The results in post #79 (
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-mini-i5-tests.2153750/page-4#post-26798154) really make me wonder what I'm getting if I spend another $200 for the i7 processor.
It's now clear that I can edit a scan of a medium format, 6cm x 7cm (2.25"x2.75"), 117MB negative in Lightroom with not so much as a hiccup. I'm going to repeat this tomorrow with a scan of a large format 4"x5" negative, but I think that a different result is unlikely.
Frankly, I'm surprised that the Lightroom test also presented no challenge for the 8GB of RAM, although thinking about it, not so many years ago all of us were using Lightroom with 8GB of RAM. I was planning on adding 32GB, but now I think that 16GB may be plenty.
The two Compressor tests make it clear that I can get a master Final Cut 4K video ready for uploading to, say, YouTube or Vimeo, in close to real time. Given that I'm not running a commercial operation, that's not exactly onerous. Uploading to YouTube, and YouTube's internal processing, is a lot slower.
The one thing that I haven't tested yet is using this machine to edit a video in Final Cut, preferably including making some effects in Motion. With luck, I'll find time to do that in the next few days. I also want to do some recording and mixing in Logic, although that has mostly to do with assessing whether noise from the mini is an issue.
I'm beginning to think that maybe the speed with which I do things is just not a challenge for this computer, and that a lot of the theoretical tests people are talking about in the forum, at least as they relate to most users, are just that - theoretical. In other words, the computer can type 100 words/minute, but I can't write an essay anywhere near that fast.
So far, the big change for me is the Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports and the remarkable speed of the external Samsung T5 flash drive, but that is not about the processor and RAM. However, given that I prefer to have only my current project on the internal drive, it does make me increasingly comfortable with the idea of having a 256GB rather than 512GB Mac mini SSD.
