As the title says. All I wanna use the computer for is to surf, music and watch movies obviously! Not gonna do any editing or anything.
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Will base model Mac Mini be usable with a 4k screen?
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I don't mean in that sense. I mean the performance. Will it be smooth or laggy as hell?
What does AFAIK mean? It's 60hz through thunderbolt no?
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What does AFAIK mean? It's 60hz through thunderbolt no? The screen i'm going to get is LG 34UM95-P so it's not really 4k though but high resolution
AFAIK is internet shorthand for "As Far As I Know"
The LG display has a resolution of 3440x1440, which is low enough to not need "Multi Stream Transport" - so it's low enough resolution to support full 60 Hz refresh rate on the Mac Mini.
As for how it will respond? For non-3D uses, it should be just fine. For games, you'll want to use a lower resolution and/or lower quality settings, though.
The LG display has a resolution of 3440x1440, which is low enough to not need "Multi Stream Transport" - so it's low enough resolution to support full 60 Hz refresh rate on the Mac Mini.
As for how it will respond? For non-3D uses, it should be just fine. For games, you'll want to use a lower resolution and/or lower quality settings, though.
That is awesome news then! I was gonna get a 4k desktop monitor but I think the ultra wide form factor is the way to go. So the model for 499$ should have no problems with playing movies and streaming movies etc? That will be the most demanding thing i'll do on the comptuer really. Maybe i'll need to update from 4GB ram to 8GB But then i'm like only 150$ from the one starting at 699$ I'm buying a windows pc again but I don't wanna use it for anything else than games really. OSX is just too good!
I don't know if you caught my edit but will 4gb ram be enough? I wish there were benchmarks on the iMac! I wonder if going from ssd to a 5400 rpm hard drive will be a pain in the ass too
For your workload, 4 GB shouldn't be too big a deal, but the drop to a hard drive WILL be noticeable. Look for benchmarks on the MacBook Air - the low end mini is basically the same hardware as the MBA, only with a spinning hard drive.
Didn't know a low specced computer like that could stream full hd content etc. how will I notice the physical hard drive? Like where will it be noticeable?
It will be noticeable on starting the computer, loading applications mostly. For truly light workload, it won't be very noticeable.
Ah I see. Well I never shut down my MacBook so I don't plan on ever turning of the Mac mini either. And only apps I'll open is iTunes, quicktime, vlc, Safari really
In all honesty the 2014 Mac Mini's 4k support is a half baked solution. You're seriously handicapping that nice monitor by feeding it a 30hz signal. Movies and photo viewing is fine but regular desktop use like Internet surfing is going to be seriously compromised. I don't personally like using a computer when the mouse cursor disappears half of the time. IMHO if you must use OS X, the only machines in apples lineup that support external 4k monitors have iris pro or better with thunderbolt 2. The Mini's problem is that it only has a regular iris.
Wait for broadwell mini if you must have mini + 4k or better.
Wait for broadwell mini if you must have mini + 4k or better.
Apparently since the lg screen is not actually 4k it will not be any problems and it should run at 60hz
I can confirm - I'm running the 3440x1440 LG curved display on my 2014 mini with absolutely no problems, at 60Hz.
Wow! What Mac mini model do you have? Do you play full gd content and stream 4k on YouTube with no problems? How is it when you have multiple Safari tabs open? Does the graphics lag when you open mission control for e.g?
no, I don't get any lag at all even with multiple big applications up and lots of tabs.
i don't do any gaming and if I did I wouldn't try to do it on a mac
i don't do any gaming and if I did I wouldn't try to do it on a mac
You didn't say how it works with watching 4k video on youtube though and what model you have!
I mean on YouTube! My moms older laptop lags when I play YouTube videos for e.g. I'll probably get the mid model as well. But will most likely wait til next year I guess. If you can connect iPad pro to a screen I think I'll want that instead.
Yes, I can play 4k content on youtube without any lag (except for a little network buffering at the beginning). I clicked the gear icon and selected 4k, then confirmed that the little red icon said 4k. With that said, the video didn't spill over my monitor, even with full screen enabled, so I'm not sure what kind of signal was coming through. It looked about the same as when I selected the 1440 option.
because my 3440x1440 monitor is smaller than a 4k, the video should spill over it if my graphics card was actually displaying all the pixels. It might still be processing them and then shrinking it back down, hence why i said i wasn't sure what the signal was.