Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Mac Mini Not Dead Yet?

Kar98 said:
You can point to articles all you want, and suspect whatever you want. Real world experience is, if I accidentally boot into the built-in 80 GB 5,4000 rpm drive, the mini is excruciatingly slow in comparison with the 320 GB 7,200 rpm external drive connected via Firewire 400.
Click to expand...

Boot time is meaningless. You need to run a diagnostic tool to assess your drives' performances. Here's the Intech Quickbench result of comparing my Mini's internal 60 gig 5400 8 mb cache Segate SATA drive vs. my external Seagate FW400 500 gig 7200 rpm 16 mb cache drive:

Internal 60 gig SATA drive
Extended Test Size: 2 MB Read: 6.308 MB/sec Write: 121.974 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 3 MB Read: 24.096 MB/sec Write: 121.369 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 4 MB Read: 24.189 MB/sec Write: 110.763 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 5 MB Read: 23.575 MB/sec Write: 75.529 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 6 MB Read: 25.667 MB/sec Write: 64.713 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 7 MB Read: 25.979 MB/sec Write: 60.063 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 8 MB Read: 27.472 MB/sec Write: 52.914 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 9 MB Read: 29.222 MB/sec Write: 52.506 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 10 MB Read: 29.181 MB/sec Write: 49.032 MB/sec

FW400 Drive
Extended Test Size: 2 MB Read: 25.791 MB/sec Write: 21.071 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 3 MB Read: 16.029 MB/sec Write: 30.791 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 4 MB Read: 17.705 MB/sec Write: 30.752 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 5 MB Read: 20.273 MB/sec Write: 31.485 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 6 MB Read: 16.750 MB/sec Write: 16.146 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 7 MB Read: 29.418 MB/sec Write: 27.981 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 8 MB Read: 24.208 MB/sec Write: 19.158 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 9 MB Read: 30.167 MB/sec Write: 27.574 MB/sec
Extended Test Size: 10 MB Read: 26.503 MB/sec Write: 31.025 MB/sec

Clearly, the better performance is from the internal 5400 rpm drive with its 1.5 gbps SATA interface vs. the 400 mbps FW drive. Your FW connection is a bottleneck - your drive is only as fast as the FW controller. If you want to make your Mini perform better, put in a 320 gig 5400 notebook hard drive. They're only about $140.
 
Kar98 said:
Reading comprehension is fundamental.
I wasn't talking about boot time.
Click to expand...

No, we were talking about hard drive performance in Minis and that after 250 gigs or so, spindle speed has little to do with performance; data density on the platters does. If you have better performance from your external fw drive than your internal (have you even tested them?), then there's something wrong with your internal or you're near capacity. My two-year old 60 gig 5400 rpm drive outperforms a 500 gig 7200 rpm FW400 drive that is three months old. Today's 5400 rpm SATA notebook drives are even more efficient with their greater data density.

If you want the best hard drive performance for an Intel-based mini, pick up a 5400 rpm 320 gig internal SATA drive. There is no way an equivalent FW400 drive at 7200 rpm can perform as well.
 
Kar98 said:
replacing the hard drive with a solid state flash disk.
Click to expand...

With a price tag of $2000 for a 2Ghz model with a 64gb hard drive.

Why a solid state flash disk? Simply because it is something that is "new!!!" and used in the Macbook Air?

I would much rather they use desktop components.
 
Cave Man said:
... better performance from your external fw drive than your internal (have you even tested them?)...
Click to expand...

Yes. Unpack brand-new Mac mini G4. Turn on for the first time. Grind teeth at the painfully slow system I talked my self into it. Updated RAM to full capacity. Still, all I see every time I click something is the spinning beachball. Bought an external harddrive (aforementioned model. Did I forget it also has 16MB of cache built in?) There, much better, now this little box is actually usable.
Upgraded to a Intel mini 1.83 in late 2006. Surely this machine with a dual core 1.83 GHZ CPU and a 5,400 rpm drive will perform satisfactory as is. No, it won't. Upgrade to 2GB RAM. Hmm, a bit better. Start from the external drive again. There, snappy.
Sorry, both of my minis were as slow as Windows 95 on a 486 DX2 66 with their respective hard drives, although the G4 was much worse, seeing how it only spun at at 4,200.
You can run lab tests all you want, but if it takes seconds to switch between different programs, with lots of spinning beachballs in between, on one configuration, and everything is just snappy 90% of the time, with the only difference being the different hard drives, I will definitely come to my aforementioned conclusion.

then there's something wrong with your internal or you're near capacity.
Click to expand...

There's nothing wrong with it, I'm not near capacity, I don't have to repair permissions, or zap the PRAM, or wave a black chicken over it.

If you want the best hard drive performance for an Intel-based mini, pick up a 5400 rpm 320 gig internal SATA drive. There is no way an equivalent FW400 drive at 7200 rpm can perform as well.
Click to expand...

I'll spring for a ST9200420AS instead in a few weeks.
 
Kar98 said:
Yes. Unpack brand-new Mac mini G4. Turn on for the first time. Grind teeth at the painfully slow system I talked my self into it. Updated RAM to full capacity. Still, all I see every time I click something is the spinning beachball. Bought an external harddrive (aforementioned model. Did I forget it also has 16MB of cache built in?) There, much better, now this little box is actually usable.
Upgraded to a Intel mini 1.83 in late 2006. Surely this machine with a dual core 1.83 GHZ CPU and a 5,400 rpm drive will perform satisfactory as is. No, it won't. Upgrade to 2GB RAM. Hmm, a bit better. Start from the external drive again. There, snappy.
Sorry, both of my minis were as slow as Windows 95 on a 486 DX2 66 with their respective hard drives, although the G4 was much worse, seeing how it only spun at at 4,200.
You can run lab tests all you want, but if it takes seconds to switch between different programs, with lots of spinning beachballs in between, on one configuration, and everything is just snappy 90% of the time, with the only difference being the different hard drives, I will definitely come to my aforementioned conclusion.
Click to expand...

hope you don't mind me interfering, but since i believe i have an idea of what you're talking about, i'll just chime in with my two cents:

the original 2.5" 40GB of the lower-end g4 minis (1.25), and IIRC the 60GB of the mid and higher end minis too but don't quote me on that, are notorious for their abysmal, scratch that, f***ing insane high seek times. on top of that, they have a misconceived head-parking feature which supposedly intelligently preserves the drive from hazardous vibrations by parking the head after a certain idling pause. naturally, at next drive access the op takes forever to complete; a typical example is when bringing to foreground an app after a while, so the VM system has to swap it in.

the solution is indeed what you (and many others too) did - hook up an external fw400. the important detail here is 'firewire', as an identical drive over usb2 gives worse seek times due to the poor latencies of the usb mass-storage protocol.

bottom line being, a decent fw400-hooked drive kills the factory-supplied mini's drives (yes, synthetic tests show that too). that, though, does not mean a decent drive on a SATA would not beat a decent drive on fw400. now, fw800 is something else - it can keep up with the best of them.
 
It's time that the Mac mini and Apple TV were merged into one product... and that the iSight camera was redesigned and rereleased.

The things I really want to do in my living room from USING ONLY AN APPLE PRODUCT:
- Pop up a web browser window for that quick search that I need to do while watching a show or to enter a corny contest using my brand new never before seen BT Apple keyboard with touch pad.
- Video iChat with family and friends from my living room on my widescreen HDTV, so I don't have to be in my home office or a small third bedroom of the house that is dark and usually cluttered as a "catch all" room. This is where the new iSight camera would come into play.
- Use my new Mac TV box as a DVR where I can burn all of my saved shows to DVD as if I'm burning a data disc on my computer.
- HDMI, with possibly also a digital optical audio out port, on the back of the unit.
- The ability to use your iPhone as a touch based remote control for the Mac TV unit.
- If you really want to piss off Sony, put a Blu-Ray player in it too.

Just the off the top of my head type of things I would really like to see Apple do to my living room experience.
 
I'd buy a mini in a second if the price were at least $150 dollars cheaper or if they included a mouse and keyboard. Once you add the mini with a monitor and a keyboard/mouse combo there truely is no savings against a comparable iMac. My Powerbook died in Nov. 2006 and since then I've been using an HP since it was all I could afford at the time, I would like a mac again but the mini must drop because OSX is worth some premium just not $200 worth.
 
actripxl said:
I'd buy a mini in a second if the price were at least $150 dollars cheaper or if they included a mouse and keyboard. Once you add the mini with a monitor and a keyboard/mouse combo there truely is no savings against a comparable iMac. My Powerbook died in Nov. 2006 and since then I've been using an HP since it was all I could afford at the time, I would like a mac again but the mini must drop because OSX is worth some premium just not $200 worth.
Click to expand...

The Mini will never include a mouse or keyboard. It is intended to be a drop in replacement for a user that already has a computer, mouse, keyboard and monitor sitting on their desk. The idea is to replace that Windows tower as conveniently as possible.
 
The Mac Mini will never die. Why would APple kill it? Then their only computer that doesn't come with a monitor will be the Mac Pro, which is several thousand dollars too expensive for most, and the X-serve, for which the same reasoning as the Mac Pro applies.

I can see price reductions or more powerful iterations of the mini, but never its disappearance.
 
wow a lot of fervent discussion on the mini. i think there are a LOT of people waiting for the upgrade.

i, for one, will be purchasing the day it comes out.
 
queshy said:
The Mac Mini will never die. Why would APple kill it? Then their only computer that doesn't come with a monitor will be the Mac Pro, which is several thousand dollars too expensive for most, and the X-serve, for which the same reasoning as the Mac Pro applies.

I can see price reductions or more powerful iterations of the mini, but never its disappearance.
Click to expand...

I think we'll see the Mini, in it's current form, dissappearing as ATV gains popularity.

I can see :apple: selling a Pro Mini, offering similar specs to the iMac, in a Micro tower form. That's be excellent for other switchers, lime me, who still want to play games that just don't work/appear on consoles.
 
Kar98 said:
Sorry, both of my minis were as slow as Windows 95 on a 486 DX2 66 with their respective hard drives, although the G4 was much worse, seeing how it only spun at at 4,200.
Click to expand...


can i have some of whatever you are smoking? because it's clearly some seriously mind-bending stuff if you're making that comparison in all seriousness.
 
Huh....

I have started to notice this three way rift with the Mac community, and it is somewhat troubling to see. I noticed that there is a sizable user base who all be it likes the idea of a product refresh (i.e. new mac mini) and yet are not too keen on the idea of expandability. I have also noticed of several sites where those who spoke of Macs with serious graphics or expandability that could possibly hold off the death knell of obsoleteness, were out right shunned, being called shills of Microsoft or insane to think so. I have also noticed that there is also there is a reasonable amount of people who are seriously interested in building hackintoshs, and the same people resistant to "change" charge these enthusiasts of Apple heresy and ask that they be jailed.

I personally think that a reinvigorated line up of Mac Mini's geared towards the Student, the Enthusiast, and the "Other" would be great. I doubt that a discreet option for graphics will be offered other than Intel's GMA or ATI's 200Xpress, seeing how nVidia tends to charge a premium for margin performance on your dollar. ATI might be an appealing option to Apple seeing how their software tends be rather easy in the world of OSX (coming from a user that has had to write his own drivers for an ATI card) and the Express series offered by ATI preforms well when pitted against the 7300 and 6200 from nVidia. Apple could make serious inroads with the Windows users out there by making a Mac "Console" /HTPC for a premium, and by funding some studios to port popular games (other than EA) to OpenGL, or they could finally license DX10.1 from Microsoft (a serious option if you talk to some Microsoft insiders).


But in reality what we will get is a CPU refresh and a larger storage options..... and maybe a new chassis. It would be safe to buy a Mac Mini now, seeing how if the bump to Penryn were to be made, most average users (iTunes, browsing, photo/video storage/office) wont notice serious increases in performance.... unless they are trying to cram Premiere down the mini's throat

.....and Kudos to all of you who have jumped the gun and built your own Macs from Asus Eee's and ITX boards! ;)
 
EagerDragon said:
So you think that a 600 dollar computer in a tiny box should be able to run all pro software and run it well?
By that argument, Apple should only sell the mini and the MB and get rid of all the other computers. There would be no place for the others as the mini and the equivalent laptop (MB) would be able to do it all for a next to nothing price.

Do you really think that is realistic?
Click to expand...

I was attacking people saying the machine was useless and apple should get rid of it altogether whilst agreeing that a model with discrete graphics, whether a new model or an expensive BTO option on the mini, is necessary since the majority of users do not want a workstation, all-in-one or high-end laptop as their primary computer. I didn't say anything about what pricepoint they should offer it at or how well pro software should work on less expensive machines, just that you shouldn't have to buy a mac pro/imac/mbp to run the latest software at all.

Like I said, the mini is capable of a lot more than people give it credit for. I've worked on 4K footage in Shake on a rev.a intel mini, which worked surprisingly well (the fact that it worked at all was pretty surprising). That said, I think there should be a budget model for switchers and a headless iMac because not every bit of pro software has the same minimum requirements as Shake (ie Motion, which shake is purportedly being rebuilt from the ground up using its code as a base).

I guess that I was wrong about Aperture. I know a photographer who sold his Macbook to get a MBP 6 months ago because he thought he wouldn't be able to run it.

There's a place for all the computers in Apple's lineup, and some more besides. And if the prices came down on the integrated graphics models to accommodate other macs, there would be quite a few more switchers.
 
Whats apple is lacking..

MY MAC IMPROVEMENTS

Hi all,

I think a new mac mini is great. However, why must it allways be a cheap ripoff of the macbook with lousy 3d graphics.

A media/gamingcentre is the way to go for apple. Something that plays full HD video and has upgradable SLI graphics. (for those who want it as choice)

The graphics in current mac models just suck. Allways have been, i mean 3d graphics.

The only way you can get around this is buy an expensive macbook pro or mac pro.. Their missing out on a piece of market. Mediacentres.

Way beyond most peoples budget.

What I would like to see from apple is the following:

A XPC, with PCI-e slots, 2 if possible
A upgradable 5.25'' drive (can replace with blue ray later)
A 3.5'' harddrive (or two and a raid controller)

If it becomes bigger, too bad. Make it stereo form factor, but a decent desktop.

Something like a shuttle XPC, but then Mac, and this can be made unedr a 1000$..
_____________________________________________________________

And for their imacs, make it possible to hook up two iMacs as 1 machine. Share the screens under both machines and use both PC's to render. A dual iMac setup would rock, with "HDMI/DVI in" so i can hook up a playstation. Skip the drive, I go external. And VESA wall mounting and a keyboard or something with a build in Ipod dock.

But above all... give the macs some decent 3d graphic cards.

I am an Interaction Designer from profession, if apple reads this and wants to give me a job, I'll be happy to work for you.. :)
 
My 1.42 PPC mini is currantly acting as a Hub and Server for all my Appletv Content and the External Drives that houses it. As much as I'd like a new Mac Mini, the new one would'nt serve this purpose anybetter. I Use my Core Duo 2 Vista Laptop and Desktop to encode and do other things. An upgrade Mac mini has unfortunately been too late in arriving.
 
Macminded said:
MY MAC IMPROVEMENTS

The graphics in current mac models just suck. Allways have been, i mean 3d graphics.

***

But above all... give the macs some decent 3d graphic cards.

I am an Interaction Designer from profession, if apple reads this and wants to give me a job, I'll be happy to work for you.. :)
Click to expand...

You can see here and here that despite not giving sublime performance, for the VAST majority of users, the graphics cards that Apple offers with its products offer good performance.

They might not be top end, but the graphics cards Apple use are majestically well positioned in terms of price / performance. And if you require serious power, you can always get the Geforce 8800 for $200 extra on the Mac Pro (as recommended in the first link).

Peace and God Bless!
 
Sounds great. I've been thinking of renewing my old PPC Mini for a very long time and doing it soon would be even more sensible.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back