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2.5Ghz i5 vs. Server Mac Mini for Video

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CoolDaddyCole

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 30, 2012
4
0
Fort Worth
I got an aging iMac that I desperately need to replace for some light video editing. Weddings,Events that sort of stuff. While my iMac from 08 has been a trooper I need to upgrade to Final Cut X and its not compatible.

I am in a crunch financially and I have been looking at a Mac Mini since I already have a pretty good monitor. I also like the idea of being able to upgrade the Mac Mini down the road if needed.

My question is would the i5 model with the AMD graphics card be as good as the server edition with the Quad Core ? In my experience the graphics card really only comes in to play with animation, gaming,things like that but I am not sure with all the new OpenCL tech out there?

P.S. I know that these could be updated any minute but I gotta jump on something quick.
 
F

fa8362

macrumors 68000
Jul 7, 2008
1,571
497
The server will be much faster for rendering. The AMD model will be faster at importing video, and will provide smoother playback when editing.

I'd probably choose the server, but I've never done editing professionally, and might be overlooking something that a pro would see.
 
comatory

comatory

macrumors 6502a
Apr 10, 2012
738
0
henchman said:
Except no mention of the quadcore i7 server in that article.
And a quadcore 2.0 will be better at crunching video and audio, than a dualcore 2.7.
Click to expand...

This graphic card wont help you for anything related to video,its useless.
If you will really do light editing,the base model will serve you fine after you add 8gb ram. I regilarly edit HD videos on 11" macbook air that has dual core i5.
Sure the render times arent great but since its cheap its not bad. You really need to consider how fast and how demanding the video editing will be.
Server version would be much better although the cooling isnt great it will work. But its much higher at that price that you may as well consider base iMac.

If you dont mind waiting extra few minutes when outputting video I would go with base model cause its cheap,if youre willing to drop more cash at the machine you could install SSD along with the original drive and more RAM.
 
henchman

henchman

macrumors 6502a
Dec 28, 2004
548
6
comatory said:
This graphic card wont help you for anything related to video,its useless.
If you will really do light editing,the base model will serve you fine after you add 8gb ram. I regilarly edit HD videos on 11" macbook air that has dual core i5.
Sure the render times arent great but since its cheap its not bad. You really need to consider how fast and how demanding the video editing will be.
Server version would be much better although the cooling isnt great it will work. But its much higher at that price that you may as well consider base iMac.

If you dont mind waiting extra few minutes when outputting video I would go with base model cause its cheap,if youre willing to drop more cash at the machine you could install SSD along with the original drive and more RAM.
Click to expand...
I would think having multiple cores with hyper threading would render faster.
 
comatory

comatory

macrumors 6502a
Apr 10, 2012
738
0
henchman said:
I would think having multiple cores with hyper threading would render faster.
Click to expand...

Yes it definitely will. But as I said in my post, it depends on your budget. OP said he does some light editing and photo stuff and I am able to do the same on 11" Macbook Air, which is even less powerful than base mini (with same GPU, but with SSD and 4GB RAM).

So it depends. If OP doesn't mind spending almost twice as much then I'd go with Server but if it's just a spurt of performance, OP can save himself some money (and invest them into more RAM or SSD) because dual-core i5 is more capable than most of people think. You can do some heavy stuff on it and if you're rendering a movie, then you'll just wait few minutes more.

As I said, depends on how much OP is willing to spend.
 
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