AMD Radeon HD 6630M vs Intel HD 3000 for driving a Thunderbolt Display

I think that is the main issue with glossy displays. They work and look great at max brightness - particularly for movies/video etc, but at lower settings reflections can interfere. I already bought an iMac for the lab (with similar lighting setup) and it is difficult to use, particulalry if you are trying to show someone else your work - i.e. it is quite hard to position it so that two people can see the screen reflection free at once. The same usage is fpr my officw, I will often be meeting with people and discussing onscreen work, so need something that is easy to use and share.

In my office I like to run screens at much lower brightness, to match the environmental lighting. I also ad thst this is meant to create much less strain on the eye/brain too. I am running the Dell display at 45% contrast and only 25-35% brightness depending on the time of day. Defaiults are 50 and 50. 100% brightness is incredibly bright, and too much for me for office work.

Thanks for your suggestion though. I will try adding more RAM, and see how i go. One option on the horizon could be an external thunderbolt graphics card. But that is probably 6-12 months away.

Thanks KYL.

I upgraded the mini server to 8GB of fast 1867 Mhz Kingston HyperX RAM.

It works fine, and GeekBenches extremely high, but unfortunately it has made little difference to the Expose/MC smoothness when running the Dell display at maximum resolution.

I am still really surprised that the 6630 is not better, but perhaps it is just short of RAM. Very frustrating Apple skimped on that. It must be pennies to make it 512MB.

In the end, I am running a modified Snow Leopard installation. And with Expose rolled back to the 10.5 version. Everything is much smoother in 10.5 Expose. And full depth window Safari scrollling is smoother in SL than in Lion so I am happy about that too. Everything else appears to be working flawlessly, and it even Geekbenches higher than Lion.

Thanks again for your help though!

I am using a Mac Mini i7 with Apple Thuderbolt display with the SSD/750 7200rpm drives and the unit preforms very well with multiple web pages opened but tends to lag when I am running a lot of quick time movies etc.. Using this as a stop gap right now, till Apple fixes the mess they are having with there iMacs, as mine 2011 June model died a quick death after a Lion upgrade. The 6630 is made to work better with the Thunderbolt display as stated by Apple, and the DDR5 sure helps, but I agree they need to up the ram on this unit, more like to 1 gig. It would be nice to see a i7 Quad core mini with a much better graphics card, but something tells me it would be one hot box after awhile. For now the unit suites me fine as I will eventually upgrade back to another iMac in due time. I should add I am also using 16gig of memory in this unit as well.