Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

WizOSX · Sep 24, 2011, 06:50 PM

People who buy the MMS (Mac Mini Server) seem to really like it and say it is very fast. Some benchmarks have the MMS quite a bit faster than the Mi5 (Mini Radeon i5) but I haven't seen any direct comparisons of the MMS to the Mi7 (Mini Radeon i7).

My question is whether the MMS or Mi7 would be faster for everyday tasks? Those who have bought the MMS for other reasons than use as a server are usually doing movie related tasks, etc. with software that is multi-core aware. But what about everyday tasks (other than games) that slow a Mac down? Would the extra .7 ghz of the Mi7 more than compensate for the two extra cores of the MMS?

Waragainstsleep · Sep 25, 2011, 06:53 AM

Its probably not a matter of compensating for them. For single or dual threaded tasks or GPU heavy tasks, the i7 will be quicker, for anything else, the quad core will win.

WizOSX · Oct 1, 2011, 04:41 PM

Assuming the MMS and Mi7 both have 7200rpm hard drives (no SSD) then which would be faster for:
1) Bootup
2) Software startup
3) Basic Photoshop CS operations
4) VIrtually anything with MS Office

Anyone got guesses?

chabig · Oct 1, 2011, 05:05 PM

I think the 2.7 GHz i7 Mini would have to be faster at every single task than the 2.0 GHz Server. It's the same processor but at a higher clock speed. Now when you start to load up the machine with tasks, the quad core benefits of the server should begin to shine. I don't know how to compare them directly, though.

P · Oct 1, 2011, 05:17 PM

1, 2 and 4 are too close to call, honestly: The first two are more disk intensive than CPU intensive, and the last is so low in CPU usage it's not worth measuring. 3 is interesting - I suspect that the i7 will be faster in anything optimized for GPU processing, but the MMS faster in anything else.

cgc · Oct 1, 2011, 06:51 PM

Barefeats shows the MMS beating the 2.7GHz i7 in some multi-threaded benchmarks so it may not be what you're looking for. Passmark shows the 2.0GHz quad-core i7 scoring 6335 and the 2.7GHz dual-core i7 scoring 5566. I'd think in day-to-day use the 2.7GHz i7 would be more noticeable.

P · Oct 2, 2011, 05:15 AM

Note that the 2.0 quadcore will turbo up to 2.9 GHz on a single core and 2.8 GHz on two. Granted, the dualcore 2.7 will turbo up to 3.4/3.2, but that is till a much smaller gap than the 2.0-2.7 split would indicate.

The quadcore also has 6MB of L3 cache, while the 2.7 dual only has 4.

SierraDragon · Oct 4, 2011, 12:02 PM

For the "everyday tasks" listed any Sandy Bridge CPU is fast enough (today) and IMO the dual/quad comparison is fairly unimportant.

IMO far more important today is SSD versus HDD. The impact of SSD usage is huge on everyday tasks. It literally can change workflows (especially on laptops).

Moving forward over the life of a new box I expect the trend in apps/OS to be (a) utilizing more RAM, (b) better at utilizing multiple cores, (c) more capable of taking advantage of graphics processing. After SSD those are the parameters I would worry about life-cycle optimizing. But planning on SSD is a prerequisite IMO.

"Basic Photoshop" for instance has minimal GPU usage but the trend CS4-CS5 has been increasingly more usage of graphics; 3D and some plug-ins access the GPU now.

-Allen

crumby99 · Oct 6, 2011, 02:05 PM

Originally Posted by cgc

Barefeats shows the MMS beating the 2.7GHz i7 in some multi-threaded benchmarks so it may not be what you're looking for. Passmark shows the 2.0GHz quad-core i7 scoring 6335 and the 2.7GHz dual-core i7 scoring 5566. I'd think in day-to-day use the 2.7GHz i7 would be more noticeable.

cgc,

I believe that both of your passmark scores are referencing the wrong CPUs. The dual core i7 found in the non-server Mac mini is the i7-2620M. The passmark score for that one is only 3938. The Mac Mini server has the i7-2635QM which scores 6313.

Server (quad core) i7: 6313
Non-Server (dual core) i7: 3938

The server almost doubles the non-server's passmark score. That is pretty significant.

cgc · Oct 6, 2011, 06:36 PM

Originally Posted by crumby99

cgc,

I believe that both of your passmark scores are referencing the wrong CPUs. The dual core i7 found in the non-server Mac mini is the i7-2620M. The passmark score for that one is only 3938. The Mac Mini server has the i7-2635QM which scores 6313.

Server (quad core) i7: 6313
Non-Server (dual core) i7: 3938

The server almost doubles the non-server's passmark score. That is pretty significant.

Could be...I didn't see part numbers on the computer config page and really didn't want to spend too much time looking into it. Thanks for fixing it...I assume you got the part numbers from Apple's tech specs?