Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Where Are The Mac Mini 2011 Gaming Benchmarks?
- Thread starter VeganHipster
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
There are a few within these general benchmark tests done by MacWorld if that helps.
http://www.macworld.com/article/161306/2011/07/2011macminibenchmarks.html
http://www.macworld.com/article/161306/2011/07/2011macminibenchmarks.html
Last edited:
Wow that just shows you how bad the Intel HD3000 is. The old mac mini kills the new base mac mini for gaming. Now the mac mini with the ATI GPU is one awesome machine.
2 questions
- ATI video uses additional memory besides its own 256mb?
- will i be able to launch GTA4 (win7) on new mini with Radeon?
__________________
- ATI video uses additional memory besides its own 256mb?
- will i be able to launch GTA4 (win7) on new mini with Radeon?
__________________
Are there any for the version with the discrete gpu? That is the one I am interested in. Thank you!
That article does include benchmarks for the new Mini with a discrete Radeon GPU. The 2.5Ghz i5 has a discrete GPU and is the higher end model. The 2.3 Ghz i5 is the lower end new Mini with the integrated Intel GPU. What it doesn't include is the high end Mini with the i7 upgrade option.
The benchmarks for the i5 with the Radeon should give you an idea of what that GPU offers compared to the integrated Intel GPU in the low end new Mini and last years Mini with the Nvidia 320M GPU. Indeed those benchmarks put last years model above this years low end model. However the new high end Mini with the discrete Radeon GPU gives even better results.
the radeon gpu scores around 7k in 3dmark 06. thats better then a nvidia 9600gt which plays most games on medium without breaking a sweat. the gpu isnt high end but it definitely plays most games at medium and really really new games at low. its not like the 9400m at all. not even close.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)
My wife is playing Sims 3 on max settings with 44 fps average it fluctuates between 35-60 on the AMD 6630m. With original Apple Cinema display at 1600x1024.
My wife is playing Sims 3 on max settings with 44 fps average it fluctuates between 35-60 on the AMD 6630m. With original Apple Cinema display at 1600x1024.
Apparently Sims 3 is not a very graphically demanding game from what I've read and so it's not surprising you get that level of performance.
That's what I'm getting - the i7 with a 7200RPM HD AND 8GB of RAM.
On a related note I just downloaded the free client version of World Of Warcraft yesterday and tried playing it on my current Mini which is the 2009 model with a Core 2 Duo CPU, 4GB of RAM and the Nvidia 9400M GPU which is not discrete and has to use shared memory.
I had to turn the settings down all the way to the lowest level to get a decent frame rate and by that I mean around 50FPS. At the level above that which is called Low I believe I was only getting around 25FPS. The thing is the game looks awful at anything but the High or Ultra settings although Medium is not too and. I'm hoping on the new Mini I can achieve at least Medium if not the high settings.
I've done some benchmarking here:
http://shift-command-3.blogspot.com/2011/07/mac-mini-gaming-benchmarks-late-2009-vs.html
http://shift-command-3.blogspot.com/2011/07/mac-mini-gaming-benchmarks-late-2009-vs.html
If an i7 imac struggles to be a gaming computer I cant see the new mini range being able to play games at a reasonable rate of fps.
There is no reason for aN i7 iMac to struggle with gaming especially when it has a Radeon 6770 with 512MB of VRAM and a Quad Core CPU.
Well done! That's pretty good. It really sounds like the ATI Mini is a great option for the mid range gamer. I don't think this qualifies it as a "gaming machine" but that should satisfy 95% of people.
I've said it before but I wish I had an excuse to get a new mini
SC2 benchmark added. And, yeah, these aren't top notch 'gaming machines' but they're a heck of a lot better than previous minis.
Maybe your i7 iMac struggles because according to your signature it has only 12mb of RAM?
I have the $799.99 Mini and the only game I own is SC2 - It runs smooth on high / medium setting with 40-50 FPS for me - I usually play 4 v 4 so there is quite a bit on screen with absolutely no slow down. I am sure that 1 v 1 could be ran on all high or ultra.
Thank you for this. Anyone else done SC2 tests with @ 1680x1050 resolution? 1vs1 or 2vs2 fps tests would be cool with details on settings.
Gracias!
Gracias!
Just got my 2.5ghz AMD6630 mini today, and although the wow trail is not completely installed (still downloading, in the "playable" phase), I was extremely impressed with its performance. Was running everything on Ultra with 2x multisampling and was getting 25fps average. I would expect to see these numbers improve when the game is finished downloading.
Hope this helps some people out!
Hope this helps some people out!
It also depends on the resolution and what you consider playable, for me at 1920x1080 I could only run on medium settings with my similar mini.
Your right, sorry about that. Forgot to post I am running 1920x1080. I was not in a very busy area while testing, but I think I will still be able to run at least "high" settings in citys without a problem.
I consider 20+FPS playable, but prefer around 25-30.