I upgraded from a 2011, 2.7GHz i7 + 16GB 1600MHz DDR3.
I bought the 2.6GHz Quad, upgraded my RAM to 16GB and kept my Intel SSD.
I didn't run any "real" benchmark yet, just the test portion (Cube) of OpenGL Extension viewer. I have the Thunderbolt display.
With the Radeon 6630, I got around 390~ FPS windowed, around 500 FPS fullscreen.
With Intel HD 4000, I get 500~ windowed and about 750 FPS fullscreen.
Anyway, this small test don't mean too much, so I ran some games, and although I did not check the FPS (in both case) I must say that it's more fluid than it was before. I guess the 768 vs 256 graphic ram must help in this case.
One thing to note, on this page about the radeon:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6630M.43963.0.html
It says the memory bus is 128 bit, but in the 2011 minis, it's just 64 bit, so it's slower than a standard 6630m.
All in all I don't feel there is any downgrade in the GPU performance. For people running windows, my WEI for the Radeon was 5.2 and 6.4, and with the HD 4000 it's now 5.9 and 6.5.
Also, completely unrelated but expected, when you install windows it's now using AHCI instead of IDE, and my SSD score went from 7.0 to 7.6
I bought the 2.6GHz Quad, upgraded my RAM to 16GB and kept my Intel SSD.
I didn't run any "real" benchmark yet, just the test portion (Cube) of OpenGL Extension viewer. I have the Thunderbolt display.
With the Radeon 6630, I got around 390~ FPS windowed, around 500 FPS fullscreen.
With Intel HD 4000, I get 500~ windowed and about 750 FPS fullscreen.
Anyway, this small test don't mean too much, so I ran some games, and although I did not check the FPS (in both case) I must say that it's more fluid than it was before. I guess the 768 vs 256 graphic ram must help in this case.
One thing to note, on this page about the radeon:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6630M.43963.0.html
It says the memory bus is 128 bit, but in the 2011 minis, it's just 64 bit, so it's slower than a standard 6630m.
All in all I don't feel there is any downgrade in the GPU performance. For people running windows, my WEI for the Radeon was 5.2 and 6.4, and with the HD 4000 it's now 5.9 and 6.5.
Also, completely unrelated but expected, when you install windows it's now using AHCI instead of IDE, and my SSD score went from 7.0 to 7.6
Last edited: