2012 quad mini performs better than latest 13" mbp?

[iamsen47]

According to geekbench benchmark, the Mini scores for 3432/11437 while the MBP scores for 4248/8556.

Is that right or are the scores missing something?

I was planning on getting the refreshed MBP to replace my Air but if the Mini can still handle all my heavy work I guess I could get the MB instead for maximal portability.

 

[chrfr]

According to geekbench benchmark, the Mini scores for 3432/11437 while the MBP scores for 4248/8556.

Is that right or are the scores missing something?

I was planning on getting the refreshed MBP to replace my Air but if the Mini can still handle all my heavy work I guess I could get the MB instead for maximal portability.

The 13" MBP is still only a dual core CPU.

 

[Boyd01]

I have a 2012 quad i7 2.6 ghz Mini and love it. Very fast machine that works well with all my software. This model is a little faster than the geekbench scores you posted, which are for the 2.3 ghz model.

On the downside, the HD4000 graphics chip is getting old (although still supported by Final Cut Pro and even DaVinci Resolve). It does not have the fast 802.11ac wifi and only has one thunderbolt 1 port. The other high speed port is Firewire 800 but that is actually an advantage for me since I am using a Sony professional HDV/DVCAM tape deck to capture a large amount of legacy video. I don't care about the wifi since I am connected to gigabit ethernet.

My mini renders video more than twice as fast as my MacBook Air with a 1.7ghz dual i7 CPU. This is a bit faster than I expected based on geekbench scores, so I assume that the MacBook Air begins throttling the CPU as it heats up during a long video render while the Mini has a better cooling system and continues at full speed.

 

[Cloudsurfer]

According to geekbench benchmark, the Mini scores for 3432/11437 while the MBP scores for 4248/8556.

Is that right or are the scores missing something?

I was planning on getting the refreshed MBP to replace my Air but if the Mini can still handle all my heavy work I guess I could get the MB instead for maximal portability.

That sounds about right, the MBP still uses dual core chips. Kaby Lake absolutely slams it in single core performance though.

 

[iamsen47]

My mini renders video more than twice as fast as my MacBook Air with a 1.7ghz dual i7 CPU. This is a bit faster than I expected based on geekbench scores, so I assume that the MacBook Air begins throttling the CPU as it heats up during a long video render while the Mini has a better cooling system and continues at full speed.

Ive got the i7 as well, though I keep forgetting if it's the 2.3 or 2.6. I don't do any videos but I don't have any problems working or large Illustrator or Photoshop files. Nowadays I mainly have it running as a server hosting several scala/nodejs web apps, a Jenkins CI server and a Gitlab instance. Including data volumes and databases, that's about 12 docker containers running at once and it's probably not even at half capacity. This is one mighty beast.

The main reason I asked is that I use the 11" Air nowadays but I want a Retina display so I'm thinking of either the latest MacBook but it's so close in price to the Pro hat I feel like I might as well get that. But I don't really need the power...

I really should head over to the MacBook forum instead.

 

[Boyd01]

My primary computer is a 11" 2013 i7/8gb/512gb Macbook Air and I am still very happy with it. Screen is not great but I'm used to it and can plug into a big monitor when needed. When I started a big video project last year though I was frustrated by the lack of ports on the MBA, tried using a dock from OWC but had a bunch of issues and returned it.

So I got the mini to setup a dedicated audio/video workstation and that's about all I use it for. Should meet my needs for a couple more years.