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Dan92

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 16, 2010
1
0
I checked the Apple website yesterday to find that the Mac Mini has been totally revamped in all directions. Awesome! I'm really thinking of buying a Mini, as my sister loves her Mini and my dad loves his Macbook Pro. I was a little disappointed though, to find that just like the new Macbooks, only 256 megabytes of the Mini's system ram were dedicated to the new graphics. Obviously I'm not going to be running really taxing 3d games, but even on light games like Portal and Team Fortress 2 (the kind of things I would be playing, after all, steam did come out for Mac) 256 is a little sketchy. Giving the graphics just a little more ram, say, 512 MBs, would be really nice. It wouldn't be the end of the world if I couldn't, but before I buy a computer, I was just wondering if it's possible to do that.
 

Jawnathin

macrumors 6502
Sep 10, 2009
271
117
You cannot allocate more system memory to the GPU...

That said, I doubt the memory is the bottleneck for the GPU. I suspect the fillrate is too slow on the 320M to make use of the 256MB as is.
 

skipjakk

macrumors member
Jun 24, 2004
43
1
Minimum is 256K

The new mini is probably similar to the last one. The memory is shared, so the more memory you add the higher the video memory goes. With 4mb installed on the previous mini, you got 512k video memory....
 

Jawnathin

macrumors 6502
Sep 10, 2009
271
117
The new mini is probably similar to the last one. The memory is shared, so the more memory you add the higher the video memory goes. With 4mb installed on the previous mini, you got 512k video memory....

You got a link or source for that? My old MB13 and MBP15 also has a 9400m thats shared with the system memory (same GPU the previous Mac Mini).

Pretty sure it has 256MB, even with 4GB of memory.
 

skipjakk

macrumors member
Jun 24, 2004
43
1
You got a link or source for that? My old MB13 and MBP15 also has a 9400m thats shared with the system memory (same GPU the previous Mac Mini).

Pretty sure it has 256MB, even with 4GB of memory.

Your right, I stand corrected, just checked and my mini is 256mb with 4GB memory....
 

LeeTom

macrumors 68000
May 31, 2004
1,581
291
The footnotes on the Mac Mini specs page say:
"Memory available to Mac OS X may vary depending on graphics needs. Minimum graphics memory usage is 256MB."

perhaps it goes up to 512mb as needed on the fly, or perhaps when 8gb is installed.

Anyone have a new mini with 8gb of ram?
 

G2244

macrumors member
Mar 4, 2009
89
2
The footnotes on the Mac Mini specs page say:
"Memory available to Mac OS X may vary depending on graphics needs. Minimum graphics memory usage is 256MB."

perhaps it goes up to 512mb as needed on the fly, or perhaps when 8gb is installed.

Anyone have a new mini with 8gb of ram?

I am very interested in this. If plunking in 8gb of RAM would increase the graphics memory beyond 256MB, I could maybe justify upgrading from my early 2009 Mini.
 

mrfoof82

macrumors 6502a
May 26, 2010
577
15
Lawton, OK
I am very interested in this. If plunking in 8gb of RAM would increase the graphics memory beyond 256MB, I could maybe justify upgrading from my early 2009 Mini.

Confirmed that it's always 256MB of allocated memory regardless of system memory (2GB, 4GB or 8GB).
 

drambuie

macrumors 6502a
Feb 16, 2010
751
1
The minimum allocated to the graphics chip is 256MB. It can use more, if needed.

This is a direct quote from the 2010 Mini tech specs, "Memory available to Mac OS X may vary depending on graphics needs. Minimum graphics memory usage is 256MB."

That means that graphics has priority access to memory, and the OS allocation may be reduced if the graphics requires more than 256MB. I can see this being the case when rendering complex 3D textures at the maximum resolution of 2560x1600 on an external display through the Mini DisplayPort, while simultaneously feeding 1920x1200 through HDMI to another display.
 
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