Performance Compared To My Current PC

[VeganHipster]

Right now I have a Dell XPS 410 and I am looking to upgrade to Mac. I have been thinking of numerous different options and I have made numerous different threads on asking which mac to buy. I think I should just get a mini. I am wondering how its performance compares to my current PC.

My Dell has an Intel Core 2 Duo and a 9600gt graphics card. I don't game much, but I do like to play Starcraft II and my current PC plays it on high at 1280x768 resolution display (26" tv, hoping to get an older Cinema Display, 20" or 23"). I want to play the Sims 3 also, and I am going to play The Old Republic when it comes out. My current 32bit geekbench score is around 2000 and I have seen the mac min score around 5000, so I am assuming the graphics perofrmance is better than my current PC, I was just coming here for clarification. The Mac Mini I was considering was the $800 model with the AMD graphics.

Another thing I was considering was to get the server and then a thunderbolt PCI-E express slot and get a radeon 5770 and pop it in there. Although there has not been a ton of information I have found on thunderbolt GPUS. HAs there been any updates? Can someone link me? Thanks!

 

[shortcut3d]

Right now I have a Dell XPS 410 and I am looking to upgrade to Mac. I have been thinking of numerous different options and I have made numerous different threads on asking which mac to buy. I think I should just get a mini. I am wondering how its performance compares to my current PC.

My Dell has an Intel Core 2 Duo and a 9600gt graphics card. I don't game much, but I do like to play Starcraft II and my current PC plays it on high at 1280x768 resolution display (26" tv, hoping to get an older Cinema Display, 20" or 23"). I want to play the Sims 3 also, and I am going to play The Old Republic when it comes out. My current 32bit geekbench score is around 2000 and I have seen the mac min score around 5000, so I am assuming the graphics perofrmance is better than my current PC, I was just coming here for clarification. The Mac Mini I was considering was the $800 model with the AMD graphics.

Another thing I was considering was to get the server and then a thunderbolt PCI-E express slot and get a radeon 5770 and pop it in there. Although there has not been a ton of information I have found on thunderbolt GPUS. HAs there been any updates? Can someone link me? Thanks!

My Geekbench 2.21 32/64 bit scores in Windows are as follows:

2.7GHz dual-core w/ AMD Discrete Graphics - 7190/9469
2.0GHz quad-core w/ Intel HD 3000 Integrated - 8654/11622

The score show the 2011 Mac Mini has significantly more processing and memory performance. Geekbench does not test graphics.

 

[redscull]

Your PC will have higher framerates than all of the 2011 minis in most modern games. For everything non-gaming, any of the minis would be a decent upgrade from your PC. But for gaming, even the best mini will be a downgrade from your PC.

The main reason is that the dedicated AMD Radeon HD 6630M video card just isn't much of a video card. It's designed to and excels at fitting in a small case, using minimal electricity, and running cool. It's not designed to push pixels in three dimension.

The other reason is that Macs just run games slower relative to their PC equivalents. Not a lot, but a little. Benchmarks of the same game, same settings, and roughly same hardware specs for a Mac vs. PC show this pretty consistently. Windows is the superior gaming platform.

Now, with all that said, the Mac mini might still perform well enough for you in the games you play. And if that's the case, cool. You can benefit from the improved performance of the non-gaming applications.

I should note that SC2 in particular might fair better on the AMD mini simply because, unlike most modern games, it chokes more on CPU than GPU. But I'd definitely not recommend the base mini for gaming. Get the discrete graphics without question.