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My New Mac mini Setup
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Stoneham, MA, USA
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So I picked up a refurb 2.6ghz Mac mini. It's a quad core with hyperthreading, so 8 logical cores. I put an OCZ SSD drive in it, so it has a 256 GB SSD and a 1 TB HDD. Not a fusion drive, I manage the space myself. The SSD benchmarks at about 400 MB/sec write and 445mb/sec read. I also stick 16 GB of RAM in there. This is replacing a heavily-upgraded 1st Gen Mac Pro, and it really is much faster! In every way except GPU of course. The Pro has a 5770 and this Mac mini has shitty intel HD graphics. I upgraded from a MacBook Pro with nvidia 320m, to a MacBook Pro with this same intel 4000 graphics... a 2 generation gap, and the intel graphics were still noticeably worse than the nvidia. Frame rates are in the toilet. BUT aside from graphics power, this little mini ain't so bad. It will be very very quick for my day to day use. I have two 1080p displays connected. I wanted to upgrade to a pair of 27" monoprice displays, but the mini can't power two dual link displays.
Not that anyone boots up often these days, but this thing goes from startup tone to menu bar in 11 seconds.
2012 Mac mini Fast Boot with SSD (11 seconds) - YouTube
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Down by the river
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Nice...I'm waiting until Intel releases the new chipset this June to replace my 1,1 MacPro with a Mini. Word on the street, the GPU will be on par with nVidia 650M which is OK. I'll probably also replace the wife's HP laptop with a Mini and monitor at the same time.
Amazing how fast the Mini's are but wish Apple would include a "real" GPU.
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"Like a midget at a urinal, I was going to have to stay on my toes." Frank Drebin, Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Stoneham, MA, USA
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I'm hoping for a lot in the upcoming desktops, like I always am. But I'm always disappointed. And with newer versions of 10.8 getting buggier and buggier on my Mac Pro 1,1 ; i just got tired of waiting. One of the great things about a mini, is how easy it will be for me to potentially get another new one in a year, swap the drives, and be good to go.
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Moderator  Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Originally Posted by cgc 
Nice...I'm waiting until Intel releases the new chipset this June to replace my 1,1 MacPro with a Mini. Word on the street, the GPU will be on par with nVidia 650M which is OK. I'll probably also replace the wife's HP laptop with a Mini and monitor at the same time.
Amazing how fast the Mini's are but wish Apple would include a "real" GPU.
Note that Haswell will come with no less than 4 choices in GPU, and only the top one - GT3e, calling it GT4 would be too easy - is the one that Intel has compared to the GT650M. While Apple tends to stay away from the lower end of what Intel offers, I'm not sure that all of them will have the GT3e. OTOH, Apple doesn't mind spending money on a GPU to detriment of the CPU in the iOS line, and they were the ones that pushed Intel for the better graphics, so maybe.
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The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: UK
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How much trouble is it to get 10.8 on the old Mac Pro?
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I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
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