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New Mac Mini with M4

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Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#781

Post by reissbaker »

Y-bar wrote: post #754
reissbaker wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple will let you buy more RAM for cheaper than Nvidia, but it won't be the same speed — it'll be ~20% slower than a 4090.

That's my point. I would absolutely be willing to suffer a 20% memory bandwidth penalty if it means I can put 200% more data in the memory buffer to begin with. Not having to page in and out of disk storage quickly make those 20% irrelevant.

If you have enough 4090s, you don't need to page in and out of disk: everything stays in VRAM and is fast. But it's true that if you just want it to work, and you don't need the fastest perf, Apple is cheaper!

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#782

Post by Y-bar »

reissbaker wrote: post #781
Y-bar wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my point. I would absolutely be willing to suffer a 20% memory bandwidth penalty if it means I can put 200% more data in the memory buffer to begin with. Not having to page in and out of disk storage quickly make those 20% irrelevant.

If you have enough 4090s, you don't need to page in and out of disk: everything stays in VRAM and is fast. But it's true that if you just want it to work , and you don't need the fastest perf, Apple is cheaper!

How _exactly_ do I keep 50+ Gigabytes of data in the 4090's VRAM without paging back and forth to disk?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#783

Post by angoragoats »

Y-bar wrote: post #782
reissbaker wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have enough 4090s, you don't need to page in and out of disk: everything stays in VRAM and is fast. But it's true that if you just want it to work , and you don't need the fastest perf, Apple is cheaper!

How _exactly_ do I keep 50+ Gigabytes of data in the 4090's VRAM without paging back and forth to disk?

As the person you’re replying to said, by having multiple 4090s. 3090s work pretty well also, and are less than half the cost of 4090s.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#784

Post by Toutouxc »

gymbeaux wrote: post #530
anemoknee wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this with newer Apple Silicon Macs? My 2020 M1 Mac Mini looks unremarkably normal on my 1440p display. I'm also going between that and my 14" M1 Pro Macbook Pro, which of course looks beautiful but doesn't really make the 1440p on the Mini 'bad'. Edit: Adding that both of these machines are now running macOS 15.1 at this time.

In my experience, you can’t do any sort of scaling with sub-4K displays. This is “since M1”. Intel Macs, even on the latest macOS, can do scaling eg 1.5x at say 1440p, which last time I bothered with an Intel Mac required a workaround via Terminal to re-enable. But that workaround is “patched” on Apple Silicon and won’t work. So yes if you have an Apple Silicon Mac plugged into a 1440p display, it will look bad with…

> Back before Apple Silicon, running that 1440p display at “1920x1080” was actually just scaling the UI elements up

I’m almost sure that macOS can’t do that. It’s always done scaling by rendering the whole image at 2x the virtual resolution and then just displaying it on whatever screen you had. For example, for “looks like 1080p” on a 1440p screen it would draw onto a 2160p canvas (and do 2160p screenshots).

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#785

Post by c0nsumer »

seec wrote: post #773
c0nsumer wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ordered one, still went for a $2K+ Mac mini, but yeah. My goal is to replace an aged 27" iMac and because of doing DTP type work, I wanted a nice high DPI screen. Really seriously considered a new iMac, but the mini and a non-Apple-specific monitor wins. It's too bad target display mode is no longer a thing.

Yes that is exactly the kind of use case the previous iMac shined at. Which is why I think it's bonkers they want people to put so much money into their standalone display, it's way too steep for the use case and you don't need that much performance making the lack of all-in-one annoying. Isn't the 2K Mac Mini a bit lackluster though? It's Mac Studio price territory, you get a lot more for 2K. Then again, they need t…

I was looking at one of the cheaper minis, but between educational discount and wanting a bit of RAM (and cores) for some map tile rendering stuff I want to play with over winter, I nudged it up... I'm hoping for a lot-of-years life out of this, so another $1K or so really isn't that bad.

I looked into the display conversion idea, but that just felt kinda meh. I could sell the old computer for a bit less than $200, or pay about $300 to make a so-so display. While the panel would be nice, the cables just hanging out the back, coupled with the rather-meh controller board just felt kinda hacky.

Instead paying $800 for a purpose-built display that should be sleek and nice... I'm okay with that.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#786

Post by Y-bar »

angoragoats wrote: post #783
Y-bar wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How _exactly_ do I keep 50+ Gigabytes of data in the 4090's VRAM without paging back and forth to disk?

As the person you’re replying to said, by having multiple 4090s. 3090s work pretty well also, and are less than half the cost of 4090s.

How is that relevant when the discussion from the start was about comparing a two year old Mac with a two year old GPU as a cost-benefit discussion.

In any case how are you going to fit 50+GB in two (theoretically 24+24 GB) Nvidia cards without swapping to disk when the Mac in question has 64GB (also theoretically) available?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#787

Post by angoragoats »

Y-bar wrote: post #786
angoragoats wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the person you’re replying to said, by having multiple 4090s. 3090s work pretty well also, and are less than half the cost of 4090s.

How is that relevant when the discussion from the start was about comparing a two year old Mac with a two year old GPU as a cost-benefit discussion. In any case how are you going to fit 50+GB in two (theoretically 24+24 GB) Nvidia cards without swapping to disk when the Mac in question has 64GB (also theoretically) available?

You seem confused. Please feel free to read my post near the top of this very chain of comments, where I specifically compare a Mac Studio to a machine with 6 to 8 Nvidia GPUs. That was the discussion “from the start.”

> In any case how are you going to fit 50+GB in two (theoretically 24+24 GB) Nvidia cards

No one was talking about only two cards.

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#788

Post by Y-bar »

angoragoats wrote: post #787
Y-bar wrote: post #786

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that relevant when the discussion from the start was about comparing a two year old Mac with a two year old GPU as a cost-benefit discussion. In any case how are you going to fit 50+GB in two (theoretically 24+24 GB) Nvidia cards without swapping to disk when the Mac in question has 64GB (also theoretically) available?

You seem confused. Please feel free to read my post near the top of this very chain of comments, where I specifically compare a Mac Studio to a machine with 6 to 8 Nvidia GPUs. That was the discussion “from the start.” > In any case how are you going to fit 50+GB in two (theoretically 24+24 GB) Nvidia cards No one was talking about only two cards.

> Mac Studio to a machine with 6 to 8 Nvidia GPUs.

That post read like a joke comparison and still does. Can you elaborate how it is relevant?

Re: New Mac Mini with M4

#789

Post by angoragoats »

Y-bar wrote: post #788
angoragoats wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem confused. Please feel free to read my post near the top of this very chain of comments, where I specifically compare a Mac Studio to a machine with 6 to 8 Nvidia GPUs. That was the discussion “from the start.” > In any case how are you going to fit 50+GB in two (theoretically 24+24 GB) Nvidia cards No one was talking about only two cards.

> Mac Studio to a machine with 6 to 8 Nvidia GPUs. That post read like a joke comparison and still does. Can you elaborate how it is relevant?

What seems like a joke about it? And relevant to what, exactly?

The parent of my initial comment in this thread said: "For inference, Apple chips are great due to a high memory bandwidth... It's a cost effective option if you need a lot of memory plus a high bandwidth."

My post was attempting to explain at a high level how 1) Apple SoCs do not really have high memory bandwidth compared to a cluster of GPUs, and 2) you can actually build that cluster of GPUs for the same cost or cheaper than a loaded Mac Studio, and it will drastically outperform the Mac.

If you want specifics on how to build such a GPU cluster, you can search for "ROMED8-2T 3090" for some examples.

I hope this helps.

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