[sunriser]

Hello everyone,

I'm the owner of a mac mini core solo (1.67GHZ, 512 Mb) and I plan to connect it to my new LCD HDTV. Now the problem is that the mini isn't buffy enought to play 1080 H.264 content...

I want to swap the cpu for a faster one but I'm note sure which one to get...

Is a Core Duo a good option or should I go for a Core 2 Duo?

Since the 2.3 Ghz (T7600 ) is still very expensive, the 1.83 C2D (T5600) seems to be a good alternative (both performance and price) but will it be enough to play 1080 h.264?

Any advice will be welcomed

Thanks

[P]

Since you're upgrading anyway, go for the Core 2 Duo. I'd pick the slowest chip with the full 4 MB cache, which is the T7200 (2 GHz). The T5600 just has 2 MB of cache, and that seems to affect OS X significantly.

[mduell]

Yea, a Pentium M or Core Solo is just enough for 720p, but not fast enough for 1080p.
Core 2 Duo is $5-10 cheaper than Core Duo at the same clockrate, so it's really a no brainer.

4MB cache provides about a 3.5% performance advantage over 2MB over about a dozen benchmarks (ranging from 0 to 10% depending on the benchmark), per Anandtech.

Newegg has 1.66Ghz for $206, 1.83Ghz for $245, and 2.0Ghz (4MB) for $300. With those prices I'd take the 2.0 if it's in your budget, but otherwise the 1.66 is fine.

[sunriser]

I saw some test on macbidouille.com and they says the 4MB hasn't really a lot of impact on the day-to-day use (around 2-4%)...

But is the T5600 enough for 1080p or not? (since the T7200 is 50% more expensive than the T5600, i'll rather get cheapest I need)

Does the RAM will have any significance impact on the video play (should I upgrade it to 1Gb)?

Thanks again

[mduell]

Yea, a Pentium M or Core Solo is just enough for 720p, but not fast enough for 1080p.
Core 2 Duo is $5-10 cheaper than Core Duo at the same clockrate, so it's really a no brainer.

4MB cache provides about a 3.5% performance advantage over 2MB over about a dozen benchmarks (ranging from 0 to 10% depending on the benchmark), per Anandtech.

Newegg has 1.66Ghz (T5500) for $206, 1.83Ghz (T5600) for $245, and 2.0Ghz (T7200) for $300. With those prices I'd take the T7200 if it's in your budget, but otherwise the T5500 should be fine for 1080p.

[sunriser]

Thanks for those usefull informations :thumbsup:

[darkmatter]

Originally Posted by sunriser 

Hello everyone,

Since the 2.3 Ghz (T7600 ) is still very expensive,

Any advice will be welcomed

Thanks

Hello, there is somewhere some information that Intel will cut the price of CPUs by the 21 of Juni or Juli, sorry, but I don't remember exactly which month.

Regards

[sunriser]

it looks like this price cut will touch th xeon only

[darkmatter]

Originally Posted by sunriser 

it looks like this price cut will touch th xeon only

In my case I will wait a bit... in the mean time I upgraded my mini with a RAM pair and a Travelstar 7200 RPM HD to boost performance, don't know exactly if this kind of upgrade has an influence in video playback but at least the mini feels really quick.

Here is a new link on the Intel's CPUs price drop:
Intel Chip Prices coming down - AppleNova Forums

Regards

[chipchen]

hmm... I'd sell the Core Solo mini and buy a Core Duo mini.