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New Mac Mini with M4

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Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#681

Post by sliken »

Rohansi wrote: post #222
jsheard wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As discussed in the iMac thread yesterday, LPCAMM2 makes it possible. There are LPCAMM2 modules with the same 7500 MT/s spec as the M4s integrated memory, and two of them running in parallel would match the M4 Pro. https://www.anandtech.com/show/21390/micron-ships-crucialbra... Even if Apple wanted to support modular memory, which they obviously don't, the ultra-tiny form factor of the new Mini would probably still r…

No way the new Mini is too small to allow upgradability. You can buy a Windows mini PC that is not only smaller than the new Mini but also allows upgrading both RAM and SSD. And that's without using LPCAMM2 - just normal SO-DIMMs. (Example: https://trigkey.com/products/trigkey-green-g4-16g-500g-n100 )

Sure. Generally with 1/2 the memory bandwidth (or usually less), a worse iGPU, and slower CPU.

That N100 is an Intel Atom, quite a bit of a downgrade from the M4 with the fastest CPU cores out there.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#683

Post by sliken »

tiltowait wrote: post #612
fourfour3 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 for the 10GbE upgrade doesn't seem unreasonable to me. A PCIe 10GbE NIC using the same Aquantia chipset as existing Macs is $80-$90. https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-XG-C100C-Network-Adapter-Single/... edit: in fact, compared to Apple's usual price gouging for extra RAM/SSD/etc it is downright reasonable .

Not to mention, the vast majority of people don’t need 10GbE. Most users use WiFi and never touch Ethernet. Adding the functionality would just drive up the cost unnecessarily.

Agreed, stings that they don't include 2.5G. Even a single spinning disk easily saturates GigE, getting 2.5x that without the price overhead of 10G is a pretty decent value. Even $200 firewall widgets often include 4x2.5G.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#685

Post by sliken »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #359

When will the 819.2 GB/s memory bandwith of the M2 Ultra be topped? With about one TB/s, say? Otherwise I'm unimpressed.

Well the M4 pro crushes the M3 pro. Presumably the M4 max will be a better than the M3 max. No idea if the Ultra will come out, apple hasn't done that since the M2, even if they do it's likely to be 6 months away.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#686

Post by sliken »

lawlessone wrote: post #23

The Dyson of PCs

Dunno, seems the opposite. Dyson are plastic, don't last long, and generally aren't serviceable.

Apples have been improving repairability, their laptops have many replaceable parts, and generally last longer than PCs.

Compare new price / used for 4 years old price on apple vs any PC. In my experience used apples age well, are reliable, still get years of OS updates, and general age better than PCs.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#687

Post by fulafel »

sliken wrote: post #664
angoragoats wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: any PC with integrated graphics has also had unified memory (yep, including Intel Macs), for at least the past decade!

True, but PCs are 128 bits wide, apple lets you upgrade to 256 bits wide (M4 pro), 512 bits wide (m3 Max) or 1024 bits wide (M2 Ultra). Unified memory is much more useful when you can get more bandwidth to it.

Yep, there's no performance x86 CPUs on the market with ambitious GPUs, only laptop chips. Games are optimized for discrete GPUs, Apple didn't have that software inertia to deal with.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#688

Post by chipdart »

goosedragons wrote: post #416
e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #330

With educational pricing this thing starts as $500, and at 16GB of RAM (finally) I think this easily beats any sort of desktop PC you can buy at that price (let's exclude custom builds, they're not the same market). I think this just became the go-to recommendation I'll give to anybody wanting an entry-level desktop computer of any kind. In fact I might buy one for my parents right now to replace the old mac mini the…

There's still good deals in mini PC land. Yes, the M4 is faster but there's loads of mini PCs with decent CPUs, 32GB RAM and a 1TB of SSD storage for under $600. I think for a lot of people for basic usage they'll get more value out of the larger and upgradable SSDs than the faster CPU. https://www.amazon.com/BOSGAME-5700U-Displays-Computers-Emul... https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-SER5-Desktop-Computer-Graphic...

> Yes, the M4 is faster (...)

I know a couple of iOS developers who recently switched to a M4 MacBook pro and they swear that in some frequent workloads it feels sluggish and slower than the old Intel MacBook pros. Being RAM-starved might have something to do with it though.

> but there's loads of mini PCs with decent CPUs, 32GB RAM and a 1TB of SSD storage for under $600.

I also add that, unlike Apple hardware, these miniPCs are built with extensibility in mind. For example, most NUCs from the likes of minisforum and Beelink ship with a single SSD but support multiple SSDs, with their cases also having room for SATA drives. They even go as far as selling barebones versions of their NUCs, where customers can then pick and choose which RAM and SSDs to add.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#689

Post by sanitycheck »

shadowmanifold wrote: post #630
leetharris wrote: post #24

Love to see that it still starts at $599. My M2 Mac Mini that I got for $499 is my favorite gaming computer I've had in a long time. Runs many games like WoW, Dota, League of Legends, etc great. Anything that it doesn't run due to MacOS I use GeForce Now over ethernet. And this was with 8gb unified memory, now with 16gb it'll be even better value. Very excited to see how the GPU has improved in the M4, especially the…

It will make me a mac owner for the first time in 25 years. I was just looking at a mac book air yesterday but I just can't get over the complete ripoff of a memory upgrade from the base model. 16 gig starting at $599. I honestly don't need to know anything else to buy one.

My first thought was similar, though followed quickly by "...but it's Apple, so what's the catch?" The relevant extra things to know are that the SSD is soldered, there are no slots for extra SSDs, and choosing a sensible (1TB) drive is >4X the price of buying similar storage at retail. Still a no from me, then.

(The only thing I do often that's CPU-limited is compiling, being faster at that saves me maybe a few minutes in a full working day; I don't care. I am frequently limited by RAM and I really hate shuffling things around to make space on drives.)

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#690

Post by Y-bar »

reissbaker wrote: post #301
Y-bar wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that they said the _Mac Studio_ which in the M2 model has between 400GB/s and 800GB/s memory bandwidth. https://www.apple.com/mac-studio/specs/ Edit: since my reply you have edited your comment to mention the Studio, but the fact remains that the M2 Max has at least ~40% greater bandwidth than the number you quoted as an example.

For reference comparing to what the big companies use, an H100 has over 3TB/s bandwidth. A nice home lab might be built around 4090s — two years old at this point — which have about 1TB/s. Apple's chips have the advantage of being able to be specced out with tons of RAM, but performance isn't going to be in the same ballpark of even fairly old Nvidia chips.

The cheapest 4090 is EUR 110 less than a complete 32GB RAM M2 max Mac Studio where I live. Speccing out a full Intel 14700K computer (avoiding the expensive 14900) with 32 GB RAM, NVMe storage, case, power supply, motherboard, 10G Ethernet … and we are approaching the cost of the 64GB M2 ultra which has a more comparable memory bandwidth to the Nvidia card, but with more than twice the RAM available to the GPU.
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