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Discrete Graphics cards in Mac Mini?

You'll probably want the mini pci-express to pci-express 1x adapter as shown in the first post of this thread.

The mini pci-express slot only provides one lane for PCI-Express, so a converter to 16X will not mean that those cards will magically work in a 1X slot. Depending on the price of this adapter, I'd be willing to give this a try as already have a PCI-1x card to test with.
 
PCIe peripherals negotiate the maximum bandwidth of the bus. Since the MiniCard bus only supports PCIe x1, that's the maximum that the peripheral will work at. Having a x16 mechanical slot gives us the advantage of using any peripheral, since they would all physically fit. They wouldn't magically go faster, but they should work - if only at the x1 speed.

Some motherboard manufacturers actually supply their slots with no back end - and many have full sized x16 mechanical slots even though they have less then 16 lanes. The Mac Pro is a good example here.
 
Poor little integrated graphics sits on a bench in the park watching the other graphics cards play. A tear rolls down his circuit board. The other graphic cards just stand there and laugh.


Tis a tragedy. :(
 
toru173 said:
I emailed Orbit Micro (one of the companies that stocks other adapters made by the manufacturer we're interested in). The response is as follows:



This is good news! It means that even though they don't stock the exact part they can make it up for us.

Aprilfools1993, if you're still interested I suggest contacting Orbit Micro and talking to them about a custom adapter. Remember, you want to be able to plug a PCIe x1 card (or x16, if they will do that) into a MiniCard (or Mini-PCIe) bus. Use the example of plugging a raid card into a laptop, it ought to get your point across. Hopefully we'll have a working prototype soon!
Click to expand...

Good find, bro!
 
This is just like getting windows to boot on an intel mac when they first came out. Everyone tried to do it and when it was finally done albeit with a majore hack job apple comes out with a way to do it.

I think once we finally get it done the new mini with graphics card will arrive. Lets hope.
 
macenforcer said:
This is just like getting windows to boot on an intel mac when they first came out. Everyone tried to do it and when it was finally done albeit with a majore hack job apple comes out with a way to do it.

I think once we finally get it done the new mini with graphics card will arrive. Lets hope.
Click to expand...

hahaha ya know you're right. But its what the people want. Rumor has it, no more Mini. There could be a new Mac in the works, but I doubt it because that would take away from Mac Pro sales.
 
Have a look at the article I linked to in the first post. The effect on bandwidth will depend on the application and what you plug in. Raid cards, wifi, firewire/usb, PCIe sound cards etc should work at or near their full potential, as most of these cards only use a x1 link anyway. A graphics card may suffer from the reduced bandwidth, but my assumption is that even a crippled discrete graphics card will beat the onboard GMA950.

A perfect example is HDTV playback. The Apple TV uses a low-spec Intel chip but is still able to play back high quality HD signals because it uses the 7300Go gpu from NVidia. The gpu handles most of the HD decoding by itself. In our case, the Mini would be saved a lot of the processing. It would be able to play back HD content with no problems at all.

Another example is OpenGL support. It is my understand that the GMA950 has relatively poor OpenGL support. Ati cards, I understand, are much better in this department because they are able to process some of the OpenGL commands directly in hardware, instead of having the driver translate for them. This would free up the cpu and system ram for other things - sound, AI, etc.

Even if it turns out that a discrete GPU on a x1 PCIe link isn't as good as the onboard video (which I seriously doubt), we still have the potential to add far more peripherals to the mini then ever before. One could have a high-capacity server by using a RAID card and several disks, within the size of a shoebox! We could finally have Firewire 800, or turn the mini into a sweet little router with a 4xGbE card. I'm excited ^_^
 
toru173 said:
Even if it turns out that a discrete GPU on a x1 PCIe link isn't as good as the onboard video (which I seriously doubt), we still have the potential to add far more peripherals to the mini then ever before. One could have a high-capacity server by using a RAID card and several disks, within the size of a shoebox! We could finally have Firewire 800, or turn the mini into a sweet little router with a 4xGbE card. I'm excited ^_^
Click to expand...

ya, I'm kinda skeptical about a graphics card working but I want to find out if you can use other x1 pieces in there such as raid card and that type of thing.
 
if it works at all, then a graphics card has just as good a chance of working as a raid/ethernet/etc card. Drivers for the devices are of course are another matter, so more likely to get working under windows at first. A bit of hacking might yield some interesting results.

Did anyone get the price on that mini-pci express to PCI-E 1x adapter? If so, how much is it?
 
I'm still waiting for a reply from the company but my guess is that it won't be cheap. I estimate around the $70 - $100 ballpark, if this similar adapter is anything to go by. I'll confirm as soon as a get a reply from the company.

Assuming drivers become the stumbling block we could always try bootcamp - just to check if the mini recognises the devices. Aprilfools1993, do you have a specific expansion card that you'd like to try in it? A mac compatible one would probably eliminate the drivers issue, although I can give no guarantees.
 
A bit crazily priced videocard for these purposes, but I suppose if a) the mini-pci express adapter worked at all, b) had drivers for the card that worked in OSX , then it would probably work pretty well.
 
I have an email back from Orbit Micro. For a MiniCard to PCIe x16 adapter they want a minimum order of 100. No word on pricing.

I replied, asking them if they have anything similar available in single unit quantities. Hopefully this idea isn't lost.

That graphics card looks really good. I know there has been a lot of work don on non-standard drivers for graphics cards, so it may be that something like that will work well.
 
100? Hmm.. Wonder how friendly they are with their samples? :) Nobody would commit to a minimum order of even 100, without a sample.
 
I've never had much luck sampling from companies. Perhaps I could pass the ball to you?
 
I'll draft up and email and see what comes of it. PM me the details of with you have been in contact with so far.
 
negatv1 said:
I'll draft up and email and see what comes of it. PM me the details of with you have been in contact with so far.
Click to expand...

Done and done. Apparently they don't like custom orders with low volume. Hopefully we can sample some, as you suggested. If not, is it possible we could get someone (or some company) to sponsor us a few? For example, I think Other World Computing would be interested in stocking this adapter if the theory is proven correct. I'm sure a lot of other 3rd party manufacturers would also be keen to do something with it. It would sell like mad if you could package it in a nice external enclosure, with appropriate power supply. Does anyone have any contacts we can leverage? I might try the local Apple retailers again, I know at least one was interested in the idea when I pitched it to them to first time.
 
You know all apple has to really do is release a mini with a dock port on the bottom. THen sell a bottom half with a port on top that has pcie slots in it and the platform would freakin EXPLODE!

You could do anything with a mini then. Hard drives at full speed, graphics cards, you name it.

It would be a great stackable modular computing platform.
 
Well, unfortunately (but, fortunately for me) I will fall out of this race for a bit. I shelled out some doe for a T7200 Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GHz and just installed it! It freakin rocks! and now, I'm freakin BROKE! :)

I'll keep following this thread tho. I got the same e-mail. Mass quantities. But I think asking companies is a good idea. Hopefully they agree that its a good idea.
 
Even if we manage to get an adapter, find that it works, plug in a video card, and get that working - I don't believe that there would be any sort of market for such a thing. Lucky to sell 100 worldwide (for this purpose) that are needed to fulfill the minimum order.

Why? For one cost. An iMac is only a couple hundred dollars more, and you get the latest CPU, and discrete graphics.

Then there is the fact that most people just don't get it. They dont know why anyone would want to hack up something to do things it wasn't built to do. Seems like a good percent of Mac people aren't comfortable even opening their machines up to add memory, in fears of voiding their warranty, or breaking the machine entirely.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it. My mini is already frankenstein-ed out (relatively tastefully done eSATA modification (link), core2 CPU, etc. And I would throw all this of this contraption in a little Shuttle type case (g4 cube?) and would be totally digging it.
 
You may be right. I'm beginning to think this whole adventure is more trouble then it's worth. Still, I'll keep my eye out for the adapter - if I find it somewhere I'll let everyone here know.

Aprilfools1993: Well done! I hope you enjoy your perky new mini ^_^

Negatv1: That looks like a very cleanly done mod. I presume the mini runs quieter as well now?

To all, thank you for you help and I hope that one day Apple will give us the expansion options we desire, so we don't have to go hunting all over the web ^_^
 
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