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This is where my hopes are at. From what it looks like it is an i7 8700.
https://ark.intel.com/products/126686/Intel-Core-i7-8700-Processor-12M-Cache-up-to-4-60-GHz-

Now I'm normally within reach of my computer for the most part and even with the Xeon I've had hiccups and had to restart some things.

Right now there is a tad piece of hope. Now if that comes to be truth, is remained to be seen but I am not one to try and expect my carriage will be in front of the horse until I see it for real.

But I promise I will know within the 14 day grace period if that Mini lives up to my expectations of my current 6 core Mac Pro.
If not, I will probably drop a 12 core in it and let it ride it out for the next several years.

Sounds like a plan!

Because of this Mac mini 2018 i7-8700, I am holding on Xeon workstations and MBP. I don't want to waste 4 grands on another overheat MBP.

If Mac mini is good, I might just buy any 13/15" Macbook as front end to remote connect to the backend mini. Let the desktop do the best they should...

Just curious what are doing to run for 3-4 hours? Any scientific or maths related?
 
Apple has turned off most anyone who wants to play a Steam game. 40 million online simultaneously. This mini has zero gaming Steam cred.
 
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I'm excited to see these. I've been working on a Mac Pro 2010 with 2x2.66 Xeon. It looks like the high-end one (and maybe the lower-end ones) have surpassed my processing power.

Do you think these will all-around kick my current machine's butt? Would those integrated graphics be better than my 5780 for apps that use graphics acceleration?

I feel like picking up one of these would be better than trying to upgrade this old machine. I've done a little bit and it can be tedious, not to mention running into all the things I can't do...

By the way, I'd be working with some basic things in Motion, as well as exporting DCP (uses all cores at 100%) and using Final Cut, etc.

For reference, according to Mactracker, my machine gets 16341 multi and 2430 single core performance.

My company isn't going to be buying me an iMac Pro anytime soon...
Had the same setup. You can easily upgrade the CPUs to X5680, use a triple-channel memory setup and install a NVMe PCIe adaptor and drive for under $300. Cost goes higher with better NVMe drives/adaptors and more storage.

You'll get a geekbench multi-core score of approx. 25K to 26K and single core score of approx. 3K

Save your moolah! You'll need it for the 7,1 or treat yourself to the finer, more important things in life.
 
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Sustained load is what it counts comes rendering or deploying tasks. If this minis still comes cool, I think this is the ultimate one monster to own. Plus side, the iconic design still complements most desks better than the current Mac Pro.
what are the best tests that compare sustained loads as I've yet to see a test on sustained loads on the 6 core MacBook Pros as it will help me decide if I actually need the mini as well. I'm assuming that the mini will fair better under sustained loads than the MacBook Pro?
 
As a long time hackintohs user, your summary is quite on point, and I was quite ready to jump into mac mini until I started researching eGPU, and it sounds a lot like hackintosh, there are a lot of variables to consider, size, noise, reliability, some apps aren't compatible depending on what eGPU (Final cut doesn't seem to work), Windows may not work, etc etc. Factor in pricing, and I'm not sure if it's a better route.

And then I see this kind of video and it's luring me back to stay hackintosh:

I think Apple severely crippled the mac mini without a discrete GPU, and I don't understand really what kind of pro user would want a 8700 CPU without a proper GPU, and many of the pro apps even a mundane illustrator or photoshop now rely quite a bit on GPU, and even to run 4k displays smoothly you will need it.

What we needed was a headless iMac, the xMac we've been asking for decades. Mac Mini is close, and yet so far.

check out egpu.io - lots of pro users. I use a Vega 64 with my MacBook Pro 13 in OSX and Windows, no issues at all. Why on earth would I want an integrated AMD or Nvidia card? I'm a pro user, it would be no use to me at all.
 
Right now i own a early 2009 iMac so any upgrade for me is going to be ridiculous. The current multi core score on my iMac is 2993 LOL

I'm debating on a mac mini i7 128gb ssd and 8gb ram (to upgrade later)

However, the one thing i've been thinking is, if the mac mini is getting this kind of power (23500 multi core score), what will the new iMacs get? Can apple really kill their own iMac sales? I mean the mac mini with i7 upgrade only comes to $1099, yes a monitor around $150-200, so $1300 max. Can you can get a new iMac at price with the same performance of the mac mini i7? Im not so sure.

A part of me wants to bite the bullet for the mini since my computer is really old but a part of me wants to wait for the iMac update to see what they offer then make my decision at that point. Maybe a March/April release?

If you are buying a monitor as well, you will never get the price to work out with a Mini compared to an iMac initially. And remember the iMac monitor is going be much much better than any $200 monitor. And it will have a better GPU if you get the iMac 27". The only way it works is if you think of replacing the Mini five years from now with a new one, but keeping the monitor, keyboard and mouse. Also it works if you factor in that if the monitor breaks you can replace it easily, while the iMac is basically dead until you pay for a costly repair.

You basically either have to have the monitor lying around (which is my situation and why I'm likely getting a Mini) and you want to switch the modular set up for ability to repair parts separately.
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what are the best tests that compare sustained loads as I've yet to see a test on sustained loads on the 6 core MacBook Pros as it will help me decide if I actually need the mini as well. I'm assuming that the mini will fair better under sustained loads than the MacBook Pro?

Probably since it is a desktop and it has a fan. Also the case is the same size as it used to be but now only houses a small SSD instead of a spinning platter. I bet there was plenty of room in it for Apple to work on thermal issues. The thermal engineers must have been having a field day once it was decided to not shrink the case even a bit.
 
I mean now, WTF??? The new iPad and Mac Mini are both faster than both of my 2013 Mac Pro's!

Uh, no, except on an incomparable and artificial benchmark.

Try running something like folding or anything else that will run the CPU and GPUs at 100% 24/7 and then see if they're "faster."
 
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what are the best tests that compare sustained loads as I've yet to see a test on sustained loads on the 6 core MacBook Pros as it will help me decide if I actually need the mini as well. I'm assuming that the mini will fair better under sustained loads than the MacBook Pro?

I find Geekbench to be slightly a bad test if you're looking for sustained workloads. Geek bench doesn't seem to do a great job with 100% sustained workloads.

I just ran a test on my machine and noticed that at no point was the CPU maxed out for any sustained time. some spikes for 1-2 seconds, but overall, geekbench seems to be doing workloads that rely on other metrics besides raw CPU horsepower. I will need to do a bit more research into what those numbers actually mean. If they're claiming to be a CPU benchmark, then why are they not maxing out my CPU?

For pure raw horsepower numbers, I like CINEBENCH. it's not realistic from a day to day activity, since it doesn't benchmark anything else but the CPU. But it will give you at least a 100% sustained load number. (it renders via CPU an image on the screen, 1 block per core so that every core/thread you have is used)

My Geekbench scores on my Ryzen 1700 is 4300 single core and 25000 multicore
My Cinebench R15 score is 1650
 
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I honestly don't understand the allure of the mini for existing Mac users. It's too expensive to be a reasonable media server choice, too under-powered to be a pro workstation, and obviously lacks the portability of a laptop. It honestly seems like most experienced users would be better off with either waiting until Apple releases new Pro towers or going an entirely different route for their particular needs.
 
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I honestly don't understand the allure of the mini for existing Mac users. It's too expensive to be a reasonable media server choice, too under-powered to be a pro workstation, and obviously lacks the portability of a laptop. It honestly seems like most experienced users would be better off with either waiting until Apple releases new Pro towers or going an entirely different route for their particular needs.

it used to be a decent (2012) little stand alone computer for those who just wanted an ok stand alone computer to do your basic stuff.

for those who have preference of their own monitor types and numbers. Someone who wants to do the odd photography maybe, with some work style stuff and online stuff.

it was just your standard, average, run of the mill computer.

it still is. That's great. the new Mac Mini is a good computer.

it's just ridiculously priced. that's where the problems are.
 
The mini uses a Desktop, not mobile, CPU.
The two benchmarks posted are for !7-8700B. This is the soldered BGA mobile chip not the I7-8700 which is the desktop version. If these are really legitimate Mac Minis and not spoofed, this would also imply that Intel is making a special I3-8100B BGA version for Apple because I don't thing its likely that Apple would put a socked I3 in the base but a soldered I5 and I7 in the others.
 
I honestly don't understand the allure of the mini for existing Mac users. It's too expensive to be a reasonable media server choice, too under-powered to be a pro workstation, and obviously lacks the portability of a laptop. It honestly seems like most experienced users would be better off with either waiting until Apple releases new Pro towers or going an entirely different route for their particular needs.

It's the best that Apple currently has to offer, desktop wise, price is not ideal, but that's Apple. I am past the time for upgrade, and I cannot wait anymore. Even if I could, Mac Pro's price would be prohibitive for me and many others.
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The two benchmarks posted are for !7-8700B. This is the soldered BGA mobile chip not the I7-8700 which is the desktop version. If these are really legitimate Mac Minis and not spoofed, this would also imply that Intel is making a special I3-8100B BGA version for Apple because I don't thing its likely that Apple would put a socked I3 in the base but a soldered I5 and I7 in the others.
i7-8700B is just the BGA version of i7-8700. Other than using the different mount, there is absolutely no difference between the two, it's the same chip.
 
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I honestly don't understand the allure of the mini for existing Mac users. It's too expensive to be a reasonable media server choice, too under-powered to be a pro workstation, and obviously lacks the portability of a laptop. It honestly seems like most experienced users would be better off with either waiting until Apple releases new Pro towers or going an entirely different route for their particular needs.

It's a perfect little machine for my music studio rig. It's small, quiet and the selection of ports (not forgetting the 4 thunderbolt 3 ports) are the ideal way to connect all my peripherals. My audio interface connects via thunderbolt, then I have additional thunderbolt ports to add an array of external storage/hubs etc. I need to add a couple of monitors (1 in my control room, and 1 in the recording room) so the HDMI and thunderbolt 3 ports are a perfect combo. It's far more flexible than an iMac display, as I can also connect a second laptop or GoPro to the display via HDMI if I wish. I don't need a 16 core Xeon workstation, but I do require a reasonably fast CPU and access to a decent amount of RAM to run audio plugins etc. I'm glad there is no discrete GPU in there, and only the integrated one - after owning a MacBook Pro 2011 with the dGPU failures, I'm keeping well clear. - Also it's just an extra source of heat to add inside that small enclosure - so just creates more problems in terms of throttling and down-clocking, due to poor thermals (although it remains to be seen how much the thermals have improved in the 2018 model). It's the ideal machine to use an eGPU with, since there is no internal display (which eats up thunderbolt bandwidth anyway). That's something I may add down the road if I need beefier graphics. I can also upgrade the GPU in the future, (and cool it properly) - unlike the GPU soldered inside the iMac's. Plus, any displays I buy are not glued to the computers internals - so if any component fails, I can swap it out/upgrade/add to it over time, rather than having to toss the whole thing out (like an all in one iMac) - so this is a big benefit to me.

I have considered many times building a Hackintosh, but I've read pages and pages of forums with people trying to get Thunderbolt 3 to work 100% reliably (including hotswap ability). I've also not seen any PC/Hackintosh that is able to support 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports either. At the end of the day, I'd rather spend my time trying to create music, rather than tinkering with a Hackintosh to get certain features to work.

So for me, the Mac Mini 2018 is the ideal machine, and suits my needs perfectly.
 
i7-8700B is just the BGA version of i7-8700. Other than using the different mount, there is absolutely no difference between the two, it's the same chip.
My point is that these are soldered so no possibility to upgrade the processor down the road. As a consequence, I will be getting the I7 when I order my new Mini in a few weeks. (I want some people to play around with theirs first so any unforeseen problems are identified before I order one.)
 
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I honestly don't understand the allure of the mini for existing Mac users. It's too expensive to be a reasonable media server choice, too under-powered to be a pro workstation, and obviously lacks the portability of a laptop. It honestly seems like most experienced users would be better off with either waiting until Apple releases new Pro towers or going an entirely different route for their particular needs.
I see it as an iMac replacement for those who don’t want/need a 27” 5K display.

For $1,199 you can get the fastest CPU, which beats the fastest iMac available. The 2019 Mac Pro will start at maybe $4K and addresses an entirely different market from the mini.
 
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So for me, the Mac Mini 2018 is the ideal machine, and suits my needs perfectly.


Master Kenobi, are you running Logic Pro on your machine? That's what I'm doing now on my late 2013 iMac. I use tons of samples, but nothing too crazy as far as amounts of tracks (usually between 10-15). Do you think these new Mac Minis could handle that with ease?
 
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Based on this, it's roughly on par with my 2017 27" iMac. It's about 100 less on single-core and 5,000 higher on multicore.

Anyone know how much faster the Radeon Pro 580 chip is compared to the Mac mini's iGPU?
 
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