but not really enjoyable. Among the games I've tested so far are Guitar Hero 3, Doom 3, C&C3 (yep, lot's of games ending with 3 ;)), which all both looks & runs great. I haven't played any games under Windows yet (I'm trying to avoid running Windows at all, since I'm so fed up with it...), but I guess the gaming performance will be slightly better under Windows.
 
Henrik85 said:
I'd say the gaming performance is decent. You will need at least 2 GB's of ram though, in order to get the GPU memory up to 256 MB. COD4 is playable, but not really enjoyable. Among the games I've tested so far are Guitar Hero 3, Doom 3, C&C3 (yep, lot's of games ending with 3 ;)), which all both looks & runs great. I haven't played any games under Windows yet (I'm trying to avoid running Windows at all, since I'm so fed up with it...), but I guess the gaming performance will be slightly better under Windows.
Click to expand...

What resolution do you run in? My Mac Mini doesn't arrive for a few days, so I can't run any tests myself. :(
 
IT'S HERE!! :D

Using now, just running Software update then I'll stuff a BootCamp partition on there for XP

I have Gears of War, Geometry Wars and Crysis to test out first...
 
Undecided said:
I remember back in about 2003 I had a desktop PC with the latest integrated graphics, which was absolutely crushed by a 3D card from c. 1997 - a Diamond Monster 3D card using the Voodoo 1 chip. We're talking old here.
Click to expand...

I'd be curious to know what graphics card you were using in 2003. More than likely a 2003 CPU would probably render graphics on it's own faster than a Voodoo, with no help from the graphics card.

Also were you running your 2003 graphics card at the 640x480 resolution that most Voodoo's were limited to?

What games were you running that were slower on the new machine?
 
TBi said:
I'd be curious to know what graphics card you were using in 2003. More than likely a 2003 CPU would probably render graphics on it's own faster than a Voodoo, with no help from the graphics card.

Also were you running your 2003 graphics card at the 640x480 resolution that most Voodoo's were limited to?

What games were you running that were slower on the new machine?
Click to expand...

Voodoo 2 could handle 800x600 resolution. If you had two of these in SLI, you could have even 1024x768 res. :D

BTW: me is also cursio, what graphic card the previous poster had.
 
opeter said:
Voodoo 2 could handle 800x600 resolution. If you had two of these in SLI, you could have even 1024x768 res. :D

BTW: me is also cursio, what graphic card the previous poster had.
Click to expand...

Voodoo 1 could handle 800x600 in certain games too. He mentioned the Voodoo 1 though and not the Voodoo 2.
 
It may have been a Voodoo 2 - not sure. I was using it for Half Life (1), running it at 800x600 with OpenGL.

The PC was an eMachines (ugh) desktop -hell if I remember what the processor was. Or maybe it was my homebrew system I had mixed in there somewhere. (It's all a blur now.)

A friend gave me the graphics card - I remember being stunned at how such an older card could blow away then-current desktops.
 
jnc said:
IT'S HERE!! :D

Using now, just running Software update then I'll stuff a BootCamp partition on there for XP

I have Gears of War, Geometry Wars and Crysis to test out first...
Click to expand...

I'm quite keen to hear how you got on, as I'm in a similar situation myself.
 
MacMiniBoy said:
I'm quite keen to hear how you got on, as I'm in a similar situation myself.
Click to expand...

I'd love to tell you, currently awaiting my 3rd Mac Mini as the first two went bad... good old Rev A :|

I might just go the complete opposite way and get a Mac Pro... I'm not happy!
 
jnc said:
I'd love to tell you, currently awaiting my 3rd Mac Mini as the first two went bad... good old Rev A :|

I might just go the complete opposite way and get a Mac Pro... I'm not happy!
Click to expand...

I'm confused. The current Mini is the 3rd version of the Intel variety, and overall the 5-6th revision since its introduction. Far from revision A.
 
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