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Why is HD4000 not good enough on 2012 mini?
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For a lot of people it's a name. They think that HD4000 isn't good enough and won't give them the performance they need. I've used both HD3000 and HD4000 and they both perform extremely well. I've used those cards for presentations, photo editing, and gaming. Anyone who says the HD4000 isn't good enough clearly has no experience using them.
My HD3000 equipped Air can't play much at all, and when it does it sounds like it's about to take off! 
Let's be clear here, photo editing and presentations don't need a beefy GPU and the HD 4000 does a fine job there, "gaming" is too wide and needs to have some variables defined - which game, at which resolution and with which quality settings.
You want to play older games or 2D/card games or Facebook games in a browser? The HD 4000 is fine for that.
You want to play Battlefield 4 at 2560x1440 with decent eye candy effects? It's going to be a slideshow, if the game even runs at all.
Those are two extremes, there's a lot of stuff that fits in between; as a general rule of thumb tho, for recent games at higher resolutions and settings, the HD 4000 won't cut it.
You can however reduce the screen resolution and quality settings to get better performance and, in most cases, you will be able to play most games in some capacity - it won't be the best experience ever, but it'll work.
Besides daily MS Office, web browsing, and iTunes, I do some work in Pixelmator, Aperture, SketchUp, and other apps of that nature. Nothing really demanding though Aperture seems really sluggish all the time on my MacPro. Additionally, as mentioned earlier, I play Counterstrike:Source, Portal2, Half-Life, and XPlane 10 (though not much). The only game I play much is Counterstrike:Source...
I specced out a mini-ITX build that includes i7-4770K, Geforce 760ti, 16GB memory, 500GB Samsung SSD, and a blueray player for ~$1,550 which is about $300 more than a maxed out Mini currently, but it SMOKES the Mini so if Apple doesn't come through I'm declaring a "broken arrow" on OSX in my home and going to Windows or Linux (just watched "We Were Soldiers", thus the reference).
Fine Point, but...
That's a fine point. Gaming has many different styles, resolutions, and types. So let me rephrase what I wrote earlier. Light gaming (Civilization V, Sim City 4, and Angry Birds, to name a few) should work fairly well. Games like Battlefied 4, mentioned above, probably won't run as well. But I don't really know of anyone that does extreme gaming on a Mac. Some of the most diehard Mac users I know keep an Alienware, Xbox, or Playstation around for when they want to do some serious gaming. Macs and OS X aren't designed for gaming and probably never will be. So the HD4000 works fine with what Macs and OS X are designed for.
That's a fine point. Gaming has many different styles, resolutions, and types. So let me rephrase what I wrote earlier. Light gaming (Civilization V, Sim City 4, and Angry Birds, to name a few) should work fairly well. Games like Battlefied 4, mentioned above, probably won't run as well. But I don't really know of anyone that does extreme gaming on a Mac. Some of the most diehard Mac users I know keep an Alienware, Xbox, or Playstation around for when they want to do some serious gaming. Macs and OS X aren't designed for gaming and probably never will be. So the HD4000 works fine with what Macs and OS X are designed for.
Civ V is not anywhere close to a lightweight game when it comes to CPU or GPU requirements. On my HD4000 equipped i3 laptop with plenty of memory on a 1368x768 screen it runs slow, even at the beginning of a game...much less at the mid or end game.
That thing is a ginormous pig.
That thing is a ginormous pig.
If there won't be new mini on Monday, can current mini run recent After Effects?
I might upgrade my CS5 AE to CS6, if I get cheap 2nd hand bargain...
I might upgrade my CS5 AE to CS6, if I get cheap 2nd hand bargain...
Try this in terminal. This made laggy Mission Control animation on my Mac mini 2011 disappear.
defaults write com.apple.dock hide-mirror -bool true;killall Dock
It will run but with some limitations. I posted some video tests regarding the Late 2012 Mini and its performance in real world in AE, Premiere, Motion 5 and FCPX it might help you to decide if its enough for you or not.
The original thread is https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1732065/
Hope it helps
The only thing i require from mac mini graphics is ability to play 4k movies without noise, heavy power consumption and not bring the machine to its knees. If the 4000 does that ...fine...if not apple should start spitting out that new mini soon.
My mac mini money have been sitting in the bank for soooooo long.
My mac mini money have been sitting in the bank for soooooo long.
The Mini can not do 4k. This isn't an hd4000 issue but rather an issue with the Thunderbolt controller used in the mini is only DisplayPort 1.1 which is limited to 2560x1440. This is the same limitation in iMacs and MBAs. Mac Pros and MacBook Pros are the only 4k enabled Macs. The hd4000 can do 4k if it wasn't limited by TB.
In other words: We need new mini (and new aTV. And new ac-airPortXpress). 4k is the simplest future proof.