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1920x1200 on a mac mini?

kingcrowing

kingcrowing

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 24, 2004
718
0
Burlington, VT
According to apple, the mac mini will run an LCD at 1920x1200 through DVI (a 23" ACD or 24" Dell) so I know its possible, but will it run like crap? I know 32Mb isnt much at all, but would be be better to get a mini and run the LCD or an older powermac (or upgraded cube, Cube=$250, 1.7GHz G4=$300+128MB GPU=$100) and If I did get an older machine, what kind of graphics card would I need to do Digital DVI @ 1920x1200?
 
kingcrowing said:
According to apple, the mac mini will run an LCD at 1920x1200 through DVI (a 23" ACD or 24" Dell) so I know its possible, but will it run like crap?
Click to expand...
No - a 1920 x 1200 screen at 32 bit colour needs 9mB of video memory. You only need to worry about a Mini's video capability if you're a gamer looking for high frame rates, or into 3D apps.
And the latest minis apparently have 64mB of video memory according to this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/151676/
 
I would be doing no gaming on it at all (I'd be using the display for an xbox 360 as well...) so I just want smooth framerates etc. while in the OS, possibly doing Photoshop, but that would be it, and light use at that. I think I might wait out to see if I can get a 1.5GHz mini+64MB vRAM, thanks a lot for that other thread
 
stevep said:
No - a 1920 x 1200 screen at 32 bit colour needs 9mB of video memory. You only need to worry about a Mini's video capability if you're a gamer looking for high frame rates, or into 3D apps.
And the latest minis apparently have 64mB of video memory according to this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/151676/
Click to expand...

That might hold true if you're talking about a 2d rendering. However with Quartz Extreme, the entire desktop is rendered in 3d, with each window using up its own texture. Not to mention that OSX is double buffered, which means twice the VRAM usage. In my experience, 32mb quickly runs out at 1280x1024. Will the mini run 1920x1200? Sure. But you might find something like expose to be more choppy than you'd like. Photoshop won't be affected, though.
 
Jigglelicious said:
That might hold true if you're talking about a 2d rendering. However with Quartz Extreme, the entire desktop is rendered in 3d, with each window using up its own texture. Not to mention that OSX is double buffered, which means twice the VRAM usage. In my experience, 32mb quickly runs out at 1280x1024. Will the mini run 1920x1200? Sure. But you might find something like expose to be more choppy than you'd like. Photoshop won't be affected, though.
Click to expand...
Yep, there are limits. I'd say that a Mini running 10.3.9 (no fancy OS X eye-candy) just for P/shop and Illustrator would be fine. If you want to run more then you're a bit too close to the limit to be comfortable. Its not just about the amount of VRAM, as you quite rightly point out.
 
Half a year ago I saw a mini with a 23"ACD at a local Apple store. It was running very smooth, first time I saw the mini too. Very beautifull machine and was running much faster then I had expected. The Ram was probably maxed out. To make a long story short, it runned the 23" ACD very nice! You could always try one out at your local Apple store.
 
Hmmm, maybe there's something wrong with my mini, but I'm definitely not happy with the Quartz Extreme performance even on 1280x1024. ;) Things like Exposé are smooth, ONLY if I have no icons on the desktop, and when the Dock is set to hide. Making the resolution lower makes a big difference in performance, but who does that with an LCD display. :eek:
 
my 19" crt can do 2048x1536 and when I had it on my mini I was able to get that res. no problem. 19x12 will be no problem. keep in mind though that with a higher res. you will get slower 2D. quartz extreme helps with that anyway.
 
kingcrowing said:
According to apple, the mac mini will run an LCD at 1920x1200 through DVI (a 23" ACD or 24" Dell) so I know its possible, but will it run like crap? I know 32Mb isnt much at all, but would be be better to get a mini and run the LCD or an older powermac (or upgraded cube, Cube=$250, 1.7GHz G4=$300+128MB GPU=$100) and If I did get an older machine, what kind of graphics card would I need to do Digital DVI @ 1920x1200?
Click to expand...

to directly answer your question.. what you should do is get the 599 mini because you are sure to get a 1.5ghz with 64mb vram. resolution and colour depth are most dependant on the amount of vram you have.

unless you do professional video, graphic or audio work you don't need a powermac.
 
jayscheuerle said:
Be prepared for some TINY text in applications. You think the palettes in Photoshop are tough to read NOW...
Click to expand...

This would depend on size of the monitor, no? I mean 1920x1200 on 23" LCD and 1680x1080 on 20" have almost exactly the same DPI (and resulting font size).
 
Hi,

I run a 1.42GHz / 1GB RAM Mac Mini with a 20.1" widescreen LCD monitor at 1680x1050.

Exposé is perfectly fine 90% of the time. If I have, say, a dozen windows open, it's sometimes a little stuttery, but I've never had to wait for Exposé to work. It's certainly not noticeably worse than when I used it with a CRT monitor at 1152x864.

Moving windows around, resizing and minimising, and the dashboard fade in/out are absolutely fine. The quality's gorgeous via DVI too.

I've read (on macosxhints.com I believe) that having many icons on the desktop can cause a bit of UI slowdown, but that's not something I've experienced -- I keep my desktop tidy :)
 
The mini works great at 1900x1200. Expose/dashboard animations are a little laggy, but that's to be expected with the mini's pathetic video controller.
 
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