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2011 AMD Mac mini - Not working out the way I had hoped . . .

Posted by: l008com on 2026-07-23 01:35:02 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.

Posted by: Byrd on 2026-07-23 04:18:17 Hi, perhaps try the Windows version of Macs Fan Control to see if you can ramp up default fan speeds before it throttles, and whatever latest AMD drivers you can get to run on the ATI Radeon 6630M GPU. Macs Fan Control Download for macOS & Windows (Boot Camp) crystalidea.com

Posted by: l008com on 2026-07-23 04:27:28 The fan is already running at basically full speed I don't think theres much more that can be done fan-wise. Also I think I may have already installed it. I think last time I was messing around with it, I was trying to figure out of it was the CPU or GPU or both that was causing it to instantly get super hot.

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