05-16-2014, 09:03 PM
RAMd®d, what model is your older mini? If it does not support 2560x1600, there is no way it could come close trying to play a 4K video. I think the Intel HD graphics that was the generation before Haswell based computers might be able to output 4K at 30 Hz over a Thunderbolt to HDMI cable but I don't have any CPU's of that era to test. C(-)ris might be a good person to answer this, if his company has bought any 4K class displays.
About four years ago my ancient Windows laptop started choking on 1080 video. The GPU was powerful enough to play them but many of the newer video formats depend on CPU features like SSE5 and later extensions. My opinion is that Intel essentially paid off or strong-armed all the developers in one way or another so that they could take over the laptop/mobile segment. They wanted video performance to depend on the CPU instead of the GPU, the latter is where Intel had been historically the laughing stock weak sister. Intel keeps updating their CPU's in this fashion. Even though an older CPU has the raw MIPS and FLOPS rating, it needs more recent CPU extensions to efficiently decode compressed video that was encoded on the newer architecture.
About four years ago my ancient Windows laptop started choking on 1080 video. The GPU was powerful enough to play them but many of the newer video formats depend on CPU features like SSE5 and later extensions. My opinion is that Intel essentially paid off or strong-armed all the developers in one way or another so that they could take over the laptop/mobile segment. They wanted video performance to depend on the CPU instead of the GPU, the latter is where Intel had been historically the laughing stock weak sister. Intel keeps updating their CPU's in this fashion. Even though an older CPU has the raw MIPS and FLOPS rating, it needs more recent CPU extensions to efficiently decode compressed video that was encoded on the newer architecture.