So I had a 2010 Mac mini with an nVidia 320m GPU. I put a small SSD in it, installed High Sierra and windows 7, I put GTA Vice City and San Andreas and GTA3 on the pc side, and OpenEMU and all the ROMs on the Mac side. It makes a great retro games machine. Oh I also play via a PS4 controller with the mini plugged in to my TV. Good times.
Somehow, I completely forgot that apple made a mini with a discrete GPU. That factoid completely left my brain once the 2012's were released. Recently I rediscovered that, so I got one. According to benchmarks, it should be about 3x as powerful as the 320m. I play Vice City at max settings, but I can only play San Andreas at 720p. 1080p would be better! And what I really wanted to do was play GTA4 at low graphics settings, hopefully fast enough to play.
Anyway, like I said, things aren't working out the way I had hoped. The mini instantly gets SUPER hot, the fan maxes out, and it starts throttling CPU and GPU. Its actually SLOWER than the 320m because its basically constantly throttling. Its only the i5 CPU too. I know in 2012's, the i7's heat up super fast but the i5's generally run very cool. But that doesn't seem like the case with the 2011's at all!
So I took it all apart, and re-did the thermal paste thinking that MUST be it. It had ZERO effect.
The only other thing I can think of is reinstalling windows incase theres some glitch in the windows install. Unlikely but i dunno what else to try. Its also running windows 10 and I'll probably downgrade it to 7 if I do reinstall.
If nothing works, then I might as well go back to the 2010. It literally runs these games better than the AMD 2011 mini.
Somehow, I completely forgot that apple made a mini with a discrete GPU. That factoid completely left my brain once the 2012's were released. Recently I rediscovered that, so I got one. According to benchmarks, it should be about 3x as powerful as the 320m. I play Vice City at max settings, but I can only play San Andreas at 720p. 1080p would be better! And what I really wanted to do was play GTA4 at low graphics settings, hopefully fast enough to play.
Anyway, like I said, things aren't working out the way I had hoped. The mini instantly gets SUPER hot, the fan maxes out, and it starts throttling CPU and GPU. Its actually SLOWER than the 320m because its basically constantly throttling. Its only the i5 CPU too. I know in 2012's, the i7's heat up super fast but the i5's generally run very cool. But that doesn't seem like the case with the 2011's at all!
So I took it all apart, and re-did the thermal paste thinking that MUST be it. It had ZERO effect.
The only other thing I can think of is reinstalling windows incase theres some glitch in the windows install. Unlikely but i dunno what else to try. Its also running windows 10 and I'll probably downgrade it to 7 if I do reinstall.
If nothing works, then I might as well go back to the 2010. It literally runs these games better than the AMD 2011 mini.
