Mac Mini Disk Speed Tests + T3 bus's + Q&A!

[jrlcopy]

Hey OP, how is that i7 holding up? Have you pushed it a little bit harder? I’ve heard it overheats, can get to 100 and then throttle little bit, but it is mainly just under 100 when pushed to the limit.

My fortnite temps and handbrake temps, handbreak throttled @ 3.4 with the high temps, it might be an overall programming thing, it's weird that fornite was able to ramp up to 4.2ghz around 91F, but only 5 or 6 and it slammed the frequency to 3.4.

Overall my encoding is done with MediaEncoder so I can use the GPU.

 

[StellarVixen]

My fortnite temps and handbrake temps, handbreak throttled @ 3.4 with the high temps, it might be an overall programming thing, it's weird that fornite was able to ramp up to 4.2ghz around 91F, but only 5 or 6 and it slammed the frequency to 3.4.

Overall my encoding is done with MediaEncoder so I can use the GPU.


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Fortnite is horrible on Mac. Were you playing on Mac or Windoze?

I went to the eGPU forums, and I’ve heard few people that eGPU performance with Mini is amazing, some are getting better performance than with laptops. What’s your experience?

 

[CurtisBilly]

My fortnite temps and handbrake temps, handbreak throttled @ 3.4 with the high temps, it might be an overall programming thing, it's weird that fornite was able to ramp up to 4.2ghz around 91F, but only 5 or 6 and it slammed the frequency to 3.4.

Overall my encoding is done with MediaEncoder so I can use the GPU.


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On your second plot your core usage is pegged at 100. I would guess if you would have had Activity Monitor running it would have shown all 6 cores and 6 virtual cores (all 12 threads) would have shown near 100% utilization. The other sustained numbers in that second plot:
~65w
~<100 deg C
~ 3.3 to 3.4 GHz vs. 3.2 base clock
are not disappointing to me as an owner of same machine.

 

[Upgrader]

So far so good, I need to pull actual numbers, however before I had the eGPU hooked up, the Mac Mini's case was HOT, like Laptop burning hot, but once the eGPU was installed and I guess took a bunch of the work off of the CPU, it's been pretty cool. I ran a bunch of transcoding tasks last night and haven't it was cool to the touch. I'll pull temp numbers this weekend.

Thanks for this insight. It concerns me to think that without an eGPU the Mini will get really hot. Makes me reconsider a purchase as I’ll need to run 2 x 2560x1440 displays and connect my cMP over Ethernet to use a media drive that will create lots of prolonged I/O. I don’t necessarily need an eGPU and was hoping the onboard mini graphics would cover me without straining the machine. Not 100% keen on the extra spend there.

In combination with the bus sharing info earlier in this thread across all those ports I’m now tempted to wait for the Mac Pro as I’m hoping it will have more PCIe connection and bandwidth capability.

 

[plucky duck]

Looks like the internal SSD is slightly better than the Samsung 970 Pro in the write department. Does booting off a thunderbolt/usb3 enclosure work?

 

[jrlcopy]

Thanks for this insight. It concerns me to think that without an eGPU the Mini will get really hot. Makes me reconsider a purchase as I’ll need to run 2 x 2560x1440 displays and connect my cMP over Ethernet to use a media drive that will create lots of prolonged I/O. I don’t necessarily need an eGPU and was hoping the onboard mini graphics would cover me without straining the machine. Not 100% keen on the extra spend there.

In combination with the bus sharing info earlier in this thread across all those ports I’m now tempted to wait for the Mac Pro as I’m hoping it will have more PCIe connection and bandwidth capability.

Yeah, running 2 x 2560x1440 displays would be a lot for an intel gpu as it is. I'd say it depends on how 'graphical' your work is. I LOVE my setup right now with this and plan on keeping it, if everything didn't pan out with the specs I would have returned it during the 14 day window.

Honestly a 'new' Mac Pro is easily 6+ months away, It's going to cost $1k more easily, so you're paying $2500-$3500 without a display which we will ALL complain about. I plan on using the Mac Mini for either long term, or until something new comes out, and then I'll sell it for 200-300$ loss. Which isn't bad for basically a '6 month rental fee'.

The bus thing doesn't bother me, I have the eGPU on one bus, and a 2TB SSD on the second bus, and then a mouse and keyboard in the USB 3.0 ports. This thing is just shy of my 18 core iMac Pro at work, so I'm VERY happy for home use.

 

[Upgrader]

With the right combination of resolutions, two daisy chained monitors. Or an eGPU/NVMe daisy chained to a monitor. I know, it’s a bit odd.
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Yes, if you use the external ports on the enclosure you have to share the PCIe lanes with both the enclosure AND the stuff plugged into it.

Better to plug the USB stuff in directly to the Mac in this case.

So to clarify, are you saying that the PCIe bandwidth from the 4 x TB ports on the Mini is the equivalent of being able to use just the one x16 PCIe slot on my cMP? Do all 4 TB ports share the same bus back to the CPU?

And from that, if I daisychain my two 2650x1440 from one TB port, will plugging in say an external NVMe SSD to another TB port see a performance hit?
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Yeah, running 2 x 2560x1440 displays would be a lot for an intel gpu as it is. I'd say it depends on how 'graphical' your work is. I LOVE my setup right now with this and plan on keeping it, if everything didn't pan out with the specs I would have returned it during the 14 day window.

Honestly a 'new' Mac Pro is easily 6+ months away, It's going to cost $1k more easily, so you're paying $2500-$3500 without a display which we will ALL complain about. I plan on using the Mac Mini for either long term, or until something new comes out, and then I'll sell it for 200-300$ loss. Which isn't bad for basically a '6 month rental fee'.

The bus thing doesn't bother me, I have the eGPU on one bus, and a 2TB SSD on the second bus, and then a mouse and keyboard in the USB 3.0 ports. This thing is just shy of my 18 core iMac Pro at work, so I'm VERY happy for home use.

I’m just reading the Apple specs and they claim to be able to power 3 x 4K displays but I’m guessing that means a performance hit on the other ports. I use After Effects so the work I do is very graphical with lots of previewing, playback and prolonged media drive I/O and lots of read/write to the cache folder on my boot disk.

My plan was to try the 3.2ghz i7/1TB/64gb RAM mainly for the increased single core performance. The vast majority of day to day operations in After Effects are single core. The Xeon’s in the cMP perform ok but when i’ve previously worked on even a late 2012 iMac I’ve noticed the speed increase when moving around the interface. It would be great to get some faster modern processors in the Mini as a master machine and hook my cMP up via ethernet, not only as a render slave but to continue to use my PCIe SSD drive to work to/from. If the Mini wasn’t up to it it could replace my 2008 MBP at home.

Interesting to hear the Mini performance rivals the iMac Pro.

 

[Mavimao]

My fortnite temps and handbrake temps, handbreak throttled @ 3.4 with the high temps, it might be an overall programming thing, it's weird that fornite was able to ramp up to 4.2ghz around 91F, but only 5 or 6 and it slammed the frequency to 3.4.

Overall my encoding is done with MediaEncoder so I can use the GPU.


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Just a dumb question but would Fortnite play alright without an eGPU?

 

[rmdeluca]

So to clarify, are you saying that the PCIe bandwidth from the 4 x TB ports on the Mini is the equivalent of being able to use just the one x16 PCIe slot on my cMP?

No. 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes are available over the Mini's TB ports. 4 PCIe lanes per TB controller, of which there are two. Note: the aggregate bandwidth of x8 PCIe 3.0 lanes is close to the same as one x16 PCIe 2.0 slot in your cMP, but they aren't usable that way.

Do all 4 TB ports share the same bus back to the CPU?

No. The two ports per controller share that controller's 4 PCIe lanes back to the CPU.

If a USB device is plugged into the TB port, that USB device is then internally connected to the USB multiplexer/PCH, which is then connected to the CPU.

If a Display Port device is plugged into a TB port, it is allocated one of the GPU's two available TB Display Port links.

And from that, if I daisychain my two 2650x1440 from one TB port, will plugging in say an external NVMe SSD to another TB port see a performance hit?

No. Display Port bandwidth utilized by one port on a controller does not reduce PCIe or USB bandwidth available for the controller on a different port.

I’m just reading the Apple specs and they claim to be able to power 3 x 4K displays but I’m guessing that means a performance hit on the other ports.

No. Two of the displays can be fed via the TB ports. The third display has to be connected to the HDMI port. Again, Display Port bandwidth used on port(s) does not affect the bandwidth available to the OTHER ports.

 

[Upgrader]

No. 8 PCIe lanes are available over the Mini's TB ports. 4 PCIe lanes per TB controller, of which there are two.



No. The two ports per controller share that controller's 4 PCIe lanes back to the CPU.

If a USB device is plugged into the TB port, that USB device is then internally connected to the USB multiplexer/PCH, which is then connected to the CPU.

If a Display Port device is plugged into a TB port, it is allocated one of the GPU's two available TB Display Port links.



No. Display Port bandwidth utilized by one port on a controller does not reduce PCIe or USB bandwidth available for the controller on a different port.



No. Two of the displays can be fed via the TB ports. The third display has to be connected to the HDMI port. Again, Display Port bandwidth used on port(s) does not affect the bandwidth available to the OTHER ports.

Thank you! Great insight. I don’t think my assumptions have ever been more wrong in one post.

Good news though is that daisy chaining two 2650x1440 displays will be well within the capabilities of the Mini - no need for the extra eGPU spend.