Mac Mini to iMac 27" help wanted

[jacom700]

I have a Late 2012 Mac Mini (i5 2.5GHz 8GB memory) and am considering getting a 27” iMac as the Mac Mini can be a little slow at times especially when editing videos in iMovie and working on larger photos.

Would the 27” 3.4GHz i5, 8GB, GTX 775M be noticeably faster than the Mac Mini I have at the moment or would I be best to go for the i7 processor to see any real difference in speed.

 

[robgendreau]

I have a Late 2012 Mac Mini (i5 2.5GHz 8GB memory) and am considering getting a 27” iMac as the Mac Mini can be a little slow at times especially when editing videos in iMovie and working on larger photos.

Would the 27” 3.4GHz i5, 8GB, GTX 775M be noticeably faster than the Mac Mini I have at the moment or would I be best to go for the i7 processor to see any real difference in speed.

"Real" difference, yes; worth paying for? hard to tell. But the multicore performance of your computer is 5700 per geekbench; the iMac is almost 12000.

 

[rkaufmann87]

I have a Late 2012 Mac Mini (i5 2.5GHz 8GB memory) and am considering getting a 27” iMac as the Mac Mini can be a little slow at times especially when editing videos in iMovie and working on larger photos.

Would the 27” 3.4GHz i5, 8GB, GTX 775M be noticeably faster than the Mac Mini I have at the moment or would I be best to go for the i7 processor to see any real difference in speed.

The iMac would be noticeably quicker however in order to get the best performance out of one you should upgrade the CPU to an I7 for video editing and a SSD for IO speed.

 

[jacom700]

Thanks for the replies most helpful.

Does a SSD really make a big difference as on my Windows desktop/laptop I have both SSD’s and HDD’s and find booting from the SSD’s to be only a little quicker than the HHD and not much improvement when either opening programs or saving files.

I have a choice of either a 1Tb Fusion, 256GB SSD or i7 processor upgrade but not both as my budget won’t stretch that far now or in the near future.

 

[yjchua95]

Thanks for the replies most helpful.

Does a SSD really make a big difference as on my Windows desktop/laptop I have both SSD’s and HDD’s and find booting from the SSD’s to be only a little quicker than the HHD and not much improvement when either opening programs or saving files.

I have a choice of either a 1Tb Fusion, 256GB SSD or i7 processor upgrade but not both as my budget won’t stretch that far now or in the near future.

SSDs really make a night and day difference.

Fusion Drive is almost as good, but note that Windows (Boot Camp) will only boot off the HDD portion of an FD setup.

 

[zhaoxin]

The i5 in iMac is much faster than the i5 in Mac mini. Because the i5 in iMac is the desktop cpu, 4 real cores. The i5 in Mac mini is a notebook cpu. Although it also shows 4 cores, but the 4 cores are 2 real cores plus 2 Hyper-Threading cores.

On the i7 part, both Mac mini and iMac are 4 real cores plus 4 Hyper-Threading cores, which show 8 core in the system. So if you have a i7 Mac mini 2012, it is faster than the i5 in iMac. Since you have a i5 Mac mini, you can feel real fast in iMac with i5. But it is even faster in i7.

If you edit video a lot, I suggest you have both an i7 and a better GPU.

 

[jacom700]

Looks like I am going to have to wait a little longer for my 27" iMac my 40" LCD TV has just stopped working. Screen doesn't light up but I have sound so depending of the cost of repair it may be a new TV first.

Thanks for all the replies it certainly helping me decide what to do when I finally get an iMac. I'm definitely going for the i7 and if I can get enough money together the 1TB fusion drive as well. The GTX 775M graphics should be a lot faster that the Intel 4000 I have now in the Mac Mini and Windows 7 PC. The PC takes 1min 20sec booting from a SSD and the Mac Mini takes 1min 10sec from HDD so a fusion drive should boot a lot quicker than either of them.

Again thanks for the help and I will post again when I get one.