[MAC] New Thunderbolt Mac Mini!

i just picked up the new mac mini from best buy today as my basement flooded saturday and my HTPC was shot. so far i've had no issues, but until i fully configure everything i won't know for sure. i have 45 days to return it though, as i originally wanted to order the core i7 from apple, as best buy only sells the 2 base models, i did get the $799 one though with the ati radeon card and core i5

Dimmuxx Wrote:Hmm, I've read a little more about the acceleration in os x and is it still slow as it was back when this was posted http://xbmc.org/davilla/2010/05/03/osx-g...leration/? I'm thinking about buying a new mini(intel) and use as an htpc but this makes me reconsider it.

But as far as I have understood hardware decoding is not supported on the 2011 Mac Minis.

Or am I wrong?

Chris

I'm following this thread with great interest. As @ix400 asks, does anyone know if hardware accelerated decoding is supported on the new mid-2011 Mac Mini's? In other words, does the VDADecoder fully make use of the Intel HD 3000 GPU (the one in the Mac Mini 2.3GHz base model) _OR_ the AMD Radeon HD 6630M GPU (the 2.5GHz Mac Mini)?

I want to buy a Mac Mini solely for setting up XBMC and I want to know if I have to go for the Intel or AMD graphics. Or would the former model Mac Mini with Nvidia GPU a better bet?

user888 Wrote:I'm following this thread with great interest. As @ix400 asks, does anyone know if hardware accelerated decoding is supported on the new mid-2011 Mac Mini's? In other words, does the VDADecoder fully make use of the Intel HD 3000 GPU (the one in the Mac Mini 2.3GHz base model) _OR_ the AMD Radeon HD 6630M GPU (the 2.5GHz Mac Mini)?

I want to buy a Mac Mini solely for setting up XBMC and I want to know if I have to go for the Intel or AMD graphics. Or would the former model Mac Mini with Nvidia GPU a better bet?

To answer my own question partly: VDADecoder supports these GPU's:

• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
• GeForce 320M
• GeForce GT 330M,
• AMD HD Radeon GFX
• Intel HD Graphics
  

That's all info I have, together with the fact that it's not available on all platforms or OSX versions.

ix400 Wrote:But as far as I have understood hardware decoding is not supported on the 2011 Mac Minis.

Or am I wrong?

Chris

Sounds wrong to me unless they changed the hardware decoding APIs (either the private ones or the public ones).

Tested yet another clip on both the macmini 2010 with nvidia and the macmini 2011 with intel. The clip was a bluray remux of U2's Rose Bowl concert. On the macmini 2010 it ran at 49% CPU / 30fps (with 0 dropped frames) and on the macmini 2011 it was 111% CPU / 15fps and constant dropped frames.

Again these are my own tests and observations but something must be off between the new models and xbmc.

Open6l Wrote:Tested yet another clip on both the macmini 2010 with nvidia and the macmini 2011 with intel. The clip was a bluray remux of U2's Rose Bowl concert. On the macmini 2010 it ran at 49% CPU / 30fps (with 0 dropped frames) and on the macmini 2011 it was 111% CPU / 15fps and constant dropped frames.

Again these are my own tests and observations but something must be off between the new models and xbmc.

I have noticed similar results with the integrated Intel HD Graphics on a i3 530, this is usually the result of the (out-of-spec) encoding profile. The Intel HD 2000 integrated graphics hold a poor HQV score (about 130), compared to 191 for the HD 3000 series graphics, but somehow, the Intel graphics still have some issues with certain encoding.

The 9400m graphics found in previous Mac Mini's do not show these kind of issues, this explains the results.

The Mac Mini 2011 with AMD HD 6630M graphics will NOT show the same results.

I have the Mac Mini 2011 with AMD HD 6630M. I have a few 1080p movies with hardware decoding turn on they display weird graphical glitches all over the place like a fried graphics card. This only happens on 1080p anything 720p plays fine. If i turn off the hardware decoder all 1080p plays fine.

Thewolf Wrote:I have the Mac Mini 2011 with AMD HD 6630M. I have a few 1080p movies with hardware decoding turn on they display weird graphical glitches all over the place like a fried graphics card. This only happens on 1080p anything 720p plays fine. If i turn off the hardware decoder all 1080p plays fine.

Yeah - I also had all sorts of these gfx glitches with my 2011-Intel3000HD - most seemed to go away with the latest nightly but the poor performance is still there.

dlmh Wrote:I have noticed similar results with the integrated Intel HD Graphics on a i3 530, this is usually the result of the (out-of-spec) encoding profile. The Intel HD 2000 integrated graphics hold a poor HQV score (about 130), compared to 191 for the HD 3000 series graphics, but somehow, the Intel graphics still have some issues with certain encoding.

The 9400m graphics found in previous Mac Mini's do not show these kind of issues, this explains the results.

The Mac Mini 2011 with AMD HD 6630M graphics will NOT show the same results.

unfortunately the AMD version is $799 which is considerably more than the $549 for the macmini 2010 which also doesn't experience these problems