Hacker Upgrades Mac Mini w/ Core 2 Duo

[swingerofbirch]

mmm . . . merom! they should actually call the chip that instead of just using it as the code name: Intel Merom sounds nicer than Intel Core 2 Duo

I want my next Mac:
to be a small portable
Merrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrom!
10.5
slot loading blu-ray player and burner
128 VRAM, capable decoding blu-ray HD
13" screen with built in isight

SAWEET

Sounds like the Macbook of next Tuesday? Next year? Never?

 

[Mechcozmo]

Apple is working for simplicity as well, it would seem. When they want to upgrade to the new CPUs, all they have to do is drop in the new CPUs. That's it. Very convenient, and the savings get passed onto the consumers. Well, part of the savings.

 

[Piarco]

What does "well recorded on these forums" mean? It's all speculation at this point. Jobs/Apple has not gone on the record in any way with a roadmap of which processors are going into which computers.

It means exactly what it means - its been discussed in many a thread. If it still remains speculation, then I still think that it will be the case - MacBooks are meant to cover the range of teh old iBooks through to the 12" PB, and as that is the case, Apple surely wouldn't want to let the MacBooks keep a lesser (albeit fantastic) chip in it - a lot of business users would be swayed away from the MacBooks possibly. Then again, that may well be what Apple want...

 

[miniConvert]

I like to just buy something at top spec. I'm quite crazy. Then it lasts me until the Next Big Thing comes along... so I buy that at top spec. Yes, it would work out quite a bit cheaper to upgrade as I go along, but I guess I just get tired of my kit and need something new to inspire me.

This Mac mini I have now will stay as it is indefinitely. I'd rather keep my money for something like the Mac Pro to have in addition to it rather than pour it on RAM (it already has 2GB), HD and/or CPU upgrades.

 

[adamfilip]

Very Cool

I really hope the new Mac pro (powermac) machine will not have the cpus soldered on the board. that would really. suck. finally i want a Mac where i can upgrade the processors easily

 

[celebrian23]

"put on page 1 for interest's sake"

haha thanks for the chuckle

 

[Abstract]

Only for a short time - its been well recorded on these forums (and many other places) that Jobs/Apple want to migrate the entire line to the new Core 2 Duo chips.

Are those opinions or facts? It has all sounded like pure opinion, but if you can show me where someone stated this, then please go ahead.

Otherwise, this sounds more right to me.....

I expect that when the Merom comes out, the MBP will be upgraded, but the MB will stick with the cheaper Yonah processors.

 

[ChrisA]

the "Core 2 Dual" is only 20% faster than the "Core Dual" 20% is hard to notice without a stopwatch and is unnoticable for many tasks. Also after the upgrade the Mini stil only holds 2GB of RAM. I doubt many people will spend almost $300 for such a small increment of performance. But in a few years ifwe are REALLY lucky the "Core 2 Quad" will fit in the same socket and more than double the performance. Generally it make little sense to upgade just one generation of processor. Beter to use a machine for 3 or so years and then upgrade

I think this make the iMac more atractive. As it is it seems such a waste to buy a 20" LCD screen and know that it is attached to a computer that will become obsolite in a few years. A good LCD screen might remain usful for a decade or longer. But an upgradable iMac would have a longer usful life

 

[shawnce]

the "Core 2 Dual" is only 20% faster than the "Core Dual" 20% is hard to notice without a stopwatch

Note the Core 2 has much better SSE support then Core, you should a better then 20% improvement from SSE. The 20% number is a ball park figure put out by Intel for typical usage (likely not counting SSE).

SSE is Intel's spin of what AltiVec does on the PowerPC... the Core 2 will bring SSE to performance much closer to AltiVec.

Note Mac OS X makes heavy use of SSE/AltiVec in various system wide services.

 

[Nar1117]

Wow. 15%. Im Amazed.

/sarcasm

Woopdedoo. And that 15% is over a PPC chip, not existing Yonahs. If you wait to switch to an Intel mac until Merom is released, you are going to wait too long. It really wont matter all that much except for the change in the description of the product. Core 2 Duo versus Core Duo.

Ok, so benchmarks will show it to be a little faster in rendering, shaving those precious seconds off of encoding... But if youre actually comparing a Yonah and a Merom real world using perception, like in the real world, it wont matter. 80% of the people who buy a mac wont care and the other 20% are buying the Merom Macs just for the 'newest, best computer' effect, which doesnt last but 6 months anyway. Its a placebo, they say its faster (which it might be) and people will think that they see an improvement when they really dont.

 

[Choppaface]

the word is modder, not hacker

in line for a T7600 baby, I've already got the Raptor X running externally and the 2gb of RAM stuffed in there and she SINGSSSSS

if apple swaps the GMA950 in the rev b i wont cry like yalls nutcases, but if they put an eSATA on the back I will cuz i already cuts a hole in mine!! X_X

seriously the mini is probably one of the coolest computers ever put on the market, now give me full speed XP emulation and NTFS R/W and I can put my server and client all in one box

 

[jvan]

if the core 2 duo chip doesn't make much of a difference in the real world, then i guess i won't wait.. i'll get a macbook this week then

 

[grockk]

Are those opinions or facts? It has all sounded like pure opinion, but if you can show me where someone stated this, then please go ahead.

Otherwise, this sounds more right to me.....

the only problem is that every other PC maker will have merom in their consumer lines. it's no longer up to apple's whim where the consumer/pro break occurs. they have to follow the industry

 

[Analog Kid]

*chuckles at the PowerPC fanboys*

Yeah, it feels good to laugh doesn't it? Nothing like outpacing a 3 year old chip to really get out the giggles though...

 

[Collin973]

Man this makes my wait even more worth it. Bring me that MBP with merom baby!

 

[gman71882]

I knew the new Core 2 duo chip was going to be a great upgrade... that why im holding out for it in the New Mini or iMac.

a 64 bit processer is perfect.
Now with the RAM limit going up to 16 GB, hopefully some companies will start making 2GB and 4 GB RAM SODIMMs so we can maxxing out those machines!!!!

 

[THX1139]

Wow. 15%. Im Amazed.

/sarcasm

Woopdedoo. And that 15% is over a PPC chip, not existing Yonahs. If you wait to switch to an Intel mac until Merom is released, you are going to wait too long. It really wont matter all that much except for the change in the description of the product. Core 2 Duo versus Core Duo.

Ok, so benchmarks will show it to be a little faster in rendering, shaving those precious seconds off of encoding... But if youre actually comparing a Yonah and a Merom real world using perception, like in the real world, it wont matter. 80% of the people who buy a mac wont care and the other 20% are buying the Merom Macs just for the 'newest, best computer' effect, which doesnt last but 6 months anyway. Its a placebo, they say its faster (which it might be) and people will think that they see an improvement when they really dont.

Wow, a little short sighted aren'tcha? There's plenty of reasons besides a hypothetical 20% speed increase to wait for Merom. True, most web surfers are not going to notice the difference, but if you're a power user stuck with a notebook out in the field, then that Merom is going to rock. My guess is that you own a device that uses Yonah and you are just pissed that you'll miss out.

I suggest you do a bit of research on Merom vs Yonah before you do any further bashing of the upgrade. There's one good post upthread concerning SSE support that is far superior to Yonah, not to mention support for 64bit in pro applications. There are plenty of other resources, but I'll leave that for you to find on your own. It should keep you busy for awhile. If you're a consumer, then it's not going to matter, but a pro will want the new technology. And yes... shaving seconds off renders does matter. Those seconds can add up to hours.

 

[Analog Kid]

Now this is impressive, almost as fast as a Dual 2.5 G5 in Photoshop trough Rosetta ????...now that good !

Lets see what 4 of these cores can do..with no Rosetta translation

"50% slower" != "almost as fast"

Man-- the bandwagon gets rolling here and all of space time gets warped out of proportion. Not saying these aren't positive results, but I'm trying to keep some frame of reference...

I think that's my benchmark for transition though-- when the Macintels running Rosetta can outpace my dual G5. At that point I know I'm not losing anything running existing software.

 

[macaddict06]

Emt64

the "Core 2 Dual" is only 20% faster than the "Core Dual" 20% is hard to notice without a stopwatch and is unnoticable for many tasks.

Yeah, let's also remember that Merom will be the first Intel Portable chip to have EMT64 - way closer to true 64 bit portable computing than Core DUO is. Look, 20% is still better than what we had - I seem to remember Intel saying that best optimization one Merom would put it at 40% better than CoreDuo. So once Apple engineers finish up their work, I'm pretty sure we will see better than just 20%....but most likely not the full 40%.

Edit: This may be of interest to the forums, just remembered that I still had the link
http://homepage.mac.com/macaholicg5/PhotoAlbum12.html

 

[Analog Kid]

Intel Merom sounds nicer than Intel Core 2 Duo

I have to agree... The new trend seems to be staccato marketing names-- "Core 2 Duo", "Mac Book Pro". I like the smoother flowing names myself, but I've gotten used to MBP so I'm sure C2D will get comfortable with time.

 

[RichP]

Yeah, it feels good to laugh doesn't it? Nothing like outpacing a 3 year old chip to really get out the giggles though...

LOL!

We talk so much about "when Photoshop goes native, blah blah" but we really dont know how much Rosetta really criples a program, do we? Is there a benchmark of a PPC app vs Universal?

 

[Analog Kid]

Here's the part that worries me:

Yonah T2300
Off 01 watts
Boot 29 watts
MacOS X/Win XP only 20 watts
MacOS X/Win XP with 2 Folding@home CLI clients 37 watts

Merom T7400
Off 01 watts
Boot 41 watts
MacOS X/Win XP only 21 watts
MacOS X/Win XP with 2 Folding@home CLI clients 51 watts

From http://www.123macmini.com/news/story/487.html

Are the Mini's equipped to handle the extra power and heat? The Merom is more power hungry clock for clock too, which I thought ran counter to Intel's claims...

 

[Nar1117]

Wow, a little short sighted aren'tcha? There's plenty of reasons besides a hypothetical 20% speed increase to wait for Merom. True, most web surfers are not going to notice the difference, but if you're a power user stuck with a notebook out in the field, then that Merom is going to rock. My guess is that you own a device that uses Yonah and you are just pissed that you'll miss out.

I suggest you do a bit of research on Merom vs Yonah before you do any further bashing of the upgrade. There's one good post upthread concerning SSE support that is far superior to Yonah, not to mention support for 64bit in pro applications. There are plenty of other resources, but I'll leave that for you to find on your own. It should keep you busy for awhile. If you're a consumer, then it's not going to matter, but a pro will want the new technology. And yes... shaving seconds off renders does matter. Those seconds can add up to hours.

Actually i dont own an Intel Mac.

Im trying to make people realize that Merom really wont make that much of a difference. From reading a lot of people on here that say to wait to buy a macbook pro until they have Merom in them, and from reading the specs (like this original post by macrumors) of Merom, i dont think that its as big of a deal as people make it out to be.

Like i said in my other post, 80% (about) of the people who buy a mac are NOT going to care. Why not? because they're not Pro-consumers. As you said, Pros will want that extra 10 seconds for rendering or encoding, and if they really need it, they should wait, sure. But i could also say that they should wait until the Mac Pros come out with Woodcrest, as most pros that ive seen use Power Macs in the lab or studio. Merom is a consumer chip, meant to replace/run alongside the Yonah. Everyone on here is saying 'wait until merom comes out!', and the people that are listening are, im taking an educated guess here, not Pros who will actually benefit from that 20% speed increase. Now we have a ton of people saying 'im waiting until merom comes out to get my Macbook', and it frustrates me that people dont look past the numbers to see that just maybe, it wont matter that much. And i certainly dont have to remind you that waiting is a fool's game in the computer world.

 

[Black Monolith]

Solving Heat Issues in MBP

I am a little excited about these Core 2 Duo chips not because of the fact that they will provide a significant speed improvement, but I am hoping they will solve some of the heat issues we have been having Apple's new Laptops...err I mean notebooks. While it is true that in the MB and MBP the CPU is not socketted, CPU swaps can still be performed. I know for a fact that there is a company out there that desolders the CPUs in the previous generation Powerbooks for 1.83GHz G4 replacements. While it might be a little expensive, I for one would be willing to do it if the service can be made available. I am sick of burning my damn hands.

 

[mmmcheese]

the only problem is that every other PC maker will have merom in their consumer lines. it's no longer up to apple's whim where the consumer/pro break occurs. they have to follow the industry

Yeah, because you know that no one else sells notebooks with Core Solo, Pentium/Celeron M, or Pentium 4 Mobile processors these days...