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cfurlin

Suspended
Original poster
Jun 14, 2011
396
770
I have a late 2012 Mac mini with an Intel HD 4000. I upgraded the machine to 16GB RAM and this increased the VRAM to 768M.

I upgraded to Mavericks today and now my machine is reporting 1024M VRAM.

Any ideas why this changed?
 

COrocket

macrumors 6502
Dec 9, 2012
485
12
It is probably a tweak to improve graphics performance. I just checked my mini which only has 4GB of RAM and it has been increased to 1024MB with 10.9 and it was listed at 512MB with 10.8
 

jbarley

macrumors 601
Jul 1, 2006
4,023
1,893
Vancouver Island
It is probably a tweak to improve graphics performance. I just checked my mini which only has 4GB of RAM and it has been increased to 1024MB with 10.9 and it was listed at 512MB with 10.8

When watching the live Apple presentation today, Vram was one of the things mentioned. Apparently Mavericks adjusts it on the fly to match the systems needs. Cook said on a low graphics text only application it could get set as low as 128MB, while on a graphics intensive application Mavericks will grab a large chunk of memory.
 

570934

Suspended
May 3, 2011
710
107
I'm actually looking forward to this on my base mini. Hoping to see some decent perf improvements.
 

anotherkenny

macrumors newbie
Mar 16, 2011
19
0
Gaming on my 2011 discrete graphics mini is markedly improved. half life 2 on the display port monitor with an hd movie playing on the TV is flawless, with no mouse interference because of the better multiple display control.

I have 8 GB physical ram, am physically using 6.93, and have 8.35 virtually
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
28,448
12,565
Just another reference point:

I have the 2012 Mini, i7, 2.6ghz, 4gb installed RAM.

With 10.8.5, it shows 512mb installed VRAM.

When I boot from my external drive containing an experimental copy of Mavericks, it shows 1024mb VRAM.
 

stukdog

macrumors 6502
Oct 20, 2004
318
521
Indeed, this is an upgrade in Mavericks as written in the Macminicolo blog. It should help pretty extensively with more of the processes being pushed to the GPU.
 

Pecans

macrumors member
Jul 31, 2012
41
0
Is this only on the 2012 mini? My base 2011 mini with 16gb of ram still shows only 512MB of VRAM even when I'm in a game.
 

Oujmik

macrumors member
Oct 23, 2012
74
0
Has anyone done any benchmarking pre and post update? I was too excited about finally being able to get a brand new apple product (would like the new iPhone, MBP and iPad, but can't justify the price of even one!) so I'd installed it before I thought to take any benchmarks in ML.
 

Negritude

macrumors 6502
Jul 14, 2011
297
199
I have a 2011 Mini (HD3000) with 8GB, and the RAM is still at 512MB for me, so this is only for HD4000 and later.
 

willdog123

macrumors newbie
May 14, 2013
20
0
Australia
Late 2012 Mac Mini + Seiki 4k

with Mavericks can a late 2012 mac mini with hd4000 output 4k @30hz to a seiki 4k tv through,

either the thunderbolt port or hdmi port??

your answer would be greatly appreciated.
 

mikochu

macrumors member
Jul 24, 2011
33
0
with Mavericks can a late 2012 mac mini with hd4000 output 4k @30hz to a seiki 4k tv through,

either the thunderbolt port or hdmi port??

your answer would be greatly appreciated.

I don't believe so. I don't think any Macs on the market right now do 4K... I think only the new Mac Pro (December) can push 4K.
 

ActionableMango

macrumors G3
Sep 21, 2010
9,612
6,907
with Mavericks can a late 2012 mac mini with hd4000 output 4k @30hz to a seiki 4k tv through,

either the thunderbolt port or hdmi port??

your answer would be greatly appreciated.

Nope.

Intel has managed to demo HD4000 with 4K support through some funky hardware configurations and specialized Windows drivers, but nothing you can do at home with a standard PC or Mac.
 
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