In need of computer advice. Fairly odd situation.

[LRH]

Here's my situation:

Just over a year ago, my tower's motherboard experienced a surge, completely rendering all of the hardware inside useless. The hardware wasn't phenomenal to begin with, but it sure beat what I've got now:

A standard mid 2011 mac-mini with Intel HD3000 on-board graphics. I've upgraded the 2GB ram to 8. I run bootcamp and have the option of booting into Mac OSX or Windows 7. It was given to me for free, which was extremely generous, but it's just so completely weak in the graphics department that I almost can't stand it.

I'm wondering what my options are as far as keeping all the data I've got on my current hard drive while upgrading the hardware I'm using. Upgrading the graphics on the machine itself seems to be impossible without using some kind of obscenely expensive adapter like this: https://secure1.sonnettech.com/index.php?cPath=139_141&osCsid=2bb8ef09e717de5bacba018dd23b583b

Would it be possible to sell the mini and somehow transfer the software licenses onto new (better) pc hardware?

Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated as always.

EDIT: I also forgot to mention money is exceptionally tight right now. I'm not in a position to just buy a new rig entirely.

[amateurhour]

Any kind of external graphics adapter isn't going to perform like a hard wired one will. It's still going through the thunderbolt pipeline and not connected to the board itself so there's going to be lag. Basically that's the long way of saying you can't upgrade the graphics on that machine, but in general you can't upgrade the graphics card on a mac anyway (most of the time) which is the one area where PCs tend to have the advantage.

If you upgrade to a new PC any of your PC software will transfer over fine as long as you've kept the license keys. You might have to go to the software vendor to remove your key from your existing machine in their database, but it's not too hard to do.

Adobe (and several other vendors) will NOT let you transfer your software from the mac to pc version using the same key without paying for an upgrade or transfer. (I know this because I have CS5 suite for the MAC and I can't use the key on the PC without paying for a CS6 suite upgrade)

What are you trying to do that's choking on the graphics?

[LRH]

Well, while there is some throttling from external graphics sources through thunderbolt, someone on Tom's Hardware (unfortunately I cannot find the link or the benchmark test right now) showed that going through something like this: https://secure1.sonnettech.com/index.php?cPath=139_141&osCsid=2bb8ef09e717de5bacba018dd23b583b offers a *substantial* boost over the current HD3000. It doesn't matter that much, though, because at $500 for the chassis alone, I'd be better off just building a budget gaming computer.

The only thing I'm doing that's demanding is some gaming. Most semi-modern titles are basically unplayable, even with graphics settings at minimums and the resolution lowered.

[amateurhour]

Yeah sadly PC gaming, even at a budget level, is always going to be a rich man's game, which is why I'm pretty set in the console world except for some indie titles that don't eat up resources. With 8 gigs of ram and what I'm assuming is an i3 processor on that model you could "maybe" switch to an ssd to run your games and notice a little bit of a speed boost, but it would be negligible, and it would still cost about $200 for a decent sized ssd.

That adapter would allow you to use external graphics, but your card selection would be limited if you wanted a card with driver support for PC and MAC (which you wouldn't, but it's still a consideration). Those things are mainly meant for video capture, audio interface, Fibre Channel, and RAID cards more than anything else.

I'd keep an eye on tiger direct and look for a good barebones system you can just plug a video card into, but yeah, even at that route you're still in the $500s

[LRH]

Good ideas, thank you.