New Chip Who Dis - Mac mini M6 — Transcript

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1. 0:00It's been 2 years since the last Mac
2. 0:01mini and things have changed a little
3. 0:03bit. But even though the price has gone
4. 0:06up, Apple has also changed things on the
5. 0:08inside. This is our first chance to take
6. 0:10a look at the new M6 chip. Let's dive
7. 0:12in. Inside the box we have the Mac mini
8. 0:15itself and we've got our power cable
9. 0:17which it's a reasonable Oh, oh, this is
10. 0:20actually I think that's longer than 6
11. 0:22ft. Yeah, now we got 72 in.
12. 0:25Wait, 72
13. 0:27>> [snorts]
14. 0:27>> That is 6 ft. We have a 6-ft cable.
15. 0:31As for the box itself, it should look
16. 0:34pretty familiar. The chassis has not
17. 0:36changed from the M4 model, which means
18. 0:38we still get our two USB-C ports at the
19. 0:40front here. These are good for a 10
20. 0:42gigabit per second. We have our 3 and
21. 0:461/2 mil microphone headphone combo jack
22. 0:49as well as our little power LED. On the
23. 0:51back, we have three Thunderbolt 4 ports,
24. 0:54an HDMI port, a 2 and 1/2 gigabit
25. 0:58networking port, which is a little bit
26. 1:00faster than last time, and our power.
27. 1:02Unfortunately, they have still kept this
28. 1:04power button on the bottom, which
29. 1:06doesn't make any sense to me. It's like
30. 1:09they saw the Magic Mouse charging from
31. 1:10the bottom and thought, "Hey, we need to
32. 1:12do that in more places." That's about it
33. 1:14for the outside tour, isn't it? I guess
34. 1:16it is worth noting that while we do have
35. 1:17the M6 model here, there is an M5 Pro
36. 1:20model that has been released at the same
37. 1:22time, which trades the three Thunderbolt
38. 1:254 ports on the back for Thunderbolt 5.
39. 1:27Another option that you have is if the 2
40. 1:30and 1/2 gigabit is not fast enough for
41. 1:32you, you can upgrade to a 10 gigabit
42. 1:34network port for $100. If you're
43. 1:37familiar with the Mac ecosystem already,
44. 1:39you'll know that they typically like
45. 1:41using these USB-C ports on the back for
46. 1:43displays. They do give you the one HDMI,
47. 1:46which is a bit more of a traditional
48. 1:47connection, but I was looking through
49. 1:49their spec page and their description
50. 1:52for what monitors it supports is just
51. 1:54weird. It says here that it supports
52. 1:57three displays. Two displays up to a
53. 1:59native resolution of 6K at 60 Hz or 4K
54. 2:03at 165 Hz plus a third display up to 5K
55. 2:07at 60 Hz over Thunderbolt or 4K at 60 Hz
56. 2:10over HDMI. What a mouthful to not really
57. 2:14be super clear in the end what you can
58. 2:16actually hook up to this. So, I thought
59. 2:19it would be fun
60. 2:22to go and just give it a try. What I've
61. 2:23put together here is I've actually got
62. 2:25three of exactly the same Alienware
63. 2:28monitors that are all 4K 240 Hz and
64. 2:31we've got one more MSI monitor that is
65. 2:34also 4K 240 Hz. This one I will just run
66. 2:37off the HDMI, whereas all of these other
67. 2:40ones we have
68. 2:42USB-C to DisplayPort connectors. I did
69. 2:44validate this ahead of time where I
70. 2:46plugged it into a MacBook Pro and made
71. 2:48sure that each one of these ran at its
72. 2:50full 4K 240 Hz ahead of time. With this
73. 2:53setup, there should be plenty of display
74. 2:56capabilities to push past what I'd
75. 2:58expect this to do. I don't expect it to
76. 3:00do four displays at 4K 240.
77. 3:03>> Oh, is it going to do the bong?
78. 3:05Does it still do the bong?
79. 3:06>> Yeah, it still does the bong.
80. 3:08>> Bong.
81. 3:10>> Let's start with one. With our one
82. 3:11display, we do get our full expected 4K
83. 3:14240 Hz. Let's see what happens when we
84. 3:16plug in a second one. See, this is why I
85. 3:18don't like having the power button on
86. 3:19the bottom. I went to go and plug the
87. 3:21display in and almost turned the whole
88. 3:23system off because the power button was
89. 3:25right where I was lifting this up.
90. 3:26>> Okay.
91. 3:27>> We have two monitors and already it
92. 3:30wants to run one of them at 240 Hz and
93. 3:32one of them at 60 Hz. Let's drop our
94. 3:35first one down to 120. No, I still can't
95. 3:39bring the second one up to 120. Let's
96. 3:44try it one more time here. Still stuck
97. 3:46at 60. That's not what I was expecting.
98. 3:48I was expecting I'd be able to run at
99. 3:50least two 4K displays at 120 Hz. Yeah,
100. 3:54you should be able to because the specs
101. 3:55says on the three display section that
102. 3:56you can run
103. 3:58two 4K displays at 165 Hz. Let's try
104. 4:01just the other monitor. Yeah, no, we're
105. 4:04stuck at 60. Well, this isn't what I
106. 4:07expected. I
107. 4:09100% expected
108. 4:11three displays to work because that's
109. 4:12what it said on the box. After fiddling
110. 4:14with this for a little bit, I did find
111. 4:16that if we wanted to get 240 Hz on both
112. 4:20monitors, I can force the 1080p
113. 4:24resolution and then I get the option for
114. 4:26240 Hz on both. For whatever reason,
115. 4:30I can't seem to get a third display to
116. 4:31come up at all. I've tried both with
117. 4:34this guy connected through the adapter
118. 4:36and I've tried with our MSI monitor on
119. 4:38the side just connected through HDMI. I
120. 4:41know that Apple
121. 4:43in the past has been pretty particular
122. 4:46about display connections. Um I know
123. 4:49that there are sometimes where you're
124. 4:52trying to use a docking station with a
125. 4:53MacBook, you need to get a very specific
126. 4:55docking station to be able to enable
127. 4:57that multi-monitor support, but I
128. 4:59expected this to work just a little bit
129. 5:01more smoothly. I expected this to be a
130. 5:03little bit of a side quest, but I really
131. 5:05didn't expect it to be this long of a
132. 5:06side quest.
133. 5:074K 240 through the HDMI port. That is
134. 5:10something that I do find actually kind
135. 5:12of interesting because anytime that
136. 5:13they're talking about the display specs
137. 5:15in their three display or two display
138. 5:18breakdown, the HDMI port is always 4K
139. 5:2260. So, it's good to know that you can
140. 5:24do a little bit more than just 4K 60
141. 5:26through the HDMI port. I'm going to give
142. 5:28this the best shot that it can. We're
143. 5:30going to go 1080p low resolution mode,
144. 5:33stick this in 60 Hz. Oh, 60 Hz feels so
145. 5:36bad. We're going to take our first
146. 5:39Alienware display,
147. 5:41plug it in.
148. 5:43We're going to stick this one in 1080p
149. 5:4560 Hz, but we do not have
150. 5:49our third monitor. Very strange. I don't
151. 5:52have any answers for this quickly, so
152. 5:54maybe shout out in the comments if
153. 5:57if you know what might be going on there
154. 5:58and how we can get three monitors
155. 6:00working on our Mac Mini that can
156. 6:02supposedly do three monitors. Apple says
157. 6:04it can. We weren't super satisfied with
158. 6:07the results that we had on set, so we
159. 6:09took the Mac Mini down to labs and we
160. 6:11grabbed a couple of USB-C
161. 6:14DisplayPort native monitors and we have
162. 6:17all three working.
163. 6:19This does confirm what I was saying
164. 6:21before where it is a little bit picky as
165. 6:24to your display setup and how you're
166. 6:26connecting them, but Apple's words on
167. 6:29the spec sheet are correct. You can get
168. 6:31three monitors. We have two running 4K
169. 6:33120 and the third running 4K 60. There
170. 6:37are a few more things that I want to
171. 6:39take a look at and talk about though.
172. 6:40So, we're going to get set back up over
173. 6:42on the main set and while I'm doing
174. 6:45that, you can take a look at this word
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198. 7:31>> We mentioned before that this new Mac
199. 7:34Mini comes with the M6 processor, but
200. 7:36what does that actually get you? In
201. 7:38terms of differences from the M4, we've
202. 7:40got a couple more CPU cores, two of them
203. 7:43being the new super cores, which are a
204. 7:46bit faster, and we get a new GPU
205. 7:49configuration where one of the notable
206. 7:51changes is there are neural accelerators
207. 7:54on each of the GPU cores. This
208. 7:57isn't the same as a tensor core, but
209. 7:59it's kind of the equivalent. Something I
210. 8:01can really appreciate about Apple's
211. 8:03attention to the design is I've had
212. 8:06Cinebench actually running here for it's
213. 8:08close to 7 minutes now, and this is
214. 8:11going to be putting a decent thermal
215. 8:13load on the system. You can barely hear
216. 8:15it at all. It's very quiet. What happens
217. 8:18if we throw a load at both the CPU and
218. 8:21the GPU at the same time though? Let's
219. 8:22take a look at Cyberpunk. When Labs does
220. 8:24testing with games, we have some
221. 8:26settings kind of preset to push the
222. 8:28hardware to where we'd expect and give
223. 8:31us a standard that we can kind of
224. 8:33compare things back and forth against.
225. 8:34It's not necessarily going to be the
226. 8:36best that you get for your gameplay
227. 8:37experience. So, when we did Cyberpunk,
228. 8:40we saw an average FPS of 36 frames per
229. 8:43second and 1% lows of 27 at 1080p
230. 8:47[music] ultra. Fun fact though is Apple
231. 8:51has actually done some work back and
232. 8:53forth with CD Projekt Red, and if you go
233. 8:56into the settings, there is a
234. 8:59for this max setting on your graphics.
235. 9:02When I click the okay button on that, uh
236. 9:05one of the things I notice immediately
237. 9:07is we are locked at a Vsync of 30, which
238. 9:11I'm going to turn off just so that it's
239. 9:13not the limiting factor here, but let's
240. 9:16see what that does to our frame rates.
241. 9:18Wow. Why would they lock this to a Vsync
242. 9:22of 30? I'm getting like 55,
243. 9:2654 FPS, and yeah, it is using some
244. 9:30resolution scaling. I can actually see
245. 9:32on the output here that MetalFX is
246. 9:35scaling the input resolution from 1536
247. 9:39by 1864 to the target resolution of 1920
248. 9:43by 1080, but yeah, I'm sure that if you
249. 9:45do a little bit of pixel peeping, you're
250. 9:47going to find some abnormalities here
251. 9:48and there, but realistically, this is
252. 9:50not bad.
253. 9:51>> Do you think this is better than a PS5?
254. 9:54>> I don't think it's better than a PS5.
255. 9:56PS5's going to be hitting a higher
256. 9:58target resolution for its rendering even
257. 10:01with the scaling. When you've got your
258. 10:03PS5 set to 4K, I think it's targeting
259. 10:06roughly a 1440p or a 1280p resolution as
260. 10:10what it's what it's rendering at. So,
261. 10:11you are getting a little bit more visual
262. 10:14fidelity out of a PS5, but this is still
263. 10:17pretty serviceable. I mean, the other
264. 10:19thing that I was curious about is what
265. 10:22the thermal load was going to be like in
266. 10:24a game versus like what it was in
267. 10:26Cinebench, and realistically, I think
268. 10:28this is quieter than what we were
269. 10:30getting when we were pushing the CPU to
270. 10:32the limit with Cinebench. Yeah, so if I
271. 10:34set it to 1440p as the target
272. 10:36resolution, our scaling input resolution
273. 10:39is 2048 by 1152. These are all really
274. 10:43weird numbers, but the technology just
275. 10:46kind of handles it for you. Then, our
276. 10:48FPS drops down to that kind of 36-ish
277. 10:53area that Labs was seeing in their 1080p
278. 10:55Ultra. So, you could crank the
279. 10:57resolution a little bit and drop some of
280. 11:00your like texture settings and that type
281. 11:02of thing to maybe play around with what
282. 11:04you like as the best combination for
283. 11:06graphics, but honestly, I'd probably
284. 11:09just leave it at that for this Mac and
285. 11:11turn the Vsync off. Running our favorite
286. 11:13CPU drag race, Cinebench, we saw a 27%
287. 11:16uplift from the M4 to the M6 in single
288. 11:19core, as well as a 49% uplift on
289. 11:23multi-threaded. This gets you a decent
290. 11:26performance jump over what the last
291. 11:28generation would have been. Labs also
292. 11:30ran in Bench on both Photoshop and
293. 11:32Premiere Pro, and they were able to see
294. 11:35a 22% and 33% respectively bump up on
295. 11:38the M6 processor. Local AI is one of the
296. 11:41areas, though, that saw very large
297. 11:44performance improvements, especially in
298. 11:46certain workloads because of those
299. 11:48neural accelerators that were added to
300. 11:49the GPU. We did see some improvements on
301. 11:52the CPU side thanks to the dual 16-core
302. 11:55neural engine that Apple has included
303. 11:57this generation, so there is a 40%
304. 11:59uplift on the int 8 test in Procyon,
305. 12:01where the larger jump on the GPU side
306. 12:04was 153%
307. 12:06on FP16 because of those neural
308. 12:09accelerators. In Lama Bench, Labs also
309. 12:12saw a 35% increase in token generation
310. 12:15and a whopping 257% increase in the
311. 12:19prompt processing on the M6. If you
312. 12:21wanted to take that a little bit
313. 12:23further, we have the M6 base model here
314. 12:26with 16 gigs of RAM. If you go to the 24
315. 12:30gig or 32 gig configs, your memory
316. 12:32bandwidth actually jumps up a little
317. 12:35bit. It goes from 153 GB/s to 170 GB/s,
318. 12:40and that will help in some of these
319. 12:42AI-related workloads. One of the last
320. 12:44things that changed with this package is
321. 12:46now we have the Apple N1 wireless chip
322. 12:48in here, which brings you from wireless
323. 12:516E in the M4 version to wireless 7, and
324. 12:54we get Bluetooth 6 support instead of
325. 12:55the Bluetooth 5.3. As I mentioned at the
326. 12:58beginning of this video, yes, the price
327. 13:01has gone up. It is unfortunate that you
328. 13:03saw the price increase from the base
329. 13:06model in the M4 of 16 gigs of RAM and
330. 13:09256 gigs of storage at $599 to now we're
331. 13:13at $899 for those same specs, but
332. 13:16there's been a lot going on in the
333. 13:17industry, and that is just kind of the
334. 13:20landscape that we're in. All things
335. 13:21considered, I do think this is a pretty
336. 13:24good value considering the package that
337. 13:26you're getting. There's not really any
338. 13:28other system that you can get a CPU, a
339. 13:31processor, and GPU combo like this for
340. 13:34that much money. And if you want to bump
341. 13:36up to the M5 Pro version, you get a
342. 13:38beefier CPU, a beefier GPU, 24 gigs of
343. 13:41RAM with that extra memory bandwidth,
344. 13:43and 512 gigs of storage for $16.99. It
345. 13:47is doubling the cost, but you're getting
346. 13:49a lot more horsepower along [music] with
347. 13:50it. If you're looking to really turn it
348. 13:52up and load it for bear, you can get
349. 13:54that M5 Pro chip with the faster GPU,
350. 13:57the faster CPU, 64 gigs of RAM, 512 gigs
351. 14:01of storage is probably still enough
352. 14:03because you might have like some extra
353. 14:05storage laying around that you can plug
354. 14:07in, and a 10-gigabit network card all
355. 14:09for three grand, which if you're looking
356. 14:11at comparable Windows-based laptops or
357. 14:14Windows-based mini PCs, you're going to
358. 14:16be spending significantly more than
359. 14:18that. On the note about storage, though,
360. 14:21one of the changes from the M4 Mac mini
361. 14:23to the M6 and M5 Pro is they went from a
362. 14:27replaceable storage module to soldered
363. 14:29storage. This means that you're not
364. 14:31going to be able to find storage modules
365. 14:34kind of floating around on the
366. 14:35third-party markets after the fact that
367. 14:37you'd be able to upgrade your internal
368. 14:39storage with. I really wish they could
369. 14:41have kept that in there, and I don't see
370. 14:43any reason why they needed to get rid of
371. 14:45it. It just makes it a little bit less
372. 14:48repairable. Thanks for watching
373. 14:49ShortCircuit. If you're looking for some
374. 14:51other Apple hardware, we have the iPhone
375. 14:5318 come through here recently. But if AI
376. 14:55mini PCs is more your thing, we did a
377. 14:57ShortCircuit on the Beelink GTR 9 Pro
378. 15:00that you should go check out.