Core 2 Duo Mac minis Geekbenched

[admin]

Core 2 Duo Mac minis Geekbenched
Monday, August 13, 2007
Posted by: Brian

Primate Labs today posted an updated series of Geekbench scores for the Mac mini. This includes scores for the latest Core 2 Duo models that were released by Apple last week.

According to the company's blog, "Moving from the Core Duo to the Core 2 Duo brings modest performance improvements without an increase in clock speed, and moving from 1.83GHz to 2.0GHz brings (unsurprisingly) another modest increase in performance. If you're running a previous generation Mac mini I see no real reason to upgrade (unless, of course, you want to use 64-bit applications). Of course, if you're moving from a PowerPC (or Core Solo) Mac mini, you'll notice a huge improvement in performance, not only from the improved Core 2 architecture, but also from the addition of an extra processing core."







Primate Labs is an independent software company based in Waterloo, Ontario. They develop Geekbench, which is a cross-platform benchmarking tool for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

http://www.123macmini.com/news/story/723.html

[Weee]

[JohnnyBoy]

[bsnoel]

I don't suspect 64-bit will gain that much on the Mac mini. The biggest advantage of 64-bit computing is that you can address over 4-GB of RAM. Since the Mac mini only has 2-GB max, 64-bit is not going to matter.

Some people argue that 64-bit processors transfer chunks of data that are twice as large, and therefore 64-bit CPUs are faster. However, in many cases a true 64-bit application sees no real performance advantage if everything else is equal. The reason is because, while the processor can move data in chunks twice the size, often the instructions in a 64-bit app are also compiled to twice the size of their 32-bit equivalent. This essentially cancels out the advantage of the CPU being able to move larger chunks of data.

So, unless an application is very memory intensive or has very large datasets, there is not that much of a performance gain from 64-bit computing. In some instances 32-bit apps run faster on 64-bit CPUs.

That being said, Leopard probably will be faster, than Tiger due to better optimized code for the Intel platform.
_________________
Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz, PowerMac G5 2.3 GHz, iMac Core Duo 17", MacBook Pro 2GHz, MacBook Pro 2.2GHz, Mac mini Core 2 Duo 1.83GHz. Multi-K9 Security System. No false alarms, just lots of sharp teeth.
www.grweather.com

[bsnoel]

Does anyone have any photos of the internals of the new Core 2 Duo Mac mini?

I put a Core 2 Duo 1.83GHz in my Core Duo Mac mini this last winter.
It works great, other than I ran into issues with excessive heat under heavy load and I had to increase the RPM on the fan to compensate. I'm wondering if Apple changed the heat sink design on the new Core 2 Duo Mac mini?
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Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz, PowerMac G5 2.3 GHz, iMac Core Duo 17", MacBook Pro 2GHz, MacBook Pro 2.2GHz, Mac mini Core 2 Duo 1.83GHz. Multi-K9 Security System. No false alarms, just lots of sharp teeth.
www.grweather.com

[Bandit Bill]

My G4 appears to be slow

[devo]

[Fox]

I found the benchmarking to be very helpful with regard to deciding which of the new minis to buy. I thought that the 2.0 ghz model would have a big advantage over the 1.83 because of its larger cache (4 mb vs 2 mb on the 1.83). However, the difference in overall speed appears to be less than 10%, which is to say, less than the difference in processor speed. As a result, I am now more inclined to buy the low end model, since I don't need a CD burner. I can get the same drive as the high end and max out the RAM for less than the cost of the stock high end mini. But I'm still planning to hold out for the release of Leopard before buying.
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Mini 1: 2.3 ghz Core i5; 8 gb RAM, Corsair 240gb SSD, 500 gb Seagate XT
Mini 2: 2.26 ghz Core 2 duo, 8 gb RAM, 500 gb Seagate
Also a Cube, 13" MacBook Air, 20" 2.66 ghz iMac & 11.6" Acer 1810TZ running Ubuntu, Mint & openSuse

[Yvan256]

[dfifo]

Do these benchmarks take advantage of dual core? Seems like comparing dual core to CPUs to single core, using single core tests doesn't give a clear picture.

[bprice]

[g5g5]

[Fox]

[Texark]

The Mac mini is just a video card away from me buying one again.

[picaman]