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CC88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 29, 2010
488
117
Dear all.

I come from a 12 core nMP 6.1 with dual D700 and 64gb of ram. In my 'waiting for arm' process I sold it for a good price and bought a used macmini 2018 i5. I use it with an eGPU for FCPX, LR and photoshop. Sometimes I use VM Fusion with an Ubuntu guest. I'm also a 3d hobbyist (modeling and cpu based render).

In short I have a chance to buy an i7, with 200 euro difference from mine.

Would you do it? The only difference about the two machine is the CPU.

Thanks a lot.
 

frou

macrumors 65816
Mar 14, 2009
1,391
2,001
Only worth it if you plan on staying on Intel for say the next 5 years, for whatever reason. Apple's ARM desktop benchmarks are mostly likely going to make the difference between two 8th-gen Intel chips seem trivial.
 
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CC88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 29, 2010
488
117
Only worth it if you plan on staying on Intel for say the next 5 years, for whatever reason. Apple's ARM desktop benchmarks are mostly likely going to make the difference between two 8th-gen Intel chips seem trivial.

Thank you very much. I'm planning to switch to ARM not at the first stage but sure in the near future. Sure I will not wait 5 years.
 

Boyd01

Moderator
Staff member
Feb 21, 2012
7,947
4,879
New Jersey Pine Barrens
Geekbench multi-core rating is about 20% higher for the i7, that might be significant if you are doing long renders. Somewhere I read that the integrated GPU is clocked slightly higher with the i7 Mini, and that combined with the larger cache results in better graphics performance. No idea if that is true however.


But really, how could a stranger know if you should upgrade? All I know is, I wanted the fastest available Mini because I will keep it for a long time. So the i7 was a no-brainer for me. Not interested in Apple Silicon, my primary reason for getting the new Mini was to replace my aging Windows PC with a virtual machine on the Mac. I am more than delighted with how that has worked out. Won't be able to do with Apple Silicon. ;)
 

CC88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 29, 2010
488
117
But really, how could a stranger know if you should upgrade? All I know is, I wanted the fastest available Mini because I will keep it for a long time. So the i7 was a no-brainer for me. Not interested in Apple Silicon, my primary reason for getting the new Mini was to replace my aging Windows PC with a virtual machine on the Mac. I am more than delighted with how that has worked out. Won't be able to do with Apple Silicon. ;)

I know... Bought the i5 because of the low price (I paid it 700 euro). Now that I own it and I love it (it's very fast, stable and all is pretty smooth than my previous MacPro a part of the render time) maybe it's a good idea to have it 'maxed out' in CPU for a 200 euro difference. But I can also use this 200 euro to upgrade the ram to 64gb (I bought the 32gb expansion but with LR and PS opened I have around 24gb of memory used with multiple layers file etc so I thought I can give the 32gb back to amazon and buy the 64gb expansion).
 
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kevinh456

macrumors newbie
Sep 19, 2007
18
11
I'm not expecting pro level arm hardware until Q3 or Q4 next year.

The question is can you deal with the i5 for another year?

Basically, the i7 gets you 6 more threads, .2 ghz base speed and .5 ghz turbo. To me, that's the difference between feeling constrained for a year or a year and a half vs being comfortable.

The difference, 200 euro, isn't that much (16 eur a month) and hyper threading + higher clock makes a huge different. I'd say go with the i7.

 

CC88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 29, 2010
488
117
Thought I can live with an i5... and put that 200 euro in 64gb ram upgrade.

LR and PS are very fast with the i5, but when they are both opened they get around 24gb of ram. I'm the type of person who can have LR, PS, Modo and Fusion opened at the same time. The only concerning is about CPU rendering with Modo, but sure I can't get great performance also with the i7. So I have to wait or, if rendering will become very frustrating I will take a look in a Ryzen machine.
 

CC88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 29, 2010
488
117
I'm considering ordering one of them recently, and want to know which is better.

It depends. After posting here I looked around youtube etc and there is no a big difference until you use FCPX with RAW video.
 

frou

macrumors 65816
Mar 14, 2009
1,391
2,001
OP's situation is slightly different to a straightforward comparison, because it would also introduce the hassle of having to sell an existing unit
 
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CC88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 29, 2010
488
117
OP's situation is slightly different to a straightforward comparison, because it would also introduce the hassle of having to sell an existing unit

Forgot to mention that the i5 in case it's a trade-in for the i7. Have to spend 200 euro, but that's the only thing.
 

steve217

macrumors 6502a
Nov 11, 2011
542
844
NC
I would go for it. In fact I did - I have a 2018, i7. I limited myself to $200 on updates on the purchase and it was either going to be more SSD or a faster CPU, but unlike storage or memory, the CPU thing is the only part you can't augment or upgrade later.

Also, it's probably worth 200 euro not to wonder later if you should have.
 

OldMike

macrumors 6502a
Mar 3, 2009
537
219
Dallas, TX
Thread is a few days old, so I hope I am not too late here, but my opinion is that you most likely won't notice a big difference and if it were me, I would just save the money for your next ARM based Mac purchase.

Your question reminded me of this 9to5 Mac video that covered just this topic:


A lot of people get the wrong idea about hyper-threading, and in some cases, it can even be detrimental to performance, especially if treating the extra threads as if they were really extra cores...
 
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CC88

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 29, 2010
488
117
Thread is a few days old, so I hope I am not too late here, but my opinion is that you most likely won't notice a big difference and if it were me, I would just save the money for your next ARM based Mac purchase.

Your question reminded me of this 9to5 Mac video that covered just this topic:


A lot of people get the wrong idea about hyper-threading, and in some cases, it can even be detrimental to performance, especially if treating the extra threads as if they were really extra cores...

Thank you very much. After this video I bought 64gb of ram. Same money spent, but I most need it in my use case than i7 I think.
 
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