Mac Mini 2009 upgrade guide
I thought I would provide a few tips for upgrading the 2009 Mac Mini, which some guides don't cover fully. If you plan on upgrading yourself, doing any damage inside can void your warranty. There are actually no stickers inside that you have to break to change the RAM or HDD and I didn't find it to be all that bad. If you're not sure about it, pay an Apple Certified Tech to do the upgrade for you but then you won't save much money.
Apple's upgrade prices on the Mini are quite expensive so this can save you some money.
The base Mini is 2GHz Core 2 Duo for £499. The 4GB Ram upgrade costs £120 and a 250GB 5400rpm drive is £80. This takes us up to £699.
What I did was upgrade to 4GB Ram and a 250GB 7200rpm drive for £630 plus I can get £50 back, which I'll explain so overall £580
What you will need to do first of all is buy your upgrade parts. I opted for 4GB RAM (check Crucial for the right kind) and a 250GB 7200rpm Hitachi Travelstar hard drive (they are supposed to be quieter than Seagates and I can verify they are pretty quiet). I also got a cheap Mac compatible 2.5" SATA enclosure from ebay for under £10:
drive = £63
RAM = £56
drive enclosure = £10
total = £129
When you get all the parts, put the drive into the enclosure and plug it into your new machine, which you should have setup (don't setup Bootcamp yet though). Format the external drive as GUID partition map (important!) and HFS+ Extended Journaled with disk utility. Download Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) or SuperDuper - I used CCC - and clone your internal onto the external drive. It should take about 15-20 minutes.
Reboot the machine holding alt (the alt-key on the new keyboard works finally) and make sure you can boot from the external drive.
Now shutdown the computer and remove all peripherals and power leads. Touch some metal objects to discharge any static.
To open the Mini up, you need the stupid putty knife method - the person who designed this case is a complete idiot. The knives have to be extremely thin and you'll find that pulling one edge up makes it very difficult to use the knife on the other side. Some Minis are easier to open than others but it kind of seems like they've strengthened the metal this time round as I found it harder than the last generation. The top case also feels heavier.
Anyway, once you have it loose, lift the top cover straight up and off. You will see the following:
There are 3 antennas. In the Mac Mini Colo guide, it shows the antenna wires disconnected from the motherboard. You don't have to disconnect these and you actually can't until you flip the top over anyway.
It's actually easier to take the top of this one than the last model.
You take the airport chip off same as the last generation by squeezing the black plastic clips underneath it - hook it over the back of the machine out the way. This allows you to access the screw at the back. The screw locations are marked with a circle above and there are 4 you need to remove. The long one goes into the front right in case you forget where it came from.
There is an orange data cable at the back. I disconnected it from the back of the optical drive rather than the I/O board as it's easy to get your fingernail in and gently prize it off. Be careful not to squash it though when moving the top part that you remove.
Gently lift the top part directly upwards. When it's loose, tip it over in the direction indicated in the image. If you're facing the front, it tips over to your left. The two antennas still have wires attached - as I say, you don't have to remove these.
I should have taken a picture of this but you'll see the bottom part looks like this:
The RAM is easy to remove. You just push out the two silver clips one each side. One thing that I noticed here was that the base Mini only gives you a single 1GB module. This probably reduces the performance of the graphics as it's not matched memory. Slotting the RAM in should be fairly trivial if you've replaced RAM before. Just make sure it snaps firmly into place. If you think you are straining it too much, try pulling the sliver levers to get the modules in.
That's the RAM upgrade done.
The hard drive is actually pretty easy to replace too. It's underneath the following block and you will see it clearly when this is upside down:
It's held in by 4 screws. There is a wire glued and taped to it. Don't worry about this as you can put it back onto your new drive easily.
The wire has a tiny chip glued to the front of the drive. You can ease this off with a small flathead screwdriver. Try to leave some glue on it so you don't have to tape it. Remove the tape too and push the wire out the way.
Take out the 4 screws and the drive will slide right out. It's not tight.
Take the drive out of your enclosure and put it in. There are no drive jumpers to worry about. Screw the drive in place and tape the wire back down. If the chip still has enough glue, it should stick back on quite firmly. If not, just add a little piece of tape over it. I think it's just a heat or vibration sensor.
There are also 2 sticky pads on the other side of the drive for cushioning. Transfer those over too. They help when slotting the drive back in.
Now that's the drive installed so flip the top back over into place and be careful not to damage the orange data cable. You also have to align it properly so that the chip on the bottom drops into the slot. It's not too difficult but do it gently.
Connect the orange data cable back up.
Connect your display, power and keyboard/mouse and boot the machine to check everything is ok. Go into the system profiler and check the RAM shows up ok. If it's working fine, shut down and disconnect everything again.
Put the 4 screws back in and then put the airport back on (remember the spring).
Now just clip the top cover back down and you're done.
The hardest part IMO is dealing with the top cover. 4 screws would make the whole process so much more pleasant.
Now, the savings I was talking about. When you take the internal 120GB 5400 rpm drive out, you can put this back in your enclosure and sell it on ebay for about £35-40. The 1GB module that was in it, you can sell for about £10-15. I'm personally going to keep the external as another backup drive (you can use it for Time Machine for example).
As far as the performance goes, getting the 4GB RAM is a good thing. It's cheap and you can't upgrade beyond this. The 7200 rpm drive I wasn't sure about at first. I did some benchmarks before I did it though and it seems that the 5400rpm drive in the new Mini is faster than the old one. I actually got double the performance. I'm not sure if they use drives with a higher density or something so I wondered if I actually needed 7200rpm but it was also double the space so I decided that if it was quiet enough, I would go ahead with it.
In the external enclosure, it sounded noisier but inside the machine it's actually fine and it doesn't seem to generate much more heat than the 5400rpm. It is a touch noisier but from a distance of about 2 ft, it's still pretty much silent.
I also did some benchmarks before and after and I noticed a distinct 25% performance improvement in drive writes - booting is also faster. I tested both writing a large single file and 10,000 x 100k files. Both showed a 25% improvement consistently.
Also, once you install more RAM, your VRAM goes up to 256MB on the 9400M. Using two modules should also help improve graphics performance. I have the Call of Duty 4 demo so I'll let you know how it runs on this machine.
For the price of £580, even though PCs are around that for a Core 2 Quad, the RAM, HDD and graphics are about even. I would prefer it to be £480 but the economy does play a part in this. If you have an old Mini already, you will get about £300 for it so it's a £280 upgrade cost and well worth it for the graphics alone.
I have also Bootcamp'd the machine (had to get another SP2 disc as I got the disk error, press to restart issue - you need one with the formatting option on it and choose FAT or NTFS quick) and you insert the install disc that comes with your machine for the drivers. So far, the graphics performance seems to be on par with the X1600 in the old iMacs but that was before my upgrades.
No graphics glitches are present so far that existed on the Intel one.
Apple's upgrade prices on the Mini are quite expensive so this can save you some money.
The base Mini is 2GHz Core 2 Duo for £499. The 4GB Ram upgrade costs £120 and a 250GB 5400rpm drive is £80. This takes us up to £699.
What I did was upgrade to 4GB Ram and a 250GB 7200rpm drive for £630 plus I can get £50 back, which I'll explain so overall £580
What you will need to do first of all is buy your upgrade parts. I opted for 4GB RAM (check Crucial for the right kind) and a 250GB 7200rpm Hitachi Travelstar hard drive (they are supposed to be quieter than Seagates and I can verify they are pretty quiet). I also got a cheap Mac compatible 2.5" SATA enclosure from ebay for under £10:
drive = £63
RAM = £56
drive enclosure = £10
total = £129
When you get all the parts, put the drive into the enclosure and plug it into your new machine, which you should have setup (don't setup Bootcamp yet though). Format the external drive as GUID partition map (important!) and HFS+ Extended Journaled with disk utility. Download Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) or SuperDuper - I used CCC - and clone your internal onto the external drive. It should take about 15-20 minutes.
Reboot the machine holding alt (the alt-key on the new keyboard works finally) and make sure you can boot from the external drive.
Now shutdown the computer and remove all peripherals and power leads. Touch some metal objects to discharge any static.
To open the Mini up, you need the stupid putty knife method - the person who designed this case is a complete idiot. The knives have to be extremely thin and you'll find that pulling one edge up makes it very difficult to use the knife on the other side. Some Minis are easier to open than others but it kind of seems like they've strengthened the metal this time round as I found it harder than the last generation. The top case also feels heavier.
Anyway, once you have it loose, lift the top cover straight up and off. You will see the following:
There are 3 antennas. In the Mac Mini Colo guide, it shows the antenna wires disconnected from the motherboard. You don't have to disconnect these and you actually can't until you flip the top over anyway.
It's actually easier to take the top of this one than the last model.
You take the airport chip off same as the last generation by squeezing the black plastic clips underneath it - hook it over the back of the machine out the way. This allows you to access the screw at the back. The screw locations are marked with a circle above and there are 4 you need to remove. The long one goes into the front right in case you forget where it came from.
There is an orange data cable at the back. I disconnected it from the back of the optical drive rather than the I/O board as it's easy to get your fingernail in and gently prize it off. Be careful not to squash it though when moving the top part that you remove.
Gently lift the top part directly upwards. When it's loose, tip it over in the direction indicated in the image. If you're facing the front, it tips over to your left. The two antennas still have wires attached - as I say, you don't have to remove these.
I should have taken a picture of this but you'll see the bottom part looks like this:
The RAM is easy to remove. You just push out the two silver clips one each side. One thing that I noticed here was that the base Mini only gives you a single 1GB module. This probably reduces the performance of the graphics as it's not matched memory. Slotting the RAM in should be fairly trivial if you've replaced RAM before. Just make sure it snaps firmly into place. If you think you are straining it too much, try pulling the sliver levers to get the modules in.
That's the RAM upgrade done.
The hard drive is actually pretty easy to replace too. It's underneath the following block and you will see it clearly when this is upside down:
It's held in by 4 screws. There is a wire glued and taped to it. Don't worry about this as you can put it back onto your new drive easily.
The wire has a tiny chip glued to the front of the drive. You can ease this off with a small flathead screwdriver. Try to leave some glue on it so you don't have to tape it. Remove the tape too and push the wire out the way.
Take out the 4 screws and the drive will slide right out. It's not tight.
Take the drive out of your enclosure and put it in. There are no drive jumpers to worry about. Screw the drive in place and tape the wire back down. If the chip still has enough glue, it should stick back on quite firmly. If not, just add a little piece of tape over it. I think it's just a heat or vibration sensor.
There are also 2 sticky pads on the other side of the drive for cushioning. Transfer those over too. They help when slotting the drive back in.
Now that's the drive installed so flip the top back over into place and be careful not to damage the orange data cable. You also have to align it properly so that the chip on the bottom drops into the slot. It's not too difficult but do it gently.
Connect the orange data cable back up.
Connect your display, power and keyboard/mouse and boot the machine to check everything is ok. Go into the system profiler and check the RAM shows up ok. If it's working fine, shut down and disconnect everything again.
Put the 4 screws back in and then put the airport back on (remember the spring).
Now just clip the top cover back down and you're done.
The hardest part IMO is dealing with the top cover. 4 screws would make the whole process so much more pleasant.
Now, the savings I was talking about. When you take the internal 120GB 5400 rpm drive out, you can put this back in your enclosure and sell it on ebay for about £35-40. The 1GB module that was in it, you can sell for about £10-15. I'm personally going to keep the external as another backup drive (you can use it for Time Machine for example).
As far as the performance goes, getting the 4GB RAM is a good thing. It's cheap and you can't upgrade beyond this. The 7200 rpm drive I wasn't sure about at first. I did some benchmarks before I did it though and it seems that the 5400rpm drive in the new Mini is faster than the old one. I actually got double the performance. I'm not sure if they use drives with a higher density or something so I wondered if I actually needed 7200rpm but it was also double the space so I decided that if it was quiet enough, I would go ahead with it.
In the external enclosure, it sounded noisier but inside the machine it's actually fine and it doesn't seem to generate much more heat than the 5400rpm. It is a touch noisier but from a distance of about 2 ft, it's still pretty much silent.
I also did some benchmarks before and after and I noticed a distinct 25% performance improvement in drive writes - booting is also faster. I tested both writing a large single file and 10,000 x 100k files. Both showed a 25% improvement consistently.
Also, once you install more RAM, your VRAM goes up to 256MB on the 9400M. Using two modules should also help improve graphics performance. I have the Call of Duty 4 demo so I'll let you know how it runs on this machine.
For the price of £580, even though PCs are around that for a Core 2 Quad, the RAM, HDD and graphics are about even. I would prefer it to be £480 but the economy does play a part in this. If you have an old Mini already, you will get about £300 for it so it's a £280 upgrade cost and well worth it for the graphics alone.
I have also Bootcamp'd the machine (had to get another SP2 disc as I got the disk error, press to restart issue - you need one with the formatting option on it and choose FAT or NTFS quick) and you insert the install disc that comes with your machine for the drivers. So far, the graphics performance seems to be on par with the X1600 in the old iMacs but that was before my upgrades.
No graphics glitches are present so far that existed on the Intel one.
Comments
Thanks, nice walkthrough. Is there a problem with a fresh install from the discs if you simply install an empty drive in there? There's not much I care about on my mini at the moment.
There shouldn't be but you'll have to go through the installer disc, which takes longer than a drive clone. The external enclosure is good because it lets you sell the internal drive easily or re-use it. You'll be able to format the empty drive by booting from the installation disc so just putting a blank disc in will be ok. I would do the installation and test the drive out before sealing it back up though. Some drives can arrive DOA.
I did a test of Call of Duty 4 and I'm really pleased with the performance. The graphics default to medium detail with all special graphics features turned on. It also turns on 4x anti-aliasing. I'd recommend turning AA off.
With those settings, indoor scenes get between 40 and 60 FPS. Outdoor scenes generally sit around 25-35 FPS. High action scenes can drop to 15 FPS but the game never seems to reach a point where you'd be annoyed by the occasional drop in FPS. You can lower some settings of course in order to avoid it but I didn't find it necessary.
It's certainly a very capable casual gaming machine and I'll try benchmarking a few other games when I get them.
...
Very nicely done, and this will help me (first time attempting to upgrade a mini) when i do it.
Speaking of ... what are you (or anyone else who upgraded the memory themselves) doing with that spare 1GB stick ....
My issue with Apple's options is not only the pricing, but that they don't go far enough. 500 MB 2.5" SATA drives are common now (especially 5400 rpm models, which is all that Apple offers for its other sizes) so why not give that choice?
And for that matter, I'm enough of a mini lover that if Apple had a 256 GB SSD option, I'd be tempted to go for it... It would make the ultimate home theater machine: no sound during the quiet bits, and Front Row would be very snappy loading menus without having to spin up a dormant drive.
(Of course, it would look downright funny having a drive option that cost more than the actual computer, so maybe that's a reason it's not there!)
Upgrade guides are always helpful, thanks!
My issue with Apple's options is not only the pricing, but that they don't go far enough. 500 MB 2.5" SATA drives are common now (especially 5400 rpm models, which is all that Apple offers for its other sizes) so why not give that choice?
And for that matter, I'm enough of a mini lover that if Apple had a 256 GB SSD option, I'd be tempted to go for it... It would make the ultimate home theater machine: no sound during the quiet bits, and Front Row would be very snappy loading menus without having to spin up a dormant drive.
(Of course, it would look downright funny having a drive option that cost more than the actual computer, so maybe that's a reason it's not there!)
that is the VERY upgrade I (and many others, likely) plan to do with the mini.
I'm going to wait a year or two for the prices to drop significantly. Then, when the warranty is gone i'm gonna go to town.
And for that matter, I'm enough of a mini lover that if Apple had a 256 GB SSD option, I'd be tempted to go for it... It would make the ultimate home theater machine: no sound during the quiet bits, and Front Row would be very snappy loading menus without having to spin up a dormant drive.
Even the 7200 rpm drive isn't noisy. From TV viewing distance, you wouldn't hear it at all. The spin up is very quick and the Travelstar doesn't make the loud noise my old drive did when coming out of sleep mode. It just turns on.
Thank you Marvin, would love for you to bench Left4Dead, UnrealTournament3, Fallout3 and CrysisWarhead (I'm not kidding), FarCry2.
So far I tested Unreal Tournament 3 and Lost Planet Extreme Condition.
Unreal Tournament 3
playing at 1024 x 768 slows down to 20FPS
800 x 600 is fine, textures and detail at mid-level (3/5) gets 30FPS average, can go down to 25FPS but goes up to 50FPS in low complexity areas
tried hardware physics - seemed to improve performance but was disabled when I went out again so it's probably not supported and I was just imagining the speed up.
This is definitely playable and looks pretty good.
Lost Planet Extreme Condition
Must be played at 800 x 600
turn motion blur off
most settings at medium, some on low
gets between 20-30 FPS, drops to 15FPS in high motion
Playable but only just. I wouldn't recommend playing this as it's just on the limit of what the machine can handle. You can of course lower settings right down to the bare minimum and it will go at around 30FPS but it doesn't look very good.
1) It doesn't like my KVM: ioGear 4 port usb kvm with VGA that stacks under the mini. The keyboard doesn't work under the KVM for the mini but works fine for my old mini and MBP.
2) The mini DVI to DVI cable (incl with Mini) does DVI-D only. Which sucks because obviously you can't use the old Apple DVI to VGA cable (incl with MBP) with it.
Marvin, perhaps you can make this a generic 2009 Mini thread?
Impressive for integrated graphics, but not suitable for me. Appreciate your testing.
AFAIK physX not supported on Bootcamp 9400M drivers.
So far I tested Unreal Tournament 3 and Lost Planet Extreme Condition.
Unreal Tournament 3
playing at 1024 x 768 slows down to 20FPS
800 x 600 is fine, textures and detail at mid-level (3/5) gets 30FPS average, can go down to 25FPS but goes up to 50FPS in low complexity areas
tried hardware physics - seemed to improve performance but was disabled when I went out again so it's probably not supported and I was just imagining the speed up.
This is definitely playable and looks pretty good.
Lost Planet Extreme Condition
Must be played at 800 x 600
turn motion blur off
most settings at medium, some on low
gets between 20-30 FPS, drops to 15FPS in high motion
Playable but only just. I wouldn't recommend playing this as it's just on the limit of what the machine can handle. You can of course lower settings right down to the bare minimum and it will go at around 30FPS but it doesn't look very good.
Thanks very much Marvin, you just saved me $1000. For those resolutions and frame rates, the 9400M comes nowhere close to my minimum gaming needs.
Impressive for integrated graphics, but not suitable for me. Appreciate your testing.
AFAIK physX not supported on Bootcamp 9400M drivers.
Yah, it's only good for light gaming. Anything beyond playing WoW at medium quality is doubtful. Fortunately, I mostly play strat games on the PC and leave my FPS fix for the PS3.
Yah, it's only good for light gaming. Anything beyond playing WoW at medium quality is doubtful. Fortunately, I mostly play strat games on the PC and leave my FPS fix for the PS3.
I am dying here waiting for an official launch of the Xbox360 in my country (don't ask, where I am is not that backward, seriously... WTF).
Because ~ the best part? An Xbox360 CAN RUN ANY GAME FOR AT LEAST 3 YEARS. No need to constantly crack one's head about image quality this or DX10 that. Left4Dead? Pop it in. Play. FEAR2:ProjectOrigin? Pop it in. Play. Rich multiplayer community.
Investing a few hundred for a year to two years of consistent, rich gaming experience at graphics better than PS3 quality, reasonable quality compared to PC gaming, I'll take it.
I am dying here waiting for an official launch of the Xbox360 in my country (don't ask, where I am is not that backward, seriously... WTF).
Because ~ the best part? An Xbox360 CAN RUN ANY GAME FOR AT LEAST 3 YEARS. No need to constantly crack one's head about image quality this or DX10 that. Left4Dead? Pop it in. Play. FEAR2:ProjectOrigin? Pop it in. Play. Rich multiplayer community.
Investing a few hundred for a year to two years of consistent, rich gaming experience at graphics better than PS3 quality, reasonable quality compared to PC gaming, I'll take it.
Sure, for just gaming the 360 is far superior to the PS3 when cost is factored in. The primary advantage of the PS3 is Blu-Ray for movies. Well that and build quality vs the 360.
Shame about that. Had it not been for the RROD issues I think MS would have really killed Sony this go around. Hopefully Sony got some complacency knocked out of them like Nintendo did on the Game Cube.
Even the 7200 rpm drive isn't noisy. From TV viewing distance, you wouldn't hear it at all. The spin up is very quick and the Travelstar doesn't make the loud noise my old drive did when coming out of sleep mode. It just turns on.
So far I tested Unreal Tournament 3 and Lost Planet Extreme Condition.
Unreal Tournament 3
playing at 1024 x 768 slows down to 20FPS
800 x 600 is fine, textures and detail at mid-level (3/5) gets 30FPS average, can go down to 25FPS but goes up to 50FPS in low complexity areas
tried hardware physics - seemed to improve performance but was disabled when I went out again so it's probably not supported and I was just imagining the speed up.
This is definitely playable and looks pretty good.
Lost Planet Extreme Condition
Must be played at 800 x 600
turn motion blur off
most settings at medium, some on low
gets between 20-30 FPS, drops to 15FPS in high motion
Playable but only just. I wouldn't recommend playing this as it's just on the limit of what the machine can handle. You can of course lower settings right down to the bare minimum and it will go at around 30FPS but it doesn't look very good.
If you have the time can you do this:
"Testing conducted by Apple in February 2009 using preproduction 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo?based 20-inch iMac units with NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (256MB VRAM shared). 20-inch iMac systems with 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT (128MB VRAM) were shipping units. Call of Duty 4 v1.7.1 tested using Timedemoambush, Timedemobog, and Timedemopipeline with standard graphics quality at 1280x800. Quake 4 v 1.3 tested using Demo001.netdemo and high graphics quality at 1280x800. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of iMac."
It might be possible that someone with the HD 2400 XT to do the same and we can compare framerates.
The system would also do a single hiccup doing other things like moving a window but all very infrequently. Maybe 10-15 seconds apart.
I suspected my RAM but it passed all the memtest tests.
I felt underneath the machine and it was pretty hot. The air coming out the back was pretty hot too. I decided to install a temperature app and it was sitting at 85 degrees.
Now none of the sensors are messed up or anything due to the install because they are reading these temps. The problem is, it seems Apple thinks it's ok to let your temperature go that high without kicking the fans in.
This is not ok. My HDD clearly states it's maximum operating temperature is 55 degrees. So I used the SMC Fan Control and set the fan speed up to 4000 rpm until it dropped to 40 degrees. This only took 5 minutes.
I then turned off the fan control and it remained at 40 degrees. That is really stupid of Apple to allow the machine to idle at such a high temperature to save 5 minutes of fan noise.
I've installed Fan Control (not SMC Fan Control), which is automated and this will start to ramp up the fan around 45 degress automatically. It should jump to 4000 rpm around 70 degrees so hopefully it won't ever go that high again. Unfortunately this won't happen in Bootcamp but I'd only use that for a couple of hours at most at a time.
Thanks very much Marvin, you just saved me $1000. For those resolutions and frame rates, the 9400M comes nowhere close to my minimum gaming needs.
Yeah, it's not great but anything faster would run much hotter too. I was only ever expecting it to match the X1600 and I'm quite happy that it exceeds that.
I would never expect a machine that size to be a high end gaming device. If that was possible, the XBox 360 and PS3 would be much smaller machines - like the Wii.
If you have the time can you do this
I only have the demos of these games just now and I don't think they have the benchmark features. The average framerates are very dodgy benchmarks because indoors, your framerate can shoot right up to around 50 fps. I have a hard time believing Apple's 2x performance claim.
If you have the time can you do this:
"Testing conducted by Apple in February 2009 using preproduction 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo?based 20-inch iMac units with NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (256MB VRAM shared). 20-inch iMac systems with 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT (128MB VRAM) were shipping units. Call of Duty 4 v1.7.1 tested using Timedemoambush, Timedemobog, and Timedemopipeline with standard graphics quality at 1280x800. Quake 4 v 1.3 tested using Demo001.netdemo and high graphics quality at 1280x800. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of iMac."
It might be possible that someone with the HD 2400 XT to do the same and we can compare framerates.
One must read this Apple statement very, very carefully.
1280x800
This is quite naughty of Apple. Because the 20" runs at 1680x1050 and 24" 1920x1200. As we know from gaming and benchmarks, these are FAR, FAR different from 1280x800.
EDIT: No, the stutter seems to be something else as it still crops up. I'll have to investigate this further. It looks like it might be happening after rebooting back from Bootcamp. If I reboot again, it seems to be ok. I use the Bootcamp control panel in Windows to restart in OS X and it seems to take longer than it should. I'll do normal reboots from now on and see if that prevents the stutter from appearing.
I'm leaving the fan software on though because the max temperature for the Core 2 Duo CPU is 90 degrees. No sense hovering at 85 when I can cool it earlier and have it hover at 40, which it's doing right now. Although 85 wasn't the temp of my hard drive, having the CPU at that speed keeps the air inside hotter so it's more likely to affect the drive. This probably explains the hard drive clunking issues in the older Minis after running them for a while.
I tested a couple more games. FEAR 2 actually runs very well but it has automated performance settings that I can't seem to override and the quality is set down a bit. Still very playable though and the graphics aren't terrible. It is mostly indoors though so frame rate is expected to be higher. Playable and recommended.
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 plays but the default performance setting chosen is too jittery. I had to reduce settings to medium and keep the resolution down. Even then, it was 20-25FPS. Not the smoothest experience. Playable but on low settings.
Left4Dead plays too but you really have to put shader quality to low because there are a number of scenes where 20-30 zombies just run at you full speed. Reminds me a bit of Painkiller. If you don't set the graphics down to the lowest settings, the game can also crash. You get into an infinite loop of audio stutter, which is quite a annoying. Playable but not recommended - you'll have to put settings down to low again.
Half Life 2 Episode 2 plays on high quality though.
The performance of the 9400M is very similar to the X1600 graphics card, which I've tested in the past.
You do have to use low settings and 800 x 600 resolution but even though it says low, the graphics are still pretty high end with HDR, bloom, blur etc. When you are driving so quickly, you don't really notice.
I was playing for maybe 2 hours and there wasn't a single slowdown even in the most intense action with multiple cars crashing. Easily 30+ FPS constantly.
I noticed that after this time and booting back into OS X, the CPU was at 60 degrees and the HDD at 50 but within a matter of minutes, the Fan Control brought it back to 50 for the CPU and 40 for the HDD.
I actually didn't upgrade to this machine to play games, it was mainly to fix the glitches and problems with Intel's terrible GMA chips. Intel's options are appalling in contrast to the Nvidia 9400M and I'm so glad to see the back of them for now.
It isn't the highest end graphics performance but it's certainly a huge improvement over what we're used to from Apple's low end and the fact that it can actually play the highest end games on low quality is enough to qualify it as a pretty decent gaming and graphics machine.
I kind of did the upgrade for a bit of fun (not much $), all the time thinking I would probably need an iMac. But so far (admittedly only 30-odd hours) this is looking good enough to be my main desktop.