Mac Mini or iMac?

[Ace134blue]

The new Mini has HDMI 1.4 which can drive up to 3840x2160. Don't know has Apple limited it though

Zero point of running it at that high of a resolution. With 256mb vram the harddrive will run out of framebuffer and anything except the desktop will slow down to a crawl. Im pretty sure they limit it to 2560 anyways

 

[Ace134blue]

At the current time, this question may be better worded as "what can the Mini do that the iMac can't." Assuming we're comparing the Mini to the base 21.5" iMac, the biggest difference (IMHO) is the Geforce 320M in the Mini. It is a TREMENDOUS improvement over the 9400M! So, while the iMac has a faster processor, the Mini has the edge in graphics. Personally, I'd pick the Mini and a nice, large monitor.



No thanks on the i3 if that means I'd be stuck with the TERRIBLE Intel HD Graphics. Unless there's room for a dedicated card, I'll keep my C2D, thanks. The combo of 2.4 C2D and Geforce 320M in the my MBP are plenty fast.

No, adding an intel gpu is on the die of the processor of itself so no it wont take up more space.

 

[Hellhammer]

Zero point of running it at that high of a resolution. With 256mb vram the harddrive will run out of framebuffer and anything except the desktop will slow down to a crawl. Im pretty sure they limit it to 2560 anyways

Is there a display with that resolution? No, unless you pay 10 000$. Apple says the HDMI support only 1920x1200 but there is a good chance that it support more thus, Apple says that 320M will use minimum of 256MB so that indicated that it can actually use more if needed

HDMI port with support for up to 1920-by-1200 resolution

Memory available to Mac OS X may vary depending on graphics needs. Minimum graphics memory usage is 256MB.

http://www.apple.com/macmini/specs.html

 

[Ace134blue]

"Memory available to Mac OS X may vary depending on graphics needs. Minimum graphics memory usage is 256MB. "
Yeah i know that, it take 256 out of the main ram, it doesn't even have its own dedicated ram. You cant tell it to use 512mb when playing tf2. It 'will' run out of memory if on a res like 1080p. I had an old mb with 256 shared with main memory and it ran out of framebuffer using an external monitor.

hdmi supports 2560x1600(well atleast every other dedicated gpu does) but i bet they say that because of the low amount of vram. Now, the question is would it be possible to allocate more memory to the gpu through a registry hack...