The Mini will run a 4K screen perfectly. Remember the first MacPro? With a Geforce 7300GT. That card ran 2x 30 inch ACD= 2x2560x1600 pixels. That is 4K. A HD4000 is 4-5 times faster. It will laugh at a 4K resolution. It only performs garbage when it comes to 3D and gaming, who cares? For productivity, design, photography, it handles 4K more than fine.
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Why the Mini Has Not Had a Refresh Since 2012
- Thread starter mad3inch1na
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The Mini will run a 4K screen perfectly. Remember the first MacPro? With a Geforce 7300GT. That card ran 2x 30 inch ACD= 2x2560x1600 pixels. That is 4K. A HD4000 is 4-5 times faster. It will laugh at a 4K resolution. It only performs garbage when it comes to 3D and gaming, who cares? For productivity, design, photography, it handles 4K more than fine.
Why did Apple bother making a Mac Pro then?
I would like to see your source on that Statement.
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I hope not, Its one of apple's most popular Mac. I'm looking to buy a new Mini for my kids, and if apple kills off the line, I may end up looking at other cheaper computer alternatives.
Places like here in mexico the mini is the ONLY close to affordable desktop solution. For example the base 27" imac costs 500.00 US more on the apple mx (which is located in the US) site for us than the apple US site price. Think about that for a minute in a place where minimum wage is about 5.00 us a day 10 hours a day. Clearly people making this are not buying them, but not many can afford them percentage wise. Many countries are the same. Cutting out the mac mini would eliminate many sales in these countries. I don't understand why they don't give it more attention.
The new "low cost iMac" has the RAM soldered... I'm starting to thinking that if Broadwell will really make motherboards smaller, there will be a chance that Apple may "confirm" this kind of formula "low cost products = soldered/no upgrade" and reduce its size to an AppleTV. Anyone thinking the same?
The iMac line now has one 21.5" model with soldered ram, two 21.5" with ram that isn't soldered, but you do have to remove the screen to get at it (so for most people it's not easily changed), and two 27" models in which the ram is very easily accessible and upgrade able. Perhaps something like this will happen to the mini, with low-end models not easily upgraded but some pricier models that are still easy to upgrade. Of course I have no idea what the Apple folks have in mind, but a redesign with a smaller form seems like a good possibility with Broadwell (or Skylake).
LOL..... go back a little over a year ago and Intel roadmaps claimed Broadwell would be out on time. If the PC CPU market is "soft" Skylake is going to slide too. There is little to no reason for Intel to retire Broadwell abnormally faster than previous generations.
Broadwell's HD 6xxx graphics are two generations beyond the current HD 4000 in the Mac mini. Waiting for HD 7xxx having possibly already skipped HD 5xxx isn't particularly rational. Same rational would wait for Cannonlake but it will have fast DDR4 and faster GPUs etc. etc. etc.
What about using the Mac Pro design for the Mini? It could help with cooling that quad core when pushing it hard.
Broadwell has had production problems from the beginning and has been delayed twice that I know of and still has no solid release time.
Skylake is being produced in a new refurbished foundry and Intel claims no delays for mid 2015 launch.
So you think they will shut down a new architecture tic until supplies of Broadwell are sold off?
They have already lost credibility with Broadwell so you think they will delay Skylake and take a double hit.
Lol yourself.
Broadwell and Skylake use the exact same process tech; 14nm. Any factory that can make Skylake will make the other too. If the Broadwell market is soft it is a deep question of really need yet another fab. If move to the next iteration is having just as many problems (or more) there is little reason to prematurely race through the two 14nm iterations faster just to hit the wall quicker.
On top of that, Broadwell and Skylake are not the sole products on the 14nm process ( e.g., ATOM and that lower TDP line ups ). Which every product is 'hot' is likely going to get the most fab wafer slots.
The 2015 Skylake offering is likely similar to the 2014 Broadwell offerings .... namely just the ULV class offerings. The rest will slide to 2016 just like the rest of Broadwell line up slid to 2015.
Don't have to if you take a look at what Intel makes as opposed to narrow subset.
Credibility and folks are going to run to who for top end PC performance? AMD? AMD has already said they out of the top performance race. Folks are going to run to ARM vendors for super low TDP .... that's isn't the bulk of the Skylake line up.
What, now I have a choice of a trash can or an ashtray? Hey, maybe I could use it as a coffee cup warmer ..
When people said that a redesigned Mini would resemble the new Mac Pro I envisioned a miniaturized Mac Pro case. The new Mac Pro has grown on me, but I didn't like the idea of simply shrinking it. I really like that render, though.
I agree with you but I'm also thinking about the laptops that use the same M line CPU from Intel and they are not upgradable anymore claiming that it can make the machines smaller.
If the Mini, as its name implies, has to be smaller (the Broadwell M soldered motherboards are actually already smaller), more powerful and affordable in every upgrade, it could become "soldered" too so they can justify the difference in marketing or a new form factor. Or maybe they could make the server model upgradable, and the others no.
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I was thinkg about my idea of new Mac Mini, that I poted in this thread earlier. Made some digging, and theorycrafting.
If Apple is really thinking about iMac being more flexible desktop computer in terms of performance - both for casual and Pro's - they need to change Mac Mini a lot.
First, I was thinking about price. It must cost 999$ at entry. It must have dual GPU's, and a Quad Core CPU, at least 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB SSD.
Lets look at GPU's in this price point. Using, like I said before, AMD Cape Verde XT cores(640 GCN cores). Shop price of every card thats based on this is 99$. Apple can buy clean cores for 60-65$. That makes 120-130$ per computer at entry point. Memory - 50-60$. SSD - 120$. Right now we are getting to the most interesting point.
Mobile CPU's cost around 350$, to even 623$ for quad core chip. Desktop parts, even if they are soldered parts, are way cheaper. So we are looking for parts that have Intel HD4600, are cheap, and have 45W of TDP to sit really great in the power envelope of Mac Mini with 120-150W power supply.
http://ark.intel.com/pl/products/80813/Intel-Core-i5-4690T-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz
http://ark.intel.com/pl/products/80809/Intel-Core-i7-4790T-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz
Two models that can be EXACTLY used specifically for this computer. i5 as base CPU, i7 as its 100$ upgrade.
So, we have 520$ only for the "base stat" chips, which ideally corespond with Apple pricing policy.
Core i5 2.5 GHz, 8 GB SO-DIMM RAM, Dual Cape Verde XT GPU's with 2x1 GB of RAM GDDR5 and 256 GB PCI-Ex SSD in a new Mac Pro case with thermal core. Only slightly smaller
That would be astonishing computer for this price. I would love to buy it one day, IF Apple will ever consider creating this computer.
If Apple is really thinking about iMac being more flexible desktop computer in terms of performance - both for casual and Pro's - they need to change Mac Mini a lot.
First, I was thinking about price. It must cost 999$ at entry. It must have dual GPU's, and a Quad Core CPU, at least 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB SSD.
Lets look at GPU's in this price point. Using, like I said before, AMD Cape Verde XT cores(640 GCN cores). Shop price of every card thats based on this is 99$. Apple can buy clean cores for 60-65$. That makes 120-130$ per computer at entry point. Memory - 50-60$. SSD - 120$. Right now we are getting to the most interesting point.
Mobile CPU's cost around 350$, to even 623$ for quad core chip. Desktop parts, even if they are soldered parts, are way cheaper. So we are looking for parts that have Intel HD4600, are cheap, and have 45W of TDP to sit really great in the power envelope of Mac Mini with 120-150W power supply.
http://ark.intel.com/pl/products/80813/Intel-Core-i5-4690T-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz
http://ark.intel.com/pl/products/80809/Intel-Core-i7-4790T-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz
Two models that can be EXACTLY used specifically for this computer. i5 as base CPU, i7 as its 100$ upgrade.
So, we have 520$ only for the "base stat" chips, which ideally corespond with Apple pricing policy.
Core i5 2.5 GHz, 8 GB SO-DIMM RAM, Dual Cape Verde XT GPU's with 2x1 GB of RAM GDDR5 and 256 GB PCI-Ex SSD in a new Mac Pro case with thermal core. Only slightly smaller
That would be astonishing computer for this price. I would love to buy it one day, IF Apple will ever consider creating this computer.
They could have easily updated the mini and they could have done it using the same processor combination as with the new not so low cost imac. Or they could've added any other Haswell/Intel graphics solution they wanted to. Instead they've left it in limbo while they fuss over everything else. I suspect it's on its way out and while something mini like might come along to replace it it won't be the mini that were all used to.
Haha looks cool but i dont think theres much room for the parts. In the real one the cards are vertical no room for that when its only so high.
It had. If Apple was supposed only to change the design of the chassis they would update it at least once since 2012. But they didnt. Same situation with Mac Pro.
The Mini is still classy with its current design, which it wasn't the case with the oMP, which looked pretty outdated with that old PC tower form-factor.
The Mac Mini isn't targeted at people who need a GPU. It wasn't upgraded because (please reference the first post)