Why is HD4000 not good enough on 2012 mini?

[EDarkness]

You need to understand that the Internet exists for two reasons; porn and geeks complaining about things. For the things you're describing, the HD4000 will be just fine.

I do all those things and more on my 2011 Mini Server with an HD3000, while running two 1080P monitors and it chugs along just fine.

This kind of stuff just isn't cool at all. People use their computers for many different activities. Sure it doesn't affect YOU, but it does affect other people. There are people who use their Mac for gaming and we really only have two options...a Mac Mini and an iMac. There's nothing wrong with people wanting at least a little bit better performance over what they had before. Granted, we haven't seen the benchmark tests yet, but having the HD4000 as the only option for the Mini is cause for concern.

Again, that doesn't affect you, but that shouldn't stop it from being an issue for other people.

 

[venom600]

Something else just occurred to me that is seriously wrong with the thinking here. The argument shouldn't be whether or not the HD4000 is as good as year and a half old discrete graphics. The thing that irritates me the most is that it's over a year later and they haven't improved the graphics at all. Everything else has improved, but not that.

 

[theSeb]

Is that the case? I have a Mac Pro 1,1 with the GeForce 8800 GT...would the new Mini be faster or slower than what I already have?

New mini faster

 

[gregorsamsa]

The new mini with HD 4000 graphics is faster than the previous model with AMD 6630M graphics:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-4000.69168.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6630M.43963.0.html

Just wait, and the benchmarks comparing the two systems directly will bear this out. The HD 4000 is not a terrible GPU any more. Doesn't hold a candle to the latest discrete GPUs, of course, but it is for once "not bad" upon release.

No it isn't faster than the older discrete HD 6630M for rendering graphics.

Just take a couple of those benchmarks from first link for recent games (as an example, I know these aren't gaming computers) that need to render 3D graphics.

Average FPS on some popular 3D games.

HD 6630M v HD 4000

Starcraft 2
Low: 137 fps - 120 fps
Med: 47 fps - 26 fps
High: 34 fps - 16 fps
Ultra: 18 fps - 11 fps

Crysis 2
Low: 51 fps - 45 fps
Med: 33 fps - 29 fps
High: 25 fps - 20 fps
Ultra: 09 fps - 07 fps

Granted there's not much difference, but HD 6630M is faster.

 

[CausticPuppy]

If you have a GMA something, it will be a huge leap. If you have a 9400M, it won't be that huge.

For comparison sake, The old HD3000 graphics are about as fast as the discrete nVidia 9600m GT cards (which were on the original unibody macbooks). The HD4000 is around 40% faster than that.

The 9400M is way slower than even an HD3000.


Even my HD3000 runs Portal2 at 1920x1200 pretty smoothly, just not with all the graphics details cranked to maximum. HD3000/HD4000 are fine for older games. I didn't buy my mini for gaming but it does work in a pinch!

 

[vikpt]

So is HD4000 enough for smooth video editing like on final cut pro x, premiere pro and adobe after effects?

 

[BornAgainMac]

HD4000 is more powerful than the $600 dollar NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra on the original Powermac G5. It took over two slots and was very loud with the fans. I am not complaining about the HD4000.

 

[paulrbeers]

HD 6630M v HD 4000

Starcraft 2
Low: 137 fps - 120 fps
Med: 47 fps - 26 fps
High: 34 fps - 16 fps
Ultra: 16 fps - 11 fps

Crysis 2
Low: 51 fps - 45 fps
Med: 33 fps - 29 fps
High: 25 fps - 20 fps
Ultra: 09 fps - 07 fps

Granted there's not much difference, but HD 6630M is faster.

Yeah and what you really aren't pointing out is that NEITHER of them is a winner at gaming. At best the 6630M can be marginally played on Medium in Starcraft whereas the HD4000 would need to be on Low. Otherwise, in Crysis 2, they both need to be on Low.

So really in "real life" usage they both are usable at the same levels which means they are virtually the same.

 

[kobyh15]

Apple cut corners to maximise cost and reduce choice for the end user - whilst my 2010 Mac Mini's struggles a bit with true HD content - 1080 - its fine for 720 content.

Whilst I'm happy at getting a 1T HDD, I'm not happy about the dropping of the discrete graphics and as such will hold off replacing my HTPC until we have a Haswell Mac Mini - hopefully this will be by September 2013.

There's something wrong with your 2010 Mini then. There's no way it should be struggling with 1080p. I've seen people running Minis older than yours that do fine with 1080p. Unless you're running Handbrake regularly or gaming, then an HTPC doesn't really get worked an awful lot. It's just not that hardware intensive. People run old hardware for HTPCs all the time. You honestly don't need the newest and greatest thing to run as a HTPC.

 

[Mr Rogers]

It shouldn't. My late 2009 never has any issues with 1080p.

I've got a few MKV's at over 10G - 20G in size and my 2010 stutters - maybe its because I'm running a few apps, usually Mail at least and a FTP programme to download from my seed box.

I'm running 8G RAM and iStats, on iStats CPU and GPU usage goes berserk - its only a handful of files I have issues with and they play fine in my LG HTC via wifi.

Anyway, disappointed with the Mac Mini, would have updated now to the i7 quadcore if only it had a discrete GPU running 512 VRAM minimum - basically will not now change until Haswell arrives and still have about 14 months AppleCare on my Mini - a iT HDD internal would have helped though - even though I'm running 4 external HDD's presently as back-up/storage.

 

[gregorsamsa]

Yeah and what you really aren't pointing out is that NEITHER of them is a winner at gaming. At best the 6630M can be marginally played on Medium in Starcraft whereas the HD4000 would need to be on Low. Otherwise, in Crysis 2, they both need to be on Low.

So really in "real life" usage they both are usable at the same levels which means they are virtually the same.

I never claimed otherwise, but made clear I used those benchmarks merely for comparison's sake when responding to someone else claiming that the HD 4000 graphics were faster. Read the posts.

As I said in that part of my post you conveniently chose to ignore: "Just take a couple of those benchmarks from first link for recent games (as an example, I know these aren't gaming computers) that need to render 3D graphics."

FWIW, it was his link, but it hardly proved that the HD 4000 was "faster" as he claimed. - Cheers.

 

[cyclotron451]

..will the extra £200 or so worth it or the quad core, or am I as well just going for the dual core? ...

just another view that although it would be nice to have the Quad Core i7 ivy bridge in the mini, my 2010 Mac Pro hexacore xeon with 12 threads, (with system activity monitor on permanently,) shows very often just a single thread running whilst I'm doing simple Word2010 typing. e.g a 67 page select all text + graphics , then copy & paste to a new blank Word document maxed out one CPU thread for 3 seconds, with another thread popping along at 10% load.

(and I was burning a DVD at the same time + iTunes was open with a docked iPhone + Mail)

For single threaded applications the actual gigahertz of the processor is more important than the parallelity of the CPU cores, hence the base 2.5GHz dual should crank through average simple stuff faster than the 2.3Ghz quad! That's the reason I bought a hex-core 3.33GHz Pro, because 3.33GHz is the fastest MP CPU.

I'm personally thinking to get the base mini + add a Dell U2412m e-IPS display from Amazon (costing just over that £200) and upgrade the mini later as needed. First would be 8GB RAM, then maybe later a 750Gig hybrid Seagate Momentum XT once iFixit works out what the HDD quirks and upgradeability will be of the 2012 mini?

 

[paulrbeers]

I never claimed otherwise, but made clear I used those benchmarks merely for comparison's sake when responding to someone else claiming that the HD 4000 graphics were faster. Read the posts.

As I said in that part of my post you conveniently chose to ignore: "Just take a couple of those benchmarks from first link for recent games (as an example, I know these aren't gaming computers) that need to render 3D graphics."

FWIW, it was his link, but it hardly proved that the HD 4000 was "faster" as he claimed. - Cheers.

I would agree the HD4000 is not faster. I've been stating all along that that the HD4000 is more or less an equal of the 6630M. My point was simply that while, in the benchmarks you pointed out, that the 6630M did beat the HD4000 they are both in essence the same Tier/class of GPU (i.e. they both run software at relatively the same speed). It's like anything else, an entry level Nvidia will beat and Entry level AMD at some games, and vice versa. You would still consider them equals because of this.

I will agree with those who are disappointed that in a year+ we ended up with Mac Mini's that have the same GPU "power" as the previous Mid-Level Mac mini, but truthfully the 2011 Mid-Mini was the only Intel Mini to have a discrete GPU and my guess is that was only because the HD3000 was so lackluster. I'm just glad that the HD4000 is such a step up and can't wait for the GPU in Haswell which is probably when I will upgrade my 2011 MBA and 2011 Mac Mini....

 

[teohyc]

Why do I get the feeling that Mac Mini users have been dissappointed ever since the first Mac Mini 1.25Ghz came out?

 

[vastoholic]

I bought the 2011 mini with the discreet graphics and the only games I've every played were Portal and Portal 2 and that's become a rarity now. I bought it just because I had the money to get upgraded specs and figured why not. Other than that, what I do really doesn't require anything past HD 4000, light photo editing, experimenting with Final Cut Pro X, and a VM to run my programming applications (Alice 2.2 uses visuals).

I use my Xbox 360 for serious gaming anymore.

 

[jack92029]

Lets assume

Suppose we agree that the HD4000 is comparable to the 6630.

What effect on graphic processing does the faster RAM (1600 vs 1333) plus quad core i7 vs dual core i5?

Seems like when you look at the entire machine that the 2012 should be much faster doing graphic intensive applications than the 2011.

 

[paulrbeers]

Suppose we agree that the HD4000 is comparable to the 6630.

What effect on graphic processing does the faster RAM (1600 vs 1333) plus quad core i7 vs dual core i5?

Seems like when you look at the entire machine that the 2012 should be much faster doing graphic intensive applications than the 2011.

The RAM won't make a whole lot of difference, at best 5-10%...

Here's some numbers from Anandtech showing various memory speeds on Ivy Bridge from 1333mhz to 2400mhz (granted this is desktop memory but it should be pretty close to the same as sodimms)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6372/...3-to-ddr32400-on-ivy-bridge-igp-with-gskill/8

The real advantage is highly parallel CPU tasks will rock. We are getting faster machines at $800 than last year's $1000 (2011 mac mini server). These are the Mini's to build a rendering farm out of....

 

[adildacoolset]

I think this may be mostly about gaming, and some applications. It would be helpful to have some direct comparisons between the HD4000 and the 6630M for graphics performance.

I have not used the Mac mini with 6630M at all, but I used bootcamp to run Skyrim on my MacBook Pro with the HD4000, and it seems to run fine on medium/high settings. We will just have to wait and see the comparisons, but the older Mac mini with 6630M is available refurbed for $549, where the new Mac mini with HD4000 is available for $599.

Who in the right mind buys a $600 mac for gaming?

 

[labars]

Who in the right mind buys a $600 mac for gaming?

With the Intel HD4000? No one. With the option of a discrete GPU? Could be done, at least it could serve as an all purpose machine. TBH it almost seems like Apple is going out of their way to make sure that no one gets the idea to play 3d games on their computers.

 

[gregorsamsa]

I would agree the HD4000 is not faster. I've been stating all along that that the HD4000 is more or less an equal of the 6630M. My point was simply that while, in the benchmarks you pointed out, that the 6630M did beat the HD4000 they are both in essence the same Tier/class of GPU (i.e. they both run software at relatively the same speed). It's like anything else, an entry level Nvidia will beat and Entry level AMD at some games, and vice versa. You would still consider them equals because of this.

I will agree with those who are disappointed that in a year+ we ended up with Mac Mini's that have the same GPU "power" as the previous Mid-Level Mac mini, but truthfully the 2011 Mid-Mini was the only Intel Mini to have a discrete GPU and my guess is that was only because the HD3000 was so lackluster. I'm just glad that the HD4000 is such a step up and can't wait for the GPU in Haswell which is probably when I will upgrade my 2011 MBA and 2011 Mac Mini....

I agree that the GPU differences are academic. But as you rightly acknowledge, after a timespan of 1yr+, for some more tech-savvy consumers these latest updates disappoint.

Mind, not hard to see why they've done it (beyond that they can do & still achieve VG sales!).

Rather than making the Mini a bit more attractive to those who value a slight upgrade in GPU power, it's allowed Apple to actually downgrade the graphical power of low-end iMacs, but without compromising sales of a more profitable product, as the iMac is.

FWIW, that also gets plenty of criticism on some iMac threads from those prepared to see beyond the sheer thinness of the latest iMacs, but I won't go there as I have no interest in buying another iMac.

FWIW, new low-end iMac's GT 640M scores 1394, whilst former low-end HD 6750 scores a more impressive, 1614:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

I'm well aware of current BTO options for a significantly higher price, but that's not relevant to this point.

Also, probably far cheaper to buy only HD 4000 boards in bulk for current Mini production lines, rather than split them & improve the older HD 6630M with a better discrete card & double the VRAM to 512.

Outwardly it's a clever business calculation from Apple to maximize profits further as most consumers won't care. However, it'll also cost them sales from others.

For eg., a fair number like me would've have gladly upgraded our HD 6630M Minis far sooner. Now I won't be doing so for a long time, but will spend that extra money on upgrading my PC hardware.

Apple won't care of course & ultimately neither will I, but the original point stands.

 

[jmhart]

Yeah, I do. The HD4000 might not render the most polygons per second, but it's equipped with one of the most efficient HD video decoder and Intel has done a great job making it effective for working. Just not gaming.

Yes, but what software that runs on OS X supports the Intel HD GPUs hardware decoder? I use Plex all the time on my 3 year old MacBook and get full GPU hardware video decoding, but it's not supported on Intel HD GPUs...yet...

Even in OpenCL on Mountain Lion the Intel HD GPU's are not yet supported:

2012-09-05 16:10:08.059 TestOpenCL[44960:303] No GPU support!
2012-09-05 16:10:08.061 TestOpenCL[44960:303] Vendor = Intel
2012-09-05 16:10:08.061 TestOpenCL[44960:303] Device = Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2620M CPU @ 2.70GHz
2012-09-05 16:10:08.062 TestOpenCL[44960:303] Profile = FULL_PROFILE
2012-09-05 16:10:08.063 TestOpenCL[44960:303] Version = OpenCL 1.2
2012-09-05 16:10:08.063 TestOpenCL[44960:303] Image support = YES
2012-09-05 16:10:08.064 TestOpenCL[44960:303] Compute units = 4

Maybe at some point down the road it'll be acceptable to stick us with only integrated Intel GPUs, but we're not there yet.

 

[iamsen47]

Not being a gamer nor a tech guy, this is an honest question.

Aren't the 2 extra cores (4 extra threads?) more than enough to make up for that little difference in speed between the AMD and HD4K?

 

[TetheredHeart]

Not being a gamer nor a tech guy, this is an honest question.

Aren't the 2 extra cores (4 extra threads?) more than enough to make up for that little difference in speed between the AMD and HD4K?

No, it makes virtually no difference in all gaming where the CPU isn't the one bottlenecking the system.

 

[paulrbeers]

Even in OpenCL on Mountain Lion the Intel HD GPU's are not yet supported:

2012-09-05 16:10:08.059 TestOpenCL[44960:303] No GPU support!
2012-09-05 16:10:08.061 TestOpenCL[44960:303] Vendor = Intel
2012-09-05 16:10:08.061 TestOpenCL[44960:303] Device = Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2620M CPU @ 2.70GHz
2012-09-05 16:10:08.062 TestOpenCL[44960:303] Profile = FULL_PROFILE
2012-09-05 16:10:08.063 TestOpenCL[44960:303] Version = OpenCL 1.2
2012-09-05 16:10:08.063 TestOpenCL[44960:303] Image support = YES
2012-09-05 16:10:08.064 TestOpenCL[44960:303] Compute units = 4

Maybe at some point down the road it'll be acceptable to stick us with only integrated Intel GPUs, but we're not there yet.

I may be remembering this wrong, but the HD3000 didn't have full OpenCL compatibility. Intel got around this by using the CPU instead of the GPU (HD3000) to give the Sandy Bridge CPU's "opencl compatibility". However, with the HD4000 (Ivy Bridge) it was my understanding that true OpenCL support in GPU was supported.

Can anyone verify this? Some quick googling appears that I am correct, but then again I didn't read the articles fully.

 

[NocturnalEdit]

Time for Mac Mini .. upgrading from 10 year old Power PC G5...

HD4000 is more powerful than the $600 dollar NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra on the original Powermac G5. It took over two slots and was very loud with the fans. I am not complaining about the HD4000.

Believe it or not... I am still running an original PowerMac (power pc based) G5 tower from like circa 2003. I remember it being a top of the line beast back in the day. It was and still is quite a physical beauty.. but it's definitely served it's purpose and it's time to pull the plug.

I told myself i wasn't going to buy a new power mac to replace it until I actually had time to "make money" off of it doing video editing at home.

I work all day editing for a living and the last thing i usually want to do is go home and edit some more. But i do need the option to take some work home with me.. and I'd like to do some home movie editing and such.

So I think the mac mini is the way to go for me... I was pissed when i found out it doesn't have any discrete graphics options, but the more i read the more I think the INTEL 4000 integrated gfx will be fine for some light Avid, FCP, and Adobe Premiere HD video editing. Curious how it will handle 3D plugins for After Effects or even BCC boris effects in Avid.

But i guess that's what Apple's 14 day return policy is for... I'd go with the new 21.5 inch IMAC.. but no user upgradeable RAM is a deal breaker.

I can buy 16 GB of RAM online for $82 bucks.. add that to the $799 mac mini quad core.. and I should have a very capable video editing and family machine for my home office for under $1000.