Oh Dear, intel integrated graphics

[tjwett]

We are not expecting a PowerMac, but a headless iMac.

ok, now this is a comment that i can actually see some thought and logic behind. at least i can say i hear where you're coming from on this. so when comparing the Core Duo mini and and the 17" iMac the differences would be:

faster/bigger hard drive on the iMac
better graphics on the iMac
17" LCD on the iMac
keyboard and mouse with the iMac
slightly faster CPU on the iMac

all the other specs are identical. the price difference between the 17" iMac and the Core Duo mini is $500. so that $500 is getting you the features listed above. seems like a fair trade. so assuming the units are priced fairly then the next step would be to ask why can't we have a headless iMac in the mini? i don't have the answer, but my questions would be:

can the mini case fit the larger hard drives?
how much does heat play a role in the mini's case?
is there room on the new logic board for dedicated graphics?

 

[tjwett]

Um its only a budget machine if its cheap. Just becaue they say its a budget machine doesn't mean they can give us crap and charge us for high end.

Take a look at the PC world conterparts. Yeah they are not as small but look at what you get. Now don't tell me it costs more to make a mini, it costs LOTS less.


For $399


For $799

Heck, that $799 will probably on spec with the Mac Pro when released.

I don't want to hear it.

did you just start using Macs today? they have never been cheap. in fact, they have ALWAYS been expensive. way more expensive than PCs. you will never get the most current hardware in a Mac at the same price as in a PC. it will never happen. never had. i can't believe people are shocked by this. buy a PC because it's cheap. sounds like a plan, as long as nothing besides price matters to you. better yet, build one yourself and run a free operating system on it and really save yourself some headaches. never mind OS X and iLife which is the only reason this computer was ever made. tell grandma who wants to look at christmas photos to setup one of those Compusa disgustoid boxes, install and unlock Windows XP, scour the virus-infested internet for some awful third party software and figure it out! because it's cheap.

 

[MacTruck]

did you just start using Macs today? they have never been cheap. in fact, they have ALWAYS been expensive. way more expensive than PCs. you will never get the most current hardware in a Mac at the same price as in a PC. it will never happen. never had. i can't believe people are shocked by this. buy a PC because it's cheap. sounds like a plan, as long as nothing besides price matters to you.

NEWSFLASH. The mac mini IS a PC. LOL.

 

[tjwett]

NEWSFLASH. The mac mini IS a PC. LOL.

oh dear. i didn't realize we were splitting hairs here. i think you know that by "PC" i meant a non-Mac Windows box. c'mon man. i'm way too old for this one.

 

[cube]

x86 + integrated graphics + fanboys. I really want to leave the Mac, but I'm trapped.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

Thanks Rocksaurus. You have officially put this squable to rest. The new integrated graphics suck to no end period.

It might suck but its better technically than the Radeon 9200. It remains to be seen how it performs in the real world on the Mini. Why do you keep ignoring facts? The 3D graphics of the old and new Minis are pretty much equal. In everything else, the Core Duo Minis win. Fact. (minus modem).

 

[cube]

It might suck but its better technically than the Radeon 9200.

The Radeon has hardware T&L.

 

[danny_w]

It might suck but its better technically than the Radeon 9200. It remains to be seen how it performs in the real world on the Mini. Why do you keep ignoring facts? The 3D graphics of the old and new Minis are pretty much equal. In everything else, the Core Duo Minis win. Fact. (minus modem).

You are completely missing the point here. If the CPU (and so much else) was upgraded, then why hobble the mini with an antiquated graphics system?

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

The Radeon has hardware T&L.

The GMA950 is DX9.0 compliant vs 8.1 on the Radeon, has a core speed of 400 vs the radeon's 250, has a faster memory speed of 667 than the Radeon's 200, has either a 20GB/s or 40GB/s memory interface vs the Radeon's 12.8GB/s and is faster in respect to fill rates, etc etc. Technically its superior, apart from the lack of T&L which it makes up for in its other advantages.

 

[cube]

The GMA950 is DX9.0 compliant vs 8.1 on the Radeon, has a core speed of 400 vs the radeon's 250, has a faster memory speed of 667 than the Radeon's 200, has either a 20GB/s or 40GB/s memory interface vs the Radeon's 12.8GB/s and is faster in respect to fill rates, etc etc. Technically its superior, apart from the lack of T&L which it makes up for in its other advantages.

The Radeon is a real 3D chip. The Intel is not. If it catches up, it's because it's wasting a ton of CPU power.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

You are completely missing the point here. If the CPU (and so much else) was upgraded, then why hobble the mini with an antiquated graphics system?

Its not an antiquated graphics system, its relatively new. Yes its very low end but its the same speed as the old one. The ATI 9200 was pretty much the cheapest and slowest card Apple could get away with putting in the previous mini. This time the card supports Core Image. If its not designed for games then its not being hobbled by a slow graphics card.
Look, I would rather have something like an X1300 in there and I was quite surprised to see the GMA950 in there but what is important in my opinion is that everything else is improved and it supports core image. Core image support is something that nearly all users will notice - its prettier. Game performance isn't as important to a huge proportion of the potential buyers. I'm a gamer, well I play games every now and again for days on end and then not at all for ages. I don't want a mini for games. I want a mini for a fast OS X system that I'll use until the Intel PowerMacs come out and I can afford to buy one of them. I admit that the Intel Mini would not be good enough for me to use it as my only system. But then an Intel Mini with an X1300 or even an X1600 would not be good enough. That's just me though. My girlfriend and a lot of my mates don't care for games at all. For them the Mini would be an absolutely perfect machine.

Edit:

The Radeon is a real 3D chip. The Intel is not. If it catches up, is because it's wasting a ton of CPU power.

An nVidia TNT chip is a real 3D chip yet both of these would defecate on that from a very great height. T&L isn't everything. The specs are very high. If it doesn't do as well as the Radeon then the drivers haven't been well written.

 

[Rocksaurus]

Did you even read the benches posted earlier...?

 

[cube]

Don't blame the drivers. If it doesn't do as well as the Radeon it's because the application is now CPU-bound because of lack of hardware T&L.

 

[rnb2]

My two cents:

Are integrated graphics an unmitigated disaster in the new mini? Probably not. Are they part of the reason I'm not buying one, even though I just bought my first Mac (a 1.5GHz/Combo Drive PPC mini) a little over a month ago? Yes, definitely. Before the announcement, I was ready to buy an Intel mini if they used the Core Duo. However, the price, combined with the integrated graphics, has me back on the fence.

The basic problem, I think, is that the components on the Core Duo mini seem mismatched. If Apple had stayed with two price levels, but used a 1.5GHz Core Solo in the lower and a 1.67GHz Core Solo in the higher, we wouldn't be having this conversation. They could have put a Superdrive in the more expensive box, priced it at $699, and none of us would particularly care, because most of us aren't interested in a Core Solo-based box, period. They would have kept the mini as a low-cost, "basic computing" machine, and that would be fine.

The problem is that they went and surprised us by putting a Core Duo in the top-end machine, thereby getting the knowledgeable buyers' curiosity piqued, and then let that audience down by not delivering the complete package. If the mini is just intended for people to do "e-mail, internet, word processing", there is absolutely no reason to put the Core Duo in it. By putting the Core Duo in the mini (remember, just a slightly slower chip than what replaced the *G5* in the iMac line), you set up the reasonable expectation in the user community that this is more than just a "basic computing" box. When you then leave off a key component, that audience is, justifiably, going to be a bit mystified as to what you're trying to accomplish.

Then there's the price. At $799 with 512mb of RAM and integrated graphics, I really think a lot of people are going to need to max out the RAM in order to be able to do the sorts of things people will want to do with a processor as good as the Core Duo. I've maxed out the RAM in my PPC mini, and with the Intel box, even going to 1GB doesn't give you a TRUE 1GB (because of the RAM sharing). Since this is a dual-channel motherboard, you should only upgrade to 1GB or 2GB; a lot of users are going to need to choose the latter, and that pushes the total cost to over $1k - too expensive for a box with integrated graphics.

Even given all of that, I would probably still be tempted by this machine if there was a mid-price version with the Core Duo and a Combo drive (a similar setup to what I currently have). That way, I'd be able to max out the RAM and keep the total under $1k - this would at least be a serviceable photo-processing box, though it would still hamper my dabbling in 3D animation.

$1k is a barrier I'm not willing to cross for a machine that's going to limit me like that, and I don't think I'm alone. I'm not even asking for the same chip that's in the MBP/iMac - just something reasonably modern that won't bottleneck the system. If they had provided that, even at a slightly higher than $799 price, I'd be all over it. Unfortunately, I think they've hit on a price/component combination that's going to leave a lot of people hoping that the next announcement is a bit better.

 

[cube]

Very good post.

 

[bzgnyc]

Maybe Apple is smarter than you think

You are completely missing the point here. If the CPU (and so much else) was upgraded, then why hobble the mini with an antiquated graphics system?

Has anyone considered that Apple might have plans beyond retrospective 3D benchmarks? The questions should be how is this machine going to perform going forward running the kind of applications necessary to support a digital media hub.

So-called Integrated Graphics Architectures basically differ from traditional PC designs in two ways: 1) some burden is moved from GPU to CPU and 2) system memory is shared between the GPU and CPU. From a system design point of view, how much faster is a $25 GPU than one of the Core Duo's cores? If you had to choose between a Core Solo and a $25 GPU (which would have to include VRAM, etc) or a Core Duo and the GMA, which would you choose? Remember, not for games but running iTunes, DVD Player, iPhoto, etc.

In any case, let's demur on that debate because I think #2 is actually very important. While sharing memory can be a money saving design trick, it can also be a performance trick. When you share memory between the CPU and GPU, you can share data without copying. Very cool things are possible that would otherwise only be possible on much more expensive systems. This was a trick that SGI used in their O2 workstations except they called it Unified Memory Buffer (UMB) instead. Sounds better doesn't it? The point was the O2 could do some video tricks that otherwise required the much bigger Onyx systems. The O2 wasn't great for T&L but for certain kinds of applications, the O2 was optimal.

The problem was that SGI's traditional customers wanted T&L. Their applications required it and probably too many people bought O2s thinking that they were cheap OCTANEs. They weren't -- they were optimized for digital media. Unfortunately SGI didn't have the customer base and marketing capabilities to get that across. And in the end, the O2's digital medial was probably most appropriate for the home and SGI was never going to compete there.

However, Apple has the vision, marketing, 3rd-party support, and brand to deliver a digital media machine to the home. And something based on a unified memory buffer may just be the most appropriate design for that.

 

[Mr Skills]

OK, I have ZERO technical knowledge so forgive me if this is a bit stupid.

If the integrated graphics effectively take power away from the CPU, isn't [crappy GPU + very fast CPU] sort of equivalent to [moderate GPU + moderate CPU] in performance?

Would people have been so upset if the CPU had been decent-but-not-great but they had put a reasonable gfx card in? And how would that be *functionally* different to the situation now (other than specific 3d games)?

 

[AlmostThere]

Is this a Mac forum or what?

The GMA 950 is basically designed to check all the boxes for Vista compatibility.

If Microsoft had made Vista just a little bit more demanding in terms of minimum hardware specs, Intel would have been forced to produce a substantially better chip.

It really isn't Apple's fault that the Mini ships with lacklustre integrated graphics. The blame for this somewhat unpopular move rest squarely on the shoulders of Bill Gates alone.

 

[Airforce]

OK, I have ZERO technical knowledge so forgive me if this is a bit stupid.

If the integrated graphics effectively take power away from the CPU, isn't [crappy GPU + very fast CPU] sort of equivalent to [moderate GPU + moderate CPU] in performance?

No

 

[Airforce]

The GMA 950 is basically designed to check all the boxes for Vista compatibility.

If Microsoft had made Vista just a little bit more demanding in terms of minimum hardware specs, Intel would have been forced to produce a substantially better chip.

It really isn't Apple's fault that the Mini ships with lacklustre integrated graphics. The blame for this somewhat unpopular move rest squarely on the shoulders of Bill Gates alone.

The blame still belongs to Intel for producing just barely acceptable solutions.

 

[Eidorian]

OK, I have ZERO technical knowledge so forgive me if this is a bit stupid.

If the integrated graphics effectively take power away from the CPU, isn't [crappy GPU + very fast CPU] sort of equivalent to [moderate GPU + moderate CPU] in performance?

Would people have been so upset if the CPU had been decent-but-not-great but they had put a reasonable gfx card in? And how would that be *functionally* different to the situation now (other than specific 3d games)?

No an integrated graphics chip IS an graphics chip in it's own right. It is it's OWN separate chipset from the CPU.

The GMA 950 runs on its OWN 400 MHz GPU. But it shares system RAM and doesn't support Transform & Lighting.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

No an integrated graphics chip IS an graphics chip in it's own right. It is it's OWN separate chipset from the CPU.

The GMA 950 runs on its OWN 400 MHz GPU. But it shares system RAM and doesn't support Transform & Lighting.

Well put. The only thing the GMA950 can't do that the 9200 could is hardware accelerated T&L. But then it supports so many more features than the 9200 and even its memory is faster than the 9200's due to the fast DDR2 PC5300 memory used.

 

[segundo]

If the integrated graphics effectively take power away from the CPU, isn't [crappy GPU + very fast CPU] sort of equivalent to [moderate GPU + moderate CPU] in performance?

Yes, that's sort of true. It depends what the system is being used for. In multitasking environments where the GPU benefits some applications this would be true. In some situations where the GPU is a moot point, then no, the system does not benefit from having moderate one present.

Would people have been so upset if the CPU had been decent-but-not-great but they had put a reasonable gfx card in? And how would that be *functionally* different to the situation now (other than specific 3d games)?

Hard to say. Please note that some of us (myself especially) don't think that Apple made poor decisions with the available CPU. Apple did a fantastic job with the CPU choices in the Mac mini. That's not what I'm bummed about. What bothers me is that they didn't go just a little bit further and include a modest GPU to go with it. As has been pointed out, we should really wait to see what the benchmarks come back with. If they don't beat the previous verison of the Mac mini by 20%, then I'll be disappointed. Apple may or may not care if I'm disappointed.

One of the best points I've seen made is that Apple may not have had enough time to integrate a more powerful GPU. I never considered this but it is a logical possibility.

Regardless, only the benchmarks will give everyone a clear picture. If they come back solid, I promise to roll over and purchase one as well as start recommending them to others.

 

[Rocksaurus]

Has anyone considered that Apple might have plans beyond retrospective 3D benchmarks? The questions should be how is this machine going to perform going forward running the kind of applications necessary to support a digital media hub.

If you had to choose between a Core Solo and a $25 GPU (which would have to include VRAM, etc) or a Core Duo and the GMA, which would you choose? Remember, not for games but running iTunes, DVD Player, iPhoto, etc.

The price difference between Core Solo and Core Duo is a lot larger than $25. Especially now with Core Duos being in short supply still.

Everyone out there still arguing about this, just answer this question (truthfully, please):

Given the choice, at no extra cost, would you rather have a Radeon X300, or a GMA 950 in your Mac Mini?
And I don't want to hear any "but it would cost mores" because I'm asking a theoretical question and in my theoretical situation you get to choose between the two, and they both cost the same.

 

[jsw]

Not sure if people in this thread saw it, but there are Xbench scores for a stock mini (the post above mine).

The graphics are about half those of the iMac.

The disk scores are much lower - which suggests an issue with net boot or something (virtual memory), because a 5400 rpm SATA shouldn't be that much slower than a 7200 rpm one.