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I'll keep this short -
The Mac Mini as an HTPC is kinda of weak but obviously great footprint. The new model appears to have the NVidia 9400 video on board and if I am reading the Wiki properly, it appears to be supported for exploiting the GPU.
Would a Mac Mini with specs - 2.26 Processor (2 cores), 4 Gigs Ram, 9400 on board work ? Would Apple's EFI get in the way? It appears that under OSX, the shared vid RAM is 256MB. I don't know if this is due to Apple's EFI or a built in limitation. I gather on PC based systems that the 9400 can exploit up to 512mb.
I am mostly interested in M2TS and VOB streaming from NAS or local drive stored files.
Thanks in advance. I am kind of hoping to jump to Linux but need an "excuse" <G>.
Cheers
- Phrehdd
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davilla
Retired-Team-XBMC Developer
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"It appears that under OSX, the shared vid RAM is 256MB"
That's using a MacMini with 2GB of ram. It's assumed that with 4GB ram, this would increase to 512MB. But I've not seen any reports to verify this yet. I do have a friend that will be putting 4GB in his new MacMini so when he does this, I've be able to verify first hand what happends.
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pike
Team Kodi Admin
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we believe VDPAU requires 512MB to decode most 1080p h264 videos
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Far more interesting would be what's available to Linux. Is that the same?
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davilla
Retired-Team-XBMC Developer
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yea, boot linux on that sucker, even the XBMC Live from CD and pick the nivdia driver.
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As one of the few interested in the Mac Mini 4gig RAM combo, if I am reading the posts correctly -
XMBC/Live should be able to run on the Mac Mini
XMBC normally requires 512mb RAM for the 9400M to normally offload to the GPU
XMBC might offload to the GPU though the Mac Mini only provides 256mb for vid.
Linux might see all 512mb that should be available on the Mac Mini "as is."
Linux may be stymied by Apple's EFI and only get 256mb allocated to video.
Small possibility that OSX plist is hard set for up to 256mb but may be editable.
Am I missing anything here? Is it possible to tamper with Apple's EFI?
Thanks
- Phrehdd