Apple Announces "3rd Transition" for macOS: From Intel CPUs to Apple Silicon

[trs96]

Something's not configured right on the hack if a 2014 Mac mini is outperforming it.

Slower renders likely due to Quicksync not being enabled. Rendering would then be much faster on the mini which does use Intel Quicksync via the HD5000 graphics. The iGPU must be running in headless mode on the hack for it to work.

 

[pastrychef]

Slower renders likely due to Quicksync not being enabled. Rendering would then be much faster on the mini which does use Intel Quicksync via the HD5000 graphics. The iGPU must be running in headless mode on the hack for it to work.

Yup. Like I said, something's not configured right on his hack.

 

[scottkendall]

Yup. Like I said, something's not configured right on his hack.

2018 mac mini would likely outperform "their" hack even if it was configured correctly because of the T2 chip. They have an I3 8100 with RX 580 according to their profile... There was a comparison on 2019 i3 Imac and 2018 I3 mac mini and the Mac mini won, I think the iMac had an RX series card but I could be wrong.

 

[pastrychef]

2018 mac mini would likely outperform "their" hack even if it was configured correctly because of the T2 chip. They have an I3 8100 with RX 580 according to their profile... There was a comparison on 2019 i3 Imac and 2018 I3 mac mini and the Mac mini won, I think the iMac had an RX series card but I could be wrong.

Yes, but he said 2014 Mac mini. That's a Haswell system. Lol

 

[UtterDisbelief]

2018 mac mini would likely outperform "their" hack even if it was configured correctly because of the T2 chip. They have an I3 8100 with RX 580 according to their profile... There was a comparison on 2019 i3 Imac and 2018 I3 mac mini and the Mac mini won, I think the iMac had an RX series card but I could be wrong.

You make some good points though - Apple tunes it's software and hardware more than is obvious. I have an old iMac 2015 and despite being painfully slow in a lot of tasks nowadays, some things are surprisingly well sorted.

Apple don't have to think about anyone else, just their small range of hardware. We, on the other hand are building chimeras!

 

[scottkendall]

Apple don't have to think about anyone else, just their small range of hardware. We, on the other hand are building chimeras!

This is what I always said in my tech support days... People were like Macs run PC crash, my response was always Macs are highly tuned for a limited hardware stack... Windows crashes because people use Win Hardware so glad that fad passed quickly. I never personally had problems with windows because I always bought quality hardware.

Microsoft surface pro X 2 in 1 run on ARM with limited hardware stack currently runs windows wonder how long till it runs Mac OS 11

 

[mars198]

You are probably right my hack needs to be configured better. It's mainly due to lack of time to troubleshoot everything. I installed Catalina fresh just following the standard guide and everything worked without a hitch. Haven't seen the need to tinker with it since then. Render times are slower than they should be with video so I may try to dig into it soon. But . . you kind of make my point. I just need something that works. Macs work well with the software designed for it - just like any computer OS would. When you try to make it fit it sometimes doesn't work as well. My decision is to move on to ARM Macs when they come out. My hack will still be good but I don't think I will invest in any new hardware to build a new one.

 

[alba2015]

If Parallels, VMware, VirtualBox et al produce ARM related versions of their products, then some kind of virtualisation might be a poor mans option.

Yes, you are right. But fortunately it is possible to use QEMU for ARM virtualisation, even if I don't know how it works and some informations about this can be useful in the future. Surely, it's a pity that other virtualisation softwares don't implement this feature.

 

[trs96]

Breaking news on AS Macs: Apple will continue to use/support Intel's Thunderbolt technology. Many have predicted the switch to USB4 but Apple says they'll continue supporting Thunderbolt 3 and 4 in new AS Macs soon to be released.

Apple promises to support Thunderbolt on its new ARM Macs

Thunderbolt is coming to Apple silicon

www.theverge.com

Thunderbolt 4 PCs will be able to connect to at least two 4K displays, whereas the previous requirement was just one. Additionally, the new connection supports PCIe data speeds up to 32 Gb/s, twice as fast as before. So you can expect to see incredibly fast Thunderbolt 4 external drives eventually.

Quote from Endgadget

This means that you'll be able to connect an eGPU to a Mac mini for example, and not lose any graphics performance.
This announcement tells me is that Apple isn't burning all their "Intel Bridges" behind them as they start using Apple Silicon in new Macs. Intel has had problems staying with their roadmap the last 5 years but that doesn't negate all of the really good things they've done for Apple (and us) over the past 15 years.

 

[scottkendall]

Quote from Endgadget

This means that you'll be able to connect an eGPU to a Mac mini for example, and not lose any graphics performance.

Except that right out the gate using an EGPU cut at least 30% of the power out of the card, and it runs at 4x rather than 16x. For most they would never even know, World of warcraft it is not bad. However, I definitely get higher Frame Rates, and higher settings when plugged into the motherboard. If they were to use two TB3 cables and bridged them to one GPU to get 80Gb that would bring us much closer to 126Gb that flows over 16x PCI-E. However, with PCI-E 4 we are doubling the 126Gb (15.75GB) of bandwidth that the current PCI-E 3rd gen has.

While I am a fan of the Mac Mini with eGPU and it meets much of my needs. The Hack provides a lot of raw power the mac mini just can not provide.