Customac mini with Video card or without?

[djrven]

HI, trying to assemble my first customac mini, I'd be using it for coding iOS and OSX apps(xcode) mostly, plus some graphic design on Pixelmator and some other vectorial apps, plus the basic activities everyone does on a computer nowadays, maybe some sound editing(basic), not intense video editing, but you never knows when you have to grab a video file and doing basic editing on it.

So far, I've planed to add 8 or 16GB RAM, Gigabyte GA-H170N, Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz , among the other components listed for this CustoMac Mini, so, what is the difference in performance between a CustoMac Mini like this with video card and without it? Planing to add EVGA GeForce GT 740 2GB DDR5 is it worth the extra $100? is it enough for the above tasks the Intel HD Graphics 530? I've heard about some issues between the HD 530 and the sleep feature, don't know how true they are.

Well I'd appreciate any input you have on this case, thanks in advance!

 

[nobodynose]

HI, trying to assemble my first customac mini, I'd be using it for coding iOS and OSX apps(xcode) mostly, plus some graphic design on Pixelmator and some other vectorial apps, plus the basic activities everyone does on a computer nowadays, maybe some sound editing(basic), not intense video editing, but you never knows when you have to grab a video file and doing basic editing on it.

So far, I've planed to add 8 or 16GB RAM, Gigabyte GA-H170N, Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz , among the other components listed for this CustoMac Mini, so, what is the difference in performance between a CustoMac Mini like this with video card and without it? Planing to add EVGA GeForce GT 740 2GB DDR5 is it worth the extra $100? is it enough for the above tasks the Intel HD Graphics 530? I've heard about some issues between the HD 530 and the sleep feature, don't know how true they are.

Well I'd appreciate any input you have on this case, thanks in advance!

The Nvidia GT 740 DDR5 is about on par with the Intel HD 530 performance-wise, if this chart is to be believed. If it were me, I'd spend the $100 on more RAM, or a bigger SSD. Nothing in your stated usage suggests you need anything more than the processor graphics.

There is the issue of sleep, which I don't believe has been solved yet with HD 530 graphics. I don't know much about this issue, but there's always a chance it will be fixed in a future version of macOS, when Apple is using CPUs with HD 530 graphics in more of their computers. Or not, it's difficult to say.

 

[djrven]

Many thanks for your answer, let me ask another question related to this topic, what is the max amount of memory the HD 530 takes from the main ram? 1536MB? is it possible even more? is this amount adjustable in BIOS or somewhere else? thanks again!

 

[nobodynose]

I believe the maximum shared memory for HD 530 is 1792MB. It's usually not adjustable, in the BIOS or anywhere else.

 

[djrven]

thanks again!