New Mac Mini sufficient?

David Vondenstein

• January 17, 2020 20:07

I'm considering replacing my 2010 iMac to a new Mac Mini. My understanding is with the i7 upgrade they are very fast computers. I would also upgrade the RAM myself to 32 GBs.

My one holdback is the GPU. It's pretty low end and not upgradable other than buying an expensive eGPU.

Does anyone here use a new Mac Mini or ON1? Does the lack of a fast GPU seem to matter much?

Thanks.

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  Brian Lawson Community moderator

  • January 18, 2020 01:09

  There are two drawbacks I can see with mini out of the box. The GPU is only the built-in Intel Graphics HD 630. Because of that it does not have any dedicated VRAM, it shares system RAM with everything else.

  ON1 is pretty GPU dependent. You may get acceptable performance with it or you may not, it will depend upon your needs. Because it is built into the CPU my MacBook Pro has one too. However, it also has a dedicated Radeon Pro 555 with 2GB VRAM. On launch ON1 automatically picks that one to use. It can bog down a bit from time to time, especially when working with masks.

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  David Vondenstein

  • January 18, 2020 15:34

  My biggest bog down with my old iMac is simply browsing through photos in film strip mode. It takes forever for the previews to draw. I recently switched to my buddy’s 2010 Mac Pro that he no longer needed. It has a quad core 2.8 processor and is quite a bit faster than my 2 core iMac. I’ve thought about upgrading that Mac Pro but not sure if it’s worth the money for a computer that old.

  Being that the new Mac Mini has a fast processor and PCIe based flash drive I would think it would handle On1 pretty well since you can control the GPU CPU usage in 2020.

  Looking for a confirmation from an actual user anyone has one.

  Also considering a Hackintosh.

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  Jurgen Schraepen

  • February 05, 2020 20:39

  I recently switched from a 2012 iMac to a 12-core Mac Pro from 2010 and the speed difference in incredible.

  ON1 is running MUCH faster and its is on the same SSD's as I used in my iMac.

  The problem I see with the Mac mini will be the GPU in the first place.

   

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  Chris Robison

  • February 09, 2020 14:14

   I replaced a Late 2012 iMac with a 2018 Mini.  I can say that the Mini is adequate for general use, but an eGpu definitely. helps a lot with the tools in ON1.  I do use just the internal gpu when doing simple browsing and file management. But when I need to actually edit, I have to use the eGpu (Asus enclosure and Vega 56).  

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  David Vondenstein

  • February 10, 2020 00:12

  I bit the bullet and bought a MacBook Pro 16". It's more than enough for On1. Hooked up to my BenQ monitor it's fantastic.

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