Hey there. I received today my Mini. i7 2.6GHz with 4GB of RAM (which I upgraded to 16GB) and the 256GB SSD.
Didn't really wanna just run Geekbench as I can go and check results on their site, and that number doesn't tell me anything, so prepared a couple of -silly- tests of stuff I do everyday to compare processing times.
Machines in comparison:
Mac Mini 2010: Core2Duo 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD.
Macbook Air 2012: i5 1.8GHz, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD.
Mac Mini 2012: i7 2.6GHz, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD.
I know these are a bit silly tests, but this is the way I found to see how much of an improvement I'd actually notice from the upgrade: Doing regular tasks I do.
Cheers!
Didn't really wanna just run Geekbench as I can go and check results on their site, and that number doesn't tell me anything, so prepared a couple of -silly- tests of stuff I do everyday to compare processing times.
Machines in comparison:
Mac Mini 2010: Core2Duo 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD.
Macbook Air 2012: i5 1.8GHz, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD.
Mac Mini 2012: i7 2.6GHz, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD.
Test 1: HANDBRAKE
Converting a 1 minute 50 seconds long HD file to the preset Apple TV3. Video is MKV, h264, DTS Audio and one subtitle track.
Mini 2010: 7m20s
MBA 2012: 3m49s
Mini 2012: 1m40s
Well, times sum it all I think. Amazing performance.
CPUs got damn hot. Gotta say I was using iStat Menus to monitor them and I don't know how precise these are, because a lot of readings were down to 0 (voltages and some temps) and it was only showing 2 CPUs... it looked legit, but who knows). The readings for these 2 CPUs went up to 105ºC (221ºF).
Test 2: SUBLER
Converting an 8GB HD movie. Video is, again, MKV, h264, DTS Audio and one subtitle track.
Mini 2010: 12m28s
MBA 2012: 2m06s
Mini 2012: 2m12s
I guess here the SSD is the trick. 6 seconds isn't really noticeable so I guess Subler doesn't really know how to use the extra power of the CPU.
Test 3: COMPRESSION
"Raring" a 1GB file into 10 files of 100MB each using SimplyRAR.
Setting: Fastest
Mini 2010: 2m07s
MBA 2012: 1m03s
Mini 2012: 48s
Setting: Normal
Mini 2010: 15m46s
MBA 2012: 10m44s
Mini 2012: 9m57s
Test 4: UNCOMPRESSION
"UnRaring" a 4GB file which was previously "rared" into 40 files of 100MB each.
Mini 2010: 5m32s
MBA 2012: 1m40s
Mini 2012: 1m19s
SSD rocks. Also notice that the Air uses a Toshiba one, which only achieve 270MB/s for write while the Mini's Samsung drive can do 410MB/s.
Test 5: CALCULUS (My favorite)
I'm working on a project at work in which we programmed this code that has to do 'something'. Can't really say what we want it for, so just to clarify this is a CPU starving process that has to calculate different iterations of this 'something'.
At work we usually do quadrillions of iterations, but of course we got a magical machine there that I'm in love with. LOL
Here I set it to do 30.000 billions of iterations.
Mini 2010: 24m10s
MBA 2012: 14m26s
Mini 2012: 7m23s
As I said, this program is only CPU. And It's amazing to see the difference.
CPUs got to around 98ºC (208ºF) during this test.
I know these are a bit silly tests, but this is the way I found to see how much of an improvement I'd actually notice from the upgrade: Doing regular tasks I do.
Cheers!