Mac mini 2014 thunderbolt bus

[FirDerrig33]

Hello all,

I am using my 2014 Mac mini as my primary device now and I have a question regarding I/O bandwidth and bus speeds. Does anyone know if the thunderbolt ports and the HDMI ports are all on the same bus? I'm wondering if having a display connected via HDMI instead of TB-HDMI/DP would increase data xfer speeds or not?

 

[apostolosdt]

Interesting question; I'd like to hear about it myself. On mine, I never attached any ext item on the HDMI port. No reason, it just happened.

 

[FirDerrig33]

Interesting question; I'd like to hear about it myself. On mine, I never attached any ext item on the HDMI port. No reason, it just happened.

Yeah I think it's a good question and I'm just hoping that someone in the world has tried it. Since the mini can output to HDMI via USB, then I could potentially use the "slower" ports to run displays and the faster ones to run storage.

I think just as Mac user for so long even during PPC Mac days, I just look at the "normal" ports for display output and use those, LOL.

 

[PaulD-UK]

The HDMI port only supports one up to 1080p monitor, but the TB2 ports support two at up to 1600p, like the 30” Apple Cinema Display.
Since the video data has to share the data lines when using TB2, it is going to affect data transfer bandwidth.

There is only one TB2 bus for the two ports, and the Mac mini only supports two monitors from its three ports, I think it likely that the HDMI port connects to the GPU not the TB2 DP signal?

In which case that would allow the TB2 bus to handle more data bandwidth?

But what on earth are you doing with a 10 year old computer that is going to saturate the available data bandwidth and be a problem???

 

[FirDerrig33]

The HDMI port only supports one up to 1080p monitor, but the TB2 ports support two at up to 1600p, like the 30” Apple Cinema Display.
Since the video data has to share the data lines when using TB2, it is going to affect data transfer bandwidth.

There is only one TB2 bus for the two ports, and the Mac mini only supports two monitors from its three ports, I think it likely that the HDMI port connects to the GPU not the TB2 DP signal?

In which case that would allow the TB2 bus to handle more data bandwidth?

But what on earth are you doing with a 10 year old computer that is going to saturate the available data bandwidth and be a problem???

I know it comes as only all to support 2 displays through the TB/HDMI ports depending on how you connect the displays, but this machine can also output USB to HDMI and can also airplay mirror/use as separate display. I'm just wondering if maybe using the HDMI and a USB to HDMI would be beneficial.

AND LOL to your question at the end. I'm not doing anything crazy and not going to saturate the bandwidth or anything and probably not even come close to it. The question was merely out of curiosity. My goal is to increase data transfer speeds; therefore limiting the use of the system memory to maximize what the computer can do while it's still alive and useable. I will eventually switch out the 1TB HDD in there for a SSD and use it for storage and then move my TM backups to a TB/USB C external device.

If everything is copied and moved faster, then that should hypothetically decrease the overall demand on the system; therefore resulting in a smoother experience for a potentially longer lifespan. Especially when I only have 8GB available memory, well...6.5GB if 'm using all max VRAM with connected displays and things.

 

[PaulD-UK]

As long as your monitors aren't using TB2 video streams, then you should have the full TB2 data bandwidth available.
But no USB video solution allows the same quality as TB2's DP 1.2, and the mini's HDMI 1.4 only works with lower resolution monitors

Using TB2 to get high bandwidth speeds that SSDs are capable of nowadays is another can of worms.....