Yes, it's another HD3000 Vs AMD 6630M thread

[Pierrel]

The base one should be fine. 720p is pretty low res for computer use though, like the 11" MBA is higher res than that (1366x768). On the plus side if you do decide to do any gaming, the low res will help out the Intel graphics.

I ordered the Corsair ones earlier cause it had two reviews saying it worked...but now I'm trying to cancel cause I saw another thread somewhere around here with some people having issues. Could just be a vocal minority that got some defective ones of course.

The TV, which i will use as a monitor, only supports 720p. And with higher resolution it might be hard to read text etc from the sofa.
Anyone got any advices regarding the memory? I think 8gb is the way to go from the start, since 2 is to little for a modern machine...
Thanks for the reply!

 

[haruspex]

i have the baseline mini, except bumped up to 8GB RAM (a necessary upgrade). i play Team Fortress 2 once in a while with my friends and also do a lot of photoshop/illustrator/you get the idea. i haven't had any complaints with the HD3000 at all. it's driving a 26" 1080p LCD too.

 

[Mr.C]

i have the baseline mini, except bumped up to 8GB RAM (a necessary upgrade). i play Team Fortress 2 once in a while with my friends and also do a lot of photoshop/illustrator/you get the idea. i haven't had any complaints with the HD3000 at all. it's driving a 26" 1080p LCD too.

Team Fortress 2 has relatively basic system requirements and I suspect Photoshop and Illustrator don't make heavy use of the GPU. Other multi media apps that use 3D and games with higher system requirements probably would struggle with the integrated GPU.

 

[haruspex]

Team Fortress 2 has relatively basic system requirements and I suspect Photoshop and Illustrator don't make heavy use of the GPU. Other multi media apps that use 3D and games with higher system requirements probably would struggle with the integrated GPU.

i'm sure. i don't do any 3D work though, so at least as far as 2D work goes it's good enough for me (after all the HD3000 is more powerful than the integrated graphics of the last PC i had, and even that wasn't too bad with 3D).

fwim i've used this mac mini to play 1440p Hi10P video on a 40" TV too, and it did an excellent job of that, no complaints.

 

[Pierrel]

i'm sure. i don't do any 3D work though, so at least as far as 2D work goes it's good enough for me (after all the HD3000 is more powerful than the integrated graphics of the last PC i had, and even that wasn't too bad with 3D).

fwim i've used this mac mini to play 1440p Hi10P video on a 40" TV too, and it did an excellent job of that, no complaints.

Nice to hear that. Just picked up my Baseline mini from Apple Store here in San Diego. Haven't unboxed it yet since I wanted to see if it would be a "bad" choise by reading your guys comments. But it doesn't seem that way. Now i just have to wait until tomorrow when i will go pick up the TV, and then hook all of it together

 

[Shishu]

I bought base Mac Mini few days ago. It is being used as HTPC (running plex) and is connected to 40" Sony (1080p). No issues with playing 1080p / 720p or streaming from various sources.

Would could be of interest is that I haven't had time to upgrade RAM (still stuck at 2GB) and yet everything is running smoothly (Plex, torrents, itunes, safari, bash, mail running concurrently). I will still pump up RAM to 4GB as I already have it over from my mac book pro, but it appears that going for 8GB of RAM is overkill if you will be using your mini as htpc.

 

[Daff]

I bought the base mini. From OWC I bought 8gb ram and the 120Gb SSD, Mercury Extreme Pro 6GB. Hopefully the combination will turn out good.

 

[Crunch]

Sweet! I opted for the OWC Electra 6G because I was able to get it for only $193. (hoping for delivery today) The OWC Extreme 6G had no discount, so the difference was almost $100. What prompted you to get the higher end one?

I'm still thinking of swapping it out for the Extreme Pro 6G because I just found out that RAID 0 only works with the Extreme Pro one. Grrr...Oh well, gotta love that 30 day w/ no restocking fee...

 

[Daff]

To be honest, I did not know about the Electra one. There is a difference in the warranty (3 yrs vs 5 yrs). But I can not see any other big differences.

If I dont care about the RAID-support. Should I swap to the Electra one? 76$ difference at macsales.com.

 

[Crunch]

Besides the additional 2 years in warranty, the claim by OWC about its Extreme Pro is that incompressible data (i.e. files that are already compressed, such as movie, video and audio files) is transferred at a lesser speed. However, I doubt it will be that big a difference, as mostly the read speeds are affected. The write speeds are not that far apart. It may all just be marketing.

Click here to check out the page that talks about the "differences". As soon as I get my Electra 6G, I will do extensive benchmarks and maybe someone else with the Extreme Pro can do the same. ;-)

In order to get a better price on the Electra, have the newsletter sent to you and click on one of the promos. My last one reduced the price to $193.00, otherwise known as a no-brainer.

 

[Pierrel]

I bought base Mac Mini few days ago. It is being used as HTPC (running plex) and is connected to 40" Sony (1080p). No issues with playing 1080p / 720p or streaming from various sources.

Would could be of interest is that I haven't had time to upgrade RAM (still stuck at 2GB) and yet everything is running smoothly (Plex, torrents, itunes, safari, bash, mail running concurrently). I will still pump up RAM to 4GB as I already have it over from my mac book pro, but it appears that going for 8GB of RAM is overkill if you will be using your mini as htpc.

As of right now I'm typing this post from my new Mini. Got everything hooked up good (except for a minor problem with my trackpad) and everything runs smooth and nice now. Just trying to figure out which resolution i should be running the computer at. At too low res, it doesn't look as good, but in high res i can't really see everything without straining my eyes. Think I will get used to the lower resolution
Thinking of buying the 8gb Corsairs and a Magic Wand from Amazon, hoping that the Corsairs will work. Seems like those memory sticks have worked for some, and not for others.

Overall i like the machine, its quick and punchy enough for my needs No need for a more powerful computer at this moment.

 

[iDave]

ALWAYS run your display at it's native resolution. If you can't see properly, get new glasses.

 

[lilsoccakid74]

As of right now I'm typing this post from my new Mini. Got everything hooked up good (except for a minor problem with my trackpad) and everything runs smooth and nice now. Just trying to figure out which resolution i should be running the computer at. At too low res, it doesn't look as good, but in high res i can't really see everything without straining my eyes. Think I will get used to the lower resolution
Thinking of buying the 8gb Corsairs and a Magic Wand from Amazon, hoping that the Corsairs will work. Seems like those memory sticks have worked for some, and not for others.

Overall i like the machine, its quick and punchy enough for my needs No need for a more powerful computer at this moment.

While web browsing, holding the command key and using the - and + buttons will change the text size

 

[dlsife]

How about simple iMovie editing? Am I okay with the base model?

 

[Pierrel]

ALWAYS run your display at it's native resolution. If you can't see properly, get new glasses.

Hehe, yea maybe i should get myself some glasses

While web browsing, holding the command key and using the - and + buttons will change the text size

Ah, great! Much better, thanks! Is there a way to standardize this setting? Seems like i have to do this at each new page i visit.

 

[japtor]

If you have a Magic Trackpad you can do something similar to iOS actually, either pinch zoom or double tap (albeit with two fingers) to zoom in on a page element.

Otherwise to standardize it I just found these with a quick search:
With a CSS file: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20091019093600680
Or Safari extension: http://sidetree.com/extensions.html

...there's also HiDPI mode but the usable space will probably be too small for you and may be buggy:
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/25/os-x-lions-hidpi-modes-lay-groundwork-for-retina-monitors/

 

[Pierrel]

If you have a Magic Trackpad you can do something similar to iOS actually, either pinch zoom or double tap (albeit with two fingers) to zoom in on a page element.

Otherwise to standardize it I just found these with a quick search:
With a CSS file: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20091019093600680
Or Safari extension: http://sidetree.com/extensions.html

...there's also HiDPI mode but the usable space will probably be too small for you and may be buggy:
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/25/os-x-lions-hidpi-modes-lay-groundwork-for-retina-monitors/

Great, works like a charm
After i put the Mini to sleep, it seems to loose the connection to my Wifi. I manually have to reconnect, is that normal?
Have had a couple of small freezups, but i think 8gbs of ram will take care of that.
Overall, I'm a very happy Windows to Mac transferrer

 

[japtor]

It should reconnect but you may just be running into Lion quirkiness for all I know.

 

[Aegelward]

You can get some browser plugins that make it a little more friendly for TV operations, though the OS itself is a challenge. There might be some hacks/plugins for OSX that optimise it for large/low dpi screens.

 

[DisMyMac]

How about simple iMovie editing? Am I okay with the base model?

Not the one with just 2Gb RAM. I tested iMovie in the store with that and it was slow.

 

[Crunch]

It doesn't matter what the Mac comes with. Just load it up with 8GB (2x4GB) and you're done. Or, if you only need 4GB, I'll send you a 2GB chip for darn near free. I got them lying around here. lol...

Anyway, so I installed my OWC Electra 6G today and it was super easy to do, first of all. It's nice and fast and I'm getting around 500MB/s each for read and write speeds using some utility I found. I'll do some real benchmarks as soon as I install Windows 7, as that's really where the better benchmark tools available.

So I'm ready for the 2nd one for a combined 240GB by way of RAID'ing two 120GB OWC SSD's in the Mac mini. I know it's possible because guess who did it before me? OWC! I have one concern, though: I don't know if I should swap out the Electra 6G for the higher performance SSD, called the Mercury EXTREME Pro. Are the Electra's really significantly "inferior"?

 

[Pierrel]

I have now been running the base Mini with 8 Gbs of ram the last couple of days. It feels a lot more snappy when running multiple tasks.
Haven't tried any more hardcore programs yet, but i will in the future. One thing though, QuickTime tasks forever to load, and i can't get VLC to be the primary program for videos. I have installed Peridian codecs for QT. Is this normal? :/

 

[Crunch]

I have now been running the base Mini with 8 Gbs of ram the last couple of days. It feels a lot more snappy when running multiple tasks.
Haven't tried any more hardcore programs yet, but i will in the future. One thing though, QuickTime tasks forever to load, and i can't get VLC to be the primary program for videos. I have installed Peridian codecs for QT. Is this normal? :/

No. Right-click on any video that you want to play with VLC (two-finger tap on trackpad), and select "Get Info" . A window will pop up to the left of your screen. Find where it says "Open with..." (about in the middle of the window) and a window will open. Scroll all the way down and doube-click on the VLC app. Finally, click on the "Change All" button which is now no longer grayed out, which will switch the default application for your video as well as all other videos with the extension of the particular video file that you just used to perform this process. Let's say your video was a Windows Media file (extension .wmv) that you just changed the default for. Assuming you also have AVI files that you want to always open with VLC as well, simply repeat the aforementioned steps for each file name extension that you want to change the default for.

VLC is the single best player for video content and supports virtually every last codec/container/extension, so you will never have to use QuickTime again. If you want to make QT more compatible with other video files, though, download "Flip4Mac" (Google it), and you will be able to play all Windows-based video content, except for DRM (protected) files. You already have Perian, so you're all set.

 

[Pierrel]

No. Right-click on any video that you want to play with VLC (two-finger tap on trackpad), and select "Get Info" . A window will pop up to the left of your screen. Find where it says "Open with..." (about in the middle of the window) and a window will open. Scroll all the way down and doube-click on the VLC app. Finally, click on the "Change All" button which is now no longer grayed out, which will switch the default application for your video as well as all other videos with the extension of the particular video file that you just used to perform this process. Let's say your video was a Windows Media file (extension .wmv) that you just changed the default for. Assuming you also have AVI files that you want to always open with VLC as well, simply repeat the aforementioned steps for each file name extension that you want to change the default for.

Ah, now i got it to work. I tried almost the same thing before, but it only affected the one file i did the change to. Thanks, and yea VLC is the media player i like the most! Just wanted to check Quicktime out since I'm new to mac