2018 Mac Mini with eGPU

[dix]

With the 2018 Mac Minis in striking range of the Geekbench scores of my modded cMP (27000+ for the fastest Mac Mini, 30000+ for my cMP) I'm wondering if it's time to move into the modern era, or continue to wait for the mythical modular Macs to show up - that I probably won't be able to afford!

I'm wondering if offloading the GPU would help DP at all. I know that dense MIDI projects can drastically slow down DP. Can someone please tell me if an eGPU would help narrow the speed dif between my cMP and the fastest new Mac Minis? Would the benefits be limited to just MIDI-dense projects?

[mikehalloran]

The Intel UHD Graphics 630 GPU will drive a 5K monitor over TB3. That makes it somewhat robust to begin with. For Logic and MainStage, it runs 4x – 6x faster on any given task and Compressor 30x faster. Unfortunately, the baseline is the 2012 Mini and not the latest iMacs.

The nice thing is that eGPU can be added later.

https://www.apple.com/us/search/egpu?src=serp

Think of the Blackmagic as the GPU from the 2017 iMac 580 and the Blackmagic Pro as the GPU from the iMac Pro Vega 56 since that's what they are.

[dix]

Thanks Mike. So I guess you're saying, that since the new Mac Mini's on-board graphics are already very powerful, that there'd be no real benefit to adding an eGPU, in terms of the speed of redraws in DP.

...Guess I'll keep rocking the old cMP Graphics cards have come down a bit. I'm going grab a Metal compatible one. That should at least let run a newer OS than El Cap (which my current card doesn't get along with well)

[mikehalloran]

My point was that I don't really know how much GPU brings to the equation — unlike Photoshop, FCPx and other such apps.

I thought it was a big deal until I observed screen redraws on iMacs with similar graphics cards where the only real difference was the i5 vs the i7. I later repeated it on other pairs in different years. I have never had the opportunity to bench test a DP project on two Macs that were identical except for the GPU. Has anyone?

So, while I've concluded that GPU doesn't make as big a difference as CPU with DP, I'll be the first to admit my findings are incomplete.

Nice thing about living in the heart of Apple Country and having friends with iMacs is that I could do this much.

[HCMarkus]

My point was that I don't really know how much GPU brings to the equation — unlike Photoshop, FCPx and other such apps.

I thought it was a big deal until I observed screen redraws on iMacs with similar graphics cards where the only real difference was the i5 vs the i7. I later repeated it on other pairs in different years. I have never had the opportunity to bench test a DP project on two Macs that were identical except for the GPU. Has anyone?

So, while I've concluded that GPU doesn't make as big a difference as CPU with DP, I'll be the first to admit my findings are incomplete.

Nice thing about living in the heart of Apple Country and having friends with iMacs is that I could do this much.

Yes, my experience also suggests DP's screen redraws are CPU-limited. It would be great if MOTU could get DP to use our powerful current-day GPUs to a fuller extent.

[waxman]

Yes, my experience also suggests DP's screen redraws are CPU-limited. It would be great if MOTU could get DP to use our powerful current-day GPUs to a fuller extent.

Until we get an Upgraded/Updated DP DAW I'm not sure if any Mac hardware update makes longterm sense. I've heard zero news on an upgrade?

[dix]

Okay. Based on this info, I don't think the new Mac Minis are going to be an improvement on my cMP so I'm going ahead and getting a new Metal friendly for card it. That will, I hope, at least allow me to move to High Sierra and eventually Mojave (which doesn't seem quite ready) without losing performance - my current ATI Radeon 5770 definitely performs redraws slower on OSs newer than El Cap.

I'm still very curious to hear how the new Mac Minis are with DP. There may be factors not reflected in a Geekbench score that make it perform better than a 5,1 12-core cMP.

[mikehalloran]

The one big difference is that the new Mini, like the 2015-on MacBook Pro and iMac has a PCIe 3x4 (aka quad) buss. This is double the speed of 6.1 MP which is PCIe 2 only.

Dirty little secret: Though the 2015 iMac has a quad buss, Apple stuck a PCIe 2 blade into it while the MBP got a quad chip. The 970 EVO plus a cheap pin-out adapter will hotrod a 2015 model iMac ($89 250G – $579 2T).

That chip can be used backward but the buss in the 5.1 and 6.1 can't take advantage of the increased speed.

[dix]

Yes, my experience also suggests DP's screen redraws are CPU-limited. It would be great if MOTU could get DP to use our powerful current-day GPUs to a fuller extent.

Indeed! Not to take my OP too OT, but I installed a newer Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2gb card today thinking it would improve redraws in High Sierra, but it does not . It's seems exactly the same. El Cap is still way better at handling a MIDI-dense SE or ME in DP. At least this card can go to Mojave when the time comes, but I'm sticking with El Cap for now.

Is there any reason to think an even more powerful card, with more RAM would handle DP's redraws any better, or is it totally as HC says, completely CPU dependent?

[HCMarkus]

The one big difference is that the new Mini, like the 2015-on MacBook Pro and iMac has a PCIe 3x4 (aka quad) buss. This is double the speed of 6.1 MP which is PCIe 2 only.

Dirty little secret: Though the 2015 iMac has a quad buss, Apple stuck a PCIe 2 blade into it while the MBP got a quad chip. The 970 EVO plus a cheap pin-out adapter will hotrod a 2015 model iMac ($89 250G – $579 2T).

That chip can be used backward but the buss in the 5.1 and 6.1 can't take advantage of the increased speed.

Actually, you can get the speed in the 5,1 if you use the proper PCIe adaptor with an NVMe drive (under Mojave for boot capability). Unfortunately, such adaptors are pricey... in the $200+range.

Let the numbers speak for themselves. I'm VERY impressed with the near PCIe 3.x performance on a '09 CMP with the Highpoint 7101A PCIe SSD Adapter and the Samsung 970 pro. Yes... Read performance has almost doubled from 1500MBs to 3000MBs. Writes are up 50%.

Taking a look under the hood, The 7101A addresses PCIe SSD’s at a pcie 3.0 x4 8.0Gts link, saturating the x16 a pcie 2.0 connection at close to PCIe 3.0 speeds.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/hi ... mp.2124253

Here's a thread with lots of PCIe SSD info for cheesgrater owners:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/bl ... ci.2146725

[HCMarkus]

Yes, my experience also suggests DP's screen redraws are CPU-limited. It would be great if MOTU could get DP to use our powerful current-day GPUs to a fuller extent.

Indeed! Not to take my OP too OT, but I installed a newer Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2gb card today thinking it would improve redraws in High Sierra, but it does not . It's seems exactly the same. El Cap is still way better at handling a MIDI-dense SE or ME in DP. At least this card can go to Mojave when the time comes, but I'm sticking with El Cap for now.

Is there any reason to think an even more powerful card, with more RAM would handle DP's redraws any better, or is it totally as HC says, completely CPU dependent?

Don't know that it's completely CPU-dependant, but it definitely is CPU-limited.

I am running an AMD RX460, which appears to be about 15% faster than your GTX680. DP Redraws on my 4k monitor are pretty slow. This is one area a newer Mac, like the Mini, might improve significantly, as I suspect the screen redraws are handled by a single CPU core, and each Mini core (fastest i7 CPU) is almost twice as fast as a X5860 core.

[mikehalloran]

Actually, you can get the speed in the 5,1 if you use the proper PCIe adaptor with an NVMe drive (under Mojave for boot capability). Unfortunately, such adaptors are pricey... in the $200+range.

I didn’t say you can’t. PCIe Quad speeds are not possible in the 5.1 or 6.1, however, even though the 970 EVO chip is.

[HCMarkus]

Mike, you get extremely close to PCIe 3 performance with the active adaptor I listed. Certainly close enough for rock n' roll (or music of any style). Maybe you missed it, but the adaptor converts 4x PCIe3 to 16x PCIe2.

A Mac Pro 5,1 user who will be satisfied with half the speed (which is still very fast!) can use one of the many available $15-20 PCIe SSD adaptor card. Personally, I've been happy with SATA2 and 3 speeds using SATA SSDs. But, then again, I am not streaming 8k video!

Reports are the flash memory shortage is over and we can expect SSDs of all stripes to be less expensive in the months ahead. The Samsung 970 EVO you mentioned is already dropping, with the price for a 1TB version at $230 on Amazon. Might be too much to resist come 2019...

[mikehalloran]

Mike, you get extremely close to PCIe 3 performance with the active adaptor I listed. Certainly close enough for rock n' roll (or music of any style). Maybe you missed it, but the adaptor converts 4x PCIe3 to 16x PCIe2.

Thanks for the clarification. We could discuss the fine points but I agree, certainly close enough for rock'n'roll!

Reports are the flash memory shortage is over and we can expect SSDs of all stripes to be less expensive in the months ahead. The Samsung 970 EVO you mentioned is already dropping, with the price for a 1TB version at $230 on Amazon. Might be too much to resist come 2019...

I noticed that just in the last week. I'm hoping that the 860 EVO 4T drops some more (not that $800 is bad...).

I had to clean up and reformat my 2T VIs drive so that I could get Komplete 12 onto it and now have only 11GB free. Being eSATA, I can run only one.

My 2010 has the best hub I can find and my iMac never sleeps but 4 ports isn't enough and USB through a hub hasn't been rock solid since Snow Leopard.

Yes I can use multiple 2Ts once I go to something newer but, if I wind up hot-rodding a 2015 iMac, I'll want to throw a 2T 970 on the PCIe buss and a single 4T 860 on the SATA buss so that having them on a USB port is never an issue.

[bayswater]

I thought I might look at a 2018 Mini to replace the 2009 iMac on Black Friday, but it appears to be the only thing that isn't on the list of deals, at least in the Canada store.

There are a few unexpected things in the reviews of this Mac. One is that the internal drive is very fast, in part due to the T2 chip, and one reviewer said his external TB drive runs even faster than the internal, which is already the fastest he's seen. That has to be a good things for VI intensive projects on DP.

There is a lot of praise for the I/O and the expansion that allows.

One universal criticism is graphics, but they all seem to be talking about 3D gaming, which doesn't matter to me. At the local Apple store I played around with an i5 version on a UHD monitor and I didn't notice any sort of graphic glitches. Can I take it from the earlier posts in this thread, that the 2018 Mini will be fine with DP?