New Mac Mini Updates:
This Mac mini update maintains many physical aspects that were introduced with the mid-2010 Mac mini, including a low-profile (1.4 inches high, 7.7 inches deep and wide) aluminum unibody design. The front has a pin-hole sized activity light and IR port. The back of the new model has a power button, power cord input, and ports for gigabit ethernet, FireWire 800, HDMI, Thunderbolt, and USB 3. An SDXC card slot and audio-out and audio-in ports round out the physical connection types, while 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and an IR port deliver wireless connectivity.
The Mac mini’s body sits on a round, quarter-inch high black plastic disc that, when rotated half an inch, can be removed to expose the two RAM slots. Both the £499 and £679 standard Mac minis come with two 2GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM modules (for a total of 4GB), but they can be upgraded to use up to 16GB of RAM.
Drive Issues:
The entry-level £499 Mac mini comes with a relatively pokey 5400-rpm 500GB hard drive. Aside from RAM, it has no optional upgrades available from the Apple Store. The high-end £67 Mac mini also comes standard with a 5400 rpm drive, though at 1TB it has twice the capacity. And this high-end model has options: For an additional £240, you can upgrade to 256GB of flash storage, or for £200 you can opt for a new 1TB Fusion Drive.
A Fusion Drive brings together a 1TB hard drive and 128GB of flash storage. The operating system and applications are installed on the flash storage at the factory. Over time, the Fusion Drive is supposed to learn your work habits and move apps and data around between the hard drive and flash storage to provide the best performance. For example, if you use Aperture all the time and infrequently use iPhoto, the Fusion Drive and OS X might move the iPhoto library and application to the slower portion of the hard drive, and move Aperture to the faster flash storage.
Grappling with Graphics:
The new Mac mini uses Intel’s much improved HD Graphics 4000 graphics processor. It’s an integrated processor—the graphics processing is built into the main CPU and shares the computer’s main memory. Discrete graphics, on the other hand, are graphics processors that are completely separate and use dedicated video memory. Generally, discrete graphics are preferred over integrated graphics for applications that demand the highest performance.
The HD Graphics 4000 is much better at delivering high frame rates in games than the HD Graphics 3000 processor used previously, but it falls far short of the performance of the discrete AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphic processor. In our Portal 2 test, the new entry-level Mac mini was 27 percent faster than the previous low-end model. However, the previous high-end model with its AMD Radeon discrete graphics was 24 percent faster than the new high-end Mac mini with the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics.
This Mac mini update maintains many physical aspects that were introduced with the mid-2010 Mac mini, including a low-profile (1.4 inches high, 7.7 inches deep and wide) aluminum unibody design. The front has a pin-hole sized activity light and IR port. The back of the new model has a power button, power cord input, and ports for gigabit ethernet, FireWire 800, HDMI, Thunderbolt, and USB 3. An SDXC card slot and audio-out and audio-in ports round out the physical connection types, while 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and an IR port deliver wireless connectivity.
The Mac mini’s body sits on a round, quarter-inch high black plastic disc that, when rotated half an inch, can be removed to expose the two RAM slots. Both the £499 and £679 standard Mac minis come with two 2GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM modules (for a total of 4GB), but they can be upgraded to use up to 16GB of RAM.
Drive Issues:
The entry-level £499 Mac mini comes with a relatively pokey 5400-rpm 500GB hard drive. Aside from RAM, it has no optional upgrades available from the Apple Store. The high-end £67 Mac mini also comes standard with a 5400 rpm drive, though at 1TB it has twice the capacity. And this high-end model has options: For an additional £240, you can upgrade to 256GB of flash storage, or for £200 you can opt for a new 1TB Fusion Drive.
A Fusion Drive brings together a 1TB hard drive and 128GB of flash storage. The operating system and applications are installed on the flash storage at the factory. Over time, the Fusion Drive is supposed to learn your work habits and move apps and data around between the hard drive and flash storage to provide the best performance. For example, if you use Aperture all the time and infrequently use iPhoto, the Fusion Drive and OS X might move the iPhoto library and application to the slower portion of the hard drive, and move Aperture to the faster flash storage.
Grappling with Graphics:
The new Mac mini uses Intel’s much improved HD Graphics 4000 graphics processor. It’s an integrated processor—the graphics processing is built into the main CPU and shares the computer’s main memory. Discrete graphics, on the other hand, are graphics processors that are completely separate and use dedicated video memory. Generally, discrete graphics are preferred over integrated graphics for applications that demand the highest performance.
The HD Graphics 4000 is much better at delivering high frame rates in games than the HD Graphics 3000 processor used previously, but it falls far short of the performance of the discrete AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphic processor. In our Portal 2 test, the new entry-level Mac mini was 27 percent faster than the previous low-end model. However, the previous high-end model with its AMD Radeon discrete graphics was 24 percent faster than the new high-end Mac mini with the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics.
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