Dual Thunderbolt Displays with Mac Mini

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Dual Thunderbolt Displays with Mac Mini

With the release of the new Mac Mini's with Sandy Bridge Core i7s and Thunderbolt, I have been toying with the idea of picking up a new fully loaded Mac Mini and two 27" Thunderbolt Cinema Displays. However, even though Thunderbolt allows for daisy chaining displays (as is shown in the MacBook Pro photos), the GPU still needs to be stout enough to be able to drive both of the displays without a noticeable drop in performance.

Can the Mac Mini, either the 2.7 GHz Dual-Core i7 with dedicated ATI Radeon graphics or the 2.0 GHz Quad-Core i7 with integrated SB graphics, handle two 27" Thunderbolt Displays without any noticeable drop in performance?

Posted on Jul 29, 2011 9:14 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 30, 2011 8:52 AM in response to patrickweber

So far the answer is no. The Intel 3000 graphics in the base and server can't handle it. The AMD graphic version should be able to but the mini is not on Apple's list. We will have to wait and have someone try.

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Answer 2

patrickweber Author

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Jul 30, 2011 9:58 PM in response to Saul in PA

Tonight, I chatted with one of the Apple Store "Experts" and I asked him about dual Thunderbolt displays through daisy-chaining.

He wasn't sure off the top of his head, so he took a few minutes to look it up and told me that "Yes you can." although he also recommended that I get the version with the dedicated GPU.

I am not sure what the graphics/system resource penalty will be with that many pixels, or if it will even be a pleasurable experience, but the first impression was not a no, which is a good sign. I suppose we'll have to wait until the screens begin shipping to find out for sure. Again, that is assuming that someone has the cash and is willing to drop it on two displays. I'm still not sure I can (or want to).

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Answer 3

patrickweber Author

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Jul 31, 2011 12:58 AM in response to Saul in PA

Just for further clarification, he did say that the Mac mini, at most, supports up to two displays. This means that if two 27" Thunderbolt Display's were daisy-chained together, the HDMI-out would be disabled. A triple-monitor configuration is not possible.

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Answer 4

Aug 20, 2011 8:46 AM in response to patrickweber

Current Thunderbolt's maximum bandwidth can not handle two 2560x1440 displays at the same time.

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Answer 5

Sep 1, 2011 7:41 PM in response to MultiplePerspectives

What about a suped up Mac mini with AMD radeon graphics? I plan on super charging my mac mini and was hoping to use a thunderbolt display with it and then connect another display through the first one...Will that not work?

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Answer 6

Sep 1, 2011 9:09 PM in response to Mmmm Brainssss

The graphics chipset is capable of multiple monitors.

The problem lies with thunderbold and Apple video and thunderbold drivers.

Especially at 60 hertz on each monitor, the bandwidth would be at it's maximum.

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