MBP 2011 replacement (precious is dying!)

Soldato
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So today my old MBP early 2011 is finally showing serious issues with the Radeon GPU (logic board replaced under warrantee a couple of years ago) and one RAM slot has died, leaving it 1 channel and 8GB. The hybrid SSD HD is fine still but it’s being a pain on restart with freaky graphics artifacts/corruptions and even displaying the image shifted so the corner starts in the centre of the screen.

I was hoping to wait until next refresh next year.. but this is looking like it will force my hand. It gets used a lot, in the past world of tanks but not since the ram channel died, however most of the time on the spare room desk.

The death spiral have meant that I don’t game now, nor do I do any gpu image processing development (Xcode). I also use virtualbox for Ubuntu running R, octave and python at the moment for a hackathon at work.

Old spec: MBP quad core i7 2.2GHz, 16GB 1333 DDR3, Radeon HD 6750M 1GB GDDR5 and a 1TB 5400 hybrid SSD. Battered and bruised case.

I’d ideally like to have 32GB to allow for a 16GB eGPU at a later date (system memory shadows the GPU still in this day and age).I can see there are only two options with 32GB - £3k for a MBP or 1.2K for a 6 core mini (plus £150 for 32GB memory kit) then add a eGPU later. However a voice in my head is just saying 3K is too expensive - especially as it’s cooling is pooched.

I have an dual core Mac mini 2009 still that works but is out of date from a OS X perspective (and slow).

Agghhh. Sounds like a mac mini...
 
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Soldato
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So Geekbench comparison
2011 (my spec): 2949 single 8300 multi
2018 mini 6 core: 5667 single, 24328 multi
2019 mbp 6 core (i9): 5879 single, 29976 multi

Speedmark
2011 (my spec): 206 (sm 6.5)
2018 mini 6 core: 5667 single, 24328 multi
2018 mbp 6 core (i9 3.7): 5350 single, 22956 multi

Cinebench
2011 (my spec): 35 (cb r11.5)
2018 mini: not worth mentioning GPU but the i7 6 core with UHD 630 gives 2956 (R20)
2019 .. it hits 3096 (R20).. no doubt blitzs the 2011 GPUs..

Others have shown the mini outperforming the i9 mbp with cinebench!

edit: the GPU in the mini is 1/3 the speed of 2019 mbp supposedly, but that's probably faster than the Radeon 6750!!

Just seems the mini hits all the points atm.
 
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Man of Honour
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If you don't need portability that the MacBook Pro offers then get a Mini. They're little power houses and you can upgrade the RAM in them simply enough. I'm assuming you have a monitor for it already? If not you can get a 27" LG 4k screen with USB-C for about £450.
 
Soldato
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If you don't need portability that the MacBook Pro offers then get a Mini. They're little power houses and you can upgrade the RAM in them simply enough. I'm assuming you have a monitor for it already? If not you can get a 27" LG 4k screen with USB-C for about £450.

That's my thinking - I have an old style monitor (non HDMI etc) and apple bluetooth keyboard and mouse from the old mac mini.

On the go tends to be the iPhone, although having some coding option on the go is nice for commute I've not bothered in the last couple of years due to the weight/inconvenience of carrying around two laptops to work.
 
Man of Honour
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You could always get something second hand and use Back To Mac or whatever it's called to remotely control the Mini? I've never used it but all my workloads are on my ESXi hosts and I just VPN home when I want to do something.

Since you're not using the portability at present I would personally struggle to justify the extra cost of a MBP.
 
Associate
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If you really need your current to last until next year then use gfxcardstatus to force the Intel graphics, even after the AMD GPU fails entirely you can follow a guide to create a boot script that forces it to boot from the Intel chip too. Did this with mine (same model as yours, with absolute AMD GPU failure) and it's still battling on but I don't have to use it for much
 
Soldato
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Ordered a mini i7 3.2GHz, 8GB, 256GB SSD. I get a 6% discount.

I’ll get a 32GB kit £135. Then look at a TB enclosure for a disk expansion and later an eGPU.

Next is a connector for a DVI monitor - either HDMI-DVI or if it works with TB3-DVI.

I’ll try the gfxcardstatus trick so it’s still working for a bit but use the mini for the heavy lifting.
 
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Soldato
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Connecting a VGA/DVI monitor, seems easiest to use a USB-C to mini-DisplayPort, then a mini-DisplayPort to DVI/VGA (I have this for the existing macs).
 
Soldato
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Noted an interesting piece on the Mini review - the i3 (4 cores) and i5 (6 cores, 9MB cache) are both non hyper threaded. The i7 is 6 core hyperthreaded 12MB cache.

For kicks - I had a look at bechmarked Intel UHD 600 vs Radeon VII (non eGPU) - 6,500% faster :D The VII is 2,600% faster than the Radeon 6570 (not the M).

Maybe a Radeon VII next year or so :)
 
Soldato
OP
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If you really need your current to last until next year then use gfxcardstatus to force the Intel graphics, even after the AMD GPU fails entirely you can follow a guide to create a boot script that forces it to boot from the Intel chip too. Did this with mine (same model as yours, with absolute AMD GPU failure) and it's still battling on but I don't have to use it for much

I looked at this, he's stopped developing it. Seems deleting the kext and hacking the EDI on the boot drive is the option taken now.
 
Soldato
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Noted an interesting piece on the Mini review - the i3 (4 cores) and i5 (6 cores, 9MB cache) are both non hyper threaded. The i7 is 6 core hyperthreaded 12MB cache.

Actually this is interesting - why? Because the current Zombie Load fix is to switch off Hyperthreading! Although Intel advises everyone decide their own level of security or take a 40% performance hit..

Anyway.. it's shipped and currently on it's way :)
 
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