Intel Reports Fix Coming for Flickering on Monitors Connected to 2012 Mac Mini via HDMI

Is this just for 2012 (Ivy Bridge/HD 4000) machines with an HDMI port? Or is it for all of them? Or is it just Mac mini customers? I have a non-retina 15" MacBook Pro; it lacks an HDMI port, and the HD 4000 isn't the only GPU I have to play with, am I affected? These are things I wish were made clearer in the original article.

William Gates said:

Apple are the ones pushing for integrated GPU's. That's why there are no discrete GPU's in the rMBP 13" and MBA's.

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Apple isn't directly pushing for integrated GPUs. They're pushing for smaller designs which necessitate integrated GPUs. Make the thing *gasp* larger, and that's not a problem.

resonator said:

Those intel integrated graphics are not very good. It really is ashamed that Apple did not put a better discrete graphics card in the mini. The graphics on the latest 13" MacBook Air are the same and really do not perform well for any type of heavy duty 3D applications. My 6 year old 17" MBP with discrete 256 MB graphics card performs better. The pro seems to really be going out of all the Apple products for lighter, thinner consumer models. It is ashamed that they do not offer the professional users many options these days. I was on the verge of buying a mini as a secondary machine until I read the specs about the video card. This is a step backwards.

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The Mac mini never had all that stellar of a video card. There were only two generations with discrete graphics, the high-end version of the previous mid-2011 generation, and the original PowerPC G4-based model. Neither models had graphics that were any higher than low-end in terms of discrete GPUs for their respective time. The Radeon HD 6630M was never all that great. Yes, it's better than the Intel HD 4000, but not by a whole lot. And no, the graphics are not that great; but they're not all that bad; they're getting much better. The Intel HD 4000 is definitely faster than the GeForce 8600M GT in 2007 and 2008 pre-unibody MacBook Pros. Hell, it's probably comparable to the GeForce 9600M GT found in the first two revs (2008 and 2009) of unibody MacBook Pros.

StealthGhost said:

So the Macbook Air, Macbook Pro 13 inch and Mac Mini wouldn't have any GPU lol? Apple can already put in an Nvidia or AMD GPU if they wish, they can turn off Intel's GPU or have it be switchable, they just don't because they want their cost to be low, not provide a powerful laptop.

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The Air and the 13" Pro (both retina and non-retina) are too thin to accommodate a discrete GPU. I'm not too sure why they didn't do it on the Mac mini. Them doing it with the last rev was really cool.

yeah so what about the crappy picture quality over HDMI?

I'm glad that they have at least acknowledged the issue with flickering and black outs. I'm getting the problem 2-3 times a day and it's annoying.

The bigger issue I have is with the poor picture quality. Yes you can sort of address it by going through custom colorsync calibration but that's a kludge at best.

My dell 2440 looks terrible with out serious tweaking of the color profile and yet looks more than acceptable when connected to a PC.

PS: for those that think theirs is "fine" go to itunes or just view a list of files in finder. You should see alternating white and gray stripes. On my mini the "gray" stripes look like barely visible yellow smudges

Lancer said:

Somehow that pic looks just wrong!

At least have the Apple KB and touch pad even if you use a cheaper LCD.

Good to know they are working on the issue, but really shouldn't this have been sorted by now?

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That's a NEC brand LCD display. Hardly cheap.

sno1man said:

I'm glad that they have at least acknowledged the issue with flickering and black outs. I'm getting the problem 2-3 times a day and it's annoying.

The bigger issue I have is with the poor picture quality. Yes you can sort of address it by going through custom colorsync calibration but that's a kludge at best.

My dell 2440 looks terrible with out serious tweaking of the color profile and yet looks more than acceptable when connected to a PC.

PS: for those that think theirs is "fine" go to itunes or just view a list of files in finder. You should see alternating white and gray stripes. On my mini the "gray" stripes look like barely visible yellow smudges

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That's because you have a crappy display. The yellow smudges are color bleed. HDMI has enough bandwidth to support 4k resolutions so I highly doubt HDMI is causing this.

SnowLeopard2008 said:

That's a NEC brand LCD display. Hardly cheap.



That's because you have a crappy display. The yellow smudges are color bleed. HDMI has enough bandwidth to support 4k resolutions so I highly doubt HDMI is causing this.

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Umm NO. When connected to an HP desktop with an nvidia card it looks quite good especially for the price.

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell_s2440l.htm

Dont be a blind apple fanboy and besides apple advertises the mini with the idea of BYOKMD. Yes the thunderbolt display is quite good, but for the prices of that plus the mini, I'd be better off with an iMac

future passed

Interesting to see the Mini with vintage computer equipment. I'm not feeling the 90's nostalgia yet, though.

tristanB said:

Do we think they'll also have a fix for the similar issue on the MBA with the same graphics?

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Indeed. There is a long thread about this on the Apple Discussions forum; the problem isn't limited just to the Mac Mini.

sno1man said:

Umm NO. When connected to an HP desktop with an nvidia card it looks quite good especially for the price.

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/dell_s2440l.htm

Dont be a blind apple fanboy and besides apple advertises the mini with the idea of BYOKMD. Yes the thunderbolt display is quite good, but for the prices of that plus the mini, I'd be better off with an iMac

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So you automatically made the assumption the root cause is the HDMI connection? Or is it the graphics card? Did you try a different connection? Try changing color profiles in System Preferences. Sometimes the default one may have been corrupted or messed up. I work at Intel. Those yellow smudges are color bleed. It's definitely not caused by the HDMI connection. Drivers? Maybe. HDMI? No.

The sentences highlighted in red just shows ignorance and incorrect assumptions. I never said to go buy a Thunderbolt display.

TXCherokee said:

These machines are not for heavy 3D applications. Intel graphics do not suck. My MacMini does everything I need it to do, as I'm not a photo editor, video producer, or a design engineer.

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Good for you, but maybe not everyone uses their computer like you do? Why would it hurt to give the ones who want another graphics card option? Then even the Mac mini could be a good machine for more graphics intensive task too.

tomjleeds said:

If it performs to a sufficient standard, what's the problem?

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The problem is that it's not sufficient for all, but could be (close to) if Apple offered a litte more hardware options – especially when it comes to graphics cards –*in their products.

resonator said:

Those intel integrated graphics are not very good. It really is ashamed that Apple did not put a better discrete graphics card in the mini. The graphics on the latest 13" MacBook Air are the same and really do not perform well for any type of heavy duty 3D applications. My 6 year old 17" MBP with discrete 256 MB graphics card performs better. The pro seems to really be going out of all the Apple products for lighter, thinner consumer models. It is ashamed that they do not offer the professional users many options these days. I was on the verge of buying a mini as a secondary machine until I read the specs about the video card. This is a step backwards.

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Wrong. While technically the same GPU, the ones found in the MacBook Air are ULV parts and run at a lot lower base clock and can't turbo as fast as the "normal" laptop parts. See this Anandtech article for more information.

majkom said:

All Apples fault... no one force them to use only thos ****** intel gpus....mini 2012 only with intel piece of ****, thank you tim

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No one forces you to buy the new Macs

Negritude said:

It's about time that MacRumors addressed this on the front page. All the discussion that has been occurring on it's own forums as well as the Apple forums has been ignored up until this point. This is a serious problem.

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I have written so several news sites...no one bothers to run an article on the fact that Apple removed the 10.8.2 update for 2012 Macs...this is an huge issue and nobody seems to care.

SnowLeopard2008 said:

So you automatically made the assumption the root cause is the HDMI connection? Or is it the graphics card? Try changing color profiles in System Preferences. Sometimes the default one may have been corrupted or messed up. I work at Intel. Those yellow smudges are color bleed. It's definitely not caused by the HDMI connection. Drivers? Maybe. HDMI? No.

The sentences highlighted in red just shows ignorance and incorrect assumptions.

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and your post just shows general arrogance.

The monitor only has HDMI and VGA inputs. I have tried a HDMI to VGA adapter and it somewhat helps but it also comes with a loss in sharpness.

I have posted on multiple threads here about my numerous attempts to get a decent picture including expert mode in color sync and trying others calibrated profiles.

I have also tried a spyder color sync tool. It gave me "out of range" errors on the mini but had no issues on the PC. Yes I know it's not a "pro" tool bout is does a good job. PLUS the same monitor looks 500% better on a 2011 mini

in short, it's my belief that somethings not right with HDMI in the newest macs and that you need to get off you high horse.

PS: do a search here for "crushed whites"

Flickering seems to be a feature that comes with some Macs. It happens sometimes on my iMac with an AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB. Not when I bring it to the Genius bar though, of course.

Fuchal said:

My 2011 (HD 3000) flickers/flashes as well on HDMI, but I bet there's no fix ever coming for that.

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I just got a like-new 2011 Mini with discrete graphics and had the same issue (picture cutting out, followed by TV-like snow) after hooking to my monitor using a Monoprice HDMI cable (HDMI to HDMI). A bit of fooling/reseating with the connectors seems to have eliminated it. Makes me wonder if it's an HDMI or 10.8.2 issue. Definitely not Intel integrated graphics' fault in my case!

sno1man said:

I'm glad that they have at least acknowledged the issue with flickering and black outs. I'm getting the problem 2-3 times a day and it's annoying.

The bigger issue I have is with the poor picture quality. Yes you can sort of address it by going through custom colorsync calibration but that's a kludge at best.

My dell 2440 looks terrible with out serious tweaking of the color profile and yet looks more than acceptable when connected to a PC.

PS: for those that think theirs is "fine" go to itunes or just view a list of files in finder. You should see alternating white and gray stripes. On my mini the "gray" stripes look like barely visible yellow smudges

Click to expand...

When I first hooked up my mini it looked much as you described. I went crazy trying to fix the settings on the mini until I found that the monitor somehow differentiated between HDMI and "PC" inputs.

I honestly don't understand the difference, but 1920x1080 from the mini looked about as bad as 720P until I fixed the monitor settings. I don't know if this will help you, but I had definitely found it unintuitive at the time.

Wildog27 said:

How about the fact that many 2012 Mini owners are stuck at 10.8.1 and unable to upgrade for some unknown reason?

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same here?

bpcookson said:

When I first hooked up my mini it looked much as you described. I went crazy trying to fix the settings on the mini until I found that the monitor somehow differentiated between HDMI and "PC" inputs.

I honestly don't understand the difference, but 1920x1080 from the mini looked about as bad as 720P until I fixed the monitor settings. I don't know if this will help you, but I had definitely found it unintuitive at the time.

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Yes been down that road as well. I have tried to find a setting on the monitor that was "PC mode" or something similar. I have another Samsung that does have that setting but it's also the family room TV.

I just get annoyed with the " i know better than thou, you are wrong" tone that so many have here. It's great when someone honestly tries to be helpful with the "have you tried this " suggestions. Telling me " I'm ignorant" just shows me that the person saying that is a d**k

profets said:

Yeah, the 2011 model was mentioned as a lot of people reported a similar issue. A quick google search will show you. Not sure if it's the exact same problem, but it happened only over hdmi. Happened on mine which had AMD gpu.

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Happened on mine, too, with the AMD graphics card. I took it back and got the Intel HD3000 base model, and haven't had any flickering issues with it since.

I think about my old Late 2009 mini 2.66 C2D. It has an EyeTV unit plugged into it and serves as my DVR. With 8GB RAM and a WD Scorpio Black 750GB HDD in it the performance is way better than when new.

A new quad mini Geekbenches at about five times faster than mine and eight logic threads would tear through video edits so much faster than the current two cores are able to. I really want one but. . .

The old mini runs 12 to 24 hours per day, displays VGA HD video almost perfectly (drops a frame now and then), makes perfect recordings, has an ugly but cool running external power brick, works with optical disks and has never ever missed a beat. I'm afraid to part with it. The more I read mini forums the more afraid I become! Other than being slow it's just too perfect.

sno1man said:

and your post just shows general arrogance.

The monitor only has HDMI and VGA inputs. I have tried a HDMI to VGA adapter and it somewhat helps but it also comes with a loss in sharpness.

I have posted on multiple threads here about my numerous attempts to get a decent picture including expert mode in color sync and trying others calibrated profiles.

I have also tried a spyder color sync tool. It gave me "out of range" errors on the mini but had no issues on the PC. Yes I know it's not a "pro" tool bout is does a good job. PLUS the same monitor looks 500% better on a 2011 mini

in short, it's my belief that somethings not right with HDMI in the newest macs and that you need to get off you high horse.

PS: do a search here for "crushed whites"

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Yes, so try a different connection? Did you try a MiniDP/Thunberbolt to VGA adapter? You do know that a VGA cable is capable of full HD resolution right? What is your infatuation with HDMI?

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sno1man said:

Yes been down that road as well. I have tried to find a setting on the monitor that was "PC mode" or something similar. I have another Samsung that does have that setting but it's also the family room TV.

I just get annoyed with the " i know better than thou, you are wrong" tone that so many have here. It's great when someone honestly tries to be helpful with the "have you tried this " suggestions. Telling me " I'm ignorant" just shows me that the person saying that is a d**k

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Yet I posted suggestions for you to try and I get called to get off my high horse. Seriously. No one said you are wrong, just maybe you should try something different instead of being ignorant, misguided, presumptuous and calling everyone who tries to help you a fanboy.

SnowLeopard2008 said:

Yes, so try a different connection? Did you try a MiniDP/Thunberbolt to VGA adapter? You do know that a VGA cable is capable of full HD resolution right? What is your infatuation with HDMI?

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Yet I posted suggestions for you to try and I get called to get off my high horse. Seriously. No one said you are wrong, just maybe you should try something different instead of being ignorant, misguided, presumptuous and calling everyone who tries to help you a fanboy.

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I did try the VGA connection and it helps but the image is fuzzy compared to HDMI. As I also said the monitor only had HDMI and VGA inputs.

Last but not least I called YOU arrogant specifically when YOU called my comments ignorant.

"The sentences highlighted in red just shows ignorance and incorrect assumptions". That makes you arrogant and insulting. What other way should that be read?

Lancer said:

Somehow that pic looks just wrong!

At least have the Apple KB and touch pad even if you use a cheaper LCD.

Good to know they are working on the issue, but really shouldn't this have been sorted by now?

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Not exactly sure which model that is, but to people like me the ability to attach one or two good NEC screens, for example, is one of the main reasons to buy a Mac Mini over an iMac. This is the kind of stuff that is important for instance for photographers. The Apple screens are not well suited for that kind of stuff. And a lot of people will say similar things about the fancy looking keyboards and mice. In that the picture is very representative of people who are moving over to the Mac world for pretty practical reasons and not for how the stuff looks that is piled up on or under my desk. Take the wireless Apple keyboard for instance. Beautiful, but useless for anyone who a) needs or wants a numbers pad (and that's not just the fat account from the old arrogant Apple commercials but also for creatives who use a lot of shortcuts) or b) anyone who actually types a lot

It may be unrelated, but try connecting a VGA display to one of these Minis with a mini Displayport adaptor. Its utterly hit or miss whether it works at all.

7enderbender said:

Not exactly sure which model that is, but to people like me the ability to attach one or two good NEC screens, for example, is one of the main reasons to buy a Mac Mini over an iMac. This is the kind of stuff that is important for instance for photographers.

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AND off the top of my head:

Developers/Programmers
Researchers
Engineers (CAD, 3D modelling, large scale drawings)
Video Editors
Music Producers/Mixers/Creators
Accountants

sno1man said:

I did try the VGA connection and it helps but the image is fuzzy compared to HDMI. As I also said the monitor only had HDMI and VGA inputs.

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Being fuzzy is not surprising for VGA, as I'm sure you know. It's also not HDMI directly, as others have said. 1080p is well within HDMI capabilities. Drivers or hardware fault would be my guesses.

Waragainstsleep said:

It may be unrelated, but try connecting a VGA display to one of these Minis with a mini Displayport adaptor. Its utterly hit or miss whether it works at all.

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That's not what I want to hear given that I'm considering upgrading my first gen Intel Mac Mini (yes, it still works, except for the superdrive which appears to have had a laser diode failure).

William Gates said:

Apple are the ones pushing for integrated GPU's. That's why there are no discrete GPU's in the rMBP 13" and MBA's.

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No they are not. Apple would rather have a dedicated (albeit lesser powerful) GPU in their rather than a Intel integrated crap. See the 9400M video and how Apple taunted using nVidia chipset. Yes it was integrated Northbridge/GPU, but it was still much more powerful than Intel's then current offering, the GMA X3100. Not to mention, it is until now that Intel GPUs are catching up to the performance the 9400M or even the 9600M GT offered, 4 years ago....

FakeWozniak said:

This doesn't seem fair to me. A GPU is actually a performance optimized CPU. Intel has been in the *PU business for a long time.

Maybe Apple should stay out of the cell phone business, or the map business, using that same logic.

This is good news actually that Intel is dedicated to helping the 5-10% market share of the Mac users. They admitted a problem and intend to fix it instead of just ignoring us.

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Not sure if serious or trying to troll hard. Intel has always been a CPU manufacturer. That is how they started and that's how it is. Their core business is CPUs. Now, as per the GPU being just a CPU is inherently, borderline dumb. Why?

A CPU contains some arithmetic logic in their. However, the real graphical push is done by heavy geometric, arithmetic, and tessellation engines. Not to mention, each of these engines has multiple cores. Add to that that each GPU is pared with ROPs and Shadders.

More to the point, GPUs have exceptionally strong out of order engines to keep executing tasks. Something CPUs do not have. They could, but it'd be wasteful as the task of the CPU is not to draw a pretty picture.

Intel entered the business, yes. However, to keep in the business a company must truly deliver something consumers actually want. Intel didn't do that nor do they. Their GPU solutions have always been crap. See to the point the whole Vista capable and Vista ready debacle. All due to Intel integrated crap GPUs. No one wants that. However, the way Intel kept their GPU market was by sheer force and arm bending OEMs.

Not only that, they literally pushed nVidia out of the business of making chipsets. That's is one quick way to kill and stifle innovation on GPUs and chipsets.

StealthGhost said:

So the Macbook Air, Macbook Pro 13 inch and Mac Mini wouldn't have any GPU lol? Apple can already put in an Nvidia or AMD GPU if they wish, they can turn off Intel's GPU or have it be switchable, they just don't because they want their cost to be low, not provide a powerful laptop.

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Dude, the GPU in Intel's newest CPUs isn't able to be turned off. It is on by default, what you can do is ignore it completely and have it not interfere. However, space is the issue with 13" Macs. Apple is attracted to the whole "less chips and components is better" ideology. That is a good thing as it makes Macs and every thing electronic much cheaper and slimmer (and what not). The problem is, Apple wants to put that dedicated GPU. The problem is the real estate to do so is not there.

Can you find me a corner in any 13" Mac that can be used for a GPU? Take into consideration nVidia's GT 650M as a baseline for dimensions and size. Also note that GPUs require a bit more space than just the chip due to other components such as VRAM and MOSFETs.

Take all that in the current 13" and you'll see the only way to do that is sacrifice battery real estate. Something Apple is unwilling to do.

jmhart said:

Intel is the cause of the entire situation currently, and not just because they can't write decent GPU drivers. They also took legal action against NVidia producing their own chipsets for the Core series processors back at the tail end of 2009, bringing an end to the last decent integrated chipset/GPU for Macs--the 9400M. Now we're stuck with Intel's integrated GPU.

I really don't mind that they are producing the hardware, but the drivers are unacceptably buggy.

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Thank you. Some one who actually uses his head.

majkom said:

All Apples fault... no one force them to use only thos ****** intel gpus....mini 2012 only with intel piece of ****, thank you tim

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Lol, I'll give you half true since in the end Apple was also arm bent to use Intel's crap.

Well...this is nothing new...

A few years back I bought a new MBP (2008) with a 30" cinema display from Apple. I had 'flickering' from the get-go on the big monitor. Apple first calibrated the monitor...no luck. Then they replaced my logic board. No help. they replaced my 30" mointor. No luck, as well. I complained to Apple throughout my entire 3 year warranty period and, to their defense, Apple tried to fix this but couldn't. So I live with it every day.

It wasn't a waste of almost $2000 for the monitor but I will make damned sure this does not re-occur when I upgrade my MPB next year.