Mini 9400m Gaming
The 2009 Mac Mini
ASUS is a leading company driven by innovation and commitment to quality for products that include notebooks, netbooks, motherboards, graphics cards, displays, desktop PCs, servers, wireless solutions, mobile phones and networking devices. However, Apple's recent update to the Mac Mini is making me wonder. Anybody have any idea if the Mac Mini graphics chip - NVIDIA 9400M w/256MB shared RAM - would be up to the challenge? I know it can handle the resolution for desktop type stuff, but I'm not sure about Portal. The Mac mini starts at £499 and for that Apple offers a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM – of which 128MB is assigned to the 9400M GPU – and a 120GB hard drive. 1GB of memory really. After over a year and a half without a change, Apple finally updated the Mac mini in March 2009. As widely anticipated, the new Mac mini adopts Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics, the same GPU found in the MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro – and it finally gets 802.11n WiFi as well (and 802.11a for good measure).
Time For Another Major Apple Transplant
Francis Vale
If Apple can undergo a major transplant and not tell anyone about it, then I guess good computer governance would mandate that we all consider replacing significant parts as well; like the hard drive of the new Apple Mac Mini.
To recap our giga-diagnosis: The must see organs of the latest headless Mini are the newly integrated Nvidia graphics; it’s the same GeForce 9400M chipset as used across the current 2009 MacBook lineup, the lower range iMac’s, and in some Windows systems.
The 9400M GPU redefines the small form factor motherboard architecture by combining a mainstream graphics processing unit (GPU), system memory controller, and system I/O into a single chipset.
Mini 9400m Gaming Laptop
The 9400M integrates almost everything an energy efficient yet powerful computer needs, such as DDR3 1066/DDR2 800 memory and bus controllers like PCI Express 2.0 x16 and x4 links, a 1066MHz frontside bus, 3GB Serial ATA, up to 12 USB ports, 2-way SLI for maxed out gaming using multiple graphics cards, Gigabit Ethernet, and all the rest of the must have goodies.
The GeForce integrated graphics processors feature hardware-accelerated high-definition video decoding and post-processing, as well as support various outputs such as dual-link DVI-I, D-Sub, DisplayPort or HDMI. Digital resolutions up to 2560x1600 are supported, with a max VGA resolution of 2048x1536.
Thanks to the 9400M, the new Mac mini uses less than 13 watts—45 percent less energy than before. But even when fed just a few watts, the GeForce 9400M still packs a wallop: it pumps out 54 gigaflops. No wonder Apple promises 5x speed increases in video performance
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However, if you are running under MS Windows (using Apple's Boot Camp) you can either use the drivers that Apple supplies with Boot Camp or try updating to the latest Windows drivers from NVIDIA. In the latter case, you probably want to post over in Apple's discussions forum on Boot Camp. Here is that link:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=237
However, I don't know whether the latest Windows drivers will work under Boot Camp (and when you are running under Boot Camp you are NOT running Mac OS X, you have to be running MS Windows -- you're basically using your Mac as a PC).
Mini 9400m Gaming Monitor
May 22, 2009 2:12 AM