Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Mac Mini 2018 less throttling with E-gpu?

mykidisluke

mykidisluke

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 29, 2017
15
23
My understanding is that the Mac Mini 2018 throttles a lot and never reaches the theoretical 4+ Ghz abilities of the CPU. Seems to be a theme with modern macs where higher CPU's are pointless in many use cases.

If you use an EGpu with a mid-range graphics card, does that cool the case down and facilitate higher processor clocks?

Does a i3 Quad Core with a reasonable EGpu beat a i5 Hex Core without? Is i7 EVER worth it? I'd love to see a review where these scenario are tested.

Has anyone tried this?
 
Not entirely true...There are threads on here demonstrating 1-4 cores on an i7 hitting the specified max turbos under sustained use. It is true, however, that the 6 core turbo only hits around 4.1Ghz instead of the specced 4.3 GHz 6-core turbo speed. Potentially due to power and/or cooling constraints.

Note that I expect performance would be impacted much more if you were also pushing the iGPU hard at the same time. So in that case, yes, an eGPU ought to help.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ploki
mykidisluke said:
My understanding is that the Mac Mini 2018 throttles a lot and never reaches the theoretical 4+ Ghz abilities of the CPU. Seems to be a theme with modern macs where higher CPU's are pointless in many use cases.

If you use an EGpu with a mid-range graphics card, does that cool the case down and facilitate higher processor clocks?

Does a i3 Quad Core with a reasonable EGpu beat a i5 Hex Core without? Is i7 EVER worth it? I'd love to see a review where these scenario are tested.

Has anyone tried this?
Click to expand...

i7 has multithreading and i5 doesn't.

I mean, if you only use single core, than i3/i5 is better.. if you value multicore performance its a nobrainer, i3 and i5 will never outrun the i7.

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-hyperthreading-71150.html
 
I feel like every week someone posts something along the lines of “is the i7 ever worth it?” Or “I’ve heard the i7 thermal throttles worse than the i5”.

There’s tons of threads that talk about this in detail and compare the various CPU’s. I suggest browsing through this forum and reading them. There’s a lot of good information and even some benchmarks.

An eGPU would only really help the cpu temps if you’re doing GPU intensive tasks. For my work (audio production), an eGPU doesn’t add any benefit to my workload.

Here’s a great starting point! https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2018-mini-cpu-speeds-explained-i3-vs-i5-vs-i7.2155878/
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: F-Train
Spectrum said:
Why do you think that is? Is there a CPU task in activity monitor that is in charge of the eGPU?
Click to expand...

I agree with @Jorbanead and I figure that on the subject of throttling the horse has already been flogged to death several times over. May he Rest in Peace.

I just wanted to point out that running an external GPU is not CPU cost free.

Beyond that, I don't agree that the facts stated in the first post are indeed facts, and I don't see any upside in getting into a debate on this subject.

In a way, a pity, because you raise an interesting question. I have another, more powerful, GPU coming on Thursday, and I may try out both paying particular attention to Activity Monitor, as you suggest. If anything comes of it, and you are interested, I'd be delighted to send you a personal message.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dr. Stealth
F-Train said:
I agree with @Jorbanead and I figure that on the subject of throttling the horse has already been flogged to death several times over. May he Rest in Peace.

I just wanted to point out that running an external GPU is not CPU cost free.

Beyond that, I don't agree that the facts stated in the first post are indeed facts, and I don't see any upside in getting into a debate on this subject.

In a way, a pity, because you raise an interesting question. I have another, more powerful, GPU coming on Thursday, and I may try out both paying particular attention to Activity Monitor, as you suggest. If anything comes of it, and you are interested, I'd be delighted to send you a personal message.
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1544581611][/doublepost]I’d certainly be interested. I wish intel was more consistent on the meanings of i3, i5,i7 and so on in regards to whI hope ones have hyperthreading etc.
 
F-Train said:
I agree with @Jorbanead and I figure that on the subject of throttling the horse has already been flogged to death several times over. May he Rest in Peace.

I just wanted to point out that running an external GPU is not CPU cost free.

Beyond that, I don't agree that the facts stated in the first post are indeed facts, and I don't see any upside in getting into a debate on this subject.

In a way, a pity, because you raise an interesting question. I have another, more powerful, GPU coming on Thursday, and I may try out both paying particular attention to Activity Monitor, as you suggest. If anything comes of it, and you are interested, I'd be delighted to send you a personal message.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised to hear that the CPU is hotter with the egpu connected, but is this only during idle? I'm curious if running a game, how hot a CPU using an eGPU would be vs a CPU using it's integrated gpu.

I had always assumed since the epgu offloaded something, the cpu would work less (even accounting thunderbolt overhead).
 
Cheapassmac said:
I'm surprised to hear that the CPU is hotter with the egpu connected, but is this only during idle? I'm curious if running a game, how hot a CPU using an eGPU would be vs a CPU using it's integrated gpu.

I had always assumed since the epgu offloaded something, the cpu would work less (even accounting thunderbolt overhead).
Click to expand...

I'm sending you a response by personal message. I don't want to get involved in a discussion about the larger issue raised in this thread.
 
In general terms, the CPU and GPU work together to push frames (FPS). With a slower GPU, the CPU is often idle waiting (blocking IO) on the GPU to do its part. With a faster GPU, the CPU does more work to keep up feeding frames to the GPU. Thus you see overall better performance from your system but it gets hotter doing it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back