A thought struck me just recently - why can't we have discrete graphics inside the mac mini? Two reasons. There isn't any space, and there's no way to connect it. To the first we could always mount the card outside the enclosure - I'm sure many of us here are able and willing to sacrifice the time needed to make that look pretty (or even the good looks) in order to get some better frame rates.
The second is more difficult to deal with. With a lot of thinking, though, I realised that the Airport card has to have an expansion bus of some sort. I had a look at pictures of the mini nude (here, labled "J") I recognised it as a mini PCI-e port. This is basically a PCI-e x1 port plus a usb port. Checking out the manufacturer's details for the 802.11n airport module (an Atheros card) confirmed this.
I went and checked out one of my favourite sites for bus adapters, http://www.adexelec.com/ and I found this:
This means that any PCI-e x1 card can be plugged into a mini PCI-e socket. With
this, also from them, one could conceivably use any graphics card on the market today.
Mechanically, they are now compatible. This article shows that it would also be electrically compatible, so long as the mechanical adapter would be able to supply sufficient power. Software? I don't know, but I'm quite sure that it would work under windows. Perhaps if the mac-specific cards were used, they would also be recognized by the mini?
I don't have a mini nor do I have the funds to try this out. I'm almost positive that it would work, but I don't know how much of a performance gain you would actually see. Certainly any of the hardware accelerated features of the card would be demonstrated, but would one be better off just using the integrated graphics?
At the very least, though, this would be an interesting hack. I hope someone tries it out ^_^
[size=+2]EDIT: Expansion cards work in the Mac Mini - Graphics cards can't be far behind! See this post.[/size] - How do I change the title of a thread to reflect this?
The second is more difficult to deal with. With a lot of thinking, though, I realised that the Airport card has to have an expansion bus of some sort. I had a look at pictures of the mini nude (here, labled "J") I recognised it as a mini PCI-e port. This is basically a PCI-e x1 port plus a usb port. Checking out the manufacturer's details for the 802.11n airport module (an Atheros card) confirmed this.
I went and checked out one of my favourite sites for bus adapters, http://www.adexelec.com/ and I found this:
This means that any PCI-e x1 card can be plugged into a mini PCI-e socket. With
this, also from them, one could conceivably use any graphics card on the market today.
Mechanically, they are now compatible. This article shows that it would also be electrically compatible, so long as the mechanical adapter would be able to supply sufficient power. Software? I don't know, but I'm quite sure that it would work under windows. Perhaps if the mac-specific cards were used, they would also be recognized by the mini?
I don't have a mini nor do I have the funds to try this out. I'm almost positive that it would work, but I don't know how much of a performance gain you would actually see. Certainly any of the hardware accelerated features of the card would be demonstrated, but would one be better off just using the integrated graphics?
At the very least, though, this would be an interesting hack. I hope someone tries it out ^_^
[size=+2]EDIT: Expansion cards work in the Mac Mini - Graphics cards can't be far behind! See this post.[/size] - How do I change the title of a thread to reflect this?