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Is it possible to upgrade graphics card of the 2011 mac mini?
- Thread starter aamirgigani
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Have you ever heard of Google? Its a new search engine, they started up only 14 years ago?
there is a thunderbolt to pcie solution - it's not 100% fully compliant with gfx cards under MAC OS yet, but apparently works unders Windows. I seem to recall support for pcie gpu under MAC OS was being worked on... can't find anything on their website to suggest this anymore 
Give it 6 months and you may have your answer!
Nox
Give it 6 months and you may have your answer!
Nox
Thanks for the sarcasm. Don't you think I've already to google some benchmarks for your dinosaur? Unfortunately since the ones I've found are based on games made in 2006, it's difficult to gauge a good comparison. You're the one claiming that your card is awesome. The burden of proof rests on you.
3DMark 06 is a pretty good benchmark. I don't take 3DMark 11 'cos it heavily depends on the optimization, which is nowhere close to ideal today, and the HD3000 would be 6 times faster than the HD6630, which doesn't make sense.
NVidia GT 320M: 4365
Intel HD 3000: 3517
Radeon HD 6630M: 6908
NVidia GT 640M (possible for next Mini): 10189
The game benchmarks do reflect the 3DMark 06 pretty accurately. You can look at game benchmarks for the HD 6630M here: http://www.notebookcheck.com/AMD-Radeon-HD-6630M.43839.0.html
NVidia GT 320M: 4365
Intel HD 3000: 3517
Radeon HD 6630M: 6908
NVidia GT 640M (possible for next Mini): 10189
The game benchmarks do reflect the 3DMark 06 pretty accurately. You can look at game benchmarks for the HD 6630M here: http://www.notebookcheck.com/AMD-Radeon-HD-6630M.43839.0.html
Just out of curiosity, why do you believe they would opt for the 640M? Or is it just wishful thinking?
Cheers for that irrelevancy, German Chris.
Why don't you comment on posts that you can actually answer...
To the OP - might be worth searching on Youtube to see if people have made videos of playing the games you like using the MacMini - that's what I do if I want to see if my MBA can play a game I'm thinking of getting.
See German Chris ----> answering in a helpful way
First, the 640M uses just a little bit more energy than the 6630M - and less than the 7750M. Second, Apple usually wants to advertise "up to 2 times the speed of the previous generation" - which is something they might be able to do with the 640M. You just have to compare games that run generally smoother on NVidia chips compared to AMD ones, and you are close to 2 times the performance.
If they use anything slower, they won't be able to market it as "really faster". And as the CPU can't be made much faster (2.0 GHz in Mini Server 2011 vs. 2.1 GHz in Mini 2012) and most other features are already in the Mini (TB, HDMI, Quad-Core, Wifi, Bluetooth 4.0, ...) it's the only thing they really could make a difference. Apart from building in a SSD as standard, of course - but I don't think that's going to happen this year.
Incorrect.
BF3 at 1080p on my mid range mac mini with 6630 on my 46" Sony is pretty damn sweet!
Last edited:
Incorrect.
BF3 at 1080p on my mid range mac mini with 6630 on my 46" Sony is pretty damn sweet!
what setting medium or high?
I've used both of my Mac Mini's for gaming. Both of them are perfectly adequate. Are they gaming powerhouses? No. Will they casually play the latest MMORPG or FPS that comes out? Yes.
The 6630M doesn't suck, but it isn't the greatest graphics chip. I currently have one of these and play swtor on it via windows 7 and bootcamp. It runs it at 30fps with everything on high except for shadows at 1920x1200 resolution. This is perfectly adequate to me. Even my old mac mini with 9400M ran swtor fairly well with all settings on low at 1920x1200.
The 6630M doesn't suck, but it isn't the greatest graphics chip. I currently have one of these and play swtor on it via windows 7 and bootcamp. It runs it at 30fps with everything on high except for shadows at 1920x1200 resolution. This is perfectly adequate to me. Even my old mac mini with 9400M ran swtor fairly well with all settings on low at 1920x1200.
Graphics card replacement?
Hi,
Please forgive me I am no genius when it comes to computers, so if my language is a inaccurate just try to understand, please.
I have sold an old minimac power pc G4 (2005) with upgraded memory from iro 500, up to 1.5gb running Leopard. It is a good little machine, with nice aluminium keyboard and monitor. It uses wifi fine, but it slows down quite quickly if you have too many programmes open.
I sold it for £100 about 6 months ago, and now apparently the graphics card has broken (??) or at least when you turn it on, the screen is pixilated, all the icons are there, and you can watch the pointer travel across the screen but it and the icons are hard to see behind a big smudge of pixels.
So a non mac computer shop said it was the graphics card, and given the age of the machine and the cost to replace it, it might not be worth fixing. Did not get an idea of a price to fix it unfortunately.
Does any body here have any opinions, maybe you might suggest how much it would cost... or if it was worth doing? I know it is an old machine, but it is quite a cute piece of kit and it would be sad to just get rid of it.
Thanks in advance.
Hi,
Please forgive me I am no genius when it comes to computers, so if my language is a inaccurate just try to understand, please.
I have sold an old minimac power pc G4 (2005) with upgraded memory from iro 500, up to 1.5gb running Leopard. It is a good little machine, with nice aluminium keyboard and monitor. It uses wifi fine, but it slows down quite quickly if you have too many programmes open.
I sold it for £100 about 6 months ago, and now apparently the graphics card has broken (??) or at least when you turn it on, the screen is pixilated, all the icons are there, and you can watch the pointer travel across the screen but it and the icons are hard to see behind a big smudge of pixels.
So a non mac computer shop said it was the graphics card, and given the age of the machine and the cost to replace it, it might not be worth fixing. Did not get an idea of a price to fix it unfortunately.
Does any body here have any opinions, maybe you might suggest how much it would cost... or if it was worth doing? I know it is an old machine, but it is quite a cute piece of kit and it would be sad to just get rid of it.
Thanks in advance.
This seems like a new topic to this old thread, but why not.
The imac g4's graphics is integrated in the logicboard and you have to replace that for a fix if the graphicscard is failing.
It sure is a design legend but i would not spend money on it.
I think you got the numbers wrong, the Radeon HD 6630M is listed 684 which is more than quite the double figure for the Intel HD 3000; Intel HD 4000 (MacMini 2012) is listed with 456