I have a Radeon RX 460 in an Akitio Thunder2 hooked up to my main Mac - but someday I wanna hook that up to the 2011 MBP and see what happens.
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What's the ideal bridge Mac?
- Thread starter repairedCheese
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I just tried that at 1280×800 Ultra and got 22 FPS. (I had to press Shift+Esc to fire up the console though.)
Reducing effects to High results in 33 FPS.
Reducing effects to Normal results in 68 FPS.
If the mid 2012 models are any indication it appears that it will work great. TB1 has enough bandwidth to be able to support the RX 460.I have a Radeon RX 460 in an Akitio Thunder2 hooked up to my main Mac - but someday I wanna hook that up to the 2011 MBP and see what happens.
Thanks for trying it, these results are about the same as an iMac with a 5670 which is odd. That is at 2560x1440 of course, but the gulf in performance I'd expect to make up for that.
The 27” iMac’s LCD should accept 1280×720. Can you rerun the tests at that resolution to compare? I mean, the 5670 was just a mid-range card in its day and 2560×1440 is a lot more pixels than 1280×800...
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An update:
1080P YouTube works fine without the fan spinning up like the MacBook is about to fly off my desk. Maybe there was some update activity happening in the background when I first tried shortly after install.
the fact that these operating systems are running this smoothly off an old hard drive is nuts. Windows 10 based on experience in the past is virtually impossible to run off a spinner unless trying to manually disable the numerous things Microsoft has running in the background.
sticking with 8GB of RAM at the moment.
1080P YouTube works fine without the fan spinning up like the MacBook is about to fly off my desk. Maybe there was some update activity happening in the background when I first tried shortly after install.
the fact that these operating systems are running this smoothly off an old hard drive is nuts. Windows 10 based on experience in the past is virtually impossible to run off a spinner unless trying to manually disable the numerous things Microsoft has running in the background.
sticking with 8GB of RAM at the moment.
720p gives me much better results, the average fps was up to 56 fps but while watching it I could still tell when lots of explosions were on screen it slowed down.
Yeah. On normal I can crack 100 easily, it seems like setting it to Ultra and manually tweaking it down gets better FPS such as turning off AA and motion blur.
2011 13" MBP, 1280×800 Ultra, no AA, no motion blur: 26 FPS.
It’s worth noting the demo makes the fan run at full blast with the CPU temp at over 80°C.
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. @repairedCheese so far so good with Big Sur on this MBP.
Anyone looking to play around I would strongly recommend taking off the fancy graphics stuff within Big Sur as it has helped with performance. The reason I’m sticking with the HDD is that I’m assuming most of these machines still have them installed. The fan is a little too loud for my liking when doing what I consider reasonable tasks with this machine in 2021. Netflix, video streaming, heavy content news sites and maybe some word processing.
I might go ahead and order a cheap 4GB kit of Ram to see how it performs at completely stock specs.
Snow Leopard FLIES on this machine! It would be great if one of these newer releases of macOS can run this smoothly. I am considering Arctic Fox/Chromium Legacy, vlc and other lightweight software designed with this hardware in mind to see what kind of performance gain I can see with the tasks mentioned above on Mojave/Big Sur.
Having a modern mac around is helpful if you want to do clean installs (I hate upgrading operating systems). I’ve removed all other OS’s and think a clean install setup of SL/Mojave/Current is the way to go for those who only want to use macOS.
I’ve always liked tinkering around like this and you guys pulled me right in with this one 🤦♂️
Anyone looking to play around I would strongly recommend taking off the fancy graphics stuff within Big Sur as it has helped with performance. The reason I’m sticking with the HDD is that I’m assuming most of these machines still have them installed. The fan is a little too loud for my liking when doing what I consider reasonable tasks with this machine in 2021. Netflix, video streaming, heavy content news sites and maybe some word processing.
I might go ahead and order a cheap 4GB kit of Ram to see how it performs at completely stock specs.
Snow Leopard FLIES on this machine! It would be great if one of these newer releases of macOS can run this smoothly. I am considering Arctic Fox/Chromium Legacy, vlc and other lightweight software designed with this hardware in mind to see what kind of performance gain I can see with the tasks mentioned above on Mojave/Big Sur.
Having a modern mac around is helpful if you want to do clean installs (I hate upgrading operating systems). I’ve removed all other OS’s and think a clean install setup of SL/Mojave/Current is the way to go for those who only want to use macOS.
I’ve always liked tinkering around like this and you guys pulled me right in with this one 🤦♂️
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Lab Tick is a good little tool to enable the backlit keyboard function on Big Sur on these old machines.
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/22151/lab-tick
Windows XP is next.
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/22151/lab-tick
Windows XP is next.
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A fun note - h264ify is a free browser extension that makes youtube fall back to the GPU-accelerated h.264 codec the sandy bridge iGPU can decode instead of VP9 video that chokes the CPU
Unfortunately these streams are a bit starved for bitrate as they're intended for last-gen mobile devices
The result? 1080p video that looks... about as good as the regular 720p option, but with MUCH less heat/power consuption.
Thanks, I will check this out.
Full disclosure here I am starting to question whether Big Sur will be a useable experience for most as the fans ramp up quickly with just a few tabs open. I had to revert back to full graphics settings enabled as the top menu bar was glitching reducing motion/transparency. Not sure an SSD installation will help.
Mojave patched by dosdude has been great.
It might not be a popular opinion on these forums, but I don’t recommend Big Sur on these machines. The little compromises that have to be made, graphical glitches in certain apps, battery drain much faster than on snow leopard/Mojave and the fact that the fan spins up for pretty much anything is too much.
Latest operating systems - Mojave/Windows 10 is my recommendation for up to date app/security support.
I’m looking into details on how to shoehorn Windows XP now.
Latest operating systems - Mojave/Windows 10 is my recommendation for up to date app/security support.
I’m looking into details on how to shoehorn Windows XP now.
Yep, fully agree! The only fuzz/challenge is to migrate/rescue the activation-code from one machine to another ...
Swapped the SSD-drive out of a 2009 c2duo iMac (actually a clone-copy created with the help of Partion Wizard Free) into a mid-2012 i7 quad 15" MBP without any hickups. Right, no complaints!
Great to hear, that even a PC-drive with Win10 can be migrated to a Mac without problems.
Fully agree!
@dosdude1 's MojavePatch runs fine and preserves both 32-bit compatibility and HFS+
When it comes to Win10 an MBR partition is mandatory to get full BootCamp-driver support.
And even if vanilla Win10 obviously runs smooth, more demanding software doesn't. I am through that ...
For WinXP I use virtualization and it's ok. (VMware Fusion).
If current software is critical, you may also try Linux. My recent experiance with LinuxMint were pretty awesome .
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If I have any issues with windows xp natively I am definitely open to run it virtualized.
Microsoft just confirmed that you will be able to manually install windows 11 on older PCs which is promising for these older gen MacBooks. Considering Microsoft provides security updates much longer than Apple does on releases you are potentially looking at extending the life of these machines for another ~10 years from today.
What the experience will be given how software will continue to demand more and a possible full transition to arm? That’s anyone’s guess, but fun to go down the rabbit hole 😅
I’ve played with Mint in the past and it’s definitely a solid Linux distro.
I'd be a little careful with that, they've also stated that unsupported hardware won't be guaranteed updates, so it might not be a good idea to be installing Windows 11 until that's all figured out.
It’s definitely something to keep an eye on. Worst case scenario Windows 10 will have support for several years to come.
Agreed, it ain't perfect. My biggest quibble with BS on non-metal machines at this point is that scrolling in Catalyst apps is deeply broken. However, on the flipside, just being able to run a newer OS can greatly increase modern software compatibility. At school, being able to run the latest versions of Office, OneDrive, Teams, Outlook, and all that such is incredibly important for keeping a machine relevant. So, for those, I find the compromise much more reasonable. On my personal early Intels, I usually run High Sierra or Mojave. But at school BS allows me to get another couple of years out of those machines at the price of a few apps I don't rely on not working properly.
TL;DR any unsupported Mac OS version is a tradeoff between certain software features being broken or not. Luckily the wonderful hacking community keeps on giving us more options
Anyone here have a clue as to the reliability of 2010 15" and 17" MBPs? I'm looking at these and I hear some GPU issues are around yet I've never actually seen people not recommend them as a result, versus the 2011 where people immediately say to steer clear.
The "GPU" issues that plague these MBPs are often due to a faulty capacitor, not due to a faulty GPU. Replace it and be done.