Intel Mac mini uses system RAM for VRAM

At 08:37 -0800 2/3/06, Mike Millard wrote:
>So ... Apple "does" a brand new computer with no dedicated video
>memory! This "feature" was one we loved to mock heavily when we read
>the specs for many cheap PCs.

and one we used to have to suffer way back in the early 90s, remember the
IIsi et al ?

        f

On Mar 2, 2006, at 8:37 AM, Mike Millard wrote:

> So ... Apple "does" a brand new computer with no dedicated video
> memory! This "feature" was one we loved to mock heavily when we read
> the specs for many cheap PCs.

So what is the Mini? It's a low end machine. It makes sense to me
to go with this graphics solution.

Disclaimer: I don't use computers for "gaming," so the fact that the
Mini's graphics seem unsuitable for the heavy games doesn't bother me.

   --John

On 02 Mar 2006, at 09:37 , Mike Millard wrote:
> Stop Press!! New Intel Mac mini—"Video RAM" Is Actually Main System
> Memory!

Erm, what do you mean, "stop the presses"? It's not like this was
hidden.

> So ... Apple "does" a brand new computer with no dedicated video
> memory! This "feature" was one we loved to mock heavily when we read
> the specs for many cheap PCs.

And this is a cheap Mac.

That said, memory is MUCH faster than it was. I expect that the mini
with a GB of RAM will still play World of Warcraft very nicely (in
fact, I have €10 riding on it), even thought he mini is not a game
machine and not billed as a game machine.

The question is, can it play video nicely?

>So ... Apple "does" a brand new computer with no dedicated video
>memory! This "feature" was one we loved to mock heavily when we read
>the specs for many cheap PCs.

I seem to remember decrying it on the Mac IIci and Mac IIsi, too. But
back then, video memory usage was a lot less than 80 MB. ;-)

--
Geoff Duncan TidBITS Technical Editor <http://www.tidbits.com/>

On 3/3/06 08:56, "johnbaxterlistsmac.com" <johnbaxterlistsmac.com> wrote:

> So what is the Mini? It's a low end machine. It makes sense to me
> to go with this graphics solution.
>
> Disclaimer: I don't use computers for "gaming," so the fact that the
> Mini's graphics seem unsuitable for the heavy games doesn't bother me.

If you buy a Mini for heavy gaming, you're doing a lot of "wooly thinking"
to begin with. I'd say that if you buy a *Mac* for heavy gaming, you're not
much of a gamer.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

Reports and confirmations on the Internet are weighing in. It seems
that the Core Duo mini can play high-def TV at 1080p resolutions
(depending on the codec in the media). MPEG2 is a lock, due to lower
computational costs, and people are still sorting out H.264
optimizations.

This blog post has some interesting numbers based on custom software
written to be a quickie test of GPU:
http://www.friday.com/bbum/2006/02/28/intel-mac-minis-video-card/#comment-819

kcd says:
March 2nd, 2006 at 3:33 am
>I know some people are simply not going to change their mind, but
>here are some (very) raw numbers:
>I have access to an original PowerPC Mac Mini (acting as my file
>server), a Core Duo Mini, a PowerBook G4 15? (Radeon 9600 Mobility),
>an iMac G5 (GeForce 5200), an iMac Core Duo 20?, and a PowerMac G5
>Quad w/7800GT. I wrote a really simple GL fill rate test app just to
>get a very rough idea of the performance across the different GPUs.
>It's just a simple rectangle-textured polygon blend benchmark,
>designed to measure very simplistic compositing performance (as
>might be used by the WindowServer). It's not the end-all-be-all GPU
>benchmark by any means, but it may help put things in perspective.
>GeForce 7800GT: 3325 megapixels/sec
>CoreDuo iMac 20?: 1137 megapixels/sec
>Cure Duo Mini: 802 megapixels/second
>iMac G5: 778 megapixels/second
>PowerBook G4: 662 megapixels/second
>G4 Mac Mini: 288 megapixels/second
>In terms of raw bandwidth for simple fill rate stuff, the new Mac
>Mini is great, and fill rate is still the most important thing for
>day to day app usage. A more interesting test would probably be to
>write some kind of interesting pixel shader and see how the
>different GPUs stack up. The picture would change quite a bit, but
>mostly to the advantage of the higher end parts like the 7800GT
>(which probably has more gates on the die than the Intel Core Duo
>and the i945G put together).

Moreover, a largely overlooked detail is that Apple seem to be using
the 945GT Northbridge chip, which runs at 400Mhz.
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/945gt/prodbrief.pdf


--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu

Am 03.03.2006 um 15:56 schrieb Google Kreme:

> On 02 Mar 2006, at 09:37 , Mike Millard wrote:
>> Stop Press!! New Intel Mac mini—"Video RAM" Is Actually Main System
>> Memory!
>
> Erm, what do you mean, "stop the presses"? It's not like this was
> hidden.

Exactly.

>
>> So ... Apple "does" a brand new computer with no dedicated video
>> memory! This "feature" was one we loved to mock heavily when we read
>> the specs for many cheap PCs.
>
> And this is a cheap Mac.

IMHO not anymore for the highend model... BYODKM and you pay the
price of an iMac.

> That said, memory is MUCH faster than it was. I expect that the mini
> with a GB of RAM will still play World of Warcraft very nicely (in
> fact, I have €10 riding on it), even thought he mini is not a game
> machine and not billed as a game machine.
>
> The question is, can it play video nicely?

This graphic chip is built into the "core" chipset (945GM) which
operates the mainboard and all peripheral devices. On the graphics
side the capabilities and performance is quite good and comparable to
lower end ATI chipsets like the 9200/9250 which were used before (or
even better). This graphic chip is suitable for all graphic
operations sans highend computer games like Doom 3 as test have shown
in PC land.

As for the shared memory: The speed at which the main memory is
accessed nowadays is quite high. If you'd like to have a look at the
Apple Store you'll notice RAM is sold in pairs to achieve higher
speeds for memory access, because both RAM modules are accessed at
the same time (dual channel).

So people stay calm and enjoy this upgraded mini. The ability to use
more than 1 GB of RAM is worth much more than a speedier graphics card.

--Michael

--On March 3, 2006 6:56:29 AM -0800 Google Kreme <gkremegmail.com> wrote:

> The question is, can it play video nicely?

Seems to me that this shouldn't matter for video. Graphic card memory (and
the video CPU) is nice for effects like drop shadows, transparencies, 3d
effects, etc... all heavily used in gaming. Video obliterates everything
underneath it, all the memory is used for is remembering the underneath the
video and the video itself. It doesn't need to do any manipulation --
that's all done in the CPU where it's decompressing the stream/file.

These new minis have a 667 MHz front-side bus. My PPC mini has a 167 MHz
front-side bus. Using system memory should be plenty fast for this.

On 03 Mar 2006, at 07:56 , johnbaxterlistsmac.com wrote:
> On Mar 2, 2006, at 8:37 AM, Mike Millard wrote:
>> So ... Apple "does" a brand new computer with no dedicated video
>> memory! This "feature" was one we loved to mock heavily when we read
>> the specs for many cheap PCs.
>
> So what is the Mini? It's a low end machine. It makes sense to me
> to go with this graphics solution.

According to a post on MDN, the mini can do 1080p.

Graphics must not be THAT bad.

<http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/8772/>

At 10:30 AM -0800 3/6/06, Michael Nordmeyer wrote:
>This graphic chip is built into the "core" chipset (945GM) which
>operates the mainboard and all peripheral devices.

Apple is using the faster 945GT chipset.

--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu

At 11:43 AM -0800 3/6/06, Andrew Laurence wrote:
>At 10:30 AM -0800 3/6/06, Michael Nordmeyer wrote:
>>This graphic chip is built into the "core" chipset (945GM) which
>>operates the mainboard and all peripheral devices.
>
>Apple is using the faster 945GT chipset.

Never mind, scratch that. They're using the (faster) 945GM, not the
(slower) 945GT.

(Note to self: never reply while working in panic mode on another project.)

--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu

> So ... Apple "does" a brand new computer with no dedicated video
> memory! This "feature" was one we loved to mock heavily when we read
> the specs for many cheap PCs.

Apple NEEDS a cheap Mac to compete with those systems. Period. If it's
too low end for you you shouldn't buy it. But price is a major major
major issue with many households. They keep seeing those Dell (and
other) ads for $399 and wonder why anyone would buy a Mac. Yet when they
walk out the door they've typically spend $900 to $2000 and don't
remember the pricing choices when they complain about how unusable it is
2 years later.

On 3/6/06 1:30 PM, "Michael Nordmeyer" <trycatchnachgeschmack.de> wrote:
> IMHO not anymore for the highend model... BYODKM and you pay the
> price of an iMac.

"BYO" usually means Bring Your Own, implying that you already have the thing
and don't need to consider its cost but I think you mean that factoring in
the cost of input devices and display, the mini Duo costs as much as an
iMac.

"Stock+"
$1299 17" iMac
$ 877 Mac mini Duo w/ wired keyboard & mouse

$422 less

"w/ common RAM & warranty upgrades"
$1568 17" iMac w/ 1GB RAM, AppleCare
$1126 Mac mini Duo w/ wired keyboard & mouse, 1GB RAM, AppleCare

$442 less

You can easily get a (good) 17" LCD for less than $300 so while I wouldn't
call the mini Duo a "cheap Mac," it's still cheaper than the cheapest iMac
by $100 or more.

The iMac could be considered a better *value* than the mini Duo, it has a
faster processor, faster & bigger hard drive, much better video card and
includes a camera, but if the all-in-one design and form factor is a problem
for someone, those extra features don't really matter.

Quoting Google Kreme <gkremegmail.com>:

> According to a post on MDN, the mini can do 1080p.
>
> Graphics must not be THAT bad.
>
> <http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/8772/>

That's with a core duo. Ars Technica's review of a Core Solo talks about video
playback too:

<http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macmini.ars/3>

They found it dropped frames and played around 10-13 fps. 480p was perfect,
720p played well for somthings, dropping to 18-20 fps during quickly chaning
scenes.

Both machines had 512MB of memory. Makes me think processor power is more
important in video playback than onboard memory.

On Mar 6, 2006, at 3:52 PM, kevinvanhaaren.net wrote:

> Ars Technica's review of a Core Solo talks
> about video
> playback too:
>
> <http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macmini.ars/3>
>
> They found it dropped frames and played around 10-13 fps. 480p was
> perfect,
> 720p played well for somthings, dropping to 18-20 fps during
> quickly chaning
> scenes.
>
> Both machines had 512MB of memory. Makes me think processor power
> is more
> important in video playback than onboard memory.

Odd. The 512M memory made me think that the test should be run again
with 1G. (I think the Ars reviewer felt the same way, but I read
that several hours ago.)

   --John (for whom HD isn't an issue)

IIsi? IIci??? it goes a lot further back than that.

The concept of sharing system RAM with video RAM actually dates back to the Mac Plus, and before that, the Apple ][. At the time it saved you not only RAM, but also obviated the need for extra hardware to refresh the DRAM chips.

1987's Mac II was the first Mac that *didn't* share video RAM with system RAM - and the price showed it.