• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

What is the comparison for the new mac mini speedwise compared to a PC?

MetalMat

MetalMat

Diamond Member
I would like to know about how [1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 running Mac OS X version 10.3 "Panther" ] would match up speedwise in comparison to a P4, Celeron and an Athlon?
 
Will depend greatly on what you do, but in terms of CPU horsepower it'll be slower than pretty much anything you can get in the x86 world currently, save some older non-D Celerons.
 
I think that the stock model will be the equivalent of similarly priced Celerons. However, adding extra RAM will increase the performance, allowing OS X to use physical memory instead continuously swapping virtual memory.
 
Comparisons in terms of performance can vary dramatically depending upon the application, and there aren't many easily benchmarkable apps that are OSX native and also available on WinXP.

Broadly speaking however, I'd say my Powerbook w/a 1.25GHz G4 is roughly comparable to Sempron 2400+/Celeron D @ 2.4GHz.
The Mac Mini uses the same processor as my Powerbook, so that should give you a rough idea of performance.

Not particularly fast at all, but it's decent enough given the price point their targeted at.
You could probably build a slightly faster PC for roughly the same cost as the Mac Mini, but nothing that would be dramatically different. Relative to most Mac's it's price/performance ratio is quite nice.

It's a pity the $600 Mac Mini 1.42GHz doesn't come stock with 512MB of RAM... I find Mac OSX to be a fair amount more RAM hungry then WinXP is.
 
Don't forget that for the price of the Mac mini, you get a superior OS with bundled software that would cost a tonne to get with a windows box, so the Mac mini is great value.
 
I owned a ibook and hated it. I'm a windows putz and don't want to learn anything else. It also seemed like for the average user osx ties your hands up. You really can't do anything and you don't defrag the harddrive. That always irked me.
 
Well i've used that 1.42Ghz G4 CPU before in a friend's PC a while ago and it really didn't feel THAT slow. I wouldn't say it is like a Celeron at all...those processors are terrible. Since the differences between x86 and the Power architecture are vast, lets just say that its a great deal and leave it at that 🙂.

Wait a second....you didn't like OSX because you don't need to defrag the HD? ..... you're joking, right?:Q
 
My 1.25 GHz PowerBook G4 feels as fast or faster than my older PC, a well balanced and tuned 2.4 GHz P4. But aside from games, most of what I do (DV editing, 3 and 5 MPixel home photos, presentations, web surfing, email, word processing, light desktop publishing) would be doing just as well on a 1 GHz G4 or a 1.8 GHz P4. Just as long as I had 512 MB of RAM. All of the bundled applications run as great as can be, as have the others I have purchased for it.

I would say that aside from the DV -> MPEG2 transcoding times, you'll find the 1.25 GHz G4 to be far fast enough for just about every task except for the newest games. And in that case, the 32 MB Radeon 9200 will be the limiting factor anyway.

If you want to compare the Mac Mini to a similar sized PC, such as the powered Nanode (Nano-ITX) system, you'll find that the G4 is over 2x faster than than the Nanode's 1.0 or 1.3 GHz Via CPU. Plus the Mac Mini has a real GPU and dedicated gfx ram, not shared onboard graphics.

There is, of course, a "differentness" to Mac OS X. Just as there was back in 1988 when people were comparing NeXTSTEP (Mac OS X"s ancestor) to traditional Unix systems of the day. It was a very different OS with a very different structure and a very different GUI. Many of the idea pioneered by NeXTSTEP have found their way into Windows and Linux over the years, and the OS itself was greatly overhauled during the Rhapsody/MacOSX project. Some elements were borrowed from "Classic" Mac OS 9 to further add to its varied background. Ever tried going from a Mazda to an Alfa? That's sort of what its to go from Windows to Mac OS X. It's a very different world.
 
Every filesystem suffers from fragmentation, though most modern filesystems don't have as much of a problem as Win95 did back in the FAT32 days.

HFS+ on Mac OS X 10.3 defrags and optimizes the drive in the background. It tries to prevent fragmentation problems before they become major. There is an analysis of this on a usenet post where some folks dug thru the Mac OS X source code (most of it is freely available from Apple's Darwin website) to see the changes between 10.2 and 10.3's HFS+ implementation.
 
Originally posted by: hopejr
Don't forget that for the price of the Mac mini, you get a superior OS with bundled software that would cost a tonne to get with a windows box, so the Mac mini is great value.
Click to expand...

exactly.
 
Originally posted by: halfadder
Every filesystem suffers from fragmentation, though most modern filesystems don't have as much of a problem as Win95 did back in the FAT32 days.

HFS+ on Mac OS X 10.3 defrags and optimizes the drive in the background. It tries to prevent fragmentation problems before they become major. There is an analysis of this on a usenet post where some folks dug thru the Mac OS X source code (most of it is freely available from Apple's Darwin website) to see the changes between 10.2 and 10.3's HFS+ implementation.
Click to expand...
Whenever a file less than 20MB is accessed (written, read, executed), it is defragged on the fly (and you don't notice it). Most en-genius if you ask me.
 
Pros:

1. Looks fantastic
2. Great price
3. Runs all the apps it ships with great
4. Makes a great gift for parents, grand parents, or little cousins



Cons:

1. Not enough computing horsepower
2. Forget it if you are going to be gaming
3. Small but not quiet portable.



For me the cons are more important for personal use. However, I would not hesitate to give it to my parents as their next comp.
 
Originally posted by: JSt0rm01
I owned a ibook and hated it. I'm a windows putz and don't want to learn anything else. It also seemed like for the average user osx ties your hands up. You really can't do anything and you don't defrag the harddrive. That always irked me.
Click to expand...

Funny, I'd say the exact same thing about Windows.
 
Originally posted by: deathkoba
Probably about as fast as a 3800+ in Photoshop....
Click to expand...

That isn't true at all, PC's run photoshop faster these days. Last gen FX and P4EE chips beat the G5, so I'm sure reasonable fast AMD and Intel chips can beat this slower mac.
 
Originally posted by: deathkoba
A G4 is nowhere near as low as a Celeron dude. The 1GHz G4s are equal in performance with 3GHz P4s according to Apple.
Click to expand...

And Apple has lied before about that, even mac fansites proved that when the G5 came out.
 
For the most part, it seems like the latest G5 and the latest Opterons are pretty close in performance, especially with code that is optimized for each platform. There are obvious exceptions to this, as well as cases where PC software was quickly/cheaply ported to Mac OS (MS Office, most big commerical games, etc). The latest round of PSBench scores show a dual 2.5 GHz G5 to do about as well as a dual 2.4 GHz Opteron system for Photoshop. As far as I know, you cannot yet buy a 2.5 GHz Opteron.

The Mac Mini uses a G4, just like the eMac, iBook, and PowerBook. The G4 is old. Heck, even the G5 is 18 months old already! The G4 compares roughtly to a P4 of about a little less than twice the clockspeed. The G4 is not magical, a 1.25 GHz G4 system with the faster 167 MHz FSB will feel about like a 2.4 GHz P4, and nothing more. The 1.2 GHz iBook has a 133 MHz FSB and feels more like a 2 GHz P4. Though do keep in mind that all Macs use dedicated GPUs and dedicated gfx ram, they do not use performance-killing shared video memory and onboard chipset graphics. No Intel "ExtremeGraphics" or VIA "DeltaChrome" crap here! A 800 MHz - 1 GHz G4 system can easily and quickly run almost all of the modern Mac applications. I know people who still do commerical video production on a dual 533 MHz G4 tower. For surfing the web, doing email, sorting photos, word processing, etc with all of the latest Mac applications, a 500 MHz G3 is enough provided you have enough RAM and a nice clean install of Mac OS X 10.3 or newer. Transcoding from DV to MPEG2 or running advanced Java applications is a bit sluggish on the old hardware, as are some of the newer games... but most of the popular apps will run just great.

It would be better to compare the Mac Mini to a EspressoPC or to a Via EPIA Mini-ITX / Nano-ITX system, like the Nanode.

PSBench details here:
http://episteme.arstechnica.co...;m=7760969205&p=71
 
Last time I checked, even a Dual 2.5ghz Apple couldnt keep up with 3.0ghz P4 for gaming not even mentioning an A64 or FX processor.

Also my friend's 1.8ghz G5 takes about 3.5 hours to do 1 calculation of SETI while I can do 2 in 3 hours and 10 min with a P4 3.0ghz. It seems that per clock cycle, A64 is better than Apple too. I am sure as a single processor for most apps nothign beats FX55 right now. Dual opterons? ehhee
 
Originally posted by: kouch
Pros:

1. Looks fantastic
2. Great price
3. Runs all the apps it ships with great
4. Makes a great gift for parents, grand parents, or little cousins



Cons:

1. Not enough computing horsepower
2. Forget it if you are going to be gaming
3. Small but not quiet portable.



For me the cons are more important for personal use. However, I would not hesitate to give it to my parents as their next comp.
Click to expand...

Lets pick your "cons" apart

1. Not enough computing horsepower

This machine has more than enough HP to do what the average users want to do, browse the net, get email, burn a cd or 2, watch a movie and do some light picture editing (possible with iphoto from the ilife bundle)

2. Forget it if you are going to be gaming

This isnt a gaming machine, its like saying that the low end dell isnt a gaming machine, no chit, thats not what its made for. They put a 9200 so you can play some simple games, but anyone that buys this knows they arent playing doom 3 on it.

3. Small but not quiet portable.

Its smaller than alot of lappies, it weighs in at under 3lb, tell me again why its not portable?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top