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New Mac Mini

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Re: New Mac Mini

#231

Post by tadfisher »

coder543 wrote: post #229
samwillis wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, in the same package as the CPU and GPU.

>>> Is the RAM and SSD upgradeable? >> Nope, soldered. > Nope, in the same package as the CPU and GPU. The SSD certainly isn't in the same package as the CPU and GPU, so your comment is simply wrong, given the question that was actually asked. Whether the RAM is on-package or not is irrelevant to the question asked further upthread. It is soldered. Neither the RAM nor the SSD can realistically be upgraded after the f…

The SSD controller is part of the SOC, so you're both half-right.

Re: New Mac Mini

#232

Post by smoldesu »

t3rabytes wrote: post #149
haunter wrote: post #128

>Dive into a multiplayer gaming session with SharePlay How many AA multiplayer games are available on Mac? Not streaming, no VM, no Wine/CrossOver. Legit playable games. I know Minecraft, WoW, Civ6, and CSGO. Probably there is more but clearly not the target of Apple and the devs either

No Man's Sky and a Resident Evil reissue are the two big ones currently that Apple is touting.

More-or-less this generation's Tomb Raider and Monument Valley, if you ask me. It's nice that Apple reaches out to AAA developers to prove that Metal ports aren't impossible, but it's a lost cause today. No Man's Sky and Resident Evil both work out-of-box on Linux without any intervention from their developers. Apple's efforts are entirely misplaced and it's obvious that they're going against the grain of the rest of the games industry.

I'd argue Apple shot themselves in the foot by depreciating 32-bit libraries as fast as they did. If they had Proton, the Macbooks could be enjoying the same surge in gaming popularity the Steam Deck has.

Re: New Mac Mini

#233

Post by lowercased »

johnvanommen wrote: post #144
isolli wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it realistic to have an external drive for photos that integrates seamlessly with the native Photos app?

I have a 1TB SSD connected to my Mac Mini M1 via USB3 and the speed is great. I have no complaints. It was about $80 from Amazon.

similar here - 2tb. partitioned it to 2 1tb drives - one as time machine backup for internal, and the other for 'extra' stuff.

Re: New Mac Mini

#234

Post by jimsmart »

cmatthias wrote: post #187
jimsmart wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, with Apple's new kit here, the RAM isn't simply some external chip soldered to the main board, it's actually on-die with the CPU silicon (and everything else in that silicon: GPU, memory controllers, etc). So yes, arguably there are fewer parts (just one), but in the event of e.g. some bad RAM during manufacture, it's far more costly to throw out the chip containing that bad RAM.

I don't think this is correct. https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/understanding-apples-un... is an article which describes the architecture. It's not on-die, it's next to the CPU, basically as close as it could physically possibly be without being on the die. Here's a photo of an M1 CPU: https://www.techinreal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2feddf... Those chips on the right side are LPDDR4x chips (which you can ve…

Thanks for the correction, appreciated.

Re: New Mac Mini

#235

Post by jimsmart »

jeffbee wrote: post #181
jimsmart wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, with Apple's new kit here, the RAM isn't simply some external chip soldered to the main board, it's actually on-die with the CPU silicon (and everything else in that silicon: GPU, memory controllers, etc). So yes, arguably there are fewer parts (just one), but in the event of e.g. some bad RAM during manufacture, it's far more costly to throw out the chip containing that bad RAM.

No. It is not possible to make DRAM on the same silicon process as high-performance CPU logic. It is a myth that Apple Silicon includes the RAM on its die. Apple uses external LPDDR packages, just like everyone else, which you can clearly see in this photograph of the mac mini's CPU module: https://valkyrie.cdn.ifixit.com/media/2021/01/28102657/m1_ch...

Thanks for the correction, appreciated.

Re: New Mac Mini

#236

Post by cmatthias »

tracker1 wrote: post #208
cmatthias wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you define "sweet spot" in this case? Usually I see that term used when the thing being considered is a pricey upgrade, and you need to strike a compromise between price and performance. In this case, we're talking about an extra 8GB of memory, which would add perhaps $10 in cost to the bill of materials for the machine (or maybe less in sufficient volume). Given that Apple is also overcharging by at least 3x cur…

Worth noting the M1 memory is MUCH faster and higher bandwidth than x86 options at launch (about 2x). That accounted for a lot of the difference in perception. At least for general usage... for Docker + containers, it definitely uses a bit more.

Did you intend to reply to a different comment? The speed of the memory has no bearing on the capacity, obviously, so I'm not sure how this is relevant to what I said.

Re: New Mac Mini

#238

Post by coder543 »

tadfisher wrote: post #231
coder543 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> Is the RAM and SSD upgradeable? >> Nope, soldered. > Nope, in the same package as the CPU and GPU. The SSD certainly isn't in the same package as the CPU and GPU, so your comment is simply wrong, given the question that was actually asked. Whether the RAM is on-package or not is irrelevant to the question asked further upthread. It is soldered. Neither the RAM nor the SSD can realistically be upgraded after the f…

The SSD controller is part of the SOC, so you're both half-right.

True, but it is a rather lame excuse for soldering the SSD, considering Apple's SSDs have not really performed better than anyone else's SSDs for a long time. Moving the controller into the SoC is a cost saving measure for Apple, but none of the cost savings are passed onto the consumer.

Something as huge as the Mac mini could easily have a regular m.2 NVMe socket. Apple could presumably still do their proprietary thing with direct NAND access through the same physical socket, while still letting you swap in your own SSD that brings its own controller... but this would interfere with their goal of profiting from crazy upgrade pricing.

For Mac Studio, the NAND actually was socketed; it just used a proprietary connector instead of letting you bring your own SSD, so it still offered no aftermarket upgrade path to extend the life of these machines.

Re: New Mac Mini

#239

Post by loufe »

horsawlarway wrote: post #189
simplotek wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, maybe there should be pushback against shitty inefficient software? How would that work? You whine on an online forum over how bloated a software is, and in the process opt to be deprived of it's usage? Or would you continue to complain about bloated software while using it? Because none of those scenarios offer a compelling reason for the software maintainers to rearchitect their whole applicati…

Way fucking cheaper than 40. Closer to $16 unless you really need DDR5. Even then, it's still around $29/8gb if buying 32gb or more. The issue is that Apple is integrating the RAM in the SoC. Personally, I'm not really a fan of "smart-phonification" of my desktop computers. I get that the mini is in a bit of a weird spot, since it's still got fairly challenging size constraints, but still... not my cup of tea.

The integration into the SoC is partially responsible for the amazing performance. The extra travelling distance for a click-in ram stick adds up, in terms of latency, quickly

Re: New Mac Mini

#240

Post by speedgoose »

Varloom wrote: post #182

I can't use my M1 mini with non-retina monitor because of how blurry it is. They stopped providing font anti-aliasing (default on Windows) few years ago in MacOS to make retina displays more relevant.

This is strange, my M1 MacBook does have anti-aliasing. Not as good as the windows cleartype one though.
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