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I bought a mac mini with 8gb ram for $650. It significantly outperforms my company macbook pro which cost almost $3k. I run logic, docker, intellij, and it neve

by eweise 5y ago

I bought a mac mini with 8gb ram for $650. It significantly outperforms my company macbook pro which cost almost $3k. I run logic, docker, intellij, and it never complains about not enough memory.

manquer 5y ago
You are comparing a portable device with a powered one. If you don't need portability/mobility of your device any manufacturer is going to be costlier for comparable performance even if they can reach that level. Even with jump in M1 performance at lower power envelopes, top of the line deskop chips will easily beat it. Apple has only reduced the gap in the performance between high power draw and lower power draw machines, they have not surpassed it.
- eweise 5y ago
  How much would it cost for a top of the line desktop running OS X vs a mac mini?
  - manquer 5y ago
    The Mac pro is still a Intel based machine, it comes with relatively beefy GPU configurations as well ( the PC world has even better options) and with a lot of expansion slots that you cannot do in a Mini, the top of the line model is a 28-core 2.9 GHz processor. It will definitely beat the M1 Mini[1] in performance and cost(~5-10x). You(I) may not see the value of that increased performance[2] and will be unwilling to pay the premium (assuming there is no use for other features like expansion cards), however there is decent market who do value that 2.5x more than the 5-10x price difference it costs. [1] Roughly 2.5x in multi core performance. https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks [2] The power draw is also considerably more for the Mac pro ~ 1180W compared to 150W for the Mini, so not 1:1 comparison technically, however if you are only looking at non portable compute as the only value prop then it shouldn't matter.
mirekrusin 5y ago
I got one as well (+£200 for 16GB) and... stopped using £5k macbook pro from year before. M1 beats it, much faster and 5x+ cheaper. Crazy stuff.

by eweise 5y ago

I bought a mac mini with 8gb ram for $650. It significantly outperforms my company macbook pro which cost almost $3k. I run logic, docker, intellij, and it never complains about not enough memory.

manquer 5y ago

You are comparing a portable device with a powered one. If you don't need portability/mobility of your device any manufacturer is going to be costlier for comparable performance even if they can reach that level. Even with jump in M1 performance at lower power envelopes, top of the line deskop chips will easily beat it. Apple has only reduced the gap in the performance between high power draw and lower power draw machines, they have not surpassed it.

eweise 5y ago
How much would it cost for a top of the line desktop running OS X vs a mac mini?
- manquer 5y ago
  The Mac pro is still a Intel based machine, it comes with relatively beefy GPU configurations as well ( the PC world has even better options) and with a lot of expansion slots that you cannot do in a Mini, the top of the line model is a 28-core 2.9 GHz processor. It will definitely beat the M1 Mini[1] in performance and cost(~5-10x). You(I) may not see the value of that increased performance[2] and will be unwilling to pay the premium (assuming there is no use for other features like expansion cards), however there is decent market who do value that 2.5x more than the 5-10x price difference it costs. [1] Roughly 2.5x in multi core performance. https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks https://browser.geekbench.com/mac-benchmarks [2] The power draw is also considerably more for the Mac pro ~ 1180W compared to 150W for the Mini, so not 1:1 comparison technically, however if you are only looking at non portable compute as the only value prop then it shouldn't matter.

mirekrusin 5y ago

I got one as well (+£200 for 16GB) and... stopped using £5k macbook pro from year before. M1 beats it, much faster and 5x+ cheaper. Crazy stuff.